Wide-mouthed the dogfish loves to swim
The fishes go in fear of him
Filled with rage and drug-powered to insanity, Cale lashed at the Redeemers around him with the blunt-toothed poleaxe – a thug’s weapon wielded by a thug with savage handiness and utmost craziness: brutal the crushing insults to teeth and to faces, blunt the breaking of scalps and of fingers, the splintering of knees and elbows. His hammer to their chests caused their hearts to stop as they stood, shattered spines and cheekbones; he hammered ribcages, fractured bones, legs tore, noses burst. Even Redeemers were stunned at the violence – and then the discouraged of the New Model Army, seeing the madman who’d come to their rescue, rushed to his aid and startled their betters as if they were taunted by Cale’s delirious poison, unhinged by the blood and the shit smells and the horror.
Now more Redeemers poured in from behind but made things worse as their panicking comrades tried to escape the mad-infected counter-attack. Cale was stepping on the wounded living to get in his blows on the retreating enemy. He was in such a mania that he’d have been a terror holding a baby’s rattle in either hand. The drug released in a flood the pent-up anger against the men falling back in front of him – the whining and begging of men who were dying and the crowing and gloating of his men at his shoulders – these are the signals and the sounds of a battle, the terror and pain and the singular rapture.
The Redeemer advance collapsed and but for one centenar, who kept his head and pulled away men who were standing like stumps to be slaughtered, they might have had a blow hard enough to make them leave. As they retreated Cale had to be held back from following – lucky for him, as once in the open beyond the outer rim of wagons he’d have been killed. No drug would have helped him there. The leader of the Fridays managed to hold Cale in the kind of grip possessed only by a six and a half foot tall former blacksmith. He held him back long enough for Vague Henri to arrive and talk him back to the semi-circle in front of the tarn. Now it was dark and as Vague Henri gave Cale over to a field doctor, with whispered advice about a medicine that had gone wrong, he tried to work out how to cover the breach.
Had the Redeemers attacked the same point again they would have been through in a few minutes but they were, understandably, amazed at what had happened and, believing the New Model Army had found some berserk mercenaries, decided that they should try a different approach. For the next two hours they attempted an attack on the outer perimeter with the intention of setting all the wagons on fire and then pulling the burnt remainder out of the way to give them a clear line of assault to the semi-circle backed onto the lake. Vague Henri held them off until two hours past midnight and then ordered the survivors to retreat to the tarn and watch the Redeemer engineers pull the outer perimeter apart. At four in the morning the last attack began.
The Redeemers gathered on the inside of the perimeter and sang: Alleeeeluuuueeeeaaaa!
Alleeeeluuuueeeeaaaa! Lit from behind by the red embers of the burnt-out wagons they looked like some monstrously armed choir from hell. To the left, other Redeemer soldiers began to sing.
Death and judgement, heaven and hell.
The last four things on which we dwell
.
To the right:
Faith of our fathers, living still we will be true to theetill death.
In a harrowing way it was beautiful – though that thought never crossed the fearful minds of those watching and listening.
Brought back to the wagons in front of the tarn, Cale had been taken to the tent for the wounded behind the stumpy tower built by Vague Henri. His mind seemed a little clearer but his body below the waist was shaking uncontrollably in a way that looked faintly ridiculous. Vague Henri told the doctor what he’d taken.
‘Give him something to calm him down.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ said the surgeon. ‘You shouldn’t be mixing these drugs – it’s not safe. As you can see, you can’t tell what’ll happen.’
‘Well,’ said Vague Henri, ‘I can tell you what’ll happen if you don’t get him into a condition to fight.’
It was hard to argue with this so the surgeon gave him Valerian and Poppy in a dose large enough to put down the former blacksmith who was now standing over Cale in case he made a run for it.
‘How long to see if it works?’
‘If I told you I’d be a liar,’ said the surgeon.
Vague Henri squatted down in front of Cale, who was shaking all over and breathing in and out in short bursts.
‘Only fight when you’re ready. Understood?’
Cale nodded between shakes and breaths and Vague Henri walked out of the tent knowing this was likely to be his last night on earth and feeling all of two years old. He climbed up the makeshift hump in the middle of the semi-circle – tower was too grand a word for it – and exchanged a few words with the fifteen crossbowmen and their loaders. Then he turned to the rest of the men – his men – at the barricades. He thought that at this time of all times they deserved the truth.
‘First,’ he lied, ‘I’ve heard that reinforcements are on their way. All we have to do is hold out till mid-morning then we’ll make them sing a different tune.’ There was a loud cheer, which made an odd clash with the music of the Redeemers.
Did they believe him? What other choice was there? Everything for Vague Henri was now about the art of delay. He decided to offer the Redeemers talks about surrender, not really thinking it worth the risk. When the messenger failed to return he was furious with himself for wasting a man’s life when he knew, really, what the answer would be. You’re weak and useless, he said to himself. He turned to the immediate problem: the shortage of bolts. He’d been setting the loaders to making the new ones all day so there was a good supply but keeping the Redeemers back for long enough would probably need more by far than he’d stockpiled. If reinforcements arrived at all it had better be by nine in the morning. After that no one would need to worry any more.
The plan he’d put together was simple enough: the raised platform gave them a line of sight everywhere to the front except for an arrow’s shadow about six feet in front of the wagons. Any Redeemers who made it to the shadow would be able to fight the defenders without being picked off by the crossbows on the tower. Vague Henri’s job was to keep the Redeemers back from the wagons so that only a comparatively small number in the protective shadow could fight hand-to-hand with the defenders. But this plan, he was sure, depended more on Cale than on him: the defenders on the wagons needed an exterminating angel on their side if they were to make it through the night.