The Rendors milled around below, still falling victim to arrows and to large rocks thrown down on them from the walls.
And then they broke and fled.
Kalten came back, panting and wiping his sword. ‘Good fight,’ he said, grinning.
‘Tolerable,’ Sparhawk agreed laconically. “Rendors aren’t very good fighters, though.’
‘Those are the best kind to face,’ Kalten laughed. He pulled back one foot to kick the bottom half of the skinny Rendor off the wall.
‘Leave him where he is,’ Sparhawk said shortly. “Let’s give the next wave of attackers something to look at while they’re crossing the field to get here. You might as well tell the people cleaning up down on the inside of the wall to save any loose heads they come across as well. We’ll set them on stakes along the battlements.’
“Object lessons again?’
‘Why not? A man who’s attacking a defended wall is entitled to know what’s likely to happen to him, wouldn’t you say?’
Bevier came hurrying down the bloody parapet. “Ulath’s been hurt!’ he shouted to them from several yards away.
He turned to lead them back to their injured friend, and the church soldiers melted out of his way. Perhaps unconsciously, Bevier was still brandishing his lochaber axe.
Ulath lay on his back. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and blood was running out of his ears.
‘What happened?’ Sparhawk demanded of Tynian.
‘A Rendor ran up behind him and hit him on the head with an axe. ‘
Sparhawk’s heart sank.
Tynian gently removed Ulath’s horned helmet and gingerly probed through the Genidian Knight’s blond hair. ‘I don’t think his head’s broken,’ he reported.
‘“maybe the Rendor didn’t swing hard enough,’ Kalten surmised.
“I saw the blow. The Rendor swung as hard as he could.
That blow should have split Ulath’s head like a melon.’
He frowned, tapping on the bulging knot of horn that joined the two curling points jutting from each side of their friend’s conical helmet. Then he examined the helmet closely. ‘Not a scratch,’ he marveled. He took out his dagger and scraped at the horn, but was unable to even mar its shiny surface. Then, finally overcome by curiosity, he picked up Ulath’s fallen war-axe and hacked at the horn several times without even chipping it. ‘That’s amazing, he said. ‘That’s the hardest stuff I’ve ever come across.’
“That’s probably why Ulath’s still got his brains inside his head,’ Kalten said. ‘He doesn’t look too good, though.
Let’s carry him to Sephrenia.’
‘You three go on ahead,’ Sparhawk told them regretfully.
“I’ve got to talk with Vanion.’
The four Preceptors stood together some distance away where they had been observing the attack.
“Sir Ulath’s been hurt, My Lord,’ Sparhawk reported to Komier.
‘Is it bad?’ Vanion asked quickly.
“There’s no such thing as a good injury, Vanion,’ Komier said. ‘What happened, Sparhawk?’
“A Rendor hit him in the head with an axe, My Lord.’
‘In the head, you say? He’ll be all right then.’ He reached up and rapped his’ knuckles on his own ogre-horned helmet. ‘That’s why we wear these.’
‘He didn’t look very good,’ Sparhawk said gravely.
‘Tynian, Kalten and Bevier are taking him to Sephrenia.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ Komier insisted.
Sparhawk pushed Ulath’s injury to the back of his mind.
“I think I’ve put my finger on some of Martel’s strategy, My Lords. He saddled himself with those Rendors for a specific reason. Rendors aren’t really very good at modern warfare. They don’t wear any kind of protective armour not even helmets – and they’re pitifully incapable of any form of swordsmanship. We swept them off the top of that wall the way you’d mow a hayfield. All they really have is a raging fanaticism, and they’ll attack in the face of insurmountable odds. Martel’s going to keep throwing them at us to wear us down and to reduce our numbers.
Then, after he’s weakened and exhausted us, he’ll throw in his Cammorian and Lamork mercenaries. We’ve got to work out some way to keep those Rendors off the walls.
I’m going to talk with Kurik. Maybe he can come up with a few ideas.’
Kurik, as a matter of fact, could. His years of experience, and the reminiscences of grizzled old veterans he had met from time to time provided him with a large number of very nasty ideas. There were objects he called caltrops: fairly simple, four-pronged steel things that could be made in such a way that no matter how far they were thrown, they would always land with one steel, sharp-pointed prong pointing upward. Rendors did not wear boots, but only soft leather sandals. A generous smearing of poison on the pointed prongs made the caltrops lethal as opposed to merely inconvenient.
Ten-foot long beams with sharpened stakes attached to them to protrude like the spines of a hedgehog and once again doctored with poison provided fairly insurmountable barriers when rolled down long beams to lie in profusion out in front of the walls. Long log pendulums swinging from the battlements parallel to the walls would sweep scaling ladders away like cobwebs. ‘None of these will actually hold off really serious attacks, Sparhawk,’ Kurik said, ‘but they’ll slow people down to the point where crossbowmen and regular archers can pick them off. Not very many attackers will reach the walls.’
‘That’s sort of what we had in mind,’ Sparhawk said.
‘Let’s commandeer the citizenry and put them to work on these ideas. All that the people of Chyrellos are doing right now is sitting around eating. Let’s give them a chance to earn their keep. The construction of Kurik’s obstacles took several days, and there were several more Rendorish attacks in the interim. Then Preceptor Abriel’s catapults scattered the caltrops in profusion in front of the walls, and the hedgehogs rolled down long beams to lie in tangles and clusters some twenty yards or so out from the walls. After that, very few Rendors reached the walls, and the ones who did were not encumbered by scaling ladders. They would normally mill around shouting slogans and hacking at the walls with their swords until the bowmen on top of the walls had the leisure to kill them. After a few of those abortive attacks, Martel pulled back for a day or so to reconsider his strategy. It was still summer, however, and the hordes of dead Rendors lying outside the walls began to bloat in the sun. The smell of rotting flesh made the inner city distinctly unpleasant.
One evening, Sparhawk and his companions took advantage of the lull to return to the chapterhouse for muchneeded baths and a hot meal. Before they did anything else, however, they stopped by to visit Sir Ulath. The big Genidian Knight lay in his bed. His eyes were still unfocused, and he had a confused look on his face. ‘I’m getting tired of just lying around, brothers,’ he said in a slurred voice, “and it’s hot in here. Why don’t we go out and hunt down a Troll? Slogging through the snow should cool off our blood a little.’
‘He thinks he’s in the Genidian Motherhouse at Heid,’
Sephrenia told the knights quietly. ‘He keeps wanting to go Troll-hunting. He thinks I’m a serving wench, and he’s been making all sorts of improper suggestions to me.’
Bevier gasped.
“And then sometimes he cries,’ she added.
‘Ulath?’ Tynian said in some amazement.
‘It may be a subterfuge, though. The first time he did it, I tried to comfort him, and it turned into a sort of wrestling match. He’s very strong, considering his condition.’
“Will he be all right?’ Kalten asked. “I mean, will he regain his senses?’
‘It’s very hard to say, Kalten. That blow bruised his brain, I think, and you never know how something like that’s going to turn out. I think you’d better leave, dear ‘ ones. Don’t excite him.’
Ulath began to make a long, rambling speech in the language of the Trolls, and Sparhawk -was surprised to discover that he still understood the language. The spell Aphrael had cast in Ghwerig’s cave seemed to still have some of its potency left.
After he had bathed and shaved, Sparhawk put on a monk’s robe and joined the others in the nearly-deserted refectory where their meal was laid on a long table.
“What’s Martel going to do next?’ Preceptor Komier was asking Abriel.
“He’ll probably fall back on fairly standard siege tactics,’
Abriel replied. “Most likely he’ll settle down and let his siege engines pound us for a while. Those fanatics were just about his only chance for a quick victory. This may drag out for quite some time.’
They all sat quietly, listening to the monotonous crash of large rocks falling into the city around them.
Then Talen burst into the room. His face was smudged and his clothes were dirty. “I just saw Martel, My Lords!’
he said excitedly.
“We’ve all seen him, Talen,’ Kalten said, sprawling deeper into his chair. “He rides up outside the walls now and then to have a look around.’