The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [187]
Closing his eyes, he murmured a snatch of song.
Mi, Etier meuf, eyoiz’etiern rem,
Crach-toi, frennz, mi viveut-toi dein…
“What’s that, Sir Neil?”
He opened his eyes. The question had come from a man just about his age, a knight named Edhmon Archard, from the Greffy of Seaxeld. He had quick blue eyes, pink cheeks, and hair as white as thistledown. His armor was good plain stuff, and Neil couldn’t see a dent on it.
Of course, his own armor was just as new. He’d found it in his tent the morning after Robert escaped, sent as a present by Elyoner Dare, who’d had his measurements taken “for clothes,” or so she had claimed. Still, Neil had the impression that in Sir Edhmon’s case, the man in the armor was as untested as the steel itself.
“It’s a bit of a song,” Neil explained. “A song my father taught me.”
“What’s it mean?”
Neil smiled.
“‘Me, my father, my fathers before. Croak, you ravens, I’ll feed you soon.’”
“Not very cheery,” Edhmon said.
“It’s a death song,” Neil said.
“You believe you’re going to die?”
“Oh, I’m going to die; that one thing is certain,” Neil said. “It’s the when, where, and how I’m not so clear on. But my fah always said it was best to go into battle thinking of yourself as already dead.”
“You can do that?”
Neil shrugged. “Not always. Sometimes I’m afraid, and sometimes the rage comes on me. But now and then the saints allow me the death calm, and I like that best.”
Edhmon flushed a little. “This is my first battle,” he admitted. “I hope I’m ready for it.”
“You’re ready for it,” Neil said.
“I’m just so tired of waiting.”
Even as he said that, he flinched as one of the ballistae behind them released with a booming twang, and a fifty-pound stone flung in a flat arc over their heads, smiting the outer bailey of Thornrath and sending a shatter of granite in every direction.
“You won’t be waiting much longer,” Neil assured him. “That wall’s coming down within a bell. They’re mustering their horse behind the waerd already.”
“Why? Why not take them up into the wall? Why risk them against us?”
Neil considered his reply for a few minutes, hoping to find an answer that wouldn’t frighten Edhmon too much.
“Thornrath has never been taken,” he said at last. “From the sea, it’s probably impossible. It’s too thick, too tall, and ships are completely vulnerable to bombardment from above. Likewise, the cliffs of the cape aren’t easily scaled from the seaside. A few defenders can keep any number of men from climbing up there, especially if the attackers are trying to bring up horses and siege engines. And without engines, they face the waerd, which can’t be taken without them.”
He pointed south down the spit of land that separated them from the wall, a ridge just ten kingsyards wide that plunged in cliffs to Foam-breaker Bay on the right and the Ensae on the left. It went that way for forty kingsyards and then widened enough for the waerd, a wedge-shaped fortress with its sharp end pointed at them and gates hidden around behind it. It had three towers and stood separated from the great wall behind it by about ten yards.
“We can’t just ride around the waerd, or they’d pelt us right off the cliffs with whatever they’ve got: stones, boiling oil, molten lead, all of that sort of thing. We’d never make it around to even give the gate a go. So we have to break the waerd from this side, and preferably from a distance. Out here we have a never-ending supply of missiles, though we don’t have a flat wall to hit. More often than not, our stones just skip right off.”
“I can see all of that,” Sir Edhmon said. “But I still don’t see what that’s got to do with the cavalry.”
“Well, when the wall comes down, we still have to cross this causeway and get through the breach before we can capture the castle. And we can only go a few at a time, about six or seven abreast. Then the horse will come to meet us before the ridge widens there.
“Meanwhile, they’ve