Tom Harper - Siege of Heaven

‘ For Christ’ sake, let go of that rope .’

I still had the hawser tied around my waist. Fumbling, I drew my sword and managed to slice through the strands. Before I had finished, two hands had reached in and ripped the remainder apart.

‘ Get down .’

The same hands pushed me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me. Aelfric crouched beside me, covering me while I twisted my shield around and pulled it off my back. Only when I had it in place did I have a chance to look around.

‘Where’s Sigurd?’

He jerked his head to his right. Peering out from behind my shield, I saw Sigurd on one knee with his shield raised, while Thomas squatted behind him and hurled stones at the battlements with a sling he had torn from a dead man’s tunic. To my left, the tower still crawled forward. Now that I saw it from a distance I could see it had suffered terrible punishment in the approach. Several of the wicker panels had been torn off, and one of its corner-posts actually seemed to have splintered in two, so that the upper levels sagged alarmingly. Miraculously — there was no other word — the golden cross at its peak remained unharmed, gleaming in the sun that now shone almost directly above.

Inch by inch, hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, it ground forward. Up on the walls, the defence seemed to waver. Fewer arrows filled the air: I thought perhaps the Fatimids had lost heart at the sight of our progress. But they had prepared for this moment. They seemed to be lifting some massive object up over the battlements, hauling it out on pulleys that hung from the adjacent towers. At first I could not see what it was; then, as it swung free of the ramparts, it became clear. It was a long tree-trunk, suspended by chains and bristling with iron. Swords and knives, sickles and spikes, nails and hooks all sprouted from its sides like branches, while the wood itself was covered in a black coat of oily slime. It fell to the ground as the men above let go the chains, bounced once, then slid down the slope until its iron claws dug into the front of the siege tower. In an instant, a volley of burning arrows flew into it. A wall of flame rose up in front of the tower, engulfing it, and I groaned. No one could survive that inferno. Nor could they extinguish it with water, for when a nearby knight tried to throw some on the fire it merely exploded back at him in a massive gout of flame. This was a diabolic fire that could turn even opposing elements to its purpose. At the top of the tower I could see Duke Godfrey and his knights frantically pulling open the walls and looking down in terror, while at the bottom the men inside found they could not get out through the crowd of men who were still trying in vain to push the tower forward.

But Godfrey was not trying to escape. Instead, so far as I could see through the smoke, his men were manhandling some heavy object to the opening they had made in the side of the tower. Had they not noticed that this was a fire that could not be drowned?

A torrent of water cascaded down the front of the tower and the barrel tumbled after it, one more morsel for the fire. I closed my eyes. There was a hiss, as if all the waters of the earth boiled, and a wall of heat blasted over me. It seared my mouth, my hands, even my closed eyes. And yet — I lived. My hair had not caught fire, nor was my skin peeled away. I opened my eyes and peered out through my fingers. Incredibly, though the spiked tree-trunk still burned, it had not erupted into the pillar of flame I had expected. Nor had the fire taken hold of the siege tower. And the hot, moist air was saturated with the tart smell of vinegar.

The men on the tower pushed another barrel to the edge of the platform and tipped it over. Now that the flames were lower it did not evaporate in an instant but splashed around the wood. Some of it settled in a small pool in a hollow in the gound. Without thinking, I ran there and knelt beside it, scooping up the vinegar into my mouth before it could melt into the earth. It burned my tongue like acid, but it was the first moisture I had tasted in hours. Meanwhile, a team of Franks picked up the chain that had held the tree-trunk and dragged it away. The spikes and blades ploughed sharp furrows in the ground.

Now the battle took on a new, more dreadful intensity. The Fatimids had tried to break the tower with rocks and burn it with fire, and none of it had worked. Now they had nothing to rely on but their desperation. It might still be enough: they knew what vengeance the Franks would take on them in defeat, and they fought as only condemned men can. I thought of Bilal, and — even in the fury of battle — hoped he was not on those walls.

The siege tower was so close that the men at the top could almost stab their enemies with their spears, but they were still too far out to bridge the gap. The Fatimids redoubled their efforts, hurling fire against the tower even as they bombarded those of us on the ground with arrows, while we tried to shield ourselves from the onslaught and retaliate in kind to force them back off the rampart. With no more firepots to hurl, they fashioned crude balls of hair and wax, doused them in oil and set them alight. Most of them slid off the slick hides that dressed the tower and bounced down into the crowd at its base. One fell on the back of my hand, scorching a livid blister into the skin; I screamed, but did not drop my sword. I was lucky: some men found that the fire fell into the folds of their tabards or lodged in the gap between helmet and hauberk, setting them ablaze.

There were fewer arrows falling on us now, but more stones. One struck my shield and deflected harmlessly away; when I glanced at it, I saw in surprise that it had the crisp edges and smooth face of a brick. In their desperation, the Fatimids seemed to be tearing down the very walls that defended them in order to hurl them at us. But we were hardly better off: we could do little more than pick up the pieces and hurl them back. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Thomas whirling his sling at the battlements. I wished he would take cover, for he made a tempting target.

Another rock struck me, this time on my shoulder, and my arm went numb. I could not stay out there. To my left, a hole gaped in the side of the tower where one of the panels had been torn off. Shouting over my shoulder to Aelfric, I ran to it, ducked underneath the splintered lintel and stepped inside. Instantly I was in darkness — a sweaty, heaving crush of men all pushing blindly forward, trying to drive the tower those precious final feet to the wall. Unthinkingly, I threw myself into the effort. Other men piled in behind me, but through the open hole in the side I could see the battle still raging. For all the Fatimids’ frantic defence, the tide seemed to be turning against them. The ditch between the walls was filling with men, and though the Fatimids killed many, they could not turn back the inexorable swell. Ladders came forward and were lifted to the battlements; the defenders were quick to shatter their rungs with rocks before any man could climb them, but the Franks had learned their lesson from the first assault and had more in reserve. In perhaps the most unnatural sight of all that day, I saw a column of priests, all dressed in white, marching forward with a ladder held above their heads as they sang the words of the psalm:

You will not fear the terror of the night,

or the arrow that flies by day,

or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,

or the destruction that wastes it at noon.

Not one of them lived to see the ladder touch the wall.

Inside the siege tower, the crush was greater than ever. It was impossible to reach the front of the tower; instead, we pushed each other forward and hoped that would be enough. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell how much progress we made, though it felt as if we heaved hard enough to push down the wall and roll the tower over it.