The fortress rose, a tumble of white stone and square towers above a vast granite plug that cut into the sky. The peak it crowned was rugged and steep-sided. Only one winding trail clawed its way up the southern face, and that trail was overhung at many points by the walls high above. Montsegur rode in the sky, seemingly inviolate, but on this day it was wrapped in flame. A great tower of black smoke rose above the burning castle, and even from where he stood, a good two and a half miles away, Maxian could see the tongues of flame roaring from the windows of the towers and the central basilica.
Between the bare ridge that they stood upon and the walls of the dying fortress the air was as clear as the finest glass. Maxian could see tiny figures, each wrapped in a yellow-red corona, leaping from the walls of the citadel. Trailing smoke, they plunged down into the bosom of the clouds that swirled around the mount, vanishing like sparks into the sea. The air above the inferno shimmered with the waves of heat billowing off the limestone walls.
The elder Atreus grunted as one of the towers, outthrust from the southern wall, suddenly cracked at its base and slid, with dreadful majesty, off into the abyss. For a moment, as the entire seventy-foot structure fell, it held its shape, but then it struck the side of the cliff and exploded with a booming sound that could be heard clear across the valley. Maxian flinched back from the sound, for the volume of the noise it represented staggered him. The echoes came back a minute later from the walls of the canyons.
“Come, my son, and see the work of the Emperor.” The elder Atreus urged his horse forward, and they descended a trail of stones that cut down the mountainside across a long slope of broken shale and small round boulders.
Under the clouds the valley below Montsegur was a hive of activity. Thousands of men had hewn a sprawling encampment out of the poor soil and scrubby trees. Maxian followed his father through the camp and marveled at the. standards he passed. Four of the Legions of the Army of the West were here, each with a camp placed equidistant around the base of the peak. A road had been built across the valley and then up the flank of the mountain. As they rode through the rows of tents, gangs of workmen were raising tall posts by the side of the road, lining it on either side. Each post had a crossbar of rough-hewn pine across the top.
At the base of the peak, a raised ditch had been dug all the way around the mountain, with a parapet behind it. A palisade fence of pine logs marked the top of the earthen berm. It ran off into the rainy mist in either direction. Legionnaires manned watchtowers placed along its length. The soldiers in the towers that they rode past to reach the mountain road looked down upon them, eyes impassive in the shadows of their helmets.
As they neared the base of the mountain, now wholly hidden by the low-lying clouds, Maxian could hear a rumble of fire and cracking stone echo down from the heavens. Between the cliffs and the circumvallation was a stretch of barren soil and tufted grass. Bodies were strewn about it, some already pecked by crows. The. inner face of the gate was adorned with the bodies of two men, each nailed up to the crossbars. Maxian turned his head, unable to stomach the sight of their decayed faces. The road rose up sharply on a long ramp of packed earth. The ramp cut past the first three switchbacks of the old road.
They rode up the ramp in silence. Maxian stared around in fear. The clouds were very low now, like a wavering gray roof above them. The elder Atreus rode on, though, and Maxian kicked his horse forward to follow. The passage through the clouds was strange-the mist clutched at them, leaving trails of water on their faces. Strange sounds echoed in it and Maxian’s heart thudded-with the sudden fear that he would never find his way out of the twilight world that he had ridden into. After a time the mist began to brighten, and they ascended the second switchback above the ramp. A moaning sound filled the air, and there was the rattle of metal.
Ahead, the elder Atreus turned aside from the road and halted on the inner edge. Maxian followed suit, as did the three Goths. Within moments figures appeared in the mist, rising like the bodies of the dead from a disturbed pool. A long line of men and women, stripped naked, their necks bound with wire collars and.tied in a coffle, staggered past. Legionnaires trotted alongside in soot-stained armor, swinging spiked truncheons, urging their charges forward with the crunch of the club or a kick if they faltered. The feet of the captives were bloody and the roadway was puddled with crimson when they had passed.
Maxian stared after them as they disappeared into the mist. “Father, won’t they ruin the value with such treatment?”
The elder Atreus laughed and looked over his shoulder. “They have no value, boy, they are heading straight for the crucifix. Within the day they will all be dead, ornamenting the road from here to Narbo. More will come too, so close your heart to them.”
“Father, who are these people? Are they rebels? Barbarians?”
The governor snorted, then clucked at his horse and can tered up the road. Maxian, his face red with embarrassment, followed after.
The road became a track and Maxian and his father were forced to halt six more times before they reached the end of it. Long gangs of captives passed them, bloody, burned, their eyes vacant and desolate. Many showed grievous wounds and the bite of the lash and the truncheon. Maxian quailed away from the dead eyes that stared at him as they stumbled past. At the top of the trail, a great tower of pale limestone blocks rose up from the dark stones. The massive shape was pierced by a long tunnel, ill-lighted and slippery. At the mouth, soldiers were hauling bodies of men out of wagons and throwing them down.the mountainside. A gutter cut into the rock of the road at the lip of that black mouth was chuckling merrily with a stream of frothy red water. Bones floated past as the horses stepped over it. Maxian’s horse balked at the smell of the tunnel, but he could not allow that, so he lashed it with his riding crop and it cantered forward into the darkness.
Pale sunlight etched the courtyard beyond. The elder Atreus had pulled his horse aside and sat upon it, unmoved by the carnage that filled the space between the gate tower and the central building. Here there was no distant air to attenuate the crackling roar of the flames that consumed the basilica. Squads of soldiers in blackened armor jogged past into the tunnel, weapons crusted with gore slung over their shoulders. A centurion trotted past after the men and raised his arm in salute as he came abreast of the governor. Maxian stared up at the flames leaping from the windows of the house..
A deep grinding sound came, and then the entire upper story of the building caved in with a roar. The ground trembled at the shock, and a great burst of sparks and new smoke flew out of the top of the ruin to join the black pall that blocked out the sky. Maxian covered his face, for now hot coals were raining out of the sky and the air was thick and hard to breathe. The elder’Atreus took his son’s bridle and kneed his horse forward again. The gray mare high-stepped through the twisted piles of dead that were scattered around the courtyard, and they climbed a stone ramp on the side of the outer wall to a platform that stood on the side of the rampart.
All around them clouds and smoke billowed. The rest of the castle was aflame, with Roman soldiers running through the smoke, carrying what loot they had scavenged from the dead. The clouds had grown dark and were rising, obscuring the top of the trail and closing upon the gate. Maxian looked out over a. sea of white foam, with the hot breath of the dying castle blowing past him. His father got down and tied his horse off on a broken stub of wood at the top of the stone ramp.