Something else was happening, He was closer now, just behind the line of the Ragnarsson archers, men behind him darting forward with bundles of retrieved arrows. What was it? Ropes. They had ropes in the gate towers, both of them, lots of ropes, and the men in the towers, still out of arrowshot, were heaving mightily at them. A Ragnarsson ran across his view—Ubbi, it seemed to be—shouting at the men pressing forward. He was telling them to throw javelins up over the battlements, to come down where the men seemed to be pulling. A few men ran forward to cast; not many. It was blind shooting, and a costly throwing spear was not something to waste idly. The ropes tightened.
Up over the edge of the gate came a round object, a great roller teetering slowly toward the edge. It was a pillar: a stone pillar from the Roman days, sawn off at both ends. Falling from thirty feet no frame could stop it.
Shef passed “Thrall’s-wreak” to Brand and ran forward, yelling inarticulately. The men inside the boar could see nothing of what was happening above their heads, but others could. The trouble was, no one had a clear idea of what to do. As Shef reached the frame several men were clustered at its rear, urging its crew to drop the handles, turn back to the drag-ropes, and haul the whole contrivance back to safety. Others were calling to Muirtach and his stormers to come to the outside and add their weight to the withdrawal. As they did so, the English archers rallied again and the air was once more full of the zip and thud of missiles, this time coming at killing range.
Shef pushed a man aside, another, and ducked into the rear entrance of the ram. Inside there was an immediate reeking fog of sweat and steaming breath, fifty heroes gasping with exertion and confusion, some already at the drag-ropes, others turning away from the massive swinging trunk.
“No,” Shef bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Get back to the handles.”
Faces gaped at him, men began to throw their weight on the ropes.
“You don’t need to push the whole thing back, just swing back the ram—”
An arm caught him in the back, he was hurled forward, other bodies charged past him, he found a rope thrust in his hand.
“Pull, ye useless bodach, or I’ll cut yer liver out,” screamed Muirtach in his ear.
Shef felt the frame tremble, the wheel behind him start to turn. He threw his weight on the rope—two feet would do it, maybe three—they couldn’t throw that great thing right out from the gate….
A ground-trembling crash, another violent blow in the back, his head making contact with a timber, a sudden terrible shrieking like a woman’s that this time went on and on…
Shef stumbled to his feet and looked around. The Vikings had been too slow. The stone pillar, finally hauled over the edge by a hundred arms, had come down squarely on the iron snout of the ram, driving it into the ground, snapping chains and tearing out their fixing bolts. It had also smashed the front of the frame, and come down finally across the hips of one of the crew. He was the one—a massive grizzled man in his forties—who was shrieking. His mates backed away—frightened, shamed, ignoring the three or four silent bodies caught by flailing chain or smashing timber. At least, apart from the one man, no one was making any noise. They would begin to babble in a moment, but for a moment, Shef knew, he could bend them to his will. He knew what must be done.
“Muirtach. Stop that noise.” The cruel dark face gaped at him, seemingly without recognition, then stepped forward, pulling a dirk from his hose-top.
“The rest of you. Roll the ram back. Not far. Six feet. Stop. Now—” He was at the timbers at the front, examining the damage. “Ten of you, outside; take broken wood, spear-shafts, anything, roll that column right hard up against the gate. It’s only a few feet wide—if we get the front wheel right up to it we can still swing the ram.