Stronghold

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the disorder that followed the retreat onto the Gatehouse it was impossible for coherent orders to be issued. Five maniacal corpses still held sway on the Barbican, but attempts to place a shield-wall at the top of the Gatehouse stair and bar their path were hampered by yet another iron hail, which now swept the Gatehouse roof, driving those remaining to the downward hatches. In the cramped rooms below it was a chaos of blood, straw and smoke. Throats were raw with shouts and gasps. Men were slumped with exhaustion, caked in dirt and gore, their tabards and surcoats in tatters.

At last Earl Corotocus arrived, forcing his way through, with du Guesculin and more of his household men struggling along behind. Father Benan, white-faced and tearful, brought up the rear.

"What is this madness, Corotocus?" Garbofasse roared, shoving men out of his way. "A third of my troops are dead and they've barely struck a blow yet!"

"They've struck plenty of blows," Ranulf interjected. "Mainly against women and children. This may be the price of that victory."

Corotocus couldn't respond. He was too startled by the bloodied, battered state of his lieutenants.

"What devilry have you unleashed on us?" Garbofasse demanded.

"My lord," Father Benan simpered, "my lord, this is too terrible…"

"Earn your corn, priest!" the earl barked. "Confess the dying, help Zacharius succour the wounded."

"Those… those men," du Guesculin stammered, his eyes bulging as he recalled what he'd seen from the Constable's Tower. "Catapulted alive onto the… and to fight and kill. It must be some kind of illusion."

"You dolt!" Garbofasse threw a crimson rag into his face. "Are these wounds an illusion?"

"Navarre?" the earl said, turning to his most trusted henchman.

Navarre was seated on a stool, sweating, breathing hard, his scalp and face horribly cut. He could only shake his head.

The earl swung to Ranulf. "What of you? You were hand-to-hand with them, damn it, what did you see?"

Ranulf looked him straight in the eye. "I saw dead men walking like puppets, but wielding weapons like Viking berserks. I saw mildewed lumps of carrion, some still coated with grave dirt, raging at us like barbarians."

"Damn devilry!" Garbofasse swore again. "Damn blasted devilry!"

The word went around quickly. Men who previously had been too weary or hurt now leapt to their feet. There was shouting, pushing.

"Enough!" the earl thundered. "You peasant scum! Enough!"

A deafening silence followed. He peered around at them. Fiery phantoms writhed on their wounded faces, on the arched brick ceiling overhead.

"You maggots!" he said. "The whole army of the world's dead may be out there, and they couldn't break these walls!"

"They won't need to break them," Navarre said, finally standing. "Forgive me for speaking plainly, but as long as they have the scoop-thrower we can't man the Barbican or the Gatehouse roof."

"And as long as they have the mangonels," came another voice, "we can barely man the curtain-wall."

This was Ulbert. Despite the fearsome attacks on his own position, news had reached him that a company had been wiped out on the Barbican. He'd come hotfoot to find his son. Though he flinched at the sight of Ranulf's lacerated face, he was palpably relieved to find him alive. He turned again to Corotocus.

"My lord, I needn't tell you, but with the curtain-wall lost, all they'll need to do is walk around the outside and come in through the front door."

"We must break the southwest bridge as we planned," Garbofasse asserted.

"That's now impossible," Ranulf replied. "The trebuchet's damaged and William d'Abbetot is dead."

"We should withdraw," du Guesculin urged his master. "Move back to the Constable's Tower."

Ranulf gave him a scornful look. "If the scoop-thrower can strike the Gatehouse roof, surely you see that it can strike the Constable's Tower as well?"

"What are our losses on the south wall?" Corotocus asked Ulbert.

"About half our strength. The fire barricade on the berm has prevented their assault force circling the castle, but it won't last forever."

Before anyone else could speak, there was a ghastly shriek and a mercenary tottered forward clutching his belly, from which a spearhead protruded. Behind him, there was another shriek. In the dim-lit press of damaged, sagging bodies, it was difficult to see exactly what was happening, but the rearmost hatch appeared to have been forced open and a figure had dropped down. It was now assailing another of Garbofasse's men with a scramsax. Its third blow clove his skull so brutally that his brain was exposed. It then shambled forward, striking at anyone within range. An instant later it was face to face with Corotocus. The earl's eyes almost popped from their sockets. The demonic thing was naked of clothing, but it had been stripped of most of its flesh as well. Muscle tissue hung in shreds. All it had for a face were torn ruins. Multiple arrows transfixed it.

Never had a nobleman, even as steeped in blood as Earl Corotocus, seen any creature as mutilated as this and still apparently alive. His eyes tracked slowly upward as it raised the weapon with which to sunder his cranium. And then the reverie was broken, and a dozen blades stormed it from all sides, hacking, slashing, reducing it to quivering pulp, chopping it to segments, which continued to squirm and twitch on the floor.

"The hatch!" someone screamed. "The damn bloody hatch!" Swiftly, the open hatchway was blocked with beams and planks.

"More of them will land up there," Navarre shouted. "We've no option — we have to go up and repel them."

"And face the iron hail?" Garbofasse scoffed.

"We could form a testudo…"

"It's suicide!"

Navarre looked to the earl for instruction, but the earl was still mesmerised by the gory fragments scattered at his feet.

"My lord," Father Benan whispered into his ear, yanking the shoulder of his cloak. "My lord… this is not… this is not the natural order of things."

Corotocus finally came round. "What are you gibbering about? Didn't I send you to your work?"

Father Benan shook his head. He half smiled, though there was an eerie light in his eyes, a form of shock or craziness. "My lord, don't you see what this means?"

Corotocus pushed him aside, and lurched over to where Captain Carew sat hunched against a pillar. "Carew?"

Carew said nothing at all; he merely offered up his hands, both bound with bloody rags and mangled beyond use.

"My lord," Father Benan said, grabbing the earl's cloak again. "You once endowed me with a generous chantry. To sing psalms for your soul. Every day and every night, you said… to protect you from Hell's vengeance in the afterlife."

Corotocus gazed down at the severed head of the thing that had just attacked him. To his incredulity, what remained of its tongue was still moving in the cavity where its lower jaw had been. He stamped on it with his mailed foot — again and again, hacking at it with his heel, cracking its skull apart, flattening it out so that its eyes popped out and a noisome porridge of rotted brain-matter flowed across the flagstones.

Father Benan was undeterred. "My lord, I cannot save you." He gave a fluting laugh even though tears spilled onto his cheeks. "Not with all the psalms or prayers in Christendom."

Corotocus turned and stared at him.

The priest shook his head frantically. "You may endow a hundred orders to try and bribe God for over a hundred centuries, but He will not listen. This abomination is a sign that you are past help. That God has turned his back on you… "

"Silence, you fool!"

"Not just on you but on all those who follow you. These unnatural horrors are the price we pay for your crimes against God and Humanity…"

"You snivelling louse!" Corotocus grabbed him by the habit and threw him to his knees. "You dare hide your cowardice behind Holy Orders? Somebody whip him! Whip him 'til there's no skin on his back!"

There was hesitation before anyone obeyed, which was a new experience indeed for the Earl of Clun. They'd all heard the priest's words. They all knew in their heart of hearts that the things they'd done in Wales under the earl's command would never find favour with Jesus Christ. But much less would it find favour to chastise one of His anointed prelates.

"D'you hear me!" the earl roared at them. "Punish this dog! This traitor who invokes God's curse on us!" Still they were reluctant. "You mindless children! Are you blind as well as stupid? The witchcraft is outside! Since when did God ever send devils to do His holy work?"

"Since when did the king of England send devils to do his?" the priest said with another laugh.

The earl kicked at him, sending him sprawling.

"Do you all hear this treason? Is this a fitting comrade, who switches his allegiance the moment the enemy is close?"

"My lord," someone protested. "A holy man…"

"What's holy about him? You heard his weasel words. If the Welsh get in, he'll no doubt hasten to tell them that it wasn't him. That he advised against this mission, which, incidentally, we are carrying out on the orders of our lord, the king." He spat on Benan's cassock. "Do not be fooled by these priestly vestments. This turd has shown his true colours. He's a snake in the grass, who would deceive us all. Now do as I say. Get him out of here, scourge his worthless hide."

"You heard His Excellency!" Navarre shouted.

To see the household champion hurt, and yet still strong and fiercely loyal to his overlord galvanised the rest of them. Two household knights came forward and dragged the weeping priest away.

"Back to the business at hand," Corotocus said. "Shore those other hatches. Make sure they can't be broken again."

As the mesnie bustled, Ranulf wondered if the earl was at last losing his grasp of military realities. He'd wasted time punishing a malefactor, and yet a desperate battle was raging outside. He was content to close off the captured areas of the castle rather than try to recover them. There were exclamations about this from the more experienced knights. They pleaded with the earl that the Barbican, or at least the Gatehouse roof, needed to be cleared of the enemy, as the warriors catapulted up there would now be able to enter the bailey. But the earl replied that no more than a handful would manage it. The dead could have the Gatehouse roof, but so long as its interior was held from them, the bulk of the enemy would be kept outside.

"Does he fully realise what we're facing here?" Ranulf asked his father quietly. "These creatures can't just be cut down with a sword-stroke. I've seen that for myself. In that respect, each one of them is worth any ten of us."

"He can only do what he can do." Ulbert replied.

"What?"

Ulbert rarely showed emotion these days, let alone fear or panic. But even by his normal detached standards, he seemed strangely resigned to meeting whatever abhorrence was hammering on the hatchways above their heads.

"He can't just wave a wand to make this foe go away, Ranulf."

"Someone waved one to make them come here."

"Then perhaps, as soldiers, it is part of our duty to find this person and kill him." Ulbert moved away. "In the meantime we must look to our friends."

The earl was still issuing orders, fully in command again. When Ulbert and Ranulf confronted him, requesting permission to return to the south curtain-wall and organise a retreat for the troops still holding out there, he eyed them thoughtfully. Any anger he still felt at Ranulf was probably tempered by the sight of the young knight's facial wounds, which proved more than words ever could that he'd fought hard in his overlord's name. In addition, there were practical considerations. To withdraw from the curtain-wall now would be to grant the Welsh unfettered access to the berm and thus to the castle's main entrance. But to leave men on the curtain-wall would be certain death for them, not just from the mangonels to their front, but from the corpses in the bailey who could climb the scaffolding and attack them from behind.

"That would be sensible," he eventually said. "I don't want to do it with the southwest bridge intact, but it seems the bridge is beyond our reach. Very well. The curtain-wall is to be abandoned, but only temporarily. When the time is right, I intend to recapture it."

Corotocus gave the two knights leave and they descended quickly to the next level, crossing over a narrow gantry drawbridge, which spanned the castle's entrance passage and joined with the north curtain-wall. Thirty feet below them, the passage was deserted, but it was easy to imagine that soon it would be packed with struggling forms, their ghoulish groans echoing in the high, narrow space. The main entrance gate was recessed into the Gatehouse on the left-hand side of this passage rather than at its far end, which made assault by ram or catapult impossible. Theoretically, such a gate was unbreakable, but Ranulf could already envisage these indestructible monsters swarming all over it until they'd torn it down with their bare hands.

On the north battlements, he leaned against a crenel to get his breath. He pulled back his coif; his hair was sticky with clotting blood. Many of his gashes still wept red tears.

"Are you alright?" Ulbert asked.

"I think my nose is broken."

"No matter. It wasn't much to look at."

Ranulf half smiled. "A pity it couldn't have been your scrawny neck."

"Do you want to wait here and rest?"

"No. There are many hurt worse than me." They set off. As they walked, Ranulf said: "Father, have you ever heard of anything… anything like this before?"

Ulbert pondered; his face was graven in stone.

"I once heard about something," he admitted. "It was two centuries ago at least. A rumour brought back from the East. Bohemond's crusader army was in peril. They'd won the battle of Antioch, but the nobles squabbled and refused to cooperate with each other, so smaller parties of knights set out for Jerusalem without them. Soon they were starved and parched. They fought their way across an arid, desolate land, hunted all the way by Saracen horsemen. When they reached civilisation, they were more like animals than men. They destroyed the Moslem city of Ma'arrat, where the more demented among them prepared a cannibal feast. Even those who'd retained their sanity joined them, tortured by the smell of cooked meat. The Saracens were so outraged by this crime that they too broke God's laws. Their wizards summoned a dust storm to envelope the crusader army when it marched again. Many were lost in the confusion. Great numbers were taken prisoner. A year later, these prisoners reappeared at the battle of Ascalon. They were naked and skinless, having been flayed, but despite this they marched against their former allies. The story is that they marched under banners made from their own shredded hides."

"That's a fairy story," Ranulf said. "Surely?"

Ulbert laughed without humour. "In years to come people will refer to this as a fairy story. But that doesn't make it any less a nightmare for those of us living through it."