“Well,” he went on, “we tried different ways, and in the end I tried dragging the arm down by ropes over a roller. Now, what I have designed are two wheels, one each side of the frame. Men stand inside each one. They tread down with their feet, and the wheel turns, turns so that there is always another tread under their feet. The wheel that they turn operates a cogwheel, and the two cogs drag down an iron chain. That chain pulls down the counterweight.”
“Does it work?”
“I cannot tell while we march every day. I need time to find smiths and make the wheels, both the cogs and the tread-wheels. But it will work. There is a picture in Vegetius, to give us authority.” Though they were speaking German, he used the Latin word auctoritatem, that which comes from an author, a written work, a book accredited.
Bruno nodded. “The march will stop one day. Then I will need your new device. Not just one next time. Six, a dozen. I have to beat some sense into these Italian heads. Maybe some others too. Come now and see what Agilulf has devised for us.”
The two men left the tent and went out into the sprawling camp, tents pitched for the night but not yet at rest. Outside the marshal Agilulf waited. Erkenbert looked again with professional interest at the crusted blisters and dead skin that ran like the mark of a broad belt across his neck and the side of his face—the track of the Greek fire. Agilulf had lain in pain and fever for weeks after they had pulled him from the sea.
A surprise that he had lived. No surprise that he had become even more taciturn than ever before.
“What is our strength now?” asked Bruno.
“Much the same. Four thousand rabble.” By rabble Agilulf meant the levies called up from the districts Bruno was marching through, first the Spanish borderlands, then the coastline of southern France, then the plains of northern Italy. As the army moved towards Rome and the seat of Saint Peter, there was a constant stream of desertions, replaced by new levies. Few of them had any military value in a serious clash, and some Bruno had dismissed, like the half-Arab deserters, sent back to loot and cause dissension in their own countries.
“About five hundred of the cowboys. They stick around as long as they’re allowed to loot and rape away from home.”
“Hang some of the rapists,” said Bruno without heat. “I’ll hang them all when their use is over.”
“Five hundred Frankish knights, with a hundred Lanzenritter as stiffening. Seven hundred Lanzenbrüder on foot. A dozen onagers in the battering-train, with a Lanzenbrüder attached to each one to stop the crews running away. More to come when the Holy Father has time to make the designs.”
The “Holy Father” was Agilulf’s only joke. He was one of those who most whole-heartedly approved the coming elevation of Erkenbert to the throne of Saint Peter. The little deacon had dressed his wound, given him feverfew for the fever. He was never far from the fighting, never showed fear. In the tight world of the Emperor’s army, it was coming about that no one outside it, German, Italian or Frank, had any weight. Nationality was less important than comradeship.
“Are they good enough to beat the heathen, this time?” asked Bruno.
“I do not think anyone can stand against the charge of the Lanzenritter. But they can be shot down by machines from a distance. For close work—the Lanzenbrüder are stout kerls. But those damned Danes—they are stout kerls too.”
“Better equipped?”
“Our shield-and-spear tactic does not work against them. They are too strong, they learn too quickly. No shield can keep out their axes if they use them. All we can do is keep a steady line, hope to use our horsemen.”
“And our machines,” said Erkenbert.
“Everything,” said Bruno. “All at once. To put down our enemies, to make Christendom one, without rival.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
The parish priest of Aups, a small village of southern France not far from Carcassonne, looked nervously out of the window of his tiny cottage, and then back at the coarsely-written pamphlet he held in his hand. It was made of paper, but the priest did not know that. It was printed rather than written, but the priest did not know that either. The priest only owned one book, and that was his Missal for conducting services. He knew the services by heart in any case. Besides his services, the priest knew the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins. On these he preached to his parishioners.