Sir Guy grunted in surprise as a handful of nuns began moving toward the stairs, their heads bowed in prayer. A chill crawled up Matt's spine. If they didn't feel capable of striking without hatred after a speech like that, how deeply did their hatred burn?
Another handful of nuns came up the stairs-reinforcements from the chapel. The abbess turned away and began talking earnestly with Sayeesa and Alisande. Then a cry went up from the far end of the wall. A nun was pointing out into the darkness. The sisters set arrows to bowstrings.
Sir Guy raced Matt to the front window. They jammed into it together, looking out over the valley. There the front rank of the enemy was charging in with scaling ladders to begin the battle.
The nuns seemed unworried. The bandit-maids had brought their armory with them when they took the cloth, so they had a plentiful supply of bolts and arrows. After all, they'd been under seige for only one night and day, not for three-quarters of a year.
Thirty nuns triggered their crossbows, then stepped back while thirty more stepped up in their places, to loose and retire, while a third rank in turn shot and stepped back. Then the first rank, cocked and reloaded, came forward.
"Whosoe'er trained those ladies knew more than a little of warfare," Sir Guy observed.
The enemy soldiers ran into a steel storm as soon as they were in range. They howled and either died or retreated. A doughty few pressed on another fifty feet before they went down.
The former bandit-maids shouted their triumph.
"They may not need our help," Matt said hopefully.
Sir Guy disagreed. "The battle is scarcely joined, Lord Wizard."
The enemy took time in getting the next act together. Then a ram-tunnel came worming its way out of the line, forty feet long, with many pairs of feet showing below.
A big bandit-maid called, "Maud! Let in some light for them!"
"Certes," a nun called from above the door across the way. "We cannot have a centipede near our house. Turn, sisters, and lower the front a mite."
They had a small catapult, mounted to swing both horizontally and vertically. "Gently," Sister Maud cautioned. "Aim not where 'tis, but where 'twill be ... Now loose!"
With a deep thrum, a boulder the size of a basketball leaped out over the field. It arced high, then swung down. The ram-tunnel captain saw it and bawled a command to back pedal. But the wooden centipede barely got into reverse when the stone crashed into the middle of the roof. The tunnel broke into two halves and beat a hasty retreat. Hoots of laughter followed it from the battlements.
Sir Guy shook his head in admiration. "Thus may we see the strengths of amateurs."
"Amateurs?" Matt looked up, startled. "I'd say those girls were pretty good."
"Aye, but they've had small training in defense. They know not that a catapult's only for attacking a castle. They've but heard of it as a siege engine; so they've mounted one on their wall for a siege - and it has succeeded!"
A cry went up along the wall. "Malvoisin! Malvoisin!"
A fifty-foot structure loomed darkly in the first rays of the moon, four hundred feet out.
"It's not moving," Matt noted.
Sir Guy grinned. "Our doughty ladies have proven the efficacy of their catapult. The enemy dares not bring his engine within range. How then will he deal with this?"
The answer came quickly as Matt noticed tendrils of fog beginning to curl around the battlements.
"They wish to shroud us!" the abbess cried, and her hands began to weave symbolic gestures, while she chanted in Latin. Whatever the spell or prayer, the fog lifted before it had fairly started.
Matt gave a low whistle. "This abbess knows some magic!"
But it was hardly enough. The enemy tried a dust storm next. It hid the battlements completely before the abbess managed to dispel it. When the air cleared, the malvoisin was well within catapult range. Sister Maud and her girls swung the catapult to bear - and got hit with a plague of gnats.
Shrieks of distress filled the battlements. Through the dense, buzzing cloud, Matt could just barely make out the abbess, clutching Sayeesa's arm. Dimly he could hear the words of chanting. Sayeesa was using magic again - white magic, this time.
While they chanted, Alisande ran among the ex-bandits, shouting and exhorting them. Heartened by the princess they were fighting for, the bandit-maids bent to their tasks and peppered the malvoisin with crossbow bolts. The ladies at the catapult drew aim, while the gnats sickened and fell to the ground all about them. Then Sister Maud shouted and the catapult arm lashed out. The stone ball arced high and fell, tearing off the top of the malvoisin. It retreated hastily out of range.
For a time, the enemy was quiet.
"They make me nervous when they're still," Matt complained. "What's the hour?"
Sir Guy looked up at the sickle moon. "Midnight, Lord Matthew. When the forces of Evil are strongest. Now the real battle shall begin."
It started with an auxiliary army scuttling from the enemy lines toward the walls - cockroaches, three feet long. The battlements filled with oaths of disgust. Bolts riddled the insects, but they kept coming. The first ones began climbing the walls in spite of the chants of the abbess and Sayeesa.
It was definitely time for some technological aid. Matt began reciting:
A mist sprang up where the wall met the earth of the moat. The upcoming cockroaches keeled over, kicking, then stilling. But some of the first ones had already climbed up onto the battlements.
Most of the nuns were backing away from the giant insects, shrieking. Some were lifting their skirts and seeking heights away from the horrors.
"You do not flee such creatures," Alisande shouted. "You slay them!" She whacked at a thorax for emphasis. A few of the bandit-maids with stronger stomachs leaped to help her.
"Down to the battle!" Sir Guy ordered. "We must aid!"
Matt spun to the door, chanting:
He knocked. The lock groaned, and the door clanked open. Matt barreled through with Sir Guy a foot behind.
They clanged out onto the battlements. The Black Knight gave a joyful shout as he laid about him with his sword. Matt leaped for a roach just before it sank its mandibles into the habit of a nun, and performed a quick vivisection on it. "Slay them!" he shouted. "They're only flesh!"
The matter was debatable. At that size, their armor was almost as good as Sir Guy's. But a monofilament edge worked wonders, and Matt knew where to probe for weak places. He and Sir Guy sliced up cockroaches right and left.
"See how they fare!" Alisande cried. "Will you let mere males outdo you, then?"
With a roar of expletive negatives, the nuns waded in. A few were bitten; but in a few minutes, the roaches were dead. Matt joined Sir Guy in the disgusting task of shoveling the corpses over the wall. He finished and turned to confront a basilisk-faced abbess.
"This was your work, was it not? The fog that banished most of the monsters?"
Matt swallowed, feeling like a schoolboy caught writing on the wall. "Yeah. It seemed like a good idea."