Page 80 of Hers To Command
He turned to his beloved and noted her pale face. She was trying to be brave for him, and he loved her all the more for it. “You should go now, Mathilde. It’s too dangerous for you here.”
He leaned close to kiss her and as he did, he whispered something he hoped would ease her fears. “I promise I won’t venture from the battlements.”
When she drew back, she gave him a tremulous smile. “God be with you, Henry, and with all of us today,” she said.
And then she left him there.
HENRY PAIDlittle heed to the men standing near him as he watched the huge battering ram again being rolled toward the gates. He doubted that, even as reinforced as they were, the gates could withstand a second onslaught.
Even so, Cerdic had ensured that they were as prepared as possible for another attack on the gate and done everything they could to stop the ram until Ranulf’s men broke through beneath the wall.
Sheaves of hay had been brought from the stables and thrown down in front of the gates to block the ram and cushion its blow. Bedding, too, had been tossed over the wall, except for the pallets for the wounded, including the ladies’ featherbed.
Several large iron pots full of water had been set on tripods above fires, ready to pour on the men manning the ram or those trying to scale the walls. There was one pot of pitch to throw onto the ram itself. Archers with fire arrows would set it alight once they got the order.
Peering at the oncoming ram, Cerdic cursed softly.
“What is it?” Henry asked, silently distressed he couldn’t see very well or far now.
“He’s using our men on the ram, too.”
“Damn him,” Henry muttered.
“We can’t throw the pitch on our own men,” Cerdic said.
“We may have no choice.”
Cerdic looked about to protest, but then he sighed and nodded. It would be difficult to throw heavy stones and boiling water onto the men they knew, and worse to send some to a fiery death from pitch and flames, but it would be worse to have the gate breeched.
“Cerdic, you go to the yard and lead the men there, should the gate fall.”
Cerdic nodded and obeyed at once, while Henry stayed where he was.
The ram rumbled closer, picking up speed as it approached the gate. Again Henry cursed his wounds as he tried to scan the army waiting a short distance away, looking for Roald and De Mallemaison. Would they wait for the gates to be broken before they attacked, or would they start an assault on the wall? Or was the ram intended to distract the men of Ecclesford while they finished undermining the wall?
“You there!” Henry called, summoning a short man in ill-fitting mail, a helmet with a noseguard on his head. “Go to Ranulf and see how long before they break through.”
The soldier hesitated and Henry didn’t hide his annoyance. “Then you go,” he said to another, who instantly made haste down the steps. “And you,” he said to the man who’d hesitated, curt in his anxiety, “stay out of the way. I won’t have a slow-witted man in the first line.”
The soldier bowed his head as if rightly ashamed, and stepped back.
Then he was forgotten as the ram struck the gate. They hadn’t done enough to stop its progress. Henry clenched his teeth as the whole wall shook with the force of the impact.
There was no help for it. “Throw the rocks,” he ordered as the men guiding the ram started to back it up to strike again. No doubt Roald had arrows trained on them, threatening them with death if they didn’t break through the gates. He wouldn’t order the pitch thrown until they were desperate.
He saw his men waver, knew they were reluctant. “If Roald gets in the gate, all could be lost.”
A rock went over the side. Then another. Nearby, the archers shifted impatiently, anxious to fire on the enemy farther back who were waiting to attack after the gate was breeched or to scale the walls.
“Not yet,” Henry cautioned them. “They’re too far away. Patience, boys, patience.”
Again the ram hit the gate, and this time, Henry had to grab onto the merlon to keep from falling. An arrow whizzed by his head. He peered out from behind the merlon to see that Roald had moved the men with pavises and the archers closer to the walls.
“If you get a shot at any of his archers or their shield men, take it,” Henry ordered his bowmen, who eagerly nocked their arrows. “But shoot wisely.”
He had trained them well, and they did as they were told. They didn’t fire indiscriminately; they held off until they had a chance of hitting one of their enemies.
The ram was coming toward the gate again. Henry moved to the edge of the battlements to look down into the yard. Despite the reinforcing iron bands, the wood of the gate was cracked and the bands themselves were bent. One great iron hinge had come loose from the wall. Another hit, and the gate probably wouldn’t hold.
