K Parker - Devices and Desires

If the defences of Civitas Eremiae had a weakness, it was the main gate itself. The doors were strong-according to the reports he'd seen, six inches of cross-ply oak, reinforced with internal crossbeams-but they offered considerably more hope of success than the walls, and of course he had Mezentine ingenuity and craftsmanship to help him, provided he could move it the enormous distance of five hundred yards.

He glanced behind him again. Here it came; they'd listed it in the inventory as a battering-ram, but there was more to it than that. True, the first stage in its operation was simple enough, merely a beautifully engineered derivative of the crude old log-dangling-from-chains. Once it had been swung, however, and its two hardened and tempered beaks had pecked into the gate panels, it displayed hidden talents. At the heart of it was a windlass driving a worm. You could turn the windlass with one hand, but the power of mechanical advantage would force the two beaks apart, tearing the gate panels like rotten cloth. A point would-be reached where the wretched timbers wouldn't be able to resist any longer. They'd be prised open, the frame of the gate would spring, and a sharp tug on the back of the ram would drag them out like a bad tooth. He had his employers' word on that, which was a comfort.

The ram edged forward. It was being pushed by fifty-odd men, who were sheltered from the scorpion bolts by eighth-inch steel pavises mounted on the sides of the frame.

An overimaginative observer with a tendency to romanticise might be put in mind of a wild boar beset by hounds; to Melancton it was a piece of equipment, and he bitterly resented having to pin his hopes on it. For all that, it came slowly; there were dead men and other obstacles under the wheels, which had to be either dragged out of the way or ridden over. There was a slight gradient to overcome as well. He could picture the machine's designers, shaking their heads and making excuses when they heard about how he'd failed. He could hear bones crunching and skin bursting under the wheels.

Of course, he hadn't failed yet. Men were crowding round it, partly to get what cover they could from the bolts, partly to add their weight and help it up the slope, over the obstructions. He saw a man pinned to a frame-timber by a scorpion bolt; he was still alive, and every jolt and bump twisted the steel pin in his ruptured intestines. A man shouldn't have to see things like that, he thought. Soldiers die in a battle, and each death is hideous and obscene, but a commander has to look past all that, so that he can see the pattern, the great shape of the mechanism. He scampered out of the way as the machine rumbled and crunched towards the gate. The noise was confusing, how could anyone think with that going on? There was a disgusting smell of sweat and urine, which he realised was his own.

He saw the beam sway backwards, drawn by chains running on pulleys; trust the Mezentines to get a gear-train in somewhere. It hung in the air for a moment, and a slab of rock dropped from the battlement above, bounced off the wall as it fell, skipped out wildly and caught the side of a man's head. Melancton saw his legs and back collapse as he lurched sideways and fell in a heap, like discarded dirty laundry. The beam swung forward. He heard the splitting of wood. The beam had stopped dead, not a quiver in the chains. They were spanning the windlass now, he could hear the scream of the oak ply being levered apart. Shouting all around him, on all sides and above, where an Eremian officer was screaming at his men to lower the elevation on a scorpion as far as it would go. Not far enough, Melancton knew, and the panic in his enemy's voice delighted him. He lifted his head and saw a great wedge of daylight glowing through the wrecked panels of the door. The framing timbers were bent like the limbs of bows; it was shocking to see the torture of materials as the stress from the worm built up in them. It was impossible for solid oak bars to bend as far as that. They snapped, the ends a prickly mess of needle-pointed splinters running down the over-abused grain. He heard a voice give an order, though he couldn't make out the words. The beam jerked back; the doors popped out of their frame like a cork from a bottle.

Of course, he hadn't given much thought to what would happen after that. He'd sort of assumed that once the gate was open, that would be that; as though the gate was the enemy's neck, snap it and they die. Instead, a cloud flitted out of the open gateway, and in the fraction of a second it took to pass him by, he heard the hiss and recognised the flight of arrows.

The engine sheltered some of them, but not all. For a moment, long enough to count up to six, it was all perfectly still in the space in front of the gate, because nobody was left alive to move. The Eremians, he knew, were fumbling for arrows, nocking them, drawing. They'd be in time to meet the confused, furious charge with another volley. Melancton turned his head away until he heard the hiss. When he turned back, he saw his men charging.

The archers in the gateway changed their minds at the last moment, realising they didn't have time for another volley. Just too late, they turned to run, and the infantry charge rammed them. Mostly they were simply knocked down and trampled on; there wasn't any room for using weapons, and no time. Melancton jumped up to join the charge. He was ready to go when he heard the slam of sliders.

They'd briefed him in great detail about the effective use of scorpions, with examples drawn from many campaigns against many different enemies. But they hadn't said anything about what would happen if a densely packed force of infantry received a scorpion volley at point-blank range. Given the proud thoroughness of Mezentine military intelligence, he could only presume that such a thing had never happened.

It had happened now. The men in the front of the scrum were blown back as if by a blast of wind or an incoming breaker. Swept off their feet, they slammed into the men behind them, as the bolts plunged through them and out behind. Three men pinned together, unable to fall for a long moment, until they toppled sideways; the sheer crushing effect of so much force contained in such a crowded, fragile space. Melancton saw it all, and the images soaked into his mind. They would be there for ever, like frescos painted on the inside of his eyelids. He noticed that he was stumbling towards the gateway, shoving his way in a jumble of calves, elbows, shoulders, backs. What am I doing? he wanted to know. Why am I going there, it's dangerous. He had no choice in the matter, apparently. He heard the hiss of arrows, and a soldier fell across him, treading on his kneecap as he sprawled to the ground. Three more paces brought him to a dead stop. Somehow it had turned into a pushing contest. His arms were jammed against his sides, so he shoved his shoulder into the back of the man trapped in front of him, and pushed with his back and legs. Someone else was doing the same to him. All the breath was forced out of his lungs, and he found he couldn't replace it. The panic of not being able to breathe suppressed every other thought for a moment, until the man behind him shifted a little and the pressure on his lungs eased up. He gobbled a deep pull of air, and was flattened against the man in front.

The Eremians loosed another volley from their scorpions.

By now, all the dead were too tightly wedged up to fall; they were a shield, a ram, something to push against. Melancton's mind evacuated all his remaining thoughts as pain rendered everything else irrelevant. He could hear his own voice screaming. Whatever was happening to him, it seemed to be going on for ever. He could see the logic; he'd looked round on the threshold of death's kingdom, and now he would be here for ever.

The Phocas were sceptical after the event. They maintained that in a crush like that, nobody could make a difference, no matter how strong they were, or how brave. But they kept their doubts to themselves, for fear of appearing ungracious. None of the other eye-witnesses agreed with them, in any event. The Bardanes and the Nicephorus both maintained that at the critical point of the battle in the gateway, Jarnac Ducas and his personal guard, recruited from his huntsmen and harbourers, cut a path through the enemy with poll-axes and glaives, took their stand outside the gate and held their ground until all the Mezentines who'd spilled into the city had been killed, and the engineers had blocked the gateway with steel pavises propped up by scaffolding beams. Only Jarnac himself and one huntsman made it back, scrambling up over a pavise as it was being lifted into place and dropping down the other side. It was, the majority of those present agreed, the most extraordinary thing they'd ever seen.