The defenders endured. There was nothing else they could do.
Lord Abriel began to construct engines of his own to respond, but aside from the rubble of destroyed houses, there was very little at hand to throw back at Martel in reply.
They endured, and each stone, each fireball, each shower of arrows dropping from the sky in a deadly rain only increased their hatred of the besiegers.
The first serious assault came not long after midnight eight days after the looting had begun. A disorganized horde of Rendorish fanatics came shrieking out of the dark, smoky streets to the southwest bent on attacking a somewhat shaky bartizan on the corner of the old wall in that quarter. The defenders rushed to that point. Sheets of arrows and crossbow bolts swept through the black-robed ranks of the Rendors, felling them in windrows like new-mown wheat. The shrieks took on that note of agony that has risen from every battlefield since the beginning of time. On and on, however, came the Rendors, men so wildly gripped by religious frenzy that they paid no heed to their dreadful casualties, some of them even ignoring mortal wounds as they dragged themselves towards the walls.
‘The pitch!’ Sparhawk shouted to the soldiers who were feverishly shooting arrows and bolts down into the seething mass of the attackers below. Cauldrons of boiling pitch were dragged to the edge of the walls even as the scaling ladders came angling up from below to clatter against the weather-worn battlements. The Rendors, shrieking war cries and religious slogans, came scrambling up the rude ladders only to fall howling and writhing from those ladders as great waves of scalding pitch engulfed them, burning, searing.
‘Torches!’ Sparhawk commanded.
Half a hundred flaming torches sailed out over the walls to ignite the pools of liquid pitch and naphtha below. A great sheet of flame shot up to bathe the walls and to burn those Rendors still clinging to their ladders as ants sizzle, shrivel and fall from a log cast into a fire. Burning men ran from the crowd below, shrieking, stumbling blindly and trailing streams of dripping flame like comets as they ran.
Still the Rendors came, and still the scaling ladders ponderously rose from their ranks, pushed from the rear by hundreds of hands to swing up and up, then to hesitate, standing vertically, and then to slowly fall against the wall. Fanatics, wild-eyed and some actually foaming at the mouth, were desperately climbing even before the ladders fell into place. From the top of the walls, the defenders pushed the ladders away with long poles, and the ladders reversed their rise, teetered back out to stand momentarily motionless and then toppled backwards, carrying the men near their tops to their deaths below. Hundreds of Rendors crowded near the base of the walls to avoid the arrows from above, and they dashed out to scramble up the ladders towards the tops of the walls.
‘Lead!’ Sparhawk commanded then. The lead had been Bevier’s idea. Each sarcophagus in the crypt beneath the Basilica had been surmounted by a leaden effigy of its inhabitant. The sarcophagi were now unadorned, and the effigies had been melted down. Bubbling cauldrons stood at intervals along the tops of the walls, and at Sparhawk’s command, they were pushed forward and overturned to pour down in great silvery sheets on the Rendors clustered at the base of the wall. The shrieks this time did not last for long, and no man ran blazing from the attack after he had been entombed in liquid lead.
Some few, then more did reach the tops of the walls. The church soldiers met them with a bravery born of desperation, and they held the fanatics long enough to permit the knights to come to their aid. Sparhawk strode forward at the head of the phalanx of black-armoured Pandions. He swung his heavy broadsword steadily, rhythmically. The broadsword is not a weapon with much finesse, and the big Pandion Knight did not so much fight his way through the shrieking Rendors as chop open a wide path. His sword was an instrument of dismemberment, and hands and whole arms flew spinning from his strokes to rain down on the faces of attackers still on the scaling ladders. Heads went sailing out to fall either on the outside of the wall or on the inside, depending on the direction of Sparhawk’s swing. The knights following him and disposing of the wounded were soon wading in blood. One Rendor, quite skinny and waving a rusty sabre, stood howling before the man in black armour bearing down on him. Sparhawk altered his swing slightly and sheared the man almost in two at the waist. The Rendor was hurled against the battlements by the force of the blow, and the remaining shred of flesh ripped as the upper torso toppled outwards. The man’s lower half caught up on one of the battlements, the legs threshing wildly. The Rendor’s upper torso did not quite reach the ground below, but hung head downwards from a long rope of purple bowel that steamed in the cool night air. The torso swung slowly back and forth, jerking slightly downwards as its intestines gradually unravelled.
‘Sparhawk!’ Kalten shouted as Sparhawk’s arm began to grow weary. ‘Get your breath! I’ll take over here!’
And so it went until the top of the wall was once again secure and all the scaling ladders had been shoved away. The Rendors milled around below, still falling victim to arrows and to large rocks thrown down on them from the walls.
And then they broke and fled.
Kalten came back, panting and wiping his sword. ‘Good fight,’ he said, grinning.
‘Tolerable,’ Sparhawk agreed laconically. ‘Rendors aren’t very good fighters, though.’
‘Those are the best kind to face,’ Kalten laughed. He pulled back one foot to kick the bottom half of the skinny Rendor off the wall.
‘Leave him where he is,’ Sparhawk said shortly. ‘Let’s give the next wave of attackers something to look at while they’re crossing the field to get here. You might as well tell the people cleaning up down on the inside of the wall to save any loose heads they come across as well. We’ll set them on stakes along the battlements.’
‘Object lessons again?’
‘Why not? A man who’s attacking a defended wall is entitled to know what’s likely to happen to him, wouldn’t you say?’
Bevier came hurrying down the bloody parapet. ‘Ulath’s been hurt!’ he shouted to them from several yards away. He turned to lead them back to their injured friend, and the church soldiers melted out of his way. Perhaps unconsciously, Bevier was still brandishing his lochaber axe.
Ulath lay on his back. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and blood was running out of his ears.
‘What happened?’ Sparhawk demanded of Tynian.
‘A Rendor ran up behind him and hit him on the head with an axe.’
Sparhawk’s heart sank.
Tynian gently removed Ulath’s horned helmet and gingerly probed through the Genidian Knight’s blond hair. ‘I don’t think his head’s broken,’ he reported.
‘Maybe the Rendor didn’t swing hard enough,’ Kalten surmised.
‘I saw the blow. The Rendor swung as hard as he could. That blow should have split Ulath’s head like a melon.’ He frowned, tapping on the bulging knot of horn that joined the two curling points jutting from each side of their friend’s conical helmet. Then he examined the helmet closely. ‘Not a scratch,’ he marvelled. He took out his dagger and scraped at the horn, but was unable to even mar its shiny surface. Then, finally overcome by curiosity, he picked up Ulath’s fallen war-axe and hacked at the horn several times without even chipping it. ‘That’s amazing,’ he said. ‘That’s the hardest stuff I’ve ever come across.’
‘That’s probably why Ulath’s still got his brains inside his head,’ Kalten said. ‘He doesn’t look too good, though. Let’s carry him to Sephrenia.’
‘You three go on ahead,’ Sparhawk told them regretfully. ‘I’ve got to talk with Vanion.’
The four Preceptors stood together some distance away where they had been observing the attack.
‘Sir Ulath’s been hurt, My Lord,’ Sparhawk reported to Komier.
‘Is it bad?’ Vanion asked quickly.
‘There’s no such thing as a good injury, Vanion,’ Komier said. ‘What happened, Sparhawk?’
‘A Rendor hit him in the head with an axe, My L
ord.’
‘In the head, you say? He’ll be all right then.’ He reached up and rapped his knuckles on his own ogre-horned helmet. ‘That’s why we wear these.’
‘He didn’t look very good,’ Sparhawk said gravely. ‘Tynian, Kalten and Bevier are taking him to Sephrenia.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ Komier insisted.
Sparhawk pushed Ulath’s injury to the back of his mind. ‘I think I’ve put my finger on some of Martel’s strategy, My Lords. He saddled himself with those Rendors for a specific reason. Rendors aren’t really very good at modern warfare. They don’t wear any kind of protective armour – not even helmets – and they’re pitifully incapable of any form of swordsmanship. We swept them off the top of that wall the way you’d mow a hayfield. All they really have is a raging fanaticism, and they’ll attack in the face of insurmountable odds. Martel’s going to keep throwing them at us to wear us down and to reduce our numbers. Then, after he’s weakened and exhausted us, he’ll throw in his Cammorian and Lamork mercenaries. We’ve got to work out some way to keep those Rendors off the walls. I’m going to talk with Kurik. Maybe he can come up with a few ideas.’
Kurik, as a matter of fact, could. His years of experience, and the reminiscences of grizzled old veterans he had met from time to time provided him with a large number of very nasty ideas. There were objects he called caltrops: fairly simple, four-pronged steel things that could be made in such a way that no matter how far they were thrown, they would always land with one steel, sharp-pointed prong pointing upward. Rendors did not wear boots, but only soft leather sandals. A generous smearing of poison on the pointed prongs made the caltrops lethal as opposed to merely inconvenient. Ten-foot long beams with sharpened stakes attached to them to protrude like the spines of a hedgehog and once again doctored with poison provided fairly insurmountable barriers when rolled down long beams to lie in profusion out in front of the walls. Long log pendulums swinging from the battlements parallel to the walls would sweep scaling ladders away like cobwebs. ‘None of these will actually hold off really serious attacks, Sparhawk,’ Kurik said, ‘but they’ll slow people down to the point where crossbowmen and regular archers can pick them off. Not very many attackers will reach the walls.’
‘That’s sort of what we had in mind,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Let’s commandeer the citizenry and put them to work on these ideas. All that the people of Chyrellos are doing right now is sitting around eating. Let’s give them a chance to earn their keep.’
The construction of Kurik’s obstacles took several days, and there were several more Rendorish attacks in the interim. Then Preceptor Abriel’s catapults scattered the caltrops in profusion in front of the walls, and the hedgehogs rolled down long beams to lie in tangles and clusters some twenty yards or so out from the walls. After that, very few Rendors reached the walls, and the ones who did were not encumbered by scaling ladders. They would normally mill around shouting slogans and hacking at the walls with their swords until the bowmen on top of the walls had the leisure to kill them. After a few of those abortive attacks, Martel pulled back for a day or so to reconsider his strategy. It was still summer, however, and the hordes of dead Rendors lying outside the walls began to bloat in the sun. The smell of rotting flesh made the inner city distinctly unpleasant.
One evening, Sparhawk and his companions took advantage of the lull to return to the chapterhouse for much-needed baths and a hot meal. Before they did anything else, however, they stopped by to visit Sir Ulath. The big Genidian Knight lay in his bed. His eyes were still unfocused, and he had a confused look on his face. ‘I’m getting tired of just lying around, brothers,’ he said in a slurred voice, ‘and it’s hot in here. Why don’t we go out and hunt down a Troll? Slogging through the snow should cool off our blood a little.’
‘He thinks he’s in the Genidian Mother-house at Heid,’ Sephrenia told the knights quietly. ‘He keeps wanting to go Troll-hunting. He thinks I’m a serving wench, and he’s been making all sorts of improper suggestions to me.’
Bevier gasped.
‘And then sometimes he cries,’ she added.
‘Ulath?’ Tynian said in some amazement.
‘It may be a subterfuge, though. The first time he did it, I tried to comfort him, and it turned into a sort of wrestling match. He’s very strong, considering his condition.’
‘Will he be all right?’ Kalten asked. ‘I mean, will he regain his senses?’
‘It’s very hard to say, Kalten. That blow bruised his brain, I think, and you never know how something like that’s going to turn out. I think you’d better leave, dear ones. Don’t excite him.’
Ulath began to make a long, rambling speech in the language of the Trolls, and Sparhawk was surprised to discover that he still understood the language. The spell Aphrael had cast in Ghwerig’s cave seemed to still have some of its potency left.
After he had bathed and shaved, Sparhawk put on a monk’s robe and joined the others in the nearly-deserted refectory where their meal was laid on a long table.
‘What’s Martel going to do next?’ Preceptor Komier was asking Abriel.
‘He’ll probably fall back on fairly standard siege tactics,’ Abriel replied. ‘Most likely he’ll settle down and let his siege engines pound us for a while. Those fanatics were just about his only chance for a quick victory. This may drag out for quite some time.’
They all sat quietly, listening to the monotonous crash of large rocks falling into the city around them.
Then Talen burst into the room. His face was smudged and his clothes were dirty. ‘I just saw Martel, My Lords!’ he said excitedly.
‘We’ve all seen him, Talen,’ Kalten said, sprawling deeper into his chair. ‘He rides up outside the walls now and then to have a look around.’
‘He wasn’t outside the walls, Kalten,’ Talen said. ‘He was in the cellar under the Basilica.’
‘What are you saying, boy?’ Dolmant demanded.
Talen drew in a deep breath. ‘I – um – well, I wasn’t entirely honest with you gentleman when I told you how I was getting the thieves of Chyrellos out of the inner city,’ he confessed. He held up one hand. ‘I did arrange for a meeting between the thieves and those church soldiers on the wall with their rope. That part was completely true. About the only thing I didn’t tell you was that I found another way as well. I just didn’t want to bore you with a lot of extra details. Anyway, not long after we got here, I happened to be down in the lowest cellar under the Basilica, and I found a passageway. I don’t know what it was used for originally, but it leads off to the north. It’s perfectly round, and the stones of the walls and floor are very smooth. I followed it, and it took me out into the city.’
‘Does it show any signs of being used as a passageway at all?’ Patriarch Emban asked.
‘Not when I went through it the first time, no, Your Grace. The cobwebs were as thick as ropes.’
‘Oh, that thing,’ Sir Nashan said. ‘I’ve heard about it, but I never got around to investigating it. The old torture-chambers are down in that cellar. It’s the sort of place most people want to avoid.’
‘The passageway, Nashan,’ Vanion said to him. ‘What’s it for?’
‘It’s an old aqueduct, My Lord. It was part of the original construction of the Basilica. It runs north to the River Kydu to carry water to the inner city. Everybody tells me that it collapsed centuries ago.’
‘Not all of it, Sir Knight,’ Talen told him. ‘It runs far enough out into the main city to be useful. To make it short, I was looking around and I found this – what was it you called that passage?’
‘An aqueduct,’ Nashan supplied.
‘That’s a peculiar word. Anyway, I found it, and I followed it, and it came out in the cellar of a warehouse several streets on out in the city. It doesn’t go any farther than that, though, but it doesn’t really have to. There’s a door leading out from the cellar into an alley. That’s the information I was selling to the thieves of Chyrellos. Anyway, I was dow
n in that cellar this afternoon, and I saw Martel come sneaking out of that passageway. I hid and he went on by. He was alone, so I followed him, and he went into a kind of store-room. Annias was waiting for him there. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they had their heads very close together like men doing some very serious plotting. They talked together for a while, and then they left the store-room. Martel told Annias to wait for the usual signal and then to meet him again down there. He said, “I’ll want you somewhere safe when the fighting starts.” Then Annias said that he was still worried about the possibility of Wargun showing up, but Martel laughed and said, “Don’t worry about Wargun, my friend. He’s blithely ignorant of everything that’s happening here.” Then they left. I waited a while and came right here.’
‘How did Martel find out about the aqueduct?’ Kalten asked him.
‘Some of his men probably chased one of the thieves and found it,’ Talen shrugged. ‘Everybody gets civic-spirited when it comes to chasing thieves. I’ve been chased by absolute strangers sometimes.’
‘That explains Wargun’s absence,’ Komier said bleakly. ‘All our messengers have probably been ambushed.’
‘And Ehlana’s still sitting in Cimmura with only Stragen and Platime to defend her,’ Sparhawk said in a worried tone. ‘I think I’ll go down to that cellar and wait for Martel. He’ll come along eventually and I can waylay him.’
‘Absolutely not!’ Emban said sharply.
‘Your Grace,’ Sparhawk objected, ‘I think you’re overlooking the fact that if Martel dies, this siege dies with him.’
‘And I think you’re overlooking the fact that our real goal here is to defeat Annias in the election. I need a report of a conversation between Annias and Martel to swing the votes I need to beat the Primate of Cimmura. Our situation here is getting very tenuous, gentlemen. Every time those fires out there sweep into a new quarter, we lose a few more votes.’