Paul Finch - Stronghold

Inside the southwest tower, it was a chaos of dust, sweat and flaring candle-light as the ballista serjeants bawled at their crews to work harder. Frantic efforts were made as magazines were spent and new ones fitted onto the sliders, as winches were worked to ratchet the catgut bowstrings back into position. With repeated, ear-dulling bangs, each new missile was unleashed as soon as it could be placed. There was no attempt to aim. Because of the angle of vent in the tower wall, the projectiles were always shot cleanly onto the bridge. And again they wrought horrible carnage, slicing figures in half, gutting them where they stood. One bolt hurtled across in a black blur, pinioning a Welshman through the midriff, carrying him with it, pinioning another, carrying him, and even pinioning a third — three men like fish flopping on a spear — before it plunged into the midst of their countrymen on the far side. The archery machines sewed the ground on both sides of the bridge with arrows. Countless more Welsh were caught in this relentless fusillade, many of them hit multiple times — through the arms, through the body, through the legs — and yet still, though reduced to limping, seesawing wrecks, they proceeded across.

"This is not possible," Gurt shouted. "There should be a carpet of corpses by now. I don't see a single bloody one!"

On the Constable's Tower, Earl Corotocus summoned a nervous squire.

"Take a message to Captain Musard in the southwest tower, boy. Tell him that, Familiaris Regis or not, if he and his men don't start killing these brainless oafs, I'll send them outside with sticks and stones to see if they can do a better job that way."

When the message was delivered, the bombardment on the bridge intensified. The air whistled with goose-feathers. The Welsh crossing over were struck again and again. Dozens more were knocked into the moat, hurtling to its rocky floor, and yet, like those who'd fallen before them, always scrambling back to their feet no matter how broken or mutilated their bodies. They even tried to climb back out, and with some degree of success. A feat that seemed inhuman given that the moat walls were mostly sheer rock.

Ranulf glanced sidelong at his father. Ulbert had lifted the visor on his helmet; always stoic in the face of battle, it was disconcerting to see that he wore a haunted expression.

Many Welsh were now progressing eastwards along the berm, intent on circling the castle and approaching the main entrance at its northwest corner. This meant that the defenders on the curtain-wall were also able to assault them.

Lifting the hatches in the wall walk, they had a bird's eye view of the enemy trailing past below, and so dropped boulders or flung grenades and javelins. It had negligible effect, even though numerous missiles appeared to hit cleanly. The sheer force of impact hurled some Welsh into the river and the current carried them away, though even then they writhed and struggled — albeit with broken torsos, sundered skulls, eye-sockets punctured by arrows. Ranulf saw one Welshman clamber back out from the water, only to be struck by an anvil with shattering effect, blood and brains spattering from a skull that simply folded on itself — and yet he got back to his feet and continued to march. Gurt saw another struck by a thrown mallet; the mallet's iron head lodged in the upper part of the fellow's nose, its handle jutting crazily forward like a rhino's horn — and yet the Welshman, who already looked as if his lower jaw was missing and whose upper body was caked with dried gore, trudged onward.

No agonised screeches or froth-filled gargles greeted the defenders' efforts. There was a sound of sorts — that low moaning, which initially the English had mistaken for the wind. Now that the Welsh were so close, it was clear they themselves were the source of it. But it wasn't just a moaning — it was a keening, a mindless mewling; utterly soulless and inhuman.

At the southwest bridge, more and more Welsh fighters poured over to the other side. Inside the southwest tower, the ballista serjeants yelled at their men until they were hoarse. Bowstrings snapped under the strain and were urgently replaced; the cranks and gears of the war-machines heated and heated until they couldn't be touched. Captain Musard came down again from the tower roof, now frantic. He threw himself to the vents to look out. The enemy should have been lying in heaps on both sides of the bridge. They should have been cluttering the bridge itself. The moat should have been running red with their blood, stacked with their mangled corpses. But it wasn't. Each new salvo darkened the sky. The impacts of missiles slamming into bone and tearing through flesh were deafening. Yet always the Welsh came on. Musard watched, goggle-eyed, as a trio of limping Welshmen crossed the bridge in single file, skewered together on the same length of shaft. He ordered them cut down, butchered. He vowed death for any bowman who failed to strike them. One after another, darts and arrows found their mark, embedding themselves deeply but not even slowing the demonic threesome.

By now, the foremost of the Welsh attackers had reached the point of the curtain-wall where Ranulf, Ulbert and Gurt were stationed.

Ranulf saw one who had lost his left arm, left shoulder and much of the left side of his torso. It had presumably been torn away by a ballista bolt — jagged bones, bloodied and dangling with tissue, jutted out — yet the creature still marched. More to the point, he wasn't even bleeding. The air around him should have been sprayed crimson. Ranulf was so entranced by this unreal vision that when his father clamped a mailed hand onto his shoulder, he jumped with fright.

"Fire!" Ulbert said. "Ranulf, wake up for Christ's sake! We must use fire!"

The call went along the battlements, but only slowly. Barrels of naptha were wrestled forward, but many defenders were in such a daze that they might have tossed them over as they were. Ulbert had to shout to prevent the precious mixture being wasted.

"Timber!" he cried, pushing his way along the walk. "We need timber too, down on the berm. We must form a barricade and ignite it. Bottle them up along the path and we can burn them all as one."

Only a handful of men responded. The others gazed with disbelief at the torn, battered figures below, some disembowelled, their entrails dangling at their feet, others dragging partly severed limbs. Many were human porcupines they were so filled with arrows. Yet they moved on in a steady column.

"Timber!" Ulbert bellowed, having to cuff the men to bring them to their senses.

The only timber available was a derelict stable block in the bailey. Three burly men-at-arms clambered down ladders and broke it up with hammers and axes. Soon, bundles of smashed wood were being hauled up the wall by rope.

"Down there!" Ulbert shouted, indicating a spot about thirty yards ahead of the Welsh force, which at last was being hindered by the avalanche of stones and spears.

The wood was cast down until a mountainous pile had been formed, blocking the berm. Several barrels of naptha were poured onto it, but firebrands were only dropped when the first Welsh reached it. The resulting explosion was bright as a starburst. The rush of heat staggered even the defenders, who were fifty feet above.

Despite this, and to Ranulf's incredulity, the first few Welsh actually attempted to clamber through the raging inferno. A couple even made it to the other side, though they were blazing from head to foot and, finally it seemed, had met their match. First their ragged clothing burned away, followed by their flesh and musculature. One by one, they sagged to the ground. Equally incredible to Ranulf was that none of them tried to dunk themselves in the river, the way he'd seen the French do in their camp on the Adour when the earl had catapulted clay pots filled with flaming naptha right into their sleeping-tents.