One of the men heaving at a rope, his feet slipping in the soft dust, dared to snarl a comment in the ear of the man next to him.
“I’m a sailor, I am. We shift our lateeno-yards over the mast all the time, just like this. But what we use is pulleys. Ain’t this lot ever heard of pulleys?”
A slash of leather opened a weal across his back and shut his mouth at the same time. As the retainer-bolt finally slid home and the gasping men let go of their ropes, he looped his line unnoticed round the side frame, twisted it into a half-hitch, walked away. What it would do he did not know. He did not know what they were supposed to be doing, drafted here on the orders of his bishop and taken from his boat just as there was a chance of a successful voyage. But if there was anything he could do to obstruct, he would.
Erkenbert viewed the cocked and prepared machine with a grim pleasure, looked round at his Emperor watching from the hillside, within cover or out of range of the weapons still shooting from the wall. Behind him the two thousand stormers ready to pour through the gate, headed by Tasso the Bavarian and the Emperor’s own elite guard.
He turned back. Saw with sudden incredulity the boulder already rising from behind the enemy’s gate. In an immediate reflex of rage shrieked the order: “Shoot!” Saw his own missile drag along the ground in its sling, whirl round, climb into the sky almost into the very path of the other.
And then the great crash, the rending of timbers and ropes and iron all together.
Shef’s exactly calculated rock came down precisely as intended, the various errors of calculation balancing out, as so often happens when each part is done as nearly as humanly possible. Range a little over-estimated, air-resistance never considered at all, the creep of strained timbers incalculable: but the answer correct. In one moment “War-Wolf” sprang apart, struck just at the pivot point and square on, shattering arm and side-frame and rending out the side of the counterweight. The great machine lay in fragments, timbers slowly, creakily falling to the earth, like a stricken hero’s limbs sinking in death. Gently, through the dust, earth began to patter out of the counterweight-chamber, falling on to the boulder that had shattered it as if to hide it from view, pretend that nothing had happened. Numbly, Erkenbert stalked forward to inspect the damage. Then caught himself, looked out across the plain to see where his shot had landed. Called on his eyes to report for him.
“Just short,” reported Godschalk the Brüder with stolid unconcern. “Up just half a cat’s hair and you’ve got it.”
From the wall, Shef looked at the boulder lying now four feet short of the gate, looked across at the cloud of dust which marked where his shot had gone home, with surely an instant ago a glimpse of broken pieces whirling end over end out of it, and reflected on the value of calculation. A deep sense of satisfaction rose within him. He had the answer. Not just to this problem alone, but to many problems.
Not, perhaps, to his most pressing one. As the cries of glee and triumph began at last to die down, he turned into the exultant face of Brand, almost a foot above his own.
“We beat off the fire, we beat off the stones,” shouted Brand.
“We have to do more than beat them off,” replied Shef.
Brand sobered. “Right. We have to sicken them of it, I always said so. Now how are we going to do that?”
Shef hesitated. He had a feeling as of one who reaches out for a familiar tool, the hilt of a sword that has hung at his belt for ten years, and finds nothing there. He reached inside himself for a source of inspiration. Advice. The voice of his father-god.
Nothing there. He had the knowledge of al-Khwarizmi now. The wisdom of Rig had gone.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Emperor of the Romans sagged back on to his camp-stool, his face drawn and weary. “Total failure,” he said. He reached out an arm, picked up the Holy Lance which never left him, cradled it to his cheek. After a few moments he put it reverently, but still wearily, back in its place.