“You don’t need to come with me.”
He shook his head. “I’m to see you safe home, if things go wrong. And that’s not easy. The rats may lie quiet in their holes while you go through in advance, but they come out with their teeth sharpened for anyone straggling back.”
He saw that our haversacks were well supplied with rations and our canteens filled with water. The Spirits, through Ezzard, had prophesied victory for Winchester, a greater one than last year’s, but as he said, an old soldier might believe in the Spirits but was not such a fool as to trust his life to them. If our army were scattered the baggage train would be lost and it was difficult enough escaping through hostile territory without going hungry and thirsty as well. We led our horses up the hill and tethered them in the grove of trees. The wind howled through, shaking the branches, but the rain had stopped. Then, our cloaks wrapped tightly round us, we looked down and watched the armies come together.
It was a slow business at first. Our army, more than five hundred men on horseback, stood grouped about the blue and gold standard, near which I picked out the tall figure of my father on Guinea, his helmet topped by the royal spike. The Petersfield men came on slowly from the east, in a wedge formation with their Prince and his standard, all green, deep inside the wedge. From time to time they stopped. The taunts and jeers from both sides came up to us, thin, tiny like the figures. At one time I exclaimed as the enemy appeared to turn tail, but Burke shook his head. It was part of the ritual, he explained, and no retreat but a show of scorn, meaning they held us in such contempt that they could expose their backs.
“If we attacked now . . .”
“It would be to give them best in that.”
“But we might win.”
“We might. If you can call it a victory, achieved without honor.”
I said: “We face the wind.”
“It blows from their city.”
“But if we had held the ridge on the right—they could only have come at us across wind, and uphill also. Or would that be dishonorable, too?”
He laughed. “Not that I have heard. But your father is a strong fighter rather than a canny one. He thinks he needs no such aid.”
“But if they had taken the ridge . . .”
“It would have made things harder for us. Watch! It begins, I think.”
The two forces were riding to a clash with growing momentum. My hands were clenched and I felt the nails score my palms. The wedge advanced toward our ragged line and as it drove in I saw swords flashing even in this dull air. Our line, giving way at the center, curved round to embrace their flanks. Then it was a melee, impossible to sort out except by reference to the swaying standards, confusion to eyes and ears alike. The din, though distant, was awfuclass="underline" shouts and cries of men, screams of horses, rattle and clash of swords.
The fight lasted for three quarters of an hour. Then slowly the sides disentangled as the Petersfield men fell back. The green standard bobbed away on a retreating tide.
“Is it over?” I asked. “Have we won?”
“We have won this fight,” Burke said. “I think there will be others. They gave way in too good order to be ready to ask for peace.”
“If we have beaten them once we can beat them again.”
“True enough. Except that next time they will be closer in to their own city.”
“What difference does that make?”
“An army fights harder the nearer it is to home.”
But they did not stand in our path again. We took East Meon and moved on, downhill at last to the low ground in which Petersfield itself stood, west of the Rother River. We camped under their walls, out of arrow shot, and waited for them either to sue for peace or come out to fight us. We were among their home farms and had food enough. They must do something or their harvest would be lost.
Pickets were set at night, though an attack was unlikely then. Darkness favors the defenders provided they are prepared; we had stakes and ditches ready. Then one morning, as the sky was beginning to grow light in the east, I awoke to what I thought was the crash of thunder. While I was still struggling to my senses I heard another crash, and shouts of pain. I pulled on my boots and got to my feet to find the camp in confusion. There was a third crash. It was different from thunder and in any case the sky was full of high thin cloud. I looked toward the city and saw, just before the next crash, a red flare of light from the walls.
Gradually some order emerged. The Sergeants rallied the men. I went to my father’s tent and found him there with his Captains. One said:
“I have heard of these things. They throw metal a great distance. But they are machines. The Seers forbid them.”
Harding said: “They bark more than they bite. Two men wounded, I am told.”
“So far,” another said. “But if they keep on with this long enough . . .”
Harding said: “We can move the camp back. I don’t know what range they have but it must have limits. And we are still in their lands.”
“Once we retreat it will give them heart. And if they bring these machines with them . . . if we ride against thunder that belches steel, will the men still follow?”
Harding shrugged. “We have no choice but to retreat. We could leave this campaign and ride against Alton again, or south to Chichester.”
Blaine, a red-faced burly man with small sharp eyes, said: “What does the Prince say?”
Neither he nor Harding would be sorry to see the campaign against Petersfield called off. It might not bring my father down but it would besmirch the reputation he had gained last year and help undermine his power. I saw them watching him.
My father said: “They use machines. It is not just the Seers but the Spirits that forbid them.”
“They can kill for all that.”
“The Spirits promised us victory,” my father said. “And these men defy them. So we attack.”
Harding said: “How, since they will not come out?”
“We attack the city.”
They stared at him in disbelief. One of the reasons Stephen had been laughed at, building his walls higher each year, was that in more than a generation no city in the civilized lands had fallen to the army of another. Taunton had gone down, three years before, but Taunton was a border city and the barbarians from the west had taken it. The armies fought, harder, as Burke had said, the nearer they were to home, and won or lost, and peace was made, ransoms and tributes paid; but the cities stayed safe and untouched. What my father was saying sounded not merely foolhardy but almost heretical.
Blaine said, his tone only just concealing the sneer:
“And take it? All the easier, do you think, for having the machines against us? They may or may not be able to bring them against us in the field. But, by the Great, we know they are on the battlements. Are we to walk like flies up the walls and into their very mouths?”
“Why not?” my father said. “Since the Spirits are with us.”
There was a silence and I saw the Captains look at one another. If one spoke up in opposition the rest might rally to him. But it was my cousin Peter who spoke. He said:
“Why not? When the Prince leads, do his Captains fear to follow?”
• • •
It seemed hopeless. They had to advance on foot, with the machines, three of them, blasting down at them from above. Even without these, scaling the walls would have seemed impossible. Because of the risk of earthquakes they were of loose construction but they were steeply sloping and more than thirty feet high, manned by archers who could pick off the crawling attackers with ease. One of the Captains had suggested making the attack at some other point where there might not be machines, but my father refused. We went under the Spirits’ protection and would advance against the machines whose use the Spirits forbade.
I watched from the camp with Burke. The machines roared again and again and I saw our men fall as the hot steel slashed their bodies. They were in bow range, too, now and the arrows also took their toll. My father led them. I do not think they would have gone forward against such odds under any other Captain. If he fell, they would scatter and run, and I guessed the enemy’s fire would be concentrated on him. Even if, by a miracle, he went on unscathed, I thought they must break as comrades dropped and died at their sides.