Chapter Thirty
The smell of burning pitch and smoke, drifting across the field, stung the back of Lyall’s throat and made his eyes water. With a deafening thump and a whooshing sound, the trebuchet sent death over the walls of Berwick. A huge rock soared through the air and crashed into a flanking tower with deadly speed. It crushed a wooden structure atop the stone tower, which was shielding the town’s archers. Splinters of wood flew out in all directions, large enough to skewer any unlucky souls who hadn’t dived for cover quickly enough.
Screams echoed through the half-light of dawn, muffled by the choking mist rising from the damp ground. From further along the field, came the sound of another trebuchet firing and hurling a fireball skywards. It blazed a path across the pink sky, landing amidst the thatched roofs of buildings just inside the wall, setting them alight with a hiss and a crackle. A mournful ringing came from the bell tower deep within Berwick, warning the townspeople of the Scots’ latest attack, much good it would do them.
Lyall hoped the whole town would not catch alight before they could subdue it. Fire could get a strangle-hold, scorching everything to ash in a town close-packed with thatched-roofed buildings.
They needed just enough force to show the English, garrisoned within that they were fighting a lost cause, not destroy their prize before they had won it. And what a prize it was. Squatting at the border between Scotland and England, Berwick was of great strategic importance, which was why its townsfolk had been the subject of brutal assaults, such as this one, as it had changed hands many times over years of fighting. The river Tweed flowed along one side of Berwick, and out into the ocean, making it a perfect garrison for those with conquest in mind. Men, arms and horses could be brought by sea quickly, from England, before being sent north to harry Scotland.
Since the English had taken it, eight years ago, they had not bothered to raise its walls higher, so confident were they in their mastery of the Scottish borders. The town could not hold out against a determined siege forever, and no reinforcements were likely to come from King Edward, presently locked in a power struggle with his cousin, the Earl of Lancaster.
With that feud simmering to boiling point, England was teetering on the brink of civil war. The Earl’s boot on Edward’s throat meant he was too beset with squabbling nobles to launch any serious counter-attack against a Scots king intent on sealing his place as ruler. Ever the chancer, Robert the Bruce was determined to take Berwick, and he did not want to do so in a long drawn out, torturous siege, reaching into winter. This thing would be settled in weeks, or not at all.
Lyall hoped to God his brother was safe. They had arrived three weeks ago, passing through war-ravaged countryside scoured of provisions – livestock, grain, all taken into the town, so as not to provide succour for an invading army. Some days ago, Cormac had been given charge of men assaulting the town from the river side. It was by far the best defended, with a massive barbican and flanking towers to rain down arrow fire.
Lyall had been sent to the east of the town which was fringed by fields and rolling hills. He had spent days on open ground, running the constant assault of trebuchets, which had been hauled miles overland, and assembled in haste. A constant bombardment, day and night, was yielding few results, with the town’s thick, defensive walls and flanking towers taking hit after hit, but holding, so far. If the townspeople’s resolve was crumbling, Lyall couldn’t see it, and their walls certainly were not.
Berwick’s defenders had hit back, time and again, hurling missiles at the Scots from their own smaller slings and ballistas, perched high on the walls. Ballistas were the worst of it. They flung thick wooden arrows or heavy bolts hundreds of yards, quick and sure as a lightning strike. Unlike those of a sling, which followed a high arc through the air, with time for avoidance, the missiles from a ballista followed a straight path and seemed to come out of nowhere. Lyall had witnessed countless men get skewered where they stood.
High-pitched screams drew his gaze to a massive siege tower, pressed up against the curtain wall. It had fallen victim to fire arrows, despite being soaked in mud and water, and was now well ablaze. Men were hurling themselves off the top, some burning alive as they fell, adding their screams and the smell of scorched flesh to the hellish morning. Others ran away screaming, aflame, like living lanterns, sending panic through the men like a pox. Ladders were being pitched against the wall, concentrated in one section only.
As for Banan, Lyall had not seen him yet, but in his heart, he knew his enemy was close. Banan would relish all this carnage and mayhem and would be waiting for his chance to kill him. Lyall was a marked man, and he knew it, so he slept with one eye open, and his dagger in his hand. He surrounded himself with men he trusted, including Owen, who would guard his back when the fighting got to close quarters. That was about to happen at any moment.
Word had come that Lord Douglas had found a way into the heart of Berwick. He had bribed an English man within to weaken the defences of a section of wall on the landward side. It was a risky, and very slim, advantage, which could allow enough Scots to scale the walls and get inside. With fighting breaking out inside the town, men would be diverted from defending the river side and rush to the aid of their comrades. The Scots would then storm the castle en masse, from both ends at once.
The only problem with this plan was that it relied on the word of a traitor. If a man could betray his own kind, he could betray the Scots too. Even if they did make it over the walls Lyall’s men would be on their own, and cut off from the rest of the Scots forces. To succeed they would have to survive against hundreds of English soldiers, rushing to seal the breach in the wall, while the river assault took place. They might be long dead before the town was taken. Was Lord Douglas sacrificing men in order to cut short this siege? He was ruthless enough to throw away lives in a diversion without a second thought.
As one of the first men onto those walls, Lyall knew he could be the first to fall to arrow fire or have his skin scorched off with boiling pitch. A ladder pushed back off the wall could send him to a crushing death twenty feet downwards, or a sword thrust to his throat as he hauled himself over the wall’s edge could end his part in this great war. If this tower went up in flames, like the last, an excruciating death awaited him.
Clinging to the upper level, Lyall felt his siege tower bounce, and then sway dangerously sideways, as men below grunted and heaved it into position. The defensive ditch which protected the town wall had been filled in with rocks, earth, piles of heather and gorse, and even the bodies of the fallen, to provide a narrow bridge to get the tower close enough.
A rock hit his platform a foot from his head, just a glancing blow but it tore off one edge of the tower, splintering wood and sending a man flying. When he peered down, he could see the poor fellow writhing in agony in the ditch below. Moments later, burning straw rained down from the walls, setting him ablaze.
Only covering arrow fire, and the relentless pounding of the trebuchets from the Scots forces protected those pushing, and those cowering in the tower. The sound of a horn rang out, assaulting his ears and setting his heart to pounding. Lyall crossed himself.
Amid the roar of men facing their maker, Lyall clung on for dear life, as the tower banged up against the walls and came to a standstill. He braced, along with his men, a sword in his right hand, a war hammer in the left, as the ramp was lowered down onto the wall, and all hell broke loose.