They all waited for two more days, and fidgeting and grumbling was once more beginning to fill the ranks in the trenches, but then proceeding from the southeast came a long column of wains, each drawn slowly by twelve to thirty span of lowing oxen, the shrill protests of ill-greased axles screaming out far ahead of them. Walid Pasha had arrived with the big guns, and Bass breathed a sigh of relief, for he had by that time about run out of convincing arguments to use in further forestalling a suicidal assault against Oentreib’s walls and guns.
Another day was required to get the tubes out of the wains, set back on their trunks, and dragged or wrestled up to the places prepared for them, protected as well as possible with combinations of packed earthen embankments, palisades, logs, and thick bundles of faggots on three sides and doorframes to which were hinged thick plank doors to give protection during reloading operations.
A week to the day after the destruction of Oentreib’s sad excuse for a port and its indefensible defenses, the first resounding boom of a thirty-two-pounder demicannon from off His Grace of Norfolk’s ship Revenge sent an explosive shell over the walls of Oentreib into the streets of that unhappy city.
With Walid Pasha’s batteries fully engaged and Sir John Stakley’s rifles firing over the heads of the entrenched besiegers against the lough side of the city, within three days every gate had been blown down if not apart, much smoke and occasional flames could be seen above walls that were themselves beginning to show clear signs of damage and weakening of fabric with the repeated pum-meling of iron cannon balls and cylindrical explosive shells. Counterbattery fire from atop the mediaeval-style walls had been mostly from huge but ancient bombards throwing stone balls, and those few guns that had seemed to cast too accurately for comfort had quickly been sighted and subjected to concentrated fire of every besieging gnn that would bear, or could by rearrangement be brought to do so, until put out of action. Now, counterbattery fire from the walls had become desultory, the dwindling number of losses from gun crews mostly being the result of long-range sniping with big bore wall-mounted matchlock calivers, but there seemed a dearth of notable marksmen within the city, for hits were rare, though the inch-or-more-in-diameter balls were almost certain to be the death of anyone so unfortunate as to be caught in the path of one.
On the morning of the fourth day of the bombardment, at about the third hour after dawn, Walid Pasha received a message from Sebastian Bey and ordered a colored rocket fired up into the sky above the embattled city, whereupon all the guns ringed about the place ceased to fire.
After some of the debris had been cleared away, a mounted party of men debouched from out the damaged arch where once had stood the main gates of Oentreib and walked their horses slowly to the verge of the first line of entrenchments, the rider following the stout man at their head bearing a rectangle of white cloth bound to a reversed pike shaft.
There was no way to get the horses across the broad trench, but boards were brought up and thrown down over it to make a springy but passable footbridge so that the party might cross to the spot where the commanders of the besiegers waited in the space between the first and second lines of trenches, one of their number also bearing a plain, near-white banner.
Face to face with the Righ. Bass found him to look anything but regal, while his manner and bearing seemed more those of a swineherd than a ruler of men. Standing a bit behind Bass, Sir Conn translated the discourse that followed.
“Where in the fuck did you get that shitty ship and those fucking guns, Lugaid?” Righ Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain demanded angrily.
He was answered by Father Mochtae. however, who said in a mild tone, “Your Majesty might say that they were a gift from God, were Your Majesty not a heathen murdering bastard, unfit to sit on any throne, much less the high and ancient and holy throne of Ulaid.”
Snarling, his face suffused with clear rage, the Righ grasped his swordhilt and started to step toward the priest, only to be frantically restrained from doing either by the men flanking him, for to break the truce here in this place would be quick suicide, death for all of them, not just the Righ . . . who more than one of them was silently thinking should be dead, and soon, for the good of the rest of them.
Halted, but not in the least cooled down by his lieutenants, Righ Conan Ruarc raised his left hand where all might clearly see the huge diamond mounted in a massy golden ring on the thumb of his big, hairy bridle hand. In a ringing voice, raised purposely to reach those in the trenches as well as those leaders now before him, he spoke.
“Hear me, men of Ulaid. You back-stabbing, ill-bom rebel swine and your pig-turd great guns may drive me out of Oentreib, but in it or out of it, I still will be your rightful and lawful king so long as I bear or wear this, the Sacred Jewel of Ulaid. And because God has recognized me as lawful Righ of Ulaid, this ring will not, cannot leave my thumb. You see?”
He lifted up his right hand as well and gave what looked to Bass like a real effort to pull or twist the ring over the joint of his thumb, but the band would not pass the obstruction.
Behind him, Bass could hear an increasing spate of whisperings and mumbling among the humbler men who made up the most of the rebel force. A few yards down, he saw some of them beginning to clamber up from out of the trenches, dropping their makeshift weapons and milling about aimlessly. A few more minutes of this bastard’s oratory and showmanship to the superstitious common men whose dispositions and mind-sets he seemed to understand so well and this almost-victorious rebellion just might fall apart at the seams.
“I wonder,” he mused, “I wonder if he really tried to get that ring off?”
Without really conscious planning, Bass peeled down the cuff of his left gauntlet and drew out the small heat-stunner. After setting the stud for heat, he tried to point it from the hip, so as not to be noticed, then depressed the stud as Hal had shown him to do.
For what seemed like at least a quarter hour to Bass, nothing at all untoward happened: the Right continued to orate and more men came up out of the trenches to swell the throng already out and empty-handed and murmuring amongst themselves. Frantically, he tried varying the direction of the device by fractions of millimeters—up, down, left, right.
All at once. Righ Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain. in the very midst of yet another appeal to the God who had supposedly coronated him to rule Ulaid for the rest of his life or until He signified His Holy displeasure by causing the ring containing the Sacred Jewel of Ulaid to come from off his thumb—why. had they not seen, time and time again on feast-day gatherings in Oentreib and other places, how neither he nor other men and women, noble and humble and even priestly, had been able to remove from his thumb the nng that God Almighty had ordained to there remain?—a look of agony and terror came over his florid face. He moaned softly, then groaned loudly, then half screamed. His features became twisted and the muscles cording his thick neck could be seen all hard and tensed to the fullest, veins stood out and throbbed strongly at his forehead, his jaw joints bulged and worked as he clenched and ground his teeth.
Then, with a hoarse, bellowing scream, he jerked down his left hand and did some unseen something with the fingers of his right hand. When the bauble dropped from off his thumb, Bass and a few others could see that where it had for so long been emplaced, there now was what looked like a severe and terrible burn circling the thumb, which thumb he then instinctively began to suck at and lick.
Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain. clearly no longer King of Ulaid. did not suffer but bare minutes. Someone of the men clustered around him—none of Bass’s party could see among the press clearly enough to ever say just who— drew and rapidly, cleanly thrust a dagger into the unar-mored back of the former Righ. His eyes opened wide, his bum clear forgotten; he fell facedown upon the ground, and the hilt of the weapon could be seen standing up out of his back, just below the left shoulderblade.
Looking down at the death-gurgling body of Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain. Bass wondered aloud, “But now who is there to rule in Ulaid?”