Raptor (60 page)

Both Theodoric’s stomach and mine, as if they had been prompted by his words, rumbled loudly. The girl heard, and blushed, and scurried from the room.

Theodoric went on, “I could order my men to dismantle the heavier shanties out here and use the timbers to construct siege towers. But they would be too weak, after that exertion, to climb the things, let alone grapple and fight from them. I have considered other possibilities.” He gestured at the chalk-scribbled parchments on the table. “I thought we might undermine the walls on the western side of the city, where they rise abruptly from that precipice edge. But it
is
a precipice—no overhang, no footholds, no practicable way to arrange protection for the digging men—and certainly the Sarmatae have readied vats of boiling water, oil, tar, whatever, to repel any attempt at that.”

“Speaking of overhang,” I said, “I noticed that the gate to the inner city is set within a very deep arch in the wall. And, for some reason, that entryway was built without a portcullis or any other sort of grating to prevent besiegers’ getting right to the gate. Quite a few warriors could congregate in there under that arch, where the Sarmatae would be unable to hit them with either oil or missiles.”

“And then what? They put their shoulders to the gate?” Theodoric grimaced. “You must also have noticed how solidly that barrier is built. No newly cut-down and unseasoned tree trunk would be strong enough to breach it, or I would already have tried. And it is too old and petrified to be burned through in less than half a lifetime. To break it down will require an iron-headed, iron-bound, chain-slung battering ram—and my train will be bringing such a thing. But when?”

The girl came back into the room and set two steaming bowls on the table. Theodoric gave her a grateful look—causing her again to blush—and motioned for me to take the bench opposite his. He immediately and ravenously began eating from one bowl, but I looked first into mine to see what we had been served. It was a gluey porridge of oats boiled in water—not even salted, as I discovered when I tasted it. I deeply regretted not having managed to bring hither the remainder of the good Vindobona foods that Amalric had stocked aboard Oppas’s barge.

“Do not turn up your nose at it,” said Theodoric between slurpings. “The lower-rankers get only bran husks.”

So I spooned up the pap, and tried to feel grateful for having
anything
to eat under the present circumstances. And suddenly the gummy mush made me remember something—an incident of long ago—and that kindled an idea within my head. But I decided not to mention it to Theodoric, not yet, not until I had thought upon it further.

I did say to him, though, “I should like to render any help that I can. In the siege, the patrols, whatever you command.”

“I believe you already have been of some help,” he said, wiping his mouth and grinning. “Of the warriors in the turma who saw you shooting arrows at a gallop, at least half are now busily splicing foot-ropes to put on their own mounts. They seem to think your invention a brilliant one.”

I said modestly, “Akh, a contrivance that I adapted from a plaything of my childhood days. It will take your men some while of using it, and practice with the bow at various gaits, before they can make good use of it. I could give them demonstrations and drill, if you wish me to.”

“Vái, Thorn, I cannot command you to anything. Not unless and until you are one of us, one of my subjects, one of my troops.”

I said wryly, “I should think that just my having shared your awful meal of silage slops would already have qualified me.”

“Ne, you must take the aiths.”

“The aiths?”

“Swear allegiance to your fellow Ostrogoths and fealty to me, in the presence of a responsible witness.”

“Very well. Call in your adjutant, or whomever it requires.”

“Ne, ne. The wench will do. Girl, stand here beside us. Try to look responsible, and not to blush.” At which, of course, she did blush.

I asked, “What are the words?”

“There is no set form. Speak your own.”

So I extended my right arm and hand in the rigid salute and said, as solemnly as I knew how, “I, Thorn, a freeman of no former nationality, do now declare myself to be an Ostrogoth from this day on, and a subject of my King Theodoric the Amaling, to whom I pledge my lifelong fidelity. Er… will that do?”

“Splendidly,” he said, and returned my salute. “Girl, bear witness.”

She whispered shyly, “I do bear witness,” and blushed almost Falernian-wine red.

Theodoric reached out to clasp my right wrist, and I clasped his, and he said warmly, “Welcome, kinsman, friend, warrior, good man and true.”

“Thags izvis, and most sincerely. I feel that I have a people at last. But is there no more to the ceremony?”

“Well, I could have our chaplain baptize you as an Arian, but that is not a requisite.”

“Then, with your permission, I will take my leave. The faber armorum bade me to return to his workshop for my helmet fittings.”

“Ja. Go, Thorn. I will resume my gloomy perusal of my chalked diagrams. Perhaps some new notion will occur to me. Or I may just lie down”—he glanced at the girl, who blushed redder yet—“and meditate for a while. That might invite my genius, or even the junone of a serving wench, to visit me with inspiration.”

I was out of the room and out of the house before I realized that I had cheated to some degree when swearing my allegiance to king and kinfolk. I had taken the aiths as “Thorn, a freeman.” I wondered if it ever would or could matter that I had neglected to pledge to Theodoric—even silently, even only in my mind—the lifelong fidelity of Veleda, a freewoman.

Before I went back downhill to the faber’s smithy, I went to take a closer look at the inner city’s gate. It was dark night by now, and the Ostrogoths were no longer ringing the wall and flinging missiles over it, and the paved open area before the gate was empty of any other people. In the dark I was able to scuttle across that open space without attracting notice—or at least without having to dodge arrows—from the Sarmatian sentries up above, and once I was under the arch I was invisible to them.

The entryway was broad enough to admit into the city the widest wagon ever built, and high enough to accommodate the most towering wagonload. But the darkness was of course even deeper in there than outside, so I had to make my examination of the gate mostly by feel. I ran my hands all over it—over both of its panels and the wicket door inset in one of them—from side to side and as high as I could reach. I found that the beams and planks of which the gate was built were indeed as massive as they had looked from a distance. And no doubt the planks that I could feel on this surface, running crosswise, were backed by others running vertically, maybe even another backing or two of planks running diagonally. And behind, the panels would be secured by immense side-to-side crossbars socketed in slots in the stone walls. The gate had no hinges that could be pried loose; each portal was hung to swivel on pivots top and bottom.

However, despite all that impregnability of design, and despite the two panels’ being so formidably strengthened by iron staples and bosses, the entire gate
was
basically of wood, and it was old, and wood shrinks over the years. So I could feel a gap where the two panels met in the middle, and a gap at their bottom, between them and the pavement of the entryway, and a gap between each panel and its wooden jamb on either side of the stone arch, and lesser cracks around the edges of the inset wicket door. The widest of those gaps, the one at the roadway level, was only about two fingers in breadth, and none of the others was much more than a single finger’s breadth. In other words, they all were too narrow to admit a pry bar big enough to do any useful forcing, even with any number of men putting their combined strength to it. Still, there
were
gaps, and
something
in the nature of destructiveness could be inserted into them. I thought I knew what that something might be.

So I broached my idea—in part, anyway—to the faber armorum and his Ostrogoth supervisor, the custos Ansila. The faber already had shaped and put together the shell of my new helmet. Now he laid a wad of cloth on top of my head—“because,” he said, “there will be leather padding inside when the helmet is complete”—settled the shell on that, and proceeded to make chalk marks on the metal to show him where my cheek lappets and nosepiece were to be fastened on. As he worked, I said:

“I notice, faber, that some parts of this helmet are bound together with rivets. But other plates seem to be somehow
forged
together.”

“Brazed together,” Ansila corrected me.

“Ja,” said the faber. “To braze two pieces of metal I score them with many shallow notches and put a spelter of powdered brass between. I clamp the work together and heat it red-hot and hammer it until the parts are inseparable.”

I asked, “Could you assemble by that method a new sort of weaponry of my own pattern?”

He said haughtily, “I have never yet failed to fabricate anything asked of me that could be made of metal.”

“Then lend me your chalk,” I said, “and something on which to draw.”

He and the custos looked on curiously as I sketched on a wooden shingle the thing I had in mind.

“Vái! What kind of weapon is that?” demanded Ansila. “It looks like nothing but an overgrown pea pod. A pea pod as long as my forearm.”

“It is not a weapon for killing people,” I said. “It is for breaking things. Think of it as the trumpet that brought down the walls of Jaíriko.”

“But you could make that yourself, young man,” said the faber, peering at my drawing. “Bend it from a piece of scrap metal, with the simplest of tools.”

“Ne,” I said. “I must fill it with the trumpet’s noise, so to speak. And then it must be sealed as tightly as a wine bottle is sealed against spoilage. Sealed so tightly that not even its trumpet noise can get out.”

“Akh, so that is why you wish it brazed. Ja, I can do that.”

“Good. I shall need at least a score of the things. And as soon as possible.”

“I said I
can
do that. But why should I?”

“Ja, why should he?” Ansila said testily. “I am the custos of all armory and weaponry. I give the orders.”

“Best give this one then, Custos Ansila. That way the faber—and you too—can work on these weapons through the night, before Theodoric has to give you the order tomorrow. I assure you that he will.”

“Oats?!”
Theodoric exclaimed in disbelief, when I accosted him while he was still getting dressed next morning. “You would batter down the gate with
oats?
Have you been deranged by hunger, Thorn?”

“Well, I cannot guarantee that this will work,” I said. “But I did once see it work most magically on a less ambitious undertaking.”

“Work
how?”

He was examining the object I had brought, one of the several that Ansila and the faber had made overnight. In finished form, made of thin sheet iron, it looked rather less like a pod than my drawing of it had, and of course nothing like a trumpet. It more resembled a thick, single-edged sword blade, squared off at each end. And it was not quite finished, for I had told the faber to leave one of its ends open.

“Through that opening,” I explained, “we fill it with the oat grains, tamped as full as it will hold. Then we pour in water to the top. Then the faber puts a cap on that end and brazes it tight shut. Then I and some other men rush these things to the gate, for we must work in a hurry. We insert the narrow edges of them into the cracks and gaps around the gate, as many of the things as possible, end to end. And we hammer them, like wedges, as far and firmly into the cracks as we can.”

I paused for breath. Theodoric was regarding me meditatively, but with the hint of a smile. “And then?” he asked.

“Then we fall back and wait. So tightly packed and confined, the swelling grains ought to burst their containers with tremendous force. Not enough, perhaps, to bring the whole gate crashing down. But enough, I hope, to buckle the panels so that they snap the crossbars behind. And enough, I pray, to make the gate vulnerable to our assault—with only a raw tree trunk for a ram, wielded by your brawniest men.”

Still regarding me with that assessing look, Theodoric said, “I do not possess a plan of Singidunum’s fortifications, but I know the wall to be awesomely thick. There is probably a second gate solidly closing the other end of that arch.”

“Then we must simply do the forcing procedure all over again. There is no way the defenders can prevent us. Of course, if and when we do get into the city, there is another aspect to consider. We will be six thousand going in against nine thousand.”

Theodoric dismissed that with a wave. “You yourself dispatched three battle-hardened Sarmatae warriors. If each of my more experienced men is able merely to match your prowess, we could go confidently in against
eighteen
thousand.”

“If we get in at all,” I said. “But we risk nothing by trying the means I propose. And I personally would rather employ the oats this way than have to go on eating the slimy mush made of them.”

“So would I,” Theodoric said with a laugh. “Of course I will try your plan. Did you doubt that I would? I will immediately send men to chop down a tree for a ram. Meanwhile, you run and tell Ansila to find himself some assistants to go on making these… whatever you call these things. Let the faber be freed of that toil so he can finish your armoring. If this clever expedient of yours does succeed, you will want to be one of the first through the gate. And for that you need helmet, corselet and buckler. Habái ita swe!”

That was the first direct order Theodoric ever gave me as my king and commander, but I would often afterward hear him utter that imperious final phrase, and would see it written at the end of every order and edict he ever published: “Be it so!”

When I went again to the armory, the custos Ansila dutifully complied with Theodoric’s instructions, setting a number of the smith’s apprentices to the cutting, bending and brazing of the oat-grain containers. Then, while the master faber resumed his more painstaking work of completing my helmet, Ansila said to me: