Duel at Araluen Page 8

  In spite of the situation, Maddie smiled to herself. It had been some time since she had heard anyone voice that sentiment. A lot of simple country people in Araluen believed that Rangers were some kind of dark wizards, able to appear and disappear at will. And their skill with a bow was close to legendary. As with anything that people didn’t fully understand, it became exaggerated the more it was discussed. The man near her obviously believed that members of the Corps could see in the dark.

  The voices faded as the two men moved in among the trees and continued on their way. She frowned thoughtfully, remaining still until they were long gone. The Foxes were obviously planning a night raid for the following night. And on the back wall of the fort. The man might be right. They might catch the defenders off guard. Night battles were always uncertain affairs. It would be useful if she could get some kind of warning to her father about the planned attack.

  Deciding that the men were well out of sight by now, she continued up the hill, moving in a low crouch across the long grass as it waved in the moderate breeze.

  There was a natural rhythm to the movement of the grass and the shadows of the clouds that drove across the sky. She matched that rhythm, blending into the very fabric of the countryside. The cloak made her a difficult mark to spot, and her smooth, steady approach helped her fade into the background around her. She had seen Will demonstrate this kind of movement many times and she knew it worked. Often, she had lost sight of him, even though she knew exactly where he was and where he would reappear. After training with him for three years, she was confident in her ability to cross relatively open ground and remain unnoticed.

  Not unseen. A watcher might see her. But he wouldn’t be aware of what he was seeing.

  She sank lower to the ground as she approached the crest of the hill, until she was almost doubled over, the long grass reaching up to conceal her.

  Finally, she dropped to her hands and knees, then onto her belly, moving forward under the impetus of her elbows and knees, virtually invisible in the gray-green grass.

  Her eyes came level with the crest, and she slid forward another meter to see more clearly. There, below her, the hill sloped down again to a flat field where the Foxes had their camp. There must have been at least fifty tents pitched by a small stream that ran through the meadow, tumbling down from the hill beyond. Men moved back and forth among the tents, but without any sense or appearance of urgency. Smoke rose from their cook fires and the waft of grilling meat came to her.

  Somewhere, someone was repairing a piece of armor or a weapon, and she could hear the ring of a hammer on steel. Interestingly, she noted, the Foxes had posted no sentries on this side of their camp. They weren’t expecting any enemies to appear from behind them.

  And that might come back to bite you, she thought.

  Then she raised her eyes and let them travel up the far hill, taking in the terraced path that ran round and round it, spiraling upward to the wooden fort at the very top. She could see figures on the parapet as the defenders kept watch on the camp below. A large lump formed in her throat as she focused on one, leaning on the parapet to one side of the main gate. It was too far to make out his features, but the body language—the way he leaned and then the way he moved as he took a few paces to the side—was unmistakable. She knew in that instant that she was watching her father.

  “Hello, Dad. I’m here,” she whispered, her voice husky.

  11

  Instinctively, the five people watching from the balcony ducked below the parapet as the massive rock flew upward. Cassandra braced herself for the sudden impact of the rock striking the wall of the tower. She heard a strange whirring noise, but no sound of rock striking rock. She made eye contact with Thomas, who was crouching beside her. The archer shook his head, puzzled.

  Then Merlon laughed and they looked at him as he slowly stood from his crouched position.

  “They missed,” he said. “They missed us clean. The shot was off line to the right and way too high. Even if it had been on line, it would have sailed way over the tower.”

  The others straightened and watched as the men below prepared the trebuchet for another shot. The rope around the windlass creaked loudly as it was wound tight and stretched. Slowly, the weighted end of the beam crept up once more. This time, the engineer in command didn’t wait until it had reached its maximum elevation. It was only three-quarters of the way up when he called a halt. One of the crew dashed forward to retrieve a boulder, which was then loaded into the sling.

  A few random creaks sounded from the tensioned rope. Then a figure holding a long shield emerged from behind the machine and backed away to check the alignment. Instantly, the three archers let fly and all three shafts slammed into the shield. The man staggered a pace or two but was unharmed. Seeing that their first three shots were ineffective, Cassandra ordered her men to cease shooting.

  “No sense wasting arrows,” she said. “Wait till there’s a proper target.”

  The man behind the shield began calling orders and, slowly, the trebuchet began to inch its way to the left. Finally satisfied that it was correctly aligned, the man moved back into cover.

  A resounding crash echoed around the courtyard as the trebuchet was released once more. The beam swung down, slamming into the stop, allowing the rope sling to continue the arc and hurl the boulder clear. Again, the watchers on the balcony ducked behind the shelter of the parapet. This time, they heard the rock as it whirred overhead. It was on line but still too high, and it flew above the tower and disappeared down the hill beyond the castle.

  There was another long pause as the machine was reloaded. More creaking of ropes, more groaning of timber under stress. This time, however, the men tending the trebuchet wound the windlass until the counterweight was only halfway to its maximum height. Two first shots had flown clear over the tower. Less impetus was needed if the rock was going to hit its mark.

  This time, the crash as the trebuchet’s beam hit the stop was noticeably less. As before, Cassandra and her men dropped into cover.

  She felt a vague tremor beneath her feet as the rock, under vastly reduced power, hit the tower somewhere below them. She stood and leaned over the parapet to see the effect. There was a litter of sandstone rubble on the flagstones at the foot of the tower, obviously all that was left of the projectile, but no sign of any damage to the structure itself.

  “I think I see their problem,” she said slowly, speaking to the sergeant. “They’re too close to the tower.”

  Merlon nodded. Normally, trebuchets were deployed at long range, hurling their projectiles in a high parabola so that they came smashing down into their target in a more or less horizontal arc. But here, the catapult was barely thirty meters away from the tower and it was difficult to bring the flight of the projectile lower so that it struck the building. The tendency was for each shot to fly over the tower and go crashing into the parkland below, hundreds of meters away.

  If the engineers reduced the arc of the beam by not winding it back fully, as they had just attempted, the shot flew with reduced power and barely scratched the surface of the hard stone of the tower.

  “Not only that,” Merlon said, “but they’ve got it mounted on a mobile platform. Every shot throws it off line.” Normally, trebuchets were a static installation, with their legs set solidly in the ground.

  As if in answer to his observation, the trebuchet hurled another rock at them, this time under full tension. This rock flew too high once more and was off line as well. The group on the balcony barely bothered to duck.

  There was a long pause, with no sign of activity from below. They could hear the men talking, but they were too far away for the listeners to make out any words. Occasionally, a voice would be raised in anger, and Cassandra assumed that belonged to the artilleryman in charge. Then there was movement around the base of the throwing beam.

  “Archers!” Cassandra called, and t
he three men nocked and drew. But the inverted V-shaped roof impeded their aim, and they lowered their bows, frustrated. Cassandra shielded her eyes with her hand and peered at the trebuchet. She could see some detail through the slit in the protective roof. Three men were working on the timber stop that the butt end slammed into at each shot.

  “They’re raising the stop,” she said.

  Merlon nodded thoughtfully. “That way, they can wind the windlass to full tension,” he said. “The arm will swing up faster when they release—it’ll be under full stretch. But the new stop will halt the movement a lot sooner. It will cause the sling to whip over earlier than before. They’ll get a lower flight path and greater speed.”

  “Let’s see what happens,” Cassandra said, as the work around the butt end of the beam was finished and the men moved back to their positions. Another stone was loaded and the windlass creaked and groaned, rope and timbers straining as they wound the counterweight up to its maximum position.

  “We might need to take cover this time,” Cassandra muttered, and her companions crouched until only their eyes were above the parapet.

  CRASH! The beam jerked upward, noticeably faster this time, with the counterweight raised to its highest position and the rope stretched taut as an iron bar. The stop brought the shorter end of the beam to a juddering halt, and the rope sling swung up and over, hurling the rock loose.

  But again, the shot was off line. Dimon’s men had forgotten to adjust the alignment after the previous shot and the rock flew wide. Had it been on line, Cassandra noticed, it would have smashed into the tower several meters below their vantage point.

  “Looks as if he’s got it worked out,” she said.

  But Merlon held up a cautionary hand. “Maybe not completely.”

  Dimon’s artillery commander, still covered by his long shield, stepped gingerly out into the open and supervised the realignment of the trebuchet. The hardwood wheels squealed on the flagstones of the courtyard as the crew heaved the big machine around, a few centimeters at a time. Watching from the balcony, Cassandra could see that the arm was perfectly lined up with her position. Her pulse pounded a little faster as she saw the throwing arm being hauled back to full cock. Then another rock was loaded into the sling.

  CRASH!

  The trebuchet released and she had a momentary sight of the rock hurtling through the air, seeming to fly straight at her. She dropped below the parapet once more, pressing against the granite as she waited for the impact.

  SLAM!

  This time, she felt the stone thud into the tower, seemingly just at her feet. Then she heard a patter of falling masonry below, and her heart skipped a beat. Had the projectile smashed the stones of the tower? It seemed impossible that it could do so with one shot, but she had heard the sound of rocks falling to the flagstones below.

  Hesitantly, she raised her eyes over the parapet, then, realizing that it would be several minutes before the trebuchet could hurl another rock, she leaned over to survey the damage.

  There was a light brown mark on the gray rock of the tower, about two meters below the point where she stood. She frowned.

  Beside her, Merlon let go a short bark of laughter. “Sandstone!” he said, as she looked at him curiously. “They’re shooting sandstone rocks.”

  “So?” she asked. “What else would they be shooting?”

  “Well, granite if they could get their hands on any,” Merlon told her. “The walls of the tower—of the whole castle, in fact—are granite. Hard, durable granite. The rocks they’re throwing are sandstone. It’s much softer and weaker than granite. It’ll never do any damage to the walls. It won’t even scratch them. The rocks will just shatter when they hit the tower wall. They’ll never break through that way.”

  He was grinning contentedly, but Cassandra was still doubtful.

  “If they keep on throwing rocks and hitting the tower repeatedly, surely that will weaken it?” she asked.

  Merlon shook his head. “Not so long as they’re throwing sandstone rocks. I’d say they fetched them from the quarry below the east wall of the castle, down beyond the tree line. But no matter how many they hit us with, or how hard they throw them, the result will be the same. The rocks will simply shatter into a hundred pieces. They’ll be in more danger down in the courtyard from falling chunks of sandstone than we’ll be up here.”

  Heartened by the fact that they had just hit the tower, the trebuchet crew were already winding the beam back. The ropes and timbers groaned under the strain and another rock was fitted into the basket. They heard a shouted order.

  SLAM! Then . . . CRASH! The boulder hit the tower again, this time a little off to one side. It shattered, and the pieces ricocheted off the curve of the wall at an angle. Once more, there was no sign of damage to the tower, other than a sandstone-colored blemish on the gray granite.

  “Sooner or later, they’ll have to wake up to the fact,” Cassandra said. “Once they hit us three or four times in the same spot and cause no damage, they must see it’s useless.”

  “They may. But of course, their shooting up till now has been pretty haphazard. So far they’ve shown no sign of being able to hit us three or four times in the same area.”

  “Granted. But what if they decided to start throwing granite boulders at us?”

  Merlon smiled. “That’s my point. They can’t. There’s no granite within a hundred leagues of here.”

  “But the castle is built of granite. Where did . . . ?”

  He stopped her with a wave of his hand. “Yes, it is. And they exhausted all the local supply of the stone when they built it. Think how much rock went into these five towers and these massive walls. Best get down,” he cautioned, glancing down into the courtyard where the trebuchet was ready to shoot.

  They both crouched below the parapet and heard the sound of wood on wood that told them the trebuchet had hurled another rock. Then there was a thud as it struck the tower below the parapet, followed by the sound of falling rocks hitting the courtyard flagstones.

  “I suppose they could start tearing down one of the other towers to get granite boulders,” Cassandra suggested.

  Merlon considered the idea, then shook his head dismissively. “It’d be awfully hard to break down any of these walls,” he said. “Nobody who’s laid siege to the castle in the past has managed it. They’re pretty solidly put in place, then mortared tight. It’d take days. Weeks, more likely. And even if they managed it, the individual building blocks in these walls are too big for the trebuchet. They’d have to break them down into smaller pieces.”

  “Could they do that?”

  He laughed. “Have you ever tried to break granite slabs down into smaller pieces, my lady?”

  “Can’t say I have. I take it it’s not easy.”

  “It’s a job masons hate. And they have the skills and special tools to do it. I doubt if that lot”—he gestured with a thumb over the parapet—“could get it done in a month.”

  “How do you know all this, Merlon?” she asked.

  He smiled knowingly. “I’ve been in the army a long time, my lady. I was at the siege of Castle Mollegor with your father many years ago. Before you were born, that was. Served with the artillery then, as a matter of fact.”

  “So I take it we can just sit tight and let Dimon waste his energy trying to smash granite with sandstone?”

  “That’s about it, my lady. Take it easy and let his men wear themselves out with all the cranking and loading and heaving on ropes. We’ll set someone to keep watch on this side of the tower, just in case. Of course, our lads could take the odd shot at them from time to time to keep them guessing, but we may as well put our feet up until Dimon realizes he’s flogging a dead horse.”

  12

  Maddie was back at the rendezvous point by the river when the Heron arrived that afternoon. While the crew began setting up a camp among the tre
es, she consulted with the command team—Hal, Thorn and Stig.

  “I plan on going through the enemy lines tonight to get a message to my father,” she told them. She had drawn a sketch of the positions of the camp and the hill fort, and it was spread out on the ground between them. They sat in a semicircle around it.

  “Is that wise?” Hal said cautiously.

  She looked up at him. “It’s necessary. The Red Fox Clan are planning a surprise attack tomorrow night and I want to warn him about it.”

  Thorn scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Your father has no idea you’re coming?” When she nodded that he was right, he continued. “Well then, aren’t you taking a risk that if you go sneaking up to the fort they’ll see you and put an arrow through you? I mean, I know you’re a Ranger, and you can appear and disappear at will, but if you want to make contact, you’ll have to reveal yourself and you might get shot before they realize who you are.”

  “That’s assuming that you can get past the enemy sentries in the first place,” Stig put in.

  “That won’t be a problem,” she said. “Their discipline is slack and the sentries are merely going through the motions. As for getting shot by Dad’s men, I don’t plan on going all the way to the fort. I’ll work my way halfway up the hill and shoot a message arrow into the timber frame above the gate. They’ll see it tomorrow morning.”

  There was silence as they considered her plan, all of them staring at the sketch of the hill fort and enemy camp that lay between them. Hal finally looked up, studying her appraisingly.

  “Well, as you keep telling us, you are a Ranger, so presumably you know what you’re doing,” he said.

  She nodded acknowledgment. He was impressed by her quiet confidence. When she said she could get through the enemy lines without trouble, she wasn’t boasting. It was a mere statement of fact.

  “There’s just one point,” he continued. “I’m coming with you.”