Chapter 28

The next night, Wildling scouts located the Virdenese camp a few miles south of the bowl. At first light the following day, King Edward ordered the defenders to man the walls, drilling the men as to the locations of their individual battle stations. They were then dismissed, subject to immediate recall.

Well before mid-morning, the Virdenese army entered the south end of the bowl. Word was passed, and there was a mad scramble to return to the walls. Thomas had placed his Rangers on the outer wall, along with all the other men who knew how to handle a bow.

The outer wall had half the height of the inner one. Thomas and his bowmen were ten feet above the approach ground on a wall with a ten-foot-deep ditch in front of it. The trench had been seeded with sharpened stakes and then flooded with now chest-high water. It would take quite a feat to cross the ditch and then scale the wall, which rose a total of twenty feet from the bottom of the flooded ditch.

The road had originally followed the river’s edge on the east side of the bowl. That road now led to the foot of the defenses. It turned toward the west, climbing gradually until it turned hard to the left, almost heading back south. Then it turned sharply right, rising toward the level of the camp behind the walls, with walls on both sides of the sloping way up. At the top, out of sight from the field below, the road turned toward the gap and rejoined its original route.

This straight rising section lacked a formal gate, but the Abingdonian defenders had numerous movable barricades and barriers poised to frustrate any unwanted advance along the road. Every foot of the new sections of the road was within bowshot of the defenses.

Because Thomas’s force had delayed the enemy, King Edward had been able to gather enough men to do all the work Nathan had suggested and more.

But as the leading elements of the Virdenese army formed up, it became apparent that they had no intention of running that gauntlet. They soon had nearly a thousand men pour through the south opening. Once the men-at-arms had the armed rabble bunched up, they began to bang their weapons against their shields.

This put some heart into the rabble, who had no shields and were armed with crude spears, billhooks, and hammers. However, they still found themselves uncomfortably between the professional soldiers and the improvised defenses.

Clack, clack, clack rhythmically banged out.

All the defenders crowded the battlements to see what they faced. Thomas could almost feel the fear roll over his men as they began to chatter nervously among themselves. They could easily see they were outnumbered, and this was less than a quarter of the total Virdenese force. Thomas’s Knowledge Stone flared a warning to him: he needed to do something to abate the emerging panic.

“Hold your tongues!” Thomas roared.

Thomas startled himself when he heard the commanding sound that came in his booming voice. It had originated deep within his chest and echoed within the bowl. Men on both walls fell silent, and Thomas knew that all eyes were on him.

“Men of Abingdon! Behold your foes! Most of them are farmers. The men pounding their shields are the only soldiers, and you outnumber them. They want to test you and test themselves. They will fail that test today, but you won’t, so long as you stand your ground and aim to kill. Do that, and we’ll see them off today, and we’ll see them off if they come again. Abingdon!” Thomas shouted.

The defenders roared back.

He waited a moment, and the clacking stopped. A clamor could be heard from the Virdenese army as they began their advance.

“For Abingdon! For freedom!” Thomas yelled.

All the men on the walls cheered. The spell that the Virdenese force had put on them was broken. Thomas looked down the line and saw only grim determination.

The Virdenese army had to cover nearly a mile, so they didn’t simply charge. Their commander set an easy pace, and Thomas was impressed that they kept a reasonably uniform line. It would take them more than ten minutes to come within bowshot at this pace.

Those ten minutes began to feel like a lifetime. Thomas’s magic began to flow, and he closed his eyes. At the back of the bowl, King Doyle and General Angen rode into view. Thomas could sense that they were trying to find the weaknesses in Abingdon’s defenses. While they didn’t think this assault would succeed, with a thousand men, they might get lucky.

If they could breach the walls, this battle would be over quickly. And the outcome would not be in Abingdon’s favor.

Finally, a horn gave one prolonged blast. All the men on the front wall rose as one and launched their arrows. As expected, the Virdenese halted and raised their shields over their heads. The arrows all fell short, which caused the Virdenese horde to cheer.

In front of them were chevaux de frise strewn across the open ground. The defenders had anchored the pointy barriers to tree stumps so they wouldn’t be easy to move. Some gaps allowed the Virdenese forces through, though in small groups rather than en masse. They then faced a second grouping of barriers.

The Virdenese decided to take the easy way, which channeled them to where the defenders wanted them: within range of the Abingdon trebuchets and ballistae. And more importantly, at points where Abingdon’s artillerists had already determined precisely what weight of shot in the trebuchets or elevation of the ballistae would hit precisely those spots.

Thomas heard two short horn blasts, and his men rose up again and fired their arrows. The Virdenese van clumped together and raised their shields over their heads when the Abingdonian arrows darkened the sky. This time, they were within range. As the arrows began to arc downward, the sound of the siege weapons could be heard, launching their projectiles.

During the week before the Virdenese force had arrived, the siege-weapon artisans had set up and begun practicing. Duke Andric had been fascinated with the machinery and watched the artillerists become proficient in their use. He noted their accuracy once the weapons were properly aligned. The key was using consistent sling lengths and shot weights for the trebuchets.

Duke Andric had gathered the war council so they could see for themselves where each weapon would drop its payload. They’d all come within a foot of their intended targets. With that in mind, Nathan had created this strategy to maximize the siege weapons’ devastation in battle. Using chevaux de frise and other obstacles on the battlefield, the defenders forced the enemy to slow down and bunch up to get through the gaps ‘accidentally’ left in the barriers. It was those gaps that the defenders had pre-targeted with their heavy weapons.

With the archers pinning the enemy van in place between the barriers, the Virdenese were right where the Abingdonians wanted them.

First came the sound of arrows either bouncing off shields or finding their marks, often in the unarmored and unshielded peasant soldiers. A moment later, it was chaos, as massive stones and spears wreaked havoc.

Thomas’s mouth fell open when he saw a stone larger than he was crash through the center of a mass of men. The ballista and trebuchet operators primarily targeted the Virdenese rear ranks, where the professional mercenary soldiers were mostly found. Their job was to herd the peasants forward, so it was easy to predict where the professionals would be on the field of battle.

One moment, they all had their shields up, and the next, several were crushed, throwing blood and guts all over the men who had just been missed.

The ballistae were just as effective in their own way. They launched heavy spears with enough force to punch through a man and kill the one behind him. They were truly diabolical when they didn’t hit their primary target directly. Thomas saw more than one spear take off a man’s arm or leg before causing collateral damage behind him.

One caught a man in the head. Everyone watched in horror as the man’s body continued to stand headless for a moment before dropping in its tracks.

“Another volley!” Griffin ordered, snapping Thomas out of the haze of horror he was experiencing.

This time, the Virdenese force didn’t stop. Instead, they ran forward. The result was that many more arrows found their mark.

“Crossbowmen, step forward and fire on my command,” Thomas yelled out.

Prince Fabian’s parting gift had been the arms that his father had ordered. Thomas’s men had found caltrops, which they’d already used with great results. The other items the wagon had held were crossbows and a supply of quarrels.

A sort of miniature ballista, a crossbow had a crank to draw back the string and a latch to keep it in place once drawn. This allowed the archer to handle a stronger draw weight and hold the draw for much longer with significantly less physical strain. The end result was that a crossbowman could focus on aiming and shooting the weapon, which launched its bolt with enough force to penetrate armor.

Another advantage of the stronger pull was that crossbow bolts flew faster than arrows. The bolts could therefore be aimed with less elevation above their intended targets, making it easier to hit what they were aimed at, even for novices.

The arrow-like projectiles of a crossbow were called bolts or quarrels. They were shorter and several times heavier than arrows, giving them a potent punch when hitting their target. While they could be equipped with various heads for different uses, the Virdenese forces had selected a four-sided point called a bodkin.

The crossbow’s only significant drawback was its rate of fire. It could take anywhere from thirty seconds to a full minute to draw the string, lock it in place, and load the quarrel. This time shortened with practice, and Abingdon’s crossbowmen were about to get plenty of practice.

“Ready!” Thomas called out as a hundred men stepped forward as one.

The regular archers stepped back at the same time. They would need to resume shooting to keep the attackers under threat while the crossbowmen reloaded.

“Aim!” Thomas selected as his own target one of the obvious commanders among the men-at-arms.

“Loose!”

Some of the men-at-arms had encountered crossbows before. Instead of raising their shields, they planted them in the dirt and hunkered down behind them. Most had no idea of the difference between the weapons, so they reacted as they would to regular arrows and raised their shields over their heads. Nearly ninety percent of the first wave of quarrels found their targets.

Their quarrels easily punched through armor and shattered wooden shields before finding their marks.

The men-at-arms who had faced crossbows before rallied their men and charged toward the wall. They planned to close the gap so that the crossbowmen would have to expose themselves to fire downward. They came up short when they began to step on the caltrops that had been seeded twenty feet from the trench.