1171, a castle on the Ulster border, Ireland
Ireland was littered with castles. The Normans built them, the Irish-Norse 'natives' built them. Oh, and the Normans also had a habit of destroying those built by the latter. Harry was lying lazily in the back of one of the siege carts in the edge of the woodland, watching the spectacle of the attack. Archers on both sides sniped at each-other, a bonfire lay to his right, a hundred yards away, blazing fiercely. This cast a section of the forest into shadow, where the Norman archers lay in hiding, taking pot-shots at anyone so stupid as to put their head above the line of the battlements.
Harry mentally calculated the position of a trebuchet, the amount of ballast in the counterweight and the angle of release needed if he was called upon to assault the castle. The trebuchet was something that he himself had taken down designs for after a visit to France where he had come upon innumerable references to such machines, and indeed, spoken with crusaders who had encountered them used by the Ayyubid armies.
He was broken from his thoughts by the thunder of hooves approaching from the direction of the camp and the bonfire. Rising from the back of the cart, Harry's hand fell to the sword by his side. Ever since the ambush in Wales, he'd been on edge, so if this was a sortie from the castle to destroy the siege equipment, he'd happily meet them, sword in hand.
"Halt!" called the lead rider, slowing the other horsemen.
Relaxing as he recognised the voice as that of the king, Harry climbed onto the bench of the cart and dropped to the loam, strapping his sword-belt about his waist.
"Siege Master, I grow impatient and wish to see this castle's defences thrown asunder." said the King, riding up, allowing Harry to see a grin on his face.
"I was thinking you might sire." Harry chuckled; "Evening is well-progressed, but by dawn, I can have a war machine assembled that should hurl rocks with such force as to crush the walls."
"How many men do you need to provide the pulling power for launching rocks?" asked Henry, puzzling him for a moment before he realised the king assumed the weapon he intended to use was a mangonel which both used torsional energy in ropes on a windlass beam at the base of the throwing arm and the force of dozens of men pulling on ropes attached to the arm to project the rocks.
"None sire, only the crews to erect the machine and to load the rocks." Harry shook his head; "This is a new machine that has travelled across Asia and Europe, I believe this is the first time it shall be employed in these isles."
"That is good, I look forward to a demonstration, and certainly a reward for the engineer who ends this siege." the King concluded; "Mayhap a knighthood."
"Sire, I doubt I have the right bloodline, and none of the right education." Harry replied.
"Knights are far more often born than made. Fools are far more often born than made." Henry replied; "I must depart, but I will return at dawn to see how my new weapon progresses."
Harry shook his head at the almost childish glee on the monarch's face before beginning to saddle up his horse. He needed to rouse the crews.
First a single beam was laid flat on the ground. Then in two channels cut into it, another two beams were laid at ninety degrees before being secured together with massive metal bolts. Slid down the length of the two beams were to iron clamps that fitted perfectly onto the wooden beams, and then placed in the upper half of these two clamps, each received a vertical beam. Then with further clamps and shorter lengths of wood, supports were placed from the extremities of the three beams lying flat on the ground.
Under Harry's watchful eye and constant instructions the workmen attached two more iron clamps with circular holes in them onto the top of the vertical beams and drove through them the circular beam which would act as the axle of the catapult. After checking the fit was loose enough for it to turn freely, and that it was lubricated, they pulled it back out and raised the throwing arm of the war machine, which at the right point, had a hole cut in it for the axle to go. Then more bolts were produced to fix the axle and the throwing arm together.
Then the empty bucket that would hold the ballast for the counterweight was attached to the short forward part of the throwing arm and then ropes attached to the upper end of the arm. It was brought down slowly as the ballast was added to the bucket, completing when the ropes held the throwing arm fully down and the weight in the bucket was about a hundred times that of the projectiles.
Finally, Harry himself took one end of the sling and, with a couple of nails, attached it to the underside of the throwing arm, and then screwed to the very end of the arm, a bolt which would carry the other end of the sling until it slid off at a certain angle, catapulting its projectile at the target.
It was shortly before dawn as Harry snacked on part of one of a large number of pheasants that the off-duty bowmen had been courteous enough to supply them with, that the jingle of armour and the thunder of horseshoes had him look up from calculations scratched on a piece of parchment.
"This is the machine?" asked the King as he rode up, looking up and down the trebuchet.
"It is sire, I just await the cart with the stones in it, at which point the attack awaits your orders." Harry replied; "I have already done some crude aiming that should land the stones around the weakest point of the wall, right at the centre, where all the weight rests on it but without the strength from the towers."
"Good good, I believe I do see the cart coming." Henry stated, jerking his horse around.
Harry dashed over to where his was grazing and leapt into the saddle. Galloping over to the cart, he urged the carter and his horses up to the war machine as the King massed his knights in the treeline, returning as, under Harry's careful watch, the trebuchet was loaded.
Dismounting, both King and adolescent went to the sling end of the catapult, where one of the crew handed Harry a large mallet to drive out the pin holding the arm down. Harry weighed it in his hand before offering it to the King;
"If it pleases Your Majesty to launch the first rock." Harry grinned, gesturing to the pin, which when driven out of its housing, would release the arm.
The King mockingly bowed to Harry and took the hammer, delivering an under-hand swing at the pin, which smoothly launched it from the housing. The arm of the trebuchet whipped up, driven by the force of the counterweight. As it reached the right angle, one end of the sling rode up the pin on the end of the arm, and slipped off. That released the sling, hurling the rock at great speed towards the castle.
Narrowing his eyes, Harry followed the trajectory of the missile, suddenly losing hope as it seemed not to be falling fast enough to hit the wall. Then it began to tumble downward. He began to regain hope for a moment before it ploughed into the battlements, sending rock flying in all directions. The crashing of stone inside the walls made him think that the walkway behind the wall had probably been damaged or destroyed.
"Grab the rope!" he yelled; "Pull down the arm. No, wind it under a horizontal beam and attach one of the carthorses to it. We'll get a quicker reload."
The crew brought up one of the carthorses and dragged the long trailing rope from the end of the arm down, under a beam. It reached just far enough to be tied to the horse's bridle. They quickly drove the horse away, dragging down the arm against the counterweight.
"Unscrew the sling pin three full turns!" Harry ordered, as that would bring the threaded screw out a little more, meaning that the moment of release would be a few moments later.
Heads were beginning to appear over the edge of the battlements, and with a gesture towards a group of archers, King Henry had them firing devastating volleys of arrows.
"Here, you take the next shot." Henry said, handing Harry the hammer.
With another rock rolled into the sling and the pin unscrewed, Harry checked the horse was released from the catapult before dealing a sharp tap with the mallet. The arm once again whipped up, bowling the rock at the walls. This time it landed plumb centre and the wall began to bow inwards with the force.
"Once more, once more and it falls!" Harry yelled.
Swiftly the horse was once more brought up and attached to the rope. They brought the arm down against the weight of the counterweight and drove the the holding pin into place. Then another rock was rolled into the sling, and after hooking it over the sling pin, he stepped up to the release.
Dealing it another sharp tap with the mallet, he once again sent a rock bowling through the air. It hit dead centre for the second time, first driving a single block of stone out of the bowing wall. Then it gradually began to tumble, as if in slow motion, lump of rock after lump of rock began to separate and crash into the dusty pile of rubble that the wall had become. Surrounded by infantry, the knights charged the breach under a hail of arrows fired to keep the enemy's heads down.
"Kneel." instructed the King, drawing his sword.
Harry cast aside the mallet and fell to his knees, feeling the flat of the blade fall on his right shoulder.
"You are loyal to the crown, do you swear this?" asked Henry.
"I so swear." Harry replied.
"You serve the crown well, We see fit to confer the knighthood of Our Realm and the Lordship of the Manor of Bennedene upon you." the King intoned, laying the sword on Harry's left shoulder before raising it and bringing it down on his back in a stinging slap; "Do well to remember that a knight serves the weak, the poor and the needy, not his own treasury. It is something few remember. Maybe you will be different."
"Your Majesty." Harry nodded.
"Rise, Sir Hadrian."