The Tears of the Sun by S. M. Stirling

horsehair on his helmet.
    Boise centurion, that one, he thought. The rest are Registered Refugee Regiment, no mistaking the red pants. The Pendleton Bossman, Carl Peters, must have ordered some of his household troops to stay back and protect his precious hide.
    â€œGet going! They’re not going to stay asleep forever!”
    Damn! he thought. It made sense to rush to the end of the job and work my way back, I thought; we have to take these down so they use the ones we want when they sally. At five hundred feet from the wall to us this one isn’t safe, that’s a long crossbow shot. Much less the next one, it’s barely half that. Should have taken the nearer ones out first before they got men here to harass the working parties. Crap! No help for it, got to get it done. They’ll be waiting for us at 10th; might even defend it.
    â€œChezzy! Grab thirty men and the wagon and go start on 10th Street! Be careful; be smart, but get it down. Take two of the mantlets!”
    He turned back to the Main Street bridge, wishing he had Thierry’s training as a field engineer. Crossbows began to twang and thump from the wall; most of the bolts fell short, but he ordered spearmen forward to hold their shields up to protect the working parties. Just as they finished the work and were forming up, a scorpion was wrestled up onto the wall. Men looked up and yelled in alarm; they were well within range of the four-foot bolts and you couldn’t count on a siege mantlet stopping them.
    Guelf laughed; it was even mostly genuine.
    â€œThey haven’t fastened that thing down, men!”
    Recoil would buck it right off the wall if they tried to fire it without a solid anchor. Pendleton was short of artillery; the Boise army had probably brought in a lot, but there wouldn’t be pre-fitted bolts ready to secure them on the walls. There were men working around it, probably trying to improvise braces.
    â€œGive them a salute, boys!”
    He turned his back on the wall, pulled the knot on his trews’ waistband and mooned the useless scorpion; a knight’s plate armor left the seat bare to grip the saddle.
    Dangerous, he thought. But it puts fresh heart in the men.
    The Gervais contingent roared and laughed and followed suit, waggling and slapping their buttocks at the wall and shouting remarks that started with shoot this, you sheep-fuckers and went downhill from there. The thermite charges lit with a hissing dragon’s roar, and off-white smoke poured heavenward. Metal bubbled and ran, and concrete broke with a snapping crackle. Guelf yanked his trews up, pulled a new slip knot and pointed his sword west . . .
    â€œBack! Let’s help Chezzy stick it to them again!”
    He led the way down the old footpath, mantlets clanking and rattling beside them. Over the rattling sound of his men double-timing in pounding unison and the banging of the mantlet’s steel wheels came a sudden wheep , like an arrow hugely magnified.
    â€œHurry!” he roared.
    The muffled impact came with a scream, high and pain-laden. Guelf pounded up onto 10th Street, into chaos. The men he’d sent were milling about, on the ground . . . he clenched his jaw against the welling of despair—Chezzy and Chezzy’s squire, Terry Reddings, a huge bolt transfixing his body. Terry was his wife’s younger brother and as like to Layella as a twin.
    God! Thank you! He’s facedown. I couldn’t bear to see his dead face . . . her face—dead . . . She’s not dead, she’s not!
    He laid about with the flat of his sword, banging on mail and shocking men back into sense.
    â€œGet that mantlet set up, get us some cover!”
    He turned to see Father Stanyon working on Chezzy.
    â€œHe’s alive? What’s happened to him?”
    â€œCrossbow bolt in the scapular.” The doctor-priest jerked a thumb to the right. “They got a man over the wall and he sneaked up close enough to take a shot.