Michael Spradlin - Trail of Fate

I kept focused on the men below, and Robard and Maryam rejoined me on the battlement. Robard held two small bundles of arrows.

“You wouldn’t believe their pitiful armory,” he said. He held up one of the bundles of arrows. “These arrows are for hunting, mostly fowl. They’ll not puncture chain mail for certain.” As he held them out, I could see they were much shorter than the arrows he used, without iron tips, just a sharpened pointed end. He indicated his own wallet. “I’m nearly out, less than two dozen left, and I have no supplies to make any more. Why don’t Franks like the longbow?” he complained.

“I don’t know, but what about other weapons? Crossbows?”

“Forty in good working order, and plenty of bolts,” he said.

“What about pikes?” I asked.

“No pikes. There are swords and a few throwing axes, but aside from the crossbows, it might as well be empty,” Robard mused.

“I don’t think they thought about fighting much,” Maryam said. “They probably kept enough weapons to keep attackers off the walls, then just waited them out, as Celia said.”

I had hoped there would be pikes at least. It could be difficult work turning back the scaling ladders without them.

“We’ll have to make do. Robard, get Jean-Luc to station the crossbows on the forward battlement. Maryam, fetch Martine and gather anything that can tip a ladder: rakes, hoes, pitchforks, whatever you can find. Then meet me back here. I have a plan,” I said.

Robard and Maryam exchanged a furtive glance, then burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I demanded.

“The idea of you with a plan,” Maryam teased. “You never have a plan this early. You make everything up as you go along.”

“She’s got you there, squire,” Robard said, still chuckling.

“I most certainly do make plans! There’s always a plan. They are just occasionally somewhat fluid ,” I said.

When I told them what I’d thought of, a big smile came to both their faces. They hurried off to their appointed tasks, and I left the battlement to find Celia. I’d need her help in gathering the supplies I required.

If it worked, Sir Hugh was in for a rather large surprise.

After one hour had passed, Sir Hugh and two knights rode to the gate under a white flag. Sir Hugh asked if we intended to yield. I replied that we did not. Without a word, he turned his horse, and the minute he reached his forward lines, they charged the fortress.

The scaling ladders were in the first wave. Robard had positioned the crossbowmen brilliantly. He broke them into two lines of twenty. The first line fired when the assailants were in range, then stepped back, replaced by the next line, who waited a few seconds and fired another volley while the first line reloaded their bows. It takes nearly a minute for even the most experienced soldier to cock and ready a crossbow, but by concentrating their fire on those carrying the ladders, he slowed their advance. Still, we were vastly outnumbered, and with only forty men shooting, our attackers would eventually gain a foothold on the walls.

Maryam, Celia and Martine led the rest of the villagers on the battlements. Martine and Celia held their swords now, and they ran about, tipping back scaling ladders and shouting encouragement here and there. Maryam wielded a pitchfork as deftly as if it were one of her daggers, pushing back ladder after ladder.

We managed to hold off the first wave, but our men tired, and the time between volleys from the crossbows became longer and longer. Robard kept encouraging them in his own special way.

“Come on, you bloody Franks!” he shouted. “Faster! Faster!” I made a mental note to remind Robard later how he might consider improving his motivational skills.

Robard methodically worked his way through the first bundle of small hunting arrows, shooting quickly but making each missile count. He moved like a dancer among the men at the walls, dodging and darting and seeking out the perfect position for every shot.

While all this happened, I stood below in the courtyard with my “plan,” as it were. It was simple, really. I’d constructed three miniature siege engines of my own. Two of Celia’s villagers who were handy with tools helped me peg them together from timbers we’d removed from the interior of the castle keep. They weren’t fancy, and not likely to be highly accurate, but I didn’t need accuracy, only power, for I intended to rain my own version of vengeance down on Sir Hugh.

Each siege engine was primarily a twelve-foot plank mounted on a triangular base and pulled backward by a rope attached to its end. As it bent backward, nearly to the breaking point, the rope was released and the plank shot upward. Each was capable of hurling an object placed on the end of it quite a distance. I had tested one off the back wall of the fortress, out of sight of our attackers, to get a sense of its power. I pried a sizable stone loose from the keep wall and managed to hurl it about sixty yards or so. Perfect.

Now I stood just below the main battlement, in the courtyard behind the gate, waiting for a signal from Robard. With Celia’s help, I’d taken several barrels of lard from the kitchen stores. Next to the siege engines, which were spaced below the southwest wall, the lard melted in iron kettles over a fire. We’d taken several earthen jugs, covered them with tinder from the fireboxes and wrapped them with burlap, which we also soaked in the melted fat. Now came the test.

When the next wave of scaling ladders came surging forward, I would release my missiles when they were about fifty yards from the wall. I could hear a yell come up from the lines outside and knew they were on the way. I waited, eager to hear the signal.

“Tristan! Now!” Robard shouted from above.

Each of us manning one of the devices emptied the melted lard into a jug until it was full, and replaced the stopper. It was quickly loaded upon the end of the plank. Then a torch was set to the burlap covering, setting the jug on fire. When the flames burned steadily, two more men pulled back on the rope attached to the planks’ end and the boards bent backward.

“Loose!” I shouted and they released the ropes. The boards sprang forward and the flaming jugs flew through the air, clearing the wall by a good ten feet. I only wished I could see what happened next, but I was forced to rely on Robard’s report.

He later told me that when the jugs hit the rocky ground outside the fortress walls, they shattered, and the flames came into contact with the melted grease inside. The flaming lard flew in every direction, and with the first shots we managed to set the clothing of dozens of our attackers on fire. I heard screams and horses whinnying, but by then we already had the second round of jugs loaded and ready to fly. I would have only a few minutes before the soldiers recovered and spread out from each other enough to limit the missiles’ effects.

“Loose!” The jugs flew, and again I could hear the screams as we found more targets.

We let several more go before Robard signaled us from the battlement. “Hold, Tristan, they’re pulling back!”

A cheer went up from the people inside Montsegur, and I raced up the ladder to gaze out at the field. Sir Hugh’s forces had retreated out of range of the crossbows, and the ground below us was littered with the dead and wounded. Some small pockets of lard still smoldered, and the smoke wafted over the ground.

“Is anyone hurt?” Celia shouted to her people. We had been lucky. We had one man dead at the hand of an attacker who managed to make it over the wall, but Maryam had run him through with her pitchfork. There were a few other villagers with minor wounds, but we had inflicted some serious damage on Sir Hugh’s men. Across the field the soldiers milled about, confused and disorganized. Knights, especially Templars, are trained to think victory will easily be theirs. They had found Montsegur a much more difficult fruit to pluck.