Annals of a Fortress

by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

The attack languished, and at length the leaders of the besieging host gave the signal for retreat.

A certain number of the assailants had remained alive in the power of the besieged, and Sigild gave orders that they should be guarded and not put to death. As to the wounded lying within the ramparts, they were killed.

Towards the middle of the night fires were seen to be lighted in the woods, about a thousand paces from the camp. The besieged had lost a few men only, but the ditch was filled with the enemy's dead and wounded. The groans of the latter were the only interruption to the quiet of the night.

Sigild slept not; he kept half the warriors on vigorous guard during the third quarter of the night, and the other half during the last quarter.

Those who were not on guard slept around the fires. The Brenn, when the assault was over, had sent messengers to the chiefs of the eight tribes to acquaint them with the happy result of this first engagement.

At break of day the Brenn had the prisoners brought before him. Two or three of them spoke the language of the valley, but with a foreign accent.

Clothed in drawers laced around, and a tunic of undyed wool, with a broad strap which served them for a girdle, they looked not unlike some of those merchants who occasionally came into the valley to barter yellow amber and bronze for corn, cheese, tanned hides, and wool. "Why do you come to attack us?" said Sigild. "We have been driven from the lands we have inhabited from the most ancient times, by hordes from the north. These men have killed many of us, taken away our wives, and murdered our children: the stronger among us have combined together, and crossing a wide river on rafts, we have travelled onwards towards the setting sun, seeking a home. Two days' journey from this spot we were told that this country is good and can afford sustenance to many; so we have come hither.

"When our chiefs saw that you shut yourselves up in this place, regarding us as enemies, they told us we must first make ourselves masters of the camp. We obeyed. We are only doing to you what has been done to us." "Why not have sent some of your number to ask of us what you required?" "I do not know." "You have come as enemies, and as enemies we have received you. How many are you?" "A great many." "Go seek your chiefs and tell them that if by nightfall their entire host have not quitted the land of Avon, the captives we have made here shall suffer." "I will not go." "Why?" "Because our chiefs will not leave this land. Put us to death; for if any of your party have fallen into the hands of our men, they are doomed to death to avenge our comrades killed this night." "Good." Sigild ordered that the captives should be fettered till he had decided on their fate.

The Brenn was very anxious that the enemy should take up a position towards the north, opposite to the weak point of the Oppidum. Accordingly he was continually reconnoitring on the eastern and western fronts as far as the river and the other side of the rivulet, to prevent the besiegers from establishing themselves in either quarter. Upon the steep sides of the plateau, opposite the burnt bridge, Sigild had placed a small camp guarded by two hundred men. The reconnoitring parties, which he sent out in large numbers, had orders to bring back into the camp all the fodder and strayed cattle they could find, engaging the enemy only when they encountered them in small bodies.

But the invaders did not seem to be contemplating another assault. They took up their quarters in the woods to the north and on the slopes of the hills, right and left, leaving between them and the camp the river and the rivulet; marauding parties might also be seen in the valley, foraging, and pillaging the deserted dwellings. On the other side of the destroyed bridge they formed a wide palisading strengthened by barricading of timber; and two days afterwards they had constructed a floating bridge on the river, formed with trunks of trees fastened together and kept in place by a kind of dam made with piles of timber fixed in the bed of the river and inclined up the stream.