“Crazy young idiot!” Vlad bellowed. “This is no place for boys. Get yourself downstairs and do something useful.”
“I’ll go roast an ox for the victory feast,” Wulf said. He went off to the top of the stair, where the collection of wounded had already increased to six. Men lining up to go down were loading them on their backs. At that moment Wend bugles blew and everyone’s attention went to the battle. The massed attackers dropped their shields and revealed their attack: not battering rams or kegs of gunpowder, but ladders, two of them. Made of two tree trunks apiece, they were not only enormously long and heavy, they were rigged with ropes to raise them. The slow and deliberate approach had been designed to keep those ropes from becoming entangled. In an impressive display of training, the men divided into three groups. A center group steadied the base of the ladders, a group behind pushed them up with pikes and poles, and the group in front, by far the largest, ran forward with the ropes. Meanwhile the archers at the back worked their crossbows in a frenzy.
“Rocks!” Vlad roared. Men rushed to the battlements and began throwing out the building stones. Most of them fell short of their targets, and the supply would obviously run out in minutes. Wulf again silently cursed the late Count Bukovany.
Gradually the far ends of the ladders rose and the attackers’ main problem became the need to keep the bases from slipping. They had as many men attending to that as they had pulling on the ropes, and the defenders poured arrows into them. Higher yet, and now the haulers by the gate were clearly winning as the angle improved. First one ladder, then the other, reached the vertical and began to topple toward the barbican. As soon as that happened, would-be heroes began scrambling aboard.
The rain of rocks had stopped for lack of ammunition. There was still plenty of discarded timber lying around the roof, though. Full of rot or worms those balks might be, but every one of them was heavy enough to kill or maim the men it landed on. Wulf found himself swept up in a gang manhandling one of the largest to the edge and raising it to go over the crenels, which was no mean task. They were just in time. As it vanished towards the ground, the top of the first ladder came rushing down to the battlements. The second followed moments later. The tower trembled at the impact.
The Wends’ planning had been excellent. They had judged the length of the ladders and their distance from the gate perfectly, for they were neither too long nor too short, overtopping the coping stones by a useful three or four feet. Defenders jumped to try and push them aside with hands or pikes, but already Wends were swarming up the rungs, weighing them down. Other attackers were holding the ropes as guylines to keep them vertical.
Wulf clawed his way to the front and managed to scramble up over the massed men-at-arms until his fingers could touch the rough wood of a ladder. -Break! You were damaged in the impact. There is a weakness near the third rung from the bottom. When the men reach the top you will be overloaded.
A sword flashed, swinging at his hand, and he fell back, lost his footing, tipped off the parapet, and sprawled headlong on the deck below, narrowly avoiding impaling himself on a couple of the embedded bolts. He was dazed for a moment, but a rattle of crossbows snapped him awake. The defender archers were lined up, shooting at Wends mounting the ladders. So he had failed. The rungs were full, and the rails were holding their weight. His curse had not prevailed against whatever blessing the Wends’ Speakers had used. Archery stopped as the defenders ran out of ammunition, leaving them only Kinghateve swords and pikes to repel the assault.
Then came a great roar from a thousand throats, part wailing, part cheering. The ladder he had cursed began to slide sideways. One leg had failed, as he had commanded. The top caught in a crenel, so the whole structure twisted and slammed into the other. Both ladders went then, with their human cargoes shrieking in terror and despair. Some who were low enough would fall to the road and crush other men, but most would be hurled over the edge, down to the banks of the Ruzena far below.
Madlenka and her helpers were on the wall near the barbican, loading a wounded man on a stretcher for transport back to the keep. There they had been within range of arrows, but there would not be many arrows coming now. At the south barbican, Anton was just stepping out the sally port, following Bishop Ugne.
Everybody on the roof was up on the parapet, peering through merlons and even over crenels, cheering and jeering as they watched the Wends crash to destruction. No one was watching Wulf. The battle at the north gate was won for today. It was time to go and attend to the other foe. Busy morning.
Wulf unbuckled his belt, dropped it, sword and all, and went to attend the parley.
CHAPTER 6
He did not break the first commandment, because he emerged from limbo directly behind Anton just as the sally port thumped shut at his back. The door itself would have hidden his mysterious materialization from the men inside, and the slight overhang of the arch from any watchers on the walls.
The new outpost Vlad had ordered, a hundred yards down the road at the first bend, comprised a timber breastwork and some blindings to conceal his archers while they reloaded. Those would also prevent the enemy from knowing how many men opposed them, which at present was no more than a dozen. The outpost, in short, was a sham, but the Jorgarian flag flew above it, beside the pennant of the new count of Cardice. If Havel Vranov tried to force his way past, he would be making war on his king. He must not be allowed to see behind the blindings, so the parley would have to take place on the far side of it, in no-man’s-land. Bearing a white flag, Arturas led the way down the slushy trail, with count and bishop following, and the gate-crashing Speaker in the rear.
Wulf poked Anton in the back, under his corselet.
Anton warped around and gave him a what-are-you-doing-here glare.
Wulf returned a knowing, you-need-me smirk. After eighteen years’ practice in dealing with each other in war and peace, the brothers needed few words to communicate. Anton pulled a face and returned to attendance on the bishop.
Ugne was not an especially short man, but he appeared so next to Anton. His conspicuous belly and flat-footed waddle made his legs seem short, though, and perhaps they were. He had a very prominent curved nose. Madlenka said that he looked like a parrot, but today he was enveloped in a robe of snowy ermine with a red miter. Wulf decided he was more o Ningha lof a cockatoo.
“Bishop Starsi is a most holy man,” he proclaimed. “His health has been causing concern of late and it is a measure of his dedicated service to the Prince of Peace that he has made the arduous journey over these hills to participate in this holy discourse.”
“I am not yet familiar with the limits of my own fief, my lord bishop,” Anton said. “I do not even know how far away Pelrelm is.”
“Oh, a day’s ride or less to the border. But Pelrelm is much larger than Cardice, and mountainous. The bishop’s see is in Woda, three days’ hard riding away from here in summer, and more in these conditions.”
They should let the holy man make an early start on his homeward journey, Wulf thought. But this was Friday, and on Sunday Anton had arrived in his new domain and thrown the conspiring Havel Vranov out on his ear. There should not have been time since then for him to ride home to Woda and rout the bishop out of bed to come and negotiate a parley. Havel himself certainly dabbled in Satanism, but was his bishop one of the Wise?
The garrison on the redoubt saluted as the dignitaries arrived. They had already opened a gap in the breastwork, so Arturas led the way through and the others followed. Wulf grinned at a couple of faces he recognized from the banquet and took note of them as people whose eyes he might want to borrow in the near future-especially Master Sergeant Jachym, who was currently in command of this suicide squad.