Siege Perilous Page 29

  Vera swore. “Shaft burned through because I waited too long. Must find the golden mean.” Ocyrhoe handed her the next arrow, already prepared. Vera again fitted it to the bowstring.

  As Vera pulled back, Ocyrhoe glanced around the night to see how others were faring. With three dozen archers, arrows were loosed about every heartbeat, but it was hardly a rain of fire; only a handful of arrows had struck the trebuchet and of them, only two had remained lit enough to even singe the wood.

  Worse, the French guard had been alerted to their presence by the sound of the arrows striking, and now could see very easily where the attacks were coming from. There was shouting and a vague, grey bustle of movement around the trebuchet.

  “Second!” shouted Peire-Roger. This was the signal to start shooting directly at the French, who obligingly appeared before the trebuchet to gauge the size of the attacking force.

  Ocyrhoe watched Vera unhesitatingly lower the angle of her shot, so that she was aiming almost dead straight, over the level top of the shield in front of her. She aimed carefully—something she had not had to do when she was trying to hit a large target—and released. Ocyrhoe despite herself watched the fire-arrow as it flashed across the darkness. Its fire flared brightly as it flew, invigorated rather than imperiled by the rushing air. With a decisive thunk, it landed in the midriff of a French sergeant at the foot of the trebuchet; he fell screaming to the ground, trying desperately to pull the arrow out of his body. Ocryhoe felt sickened and turned her head away, even as she was automatically plunging the next arrow into the flames for Vera.

  She lit half a dozen more arrows. It was hard to tell in the dim light if they were accomplishing anything; the French were scurrying around their prize machinery now, hundreds of them it seemed, little insects, moving ladders with impressive speed and precision as figures scrambled up, pulled out arrows, damped out fires, and began to douse the machine with handfuls of grimy snow to prevent any fire from taking hold.

  Then with alarming speed the French organized a counterattack. Suddenly glinting in the moonlight were hundreds of shields, protecting every Frenchman. The French were far more accustomed to moving effectively behind the protection of overlapping shields; they did it all day long, every day, while the men of Montségur had had to simply squat along the crenellated battlements.

  Shields up, the French archers began to shoot at the Cathar forces in far greater number. There were at least a hundred of them, and Ocyrhoe saw torch-toting boys scrambling down the slope toward the watchtower, where dozens more waited in reserve for emergencies like this. And no doubt a runner was also headed straight down to alert the camp. There might be a thousand French up here by morning, and meanwhile they had done no damage to the trebuchet.

  “He will tell us to retreat,” Vera said in an irritated voice, assessing the situation even more quickly than Ocyrhoe had.

  Instead, however, Peire-Roger yelled out “Three!” which nobody had been expecting, not even Vera. She frowned in startlement and turned to stare into the darkness from the direction his voice had come.

  “What is three?” Ocyrhoe asked, overwhelmed. She was no stranger to street-fights and had survived her share of danger, but she had never been in the middle of an organized battle like this before. It alarmed her that she found it slightly thrilling.

  “He wants us to attack,” said Vera. “Hand to hand. Swords and knives.” She put one tip of her bow on the ground and leaned her weight into the curve to slacken the string. “The rear units will cover us with bows.”

  “You’re going over there?” Ocyrhoe said, suddenly terrified.

  Vera unstrung her bow. “Of course,” she said and handed the bow to Ocyrhoe. “Take this. If he cries out four, you and the other squires carry the braziers across and dump them up against the trebuchet.”

  “But we’re losing,” said Ocyrhoe. “Why are there plans for moving forward when we should be retreating? There is no possible way you will open up a clear path for us to bring the fire.” She felt dizzy. Maybe she actually did care about staying alive.

  Vera frowned at her. “We’re not losing,” she said. “We are restrategizing.”

  “How many of you are there?” Ocyrhoe demanded. “How many of them?”

  Vera pulled her knife from her belt with her left hand, and with her right she drew her sword from its scabbard. “If you look at the numbers, then we are clearly on the defensive,” she said. “And the best defense is a good offense. If we don’t do this, they will absolutely take the barbican. If that happens we are done for.”

  Ocyrhoe felt sudden panic and tried to digest this news. They had been just moments from the start of victory; how could such a reversal happen without any warning or fanfare?

  Vera, indifferent to the girl’s befuddlement, was glancing around in the darkness, assessing things Ocyrhoe could not begin to guess at. “They are about to drop the shields for us,” she informed Ocyrhoe, who could not imagine how Vera knew this. “So we can rush forward. Once that happens you’ll be totally exposed. Move back around the barbican for safety, but stay light on your toes. If Peire-Roger gives the signal, come in with the brazier straight to the trebuchet. Do not bother to look for me. Only look for me if you hear me call your name in particular, which is not likely to happen.”

  There was an ominous, metallic sound, and Ocyrhoe glanced toward it. She watched as men-at-arms who had been holding up actual shields, edges overlapped to protect the archers, separated and melted elegantly back behind the first group of archers, one of them sliding between Vera and Ocyrhoe, his shield raised high above his head.

  “Not the way to do it,” Vera informed Ocryhoe with a disapproving snort, cocking her head toward him. “All goodness go with you, sister.” She pivoted from where she was standing and ran into the darkness toward the French.

  Ocyrhoe watched her for the briefest moment, slack-jawed. Then she realized the shield-bearers were already reconstituting their protective wall of iron in front of the two remaining archery units, behind her. She ran for the barbican wall.

  The next half-hour was chaos and confusion, and Ocyrhoe did not conduct herself the way she thought she would. She had been relatively fearless with Ferenc beside her, even though she valued her life; here, without valuing it, she was too frightened to put it on the line. She listened for Peire-Roger to sound the call, hoping he would not do it and then feeling wracked with guilt for such a wish, for it meant that the Montségur defenders were not prospering. The sounds of battle were all around her, so loud she felt them as much as heard them. Bodies thudding against each other, bodies being thrown to the ground, blade striking blade, and shield smashing against shield. Through it all, Ocyrhoe cowered against the barbican, hating herself for cowering, and watched the violence escalate around her. They were losing. Montségur was losing; the hand-to-hand combat was moving inexorably toward the fortress. She was on the fortress side of the barbican tower but suddenly she saw dueling soldiers snarled together in mortal combat. In most cases the French were winning, pushing the fortress defenders backward to the gates of Montségur. As Ocyrhoe watched, the slaughter and chaos expanded, bloated, around the barbican until she was in danger of being engulfed by it.

  “Retreat!” cried a voice. “Retreat!” It was Peire-Roger, and still overwhelmed with shame, Ocyrhoe welcomed it. In the quickly narrowing corridor between the fighting that had moved around from either side, she ran. She dodged men she recognized even in their armor—Percival, Peire-Roger himself, all of them fighting for their lives against men whose names and homelands would be forever unknown to them. She approached Raphael struggling with a Frenchman; they had both dropped their swords and grabbed each other around the shoulders as if hugging or trying to throw each other in a wrestling move. Her eye stayed on them as she drew even with them. As Raphael took the Frenchman’s balance, hurtling him to the ground, he disappeared completely. With a floating feeling in her stoma
ch, Ocyrhoe realized Raphael had just thrown his enemy off the frozen, cliff-sharp side of the ridge. Even as she had that thought, Raphael was reaching to pick up both his sword and the Frenchman’s. “Ocyrhoe!” he shouted sternly over the din. It brought her up short. Raphael hurled the short French sword toward her so that it flipped hilt-over-tip and sliced into the frozen ground near her. “Take it,” he ordered, then threw himself back into the fracas by the barbican.

  Ocyrhoe yanked hard at the sword. It resisted her. She marveled at what Raphael had just done, with such seeming ease: On a mountaintop made almost entirely of limestone, he had flung the sword with such precision that, in the darkness, he had landed it on a small spot of actual soil, barely visible even in the daylight, with enough force to sink into the frozen ground.

  She tugged again and dislodged it. Heavy, stomping footfalls sounded behind her; others were retreating onto the ridge. With a surge of thrilled terror she tore along the narrow ridge, raising the hilt of the sword to pound the gate, but Ferrer opened it before she could, and the force of her intended knock threw her to her knees inside the courtyard walls.

  For hours more, chaos continued. She scrambled up the cold stone stairs to the wall-walk, where the garrison guards were shooting as fast and as accurately as they could into the pressing crowd. It was an armed melee, and Ocyrhoe was grateful it was getting darker with the moon-set, for there must have been blood everywhere. It was staining what snow had not been trod away in all the scuffles, but surely there was more she could not even sense in this darkness. In the dim she saw soldiers being flung to their deaths down the sides of the ridge, and many more falling to the sword near the barbican.

  As Montségur men were able to retreat safely across the ridge, Ferrer allowed them back in. Several times they were pursued by French swordsmen who forced their way through the gate as well, but these came in small numbers and were immediately felled by Montségur men just inside the walls.

  Peire-Roger, who was among these men, ordered the others to hack up the dead Frenchmen and hurl their body parts over the parapet at their compatriots. Ocyrhoe scrambled to another part of the wall, closer to the keep, to get far away from that grisly undertaking.

  Suddenly the soldier next to Ocyrhoe cried out in shocked pain and grabbed at his chest. He had been struck by an arrow, but in the instant before he crashed off the wall to the courtyard floor Ocyrhoe saw that the arrow had entered his body straight on, as if from the same height. She immediately understood what that meant: the barbican had been taken. Now French archers were atop of the tower, shooting straight over the treacherous ridge directly at the garrison guard. The barbican was better defended than the wall-walk; the French soldiers had an advantage. Everywhere.

  With the Montségur defenders in retreat, the French pulled back, flocking into the barbican and lighting it with torches, celebrating their conquest. As the clanging and clashes of weapons diminished to be replaced by the groans of dying men, the gate of the fortress opened wider than it had been, and Ocyrhoe saw a dreadful sight below her: at least a dozen men too wounded to walk, being trundled between comrades back across the ridge to the safety of the fortress.

  No, there is no safety for them here, she corrected herself. These walls cannot hold death out now.

  The French, despite their hallowing bellows of triumph from the barbican, ceased shooting or chasing after them, allowing the tattered remnants of the Montségur force to return unmolested to the fortress.

  The wounded were carried straight through the courtyard and up into the keep. Ocyrhoe looked for the nearest wooden ladder and hurried down it, then chased after the grim procession to see who was in it.

  Inside the keep, she expected to see the dying laid out on the trestle tables or at least on the floor, but instead they were being carried right up the second set of stairs to the chapel above. The women, children, and old men huddled together and softly sobbed the names of their dear ones. Ocyrhoe glanced around the hall; there were no Good Ones here. They must have gone upstairs too. Suddenly realizing what was happening, she followed up the stairs.

  Ocyrhoe stepped inside and watched in the torchlight. The dozens and dozens of Good Ones were clustered together on the far side of the chapel, all in black, faces calm, watching. The soldiers laid their fallen colleagues gently on the floor, sometimes resting a hand on a shoulder or planting a kiss on a forehead. Then the men who had carried the dying filed out of the room, past Ocyrhoe, back down the stairs to the hall. The Goodmen moved to surround the prone soldiers.

  Ocyrhoe stayed where she was. Rixenda and the other Goodwomen began to move around the edges of the chapel, but Rixenda, seeing her, cut straight across toward her. “You cannot stay here, child,” she said as gently as she could. “The Goodmen are about to give the consolamentum. It is a sacred ritual and unless you are here to partake of it yourself you must not stay.”

  Ocyrhoe blinked. “They are all taking the vows of the Good Ones right before.”

  “Yes, right before they pass on,” said Rixenda gently. “They have done good work in this life protecting us, holding back from their final vows so that they could be in the world in a way that we are not. They have earned the right to go to God and escape the endless cycle of being reborn into the cruel world. They all wanted this. And now they will receive it. Go, Ocyrhoe, and comfort those trapped still in this hellish life. It is our job to prepare those who are about to escape it.”

  Ocyrhoe pursed her lips together and closed her eyes to keep tears from spilling out. Rixenda kissed her on the forehead, then gently turned her around to face the stairs. Ocyrhoe began to descend them. Behind her, she knew, Rixenda knelt beside her nephew, Vidal, whose wounds had left in him not an hour of life.

  The fortress slept fitfully, only the weary, scant garrison alert. Raphael, Vera and Percival slept in a clutch in the corner of the keep, having muttered between themselves about the best plans for the next day. Only the treacherous ridge, some few dozen strides long, now protected Montségur from guaranteed defeat. Would the French attack the fortress with such a narrow easement? When only two soldiers abreast could approach the walls? Yes, argued Vera; no, said Percival. Raphael was unconvinced of either, and Peire-Roger kept himself aloof, huddled in a corner with his wife’s father, Raimon de Perelha. The two lords of Montségur wore miserable expressions.

  “They are discussing a surrender,” said Raphael, watching them across the rows and clumps of sleeping forms.

  “Of course they’re not,” said Vera. “They will go down fighting before they surrender. If they give in, it is the end of Occitania. The French will never leave.”

  “We’re in a stronger position than we realize,” Percival said. “It would be madness on the French’s part to attack the fortress. We’re in a stalemate, no different than before but uncomfortably closer to our gate, that’s all. Things will stay like this until we freeze them out and they go home, or until the reinforcements arrive, attack the outskirts of the army, and draw Hugue de Arcis’s attention back down the mountain in self-defense. In the bigger picture, this setback changes nothing.”

  “They’ve taken the barbican,” argued Raphael. “That changes everything. They can shoot directly into the courtyard now, not blindly but with intention. Ocyrhoe can no longer get to the entrance of the southern tunnel.”

  “We can protect her with shields,” said Percival. “Everything but the trebuchet is made of stone, so even if they shoot with fire-arrows, there’s nothing for them to burn or…”

  His words were interrupted by a cry of alarm from outside, together with a tremendously loud crack that made the whole keep shake. Instantly, the three of them were up, blankets thrown off, hands on sword hilts. Around them sleepers woke and cried out in alarm, mothers grabbed children close to them, and people huddled together.

  The trio of warriors raced through the clutches of bodies, heading directly for the door. Raphael saw ot
her soldiers and knights also grabbing for their weapons and following after.

  In the frigid dawn light, the garrison soldiers were on their knees behind the crenellations of the wall-walk, trying to move back and forth quickly without exposing themselves. Some were shooting at the barbican, from which a sideways rain of arrows erupted. Others of the Montségur guard were shooting almost straight down over the wall at the French soldiers directly on the other side. The French were pressing their advantage; they were risking the ridge to gain the fortress. In three places, the tops of wooden ladders appeared over the walls; the nearest guards, lacking leverage, were hard put to push them off.

  Worst of all, the smash against the donjon wall had been a stone hurled from the trebuchet. While giving the denizens of Montségur a moment to breathe and collect their wounded, the French had been shortening the sling of the trebuchet so that it could hurl rocks against the fortress once again.

  One Montségur soldier, desperate to dislodge the nearest ladder, stood to give himself the leverage to shove the ladder away from the wall. “Don’t!” shouted Raphael, looking up from the porthouse. “Down!” Even as he spoke the words, an arrow from the barbican shredded the air and lodged itself high in the man’s right ribcage. He had been propelling his weight forward over the ramparts; once hit, he lost the balance and ability to right himself and toppled over the wall onto the waiting blades of the French soldiers below.

  A second soldier, not seeing what happened to his comrade in the panicked dawn confusion, stood to dislodge the ladder that rose by him; before Raphael could even speak, an arrow from the barbican took him down, too.

  “Do not stand upright!” Raphael hollered up at all of them. “Let them keep the ladders up. Only one can climb at a time; let them, and then spear them or behead them as they reach you. Stay low and safe behind the wall!” He had no idea if any of them could hear him.