Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

fastenings of his helmet, stripped off the clumsy thing, bent, and threw up.

Christopher was gratified. And his satisfaction increased even more when, a moment later, a cobble-sized stone caught Berard on the head and sent him sprawling onto the ground with a loud clank.

His men saw him fall, hesitated. But as two of his companions hauled him to his feet, he was already shouting at them to continue. They turned and went on, slogging through obstacles and disgust to reach the walls, only to find themselves flooded with boiling oil and flaming pitch and pounded with rocks the size of boulders.

Berard lost men. Inevitably, so did the villagers. Berard's crossbowmen were staying out of range of dung and missiles, but their weapons, windlassed up to two hundred and fifty pounds of tension, easily cast twelve-inch bolts as far as the walls. At such an extreme distance, their aim was not good, so they clustered their attacks; and after a few bracketing shots, heavy rains of pointed steel periodically dropped into the village.

Behind the walls, the village women took charge of the wounded, and what they could not cure with bandages and water was attended to by elven hands, for Natil harped and healed, and Mirya left her sword in its sheath as her magic closed wounds and stanched of blood. Starlight and music mingled with the dust and din of battle as the Elves did their work.

Christopher raged and catcalled at Berard, scampering from one side of the ramparts to the other as fast as if he had indeed been a monkey. He threw stones and dung, helped hoist boulders into position, even grabbed a bow and sent off a few arrows himself.

“Surrender!” Berard was shouting, but he had drifted too close, and one of Christopher's bodkin-pointed missiles caught him in the chest. The steel plate turned the head, but Berard looked shaken, then enraged. “Damn you! Yield!”

“No!” Christopher shouted back with a foppish lilt to his voice. “You'll hurt us!” And another arrow clanked against Berard's cuirass.

Berard had several thousand men, and eventually, simply as the result of pressure and momentum, they reached the walls. Scaling ladders went up, clattering into place against the stones of the parapet. The hands of the villagers went out with pikes and staves and forked sticks. The scaling ladders went back down.

But they went up once more, and then again, rising like reeds from a turbulent lake. The crossbowmen cranked, loaded, released; and shouting encouragement to one another, Berard's men swarmed upwards.

A group of nearly fifty mounted a thicket of ladders near Christopher, and he signaled frantically to the men who were hoisting a cauldron of pitch into place. A nod from them, and brimming with boiling and smoking liquid, the cauldron pivoted at the end of its crossbeam, swinging towards him, missing the heads of the defenders by only a hand's breadth.

Christopher grabbed the lip of the hot vessel with his gloved hands and muscled it into place directly above the mass of climbing brigands. “Give up?” he called down to them.

He heard curses from below. With a shrug, he let the pitch go.

It flooded down, burning, scalding. Berard's men fell back, some plainly on fire, some suffocating in their layers of plate and mail, some simply but obviously demoralized. Another rain of stones and shit, and they started away from the walls. They slid and stumbled back down into the ditch and began struggling up towards the confining palisade. But, black and vengeful, Abel rose up with a huge sledgehammer, took aim, and hurled the tool at the props that were supporting an improvised dam in the stream that ran hard by the town.

The drought had reduced the stream to a trickle, but over time, the dam had built up a sizable reservoir behind it. Abel's hammer smashed directly into the props, and the waters leaped forward with a roar, rushed down the canal, and inundated the ditch.

Christopher watched Berard's men flail and drown as he wiped the sticky pitch from his gloves. “Thank you, Abel. And they'll have a devil of a time mining under that now, too,” he said.

“Aye,” said Abel, “but they're not going to give up that easily.”

“No. I daresay it'll be siege engines next.”

“They'll have to get 'em over the ditch.”

“They've got the time.” Christopher looked out at the retreating men, could not resist another catcall. But a crossbow bolt smacked into the ramparts inches from him and cut it short.

Indeed, Berard had plenty of time. Saint Brigid was besieged, and its people, including Christopher and the Elves, were trapped. The free companies could amuse themselves, hunt, and wait for the food supplies of the village, already scant because of the drought and the time of year, to give out.

Berard, though, did not appear to be overly interested in starving the village into submission. He had attacked actively, and since he was now shouting orders that had to do with battering rams and assault towers, he obviously was going to continue along similar lines. Christopher had no idea why. Perhaps, he considered, Berard was as crazy as a certain Christopher delAurvre.

He put his hands to his head in frustration. “I've got to get to Furze. Everything Berard's got is right here at Saint Brigid. It's too good to let go. Dammit . . .”

He looked up to see the monkey perched on the parapet before him. It stuck out its tongue, and viciously, Christopher returned the gesture, then repeated it at Berard who, though still giving orders regarding further assault, appeared to be completely bewildered by his opponent.

But, a moment later, Christopher was also bewildered, for above the sound of the rushing water in the ditch, the cries from the men who still floundered in it, and the clatter of staves and shouts of triumph from the so-far successful defenders of Saint Brigid's walls, he heard Natil screaming at him:

“Christopher! Vanessa! The Church!”

The two Elves had their hands full of bleeding men, but their faces told