The Reformer g-4 Page 21
The next three fireships drifted into the red heart of the flames and exploded almost immediately. Adrian felt a huge soft pillow of hot air strike his face, making him fling up a hand as his eyeballs dried. When he blinked them clear the first tower was falling onto the flaming pillar of the second, nine stories of burning timber avalanching down unstoppably. The second tower cracked, shedding men and planks and hides; part of it hit the shallow water beyond, but the thick stump of it remained to burn with the whole of the first. Pieces of flaming wood flew through the air for hundreds of yards, well into the walled camp where the Confeds had crammed their carpentry supplies and naval stores. Fires started there, too; he could hear trumpets and drums as officers tried to organize fire-fighting parties. It would be difficult, though-the way to the nearest water supply was thoroughly blocked by the conflagration on the causeway.
There, stone would be beginning to crack as it glowed white-hot. Esmond was laughing, and the crews of the galleys were joining in-even the rowers were grinning through their oar ports on the outriggers, and the soldiers and sailors on deck were dancing, snapping their fingers and making obscene gestures towards the shore.
"A thousand men lost, there," Esmond said, slapping his hand exultantly on his swordhilt. "A thousand men, and a month's work, and all those materials. Lovely."
Even against the wind, Adrian thought he could catch a whiff of the smell. He gagged slightly and nodded.
"That will set them back a little," he said. "But I think we're going to be real, real unpopular over there now."
"Well, then," Esmond said, clapping him on the back. "We'll just have to continue closing the door in their face, won't we?"
* * *
"It's called a 'trebuchet,' " Adrian said to the carpenters and blacksmiths and shipwrights. "And it's a form of catapult."
He was standing on a platform of rammed rubble behind the city wall, the section nearest to the Confed's causeway. Everyone had been up there, and seen the redoubled efforts-this time the blocking wall along the sides was like a small city's, and the towers pressed forward to the edge of construction were squat monsters sheathed in plates of beaten iron and brass, glittering like malignant serpents in the bright sunlight.
The craftsmen crowded around to look at the man-tall model he'd built. It had two heavy tripods, linked by an iron axle. Pivoting on that was a beam, anchored about one-third of the way along its height. The short end of the beam held a box full of rocks, itself pivoting on an iron bar driven through the outermost part of the beam; the long end had a leather sling on its end, holding a fist-sized ball of rock.
"How does it work?" one carpenter asked after a minute, baffled. "There's no twisted sinew, no bow neither-how does it throw things?" He made a sign with one hand. "More of your hellpowder sorcery?"
Adrian smiled soothingly. "No, this is pretty straightforward," he said. "I'll show you. Simun."
The underofficer motioned two arquebusiers forward. The other hundred were on the wall, happily potting men through the wooden shields that the Confeds moved forward to protect the working parties. They'd doubled and redoubled the thickness of planks on those, until they could barely move them over the uneven ground of the forward working surface, but the odd ball still penetrated. More still hit men behind the row of shields, or on exposed limbs, or struck the working parties that tried to move the mantlets forward. Other gunmen waited patiently for one of the trapdoors on the siege towers to open and spit a catapult dart at the city. They were just within extreme range. . extreme catapult range, that was. The arquebuses were comfortably within their range, and a dozen fired every time the Confeds made the attempt. Men died within the tower, but that was secondary-a four-ounce ball travelling at nine hundred feet per second did unpleasant things to a torsion catapult's frame and fixings whenever it struck.
Simun chuckled, looking over his shoulder, then signed to the two men. They hauled on ropes running through a block and tackle, and the long arm of the miniature trebuchet came down until he could slip an iron hook into a ring driven into the wood just above the sling. The load in that now rested, just touching the ground.
"Here, sor," he said, handing a lanyard to Adrian.
"So, we pull this-"
Thwack.
The heavy basket of rocks pulled the short arm of the trebuchet down. The long arm moved more quickly, leverage driving it. The sling added to the momentum, and the rock blurred across the fifty yards to the wall in a streak of vicious speed. It cracked into the granite facing hard enough to spall off a foot-square flake. The craftsmen and sapper officers gave long, admiring whistles.
"The thing is," Adrian went on, resting a hand on the model, "that we can build this as big as we can get timbers for-and Prince Tenny and the Syndics have authorized us to demolish buildings, even temples. We're a shipbuilding city, here, so we've got plenty of men used to working to these scales, and with heavy cables and pulleys. We'll need winches to pull down the throwing arm, but when it's ready we can throw really big weights; we can throw them on a high arc, to lob over the wall, and we can throw them all the way to shore, or nearly-dropping them right on the Confeds' heads."
A circle of beatific grins broke out as the image slowly sank into the consciousness of the onlookers.
"Shark-Toothed Sea Lord," one said, awed. "Like it was raining boulders, eh, lord? But how do we aim it?"
"We can move the whole frame around for direction," he said. "That won't be easy, but we can do it if we're careful how we build the underlying platform and if we apply plenty of manpower. For distance, we just fire ranging shots, adding or subtracting rocks from the basket on the short arm-that's where the impetus comes from, you see. We store up. ." He halted; the Islander he was using had no word that precisely corresponded to "force." "We store up the ability to throw by hauling up the basket, you see. Then when it comes down, all that, ah, strength, is transferred to whatever we're throwing all at once. By altering the weight, we alter the strength-as a man does when he's throwing a rock by hand."
A few seemed to grasp what he was driving at. There were blank looks from the others, and he removed his hat and sighed. Sweat ran down his forehead and stung in his eyes; it was hot, and the stone buildings everywhere around reflected the heat.
"We can do it," he said. Center had filled his mind's eye with images of what the trebuchet could accomplish, and precise step-by-step instructions in making it. "And when we do, it'll ruin the Confeds' whole day."
Men on the wall looked down, grinning reflexively at the laughter around Adrian. It spread spontaneously along the parapet, until the wall was ringing with cheers. Morale in Preble was very good.
"Enjoy it while you can," Adrian muttered below his breath.
Out there, the resources of the Confederacy would be moving, moving-slow at first, like an avalanche did. But very heavy in the end.
Experience had shown that the base of the causeway was safe from the weapons on Preble's wall. . and if you stayed low, from the ones on the galleys harassing the quarter-mile length. Justiciar Demansk stood, scowling and watching the stone stream forward, the dead and wounded trickle back. A solid line of guards was detailed to check that nobody came back without a real wound; they leaned on their shields, stolid and bored and glad they weren't out at the sharp end right now. The smell of sweat was heavy on the air, the smell of velipad and greatbeast dung, the dusty odor of cracked rock and the salt-silt of the shore.
At least we're getting plenty of time to drill the new recruits, he thought. That was the one good thing about siege operations, even this gods-cursed one. He ground his teeth as he watched the sails of a convoy of merchantmen appear on the horizon. Preble would be eating well; intelligence said they had six months' supplies, and they could import grain-from the Southern continent, through the freeport at Marange. As long as they had money, and they had plenty of that, too. Melting down the Temple treasuries, from what he'd heard; when that was done, there was always the King of the Isles.
"Pissed off and scared, sir," he replied promptly. "They want to get stuck into those damned rebels out there, but they're starting to think that every time it looks as if we're getting anywhere, the fuckers come up with another trick. Sir."
Demansk nodded sourly. I can't think of anything else they could do, he mused.
They'd planted iron-tipped stakes in the shallow water a hundred yards out from both sides of the causeway, using conscripted local sponge divers. No more fireships, thank the gods.
The arquebuses-spies and prisoners had brought the name back from Preble-could punch through shields, but not walls or reinforced mantlets, or the iron plates on thick timber of the new siege towers. The trickle of casualties from the towers was getting worse as they got closer to Preble, and so was the continuous sniping from galleys ranging along the causeway, but the Confederation had a big army. Soon enough they'd be within effective catapult range, and a little after that of archery. The Confed army had a lot of mercenary archers, too. The new towers were an absolute bitch to move, they were so heavy they'd had to use iron-plated wheels under them, but as a side benefit they ought to be fairly immune to battering rocks from catapults, as well.
"What am I missing?" he muttered.
"Sir! Heads up!"
Demansk felt his eyes go wide with surprise as he saw the tumbling dot rising from behind the walls that fringed the peachpit shape of the island city. I'm getting to absolutely hate feeling that expression on my face, he thought angrily. It was a rock, obviously. And equally obviously it was huge, a quarter of a ton, far heavier than anything a catapult could throw-could have thrown, before the gods condemned him to this nightmare operation. Once more he felt the ground shifting below his feet, as the certainties of a lifetime-of uncounted lifetimes, back to the times of the heroes-crumbled.
The boulder dropped into the water with an enormous splash, a hundred yards short of the left-hand, southern tower side of the causeway. The water was shallow enough there that the tip of it remained sticking up above the water. Men began pelting back, their mouths open Os of fright-conscripted local workers, he noted with somber pride, not Confed soldiers.
"First Spear, evacuate the causeway," he said heavily. "Everything but enough men in the towers to stand off a fast attempt at a landing."
Wouldn't it look lovely on his record if he pulled everyone out, and a commando set the towers on fire again? But he wasn't going to waste more troops, not if this got as nasty as it might.
The evacuation was orderly enough; five minutes later men were filing past him in columns, profanely shepherded along by his troops, and they were taking their baskets and hammers with them, their carts and beasts and timbers. One of the surveyors was jittering around the edge of the circle of Demansk's personal guards, probably come to complain about the interruption to his work.
"Heads up!"
Another quarter-ton boulder. This one grew with remorseless speed, dropping down from the sky like an anvil thrown by the gods from heaven, like the dim legends of the end of the Golden Age before history. Demansk traced its curve with his eye and sighed.
CRACK. It hit the forward left corner of the southernmost of the pair of towers. Iron plates sprayed out as the bolts and spikes that held them to the wooden frame sheered off. Fragments of rock and iron and wood sprayed across the forward end of the causeway, knocking down a few men not yet withdrawn; he could see the sudden red gush of arterial blood, imagine it running pink into the sea, and the sudden frenzy of sea life there-scavengers had gathered from all over, and swimming had become much less popular.
"Get the men out of the towers," he said.
"Sir-"
"They're going to pound them into splinters and there's not a fucking thing we can do. Get them out!"
Luckily, whatever-it-was out there on Preble seemed to take a long time to load-not as long as he would need to get the ultraheavy siege towers out of the way, but at least five to eight minutes between rocks. The archers and artillerists in the towers were pouring back in disciplined but hasty streams, jog-trotting past him, when the third rock struck the tower halfway up its length. The whole squat wide-based mass rocked backward, and the projectile didn't shatter or rebound. Demansk winced; that meant it had broken right through the surface, even though it had struck at a glancing angle as it fell from on high. Like the fist of a god, he thought.
In fifteen minutes the towers were empty; and the southern one was leaning like a drunken man, and he could see daylight through the frame. Half a dozen more shots, and it was a toppled wreck. A hundred thousand arnkets, he thought. That much in materials alone; metals were expensive, on that scale. Not to mention the man-hours that had gone into it. .
More waiting, a half-hour, and then a boulder skimmed the northern tower's top and cracked into deadly splinters on the causeway behind it. The next one fell with malignant precision right on the roof, and he could hear the crack of rending wood as it slammed down the center of the tower. Five of the huge rocks served to send it toppling backward, with a chorus of groaning, rending, slamming sounds like the end of the world. When the dust cleared he could see it lying prone, the hole the first rock had made in the roof like an eye in the sagging rectangle of immensely thick timbers that made up the frame.
Another pause, and another tumbling dot from Preble. As it grew, he could see that it was trailing. . not flame, but blue smoke. Like. . like one of the grenades, but so much bigger. Which means. .
"Down!" he shouted, diving for the ground; his repaired back-and-breast gouged at him as he landed on the paving stones. "Down, you idiot!"
He reached out, grabbed the thick muscular boot-clad ankles of the First Spear and yanked, pulling him level. Then the world went out in thunder and pain.
* * *
"There's a bloody hole in the causeway where that big iron barrel of hellpowder landed!" Esmond said enthusiastically.
a crater, Center whispered pedantically at the back of Adrian's mind. There where times when the god-spirit-machine reminded him of a particularly literal-minded instructor of rhetoric he'd studied under in the Grove.
The Gellerts were sitting on chairs brought up to the wall's parapet, with a table laden with watered wine, olives, fish, ham, bread and fruit. Esmond was tearing into the food with methodical speed, his eyes glued to the shore and the Confederation works.
"Yes, as long as the gunpowder holds out we can batter it to pieces faster than they can rebuild it," Adrian said.
Esmond nodded, smiling. "It's a pity we can't reach their camp that way-perhaps we could mount one of the trebuchets on a ship? A big merchantman, say-take out the mast, put the trebuchet on the center."
"Accuracy would go to the Shades," Adrian said, surprised and impressed. Esmond was starting to think in terms of the potential of the new devices.
Weapons technology diffuses faster than anything else, Raj said, his mental voice somehow tired and amused at the same time. Medicine and new ways of growing crops may get ignored as outlandish nonsense, but come up with a better way of cracking skulls and they'll fall all over themselves to get their hands on it.
"But pretty soon," Adrian said, "it's going to occur to the Confeds that nothing we've shown them is much good against moving targets-like ships, for instance."
Esmond's smile turned to a scowl. "King Casull will support us with the royal fleet," he said.
The brothers' eyes met. We hope, went unspoken between them.
* * *
". . save the arm," someone was saying.
Justiciar Demansk's eyes blinked open. There were two physicians hovering over him, and Helga. He looked down; his left arm was immobilized with bandages and splints, and just beginning to deliver a ferocious ache. For the rest he felt the usual sick headache-nausea you got from being knocked out, and bruises, wrenches and sprains. About like a bad riding accident, he d
ecided, and pushed the body's complaints away with a trained effort of will. The scents of canvas and the sharp smell of medicine made him want to vomit, but that passed as well.
A few curt questions settled that he wasn't badly damaged-his First Spear had taken a bad head wound, been trepanned, and they were unsure whether he would live; now, that hurt.
When the doctors were gone at last, Demansk let his daughter raise his head and bring a cup to his lips. A distant sound like thunder made him jerk a little and spill the water on the thin sheet.
"More?" he said.
Helga nodded; the tent was dim, and it made her eyes seem to glow green at him. "More. The causeway is in ruins."
"Not to mention the reputation of everyone concerned with this fiasco," he said, laying his hand down on the pillow. "You know, this young man of yours-"
"Scarcely mine, Father!"
"— this Adrian Gellert, he threatens the whole course of things as they are. Starting with the Confederacy."
She snorted. "Oh, come now, Father. We'll take Preble, eventually."
"We may, but it's going to be very expensive. Why do you think the world is the Confederacy and some outlying regions now, instead of a tangle of little cities and valley kingdoms, the way it used to be?"
"Because we've got a better army, of course. And the gods favor us, supposedly."
"The two often go together," Demansk said dryly, not returning her smile. For one thing, it hurt too much. "But one reason is that cities don't hold out for years, the way they did back during the League Wars, or even the wars of the Alliance. The Confederacy can take most towns in a month or less. Your. . this Freeman Gellert has made sieges a lot more expensive again, all of a sudden. If these innovations-" the word had sinister connotations of decay and evil, in Emerald and the Confederation's tongue as well "-spread."
Helga laid a cold cloth on his forehead, and he held back a groan of relief. "Always thinking of the welfare of the State, eh, Father?"