Ghosts of Engines Past by Sean McMullen

Author:Sean McMullen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: ReAnimus Press
Published: 2013-10-06T05:00:00+00:00

~~~

Baron Raimond arrived at the Tower of Wings with his army on the morning of the last day of June in 1303. The summer solstice was not long past, and the weather was clear, warm and windless. The village near the tower was subdued and occupied so very quickly that there were no casualties on either side, but a runner reached the tower long before Raimond's men had any chance of mounting a surprise attack. Lady Angela herself stood listening as the exhausted peasant gasped out his warning for a second time.

“English, strong force, dozens, dozens, dozens,” he panted as he lay against a stack of barrels. “English, under Raimond.”

Lady Angela wore a fur-trimmed mantle over a kirtle and girdle, with an open veil over her parted, plaited and rolled black hair. There could not have been a greater contrast than with the armoured fighting men milling around her, yet she was their leader.

“I ordered the drawbridge raised and all archers to the walls as soon as he came through the gate,” reported the seneschal. “From the bailey wall, you can see them. The tower is surrounded. I estimate three thousand English, and they are already clearing ground for a camp about three hundred yards to the south.”

They climbed the steps to the bailey wall, and looked out over the fields to where the English were at work clearing bushes and erecting tents.

“The sun will be behind them for much of the day,” commented Lady Angela, “and they are well outside the effective range of our archers.”

“Indeed, my lady, the baron is a brave and clever warrior.”

“And he can read and write. He read all of my books as we nursed him back to health here two summers ago.”

“Now see how he repays your kindness.”

“I expected nothing else. It is the way of the world.”

The seneschal never ceased to be amazed by Lady Angela's grasp of matters that other women paid no heed. She spoke eleven languages, had ruled the Tower of Wings and its estates since she was nineteen, and had led her people through two sieges. She had also written four books, on mathematics, medicinal plants, the principles of levers, and the way that birds fly. At the top of the Tower of Wings she had a pigeon coop, and she spent many hours sitting at the windows watching her birds soar and circle about the tower, and sketching them on slate and parchment. Sometimes, however, the birds that circled the tower were devices of red silk and slivers of wicker. There had been mutterings of witchcraft by peasants, churchmen and nobles alike.

“The baron read your book on wings and flight as he lay regaining his strength,” the seneschal pointed out. “He must have denounced you to the English king as a witch, using your work as an excuse to mount this attack.”

“If not he, then someone else,” replied Lady Angela.

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