Stronghold

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

With the dawn came the dead.

Heralded by a dirge of howls and moans, they crammed along the causeway, a hundred abreast, pushing their siege-tower ahead of them, its mighty wheels rumbling on the timbers. The English responded in the only way they knew how, with showers of arrows and stones. But it made no discernible impact. The oxen, to prevent them being wounded or killed by the castle defenders, were being driven beneath the shelter of the siege-tower's ironclad skirts. As the great structure drew steadily closer, it could be seen that assault teams of the dead were already gathered on top of it. Its gantry bridge, perhaps twenty feet in length, was currently raised, held aloft by two leather thongs, either of which a simple blow would have cut. The lip of the bridge was fixed with iron hooks, so that when it fell across the Constable's Tower's stone parapet, it would catch and hold itself in place.

The earl's best fighting men waited for it, armed not just with shields and swords, but with bills, spears and a stockpile of naptha grenades. Earl Corotocus also had an onager brought forward and devil's sachets packed with bricks broken from the rear battlements.

"They must not cross!" Navarre bellowed, as the tower halted in front of them. "Not one of them!"

When the bridge fell, poll-arms were lifted to prevent it making contact, but the first of the dead merely scrambled to the top of it and leapt. At least five plummeted to the foot of the tower, but three landed safely and a savage melee commenced as they laid about them with axes and mattocks. A retaliatory storm of slashing blades soon hacked them to pieces, but not before the poll-men were themselves cut down and the bridge crashed onto the battlements.

"Onager!" Earl Corotocus roared.

His engineers were already in place, and the first devil's sachet loaded into the bucket. But before the lever could be pulled, the dead on the top of the siege-tower let loose a blizzard of arrows and crossbow bolts. Space was immediately cleared, maybe a dozen men, including those on the onager, struck down. Ramon la Roux, already grievously wounded from the fight at the Gatehouse, pivoted around grey-faced, blood oozing between his lips. A missile had pierced his breast to its feathers. He staggered a couple of yards, fell against Ranulf and dropped to the floor.

With gurgling groans, the dead threw down their bows and, bristling with swords, hammers and cleavers, advanced across their gantry. They were mid-way over, when Ranulf threw himself onto the onager's lever. The complex throwing device had been tilted upward on rear support blocks, so that its payload travelled in a straight line, rather than arcing through the air. As such, ten heavy projectiles were now flung clean into the approaching horde. The first few were felled by gut-thumping impacts, their bodies shattered into glistening green and crimson scraps; those behind went toppling over the side. Two projectiles continued through, striking the rear of the siege-tower's upper tier with pulverising force, smashing an entire section of its framework. But fresh cohorts of corpses were now flooding up its timber throat. While men-at-arms hastened to crank the onager back to full tension, Navarre and others lobbed naptha grenades across the bridge. Several struck the dead full-on, engulfing them in flame; others dropped down inside the siege-tower, spilling fire through its joists and beams.

"More naptha!" Walter Margas shrieked, only for a blazing figure to leap down and wrap its arms around him. Ranulf hewed it from its shoulder to its breastbone with a massive stroke of his longsword. But Margas was already horribly seared. He staggered back to his feet, a twisted, drooling wreck, only to be struck in the face by a javelin, which didn't penetrate deeply but laid his cheek open to the glinting bone beneath.

Though entire sections of the siege-tower had now caught fire, the dead continued to clamber up through it and rampage across the bridge. The onager was again sprung. Its deadly cargo was catapulted through the advancing mob. Yet more went spinning from the bridge, but others made it onto the battlements. One of them sent shockwaves through the English by the mere sight of him. He was a giant of a man, naked save for a loincloth, covered in soot and grease, and armed with a spike-headed mace. The flesh across his throat was gruesomely mangled. His face had been bitten over and over, his scalp almost torn from the top of his head, but it was perfectly visible who he was — Captain Garbofasse, late of the earl's mercenary division.

With black gruel vomiting from his mouth, Garbofasse gave a guttural, inhuman roar and, swinging his brutal weapon around, smote the skulls of two of his former hearth-men, dashing their brains out where they stood.

Other corpses lumbered down behind him. One was recognisable as Roger FitzUrz. The other, walking with a bizarrely crooked gait, was Red Guthric.

"Repel!" Earl Corotocus bellowed, advancing to battle himself, his sword and shield hefted.

With a furious clangour, the two forces met, blade clashing on blade, on mail, on helmet and buckler, falchions crushing shoulder-joints, axes biting through foreheads. The squire Tallebois fell at this point, Red Guthric, his former comrade, hurling him shrieking to the ground and striking at him again and again with a scramsax, cleaving him from cranium to chin three times, each breach an inch from the next, so that his head fell apart like a sliced loaf.

"Ladders!" someone cried.

All along the battlements to either side of the siege-tower, crudely constructed ladders were appearing. Ranulf dashed towards the nearest, but a monstrosity had already appeared at the top of it. Ranulf grabbed a spear, and as it tried to climb through the embrasure, transfixed it through its chest, forcing it backward into the abyss. The next one up, he clove between the eyes and across the left hand, severing all its fingers and costing it its grip. It dropped like a stone, knocking off one corpse after another all the way to the bottom. Ranulf was thus able to grab the ladder and push it sideways. It collided with a second ladder, which also collapsed, depositing maybe thirty more of the dead into the wailing mass of their comrades far below.

Earl Corotocus, meanwhile, was engaged in a savage cut-and-thrust with Garbofasse. The earl took blow after blow on his shield, which already was beaten out of shape, but at last made a telling strike of his own, ripping open Garbofasse's unguarded belly so that a mass of glistening, coiling entrails flopped out. Garbofasse seemingly felt nothing. He raised his mace with both hands, only for Navarre, who had despatched his own opponent, to sever his legs from behind, and then hew and hew at him as he lay there, until he was nought but a pile of twitching, dismembered meat.

The interior of the siege-tower was now a raging inferno. The frantic lowing of the oxen trapped beneath it became a shrill squealing as they were burned alive. One or two dead still attempted to scale up through it, but they too were consumed. So great was the heat that the siege-tower's iron skin began to soften and slide loose. With a splintering crash, the gantry bridge, burnt through at the joints, fell onto the causeway.

The ladders still had to be dealt with. Ranulf had knocked down two, but there were maybe ten others. The English went at them hammer and tongs, splitting the skulls and sundering the limbs of those attempting to climb up and, where possible, smashing the upper rungs, so that the ladders fell in two halves. But now there was another threat. In some cases, the dead had started circumnavigating the Constable's Tower, spilling around the Inner Fort via the bailey. What was more, on the curtain-wall their work-teams had erected rope-and-pulley systems and were hauling up scorpions and other bolt-throwers, with which they hurled grappling hooks linked to nets, climbing ropes and more scaling ladders to the top of the Inner Fort walls. At eighty to a hundred feet, these great ramparts would normally be unassailable, but now the English watched agog as the dead hauled themselves up the sheer edifices with comparative ease.

Drenched with sweat and blackened by smoke, Earl Corotocus had to shout to be heard in the midst of this chaos. His efforts were further hampered as flights of arrows swept up from the causeway. While the bulk of the dead now queued in orderly fashion to ascend the ladders, others — those still equipped with bows and crossbows — stood back and launched their missiles. They took particular aim at those English attempting to throw down the ladders. Ranulf, Navarre and others were forced to step back as a stream of shafts rattled through the embrasures. Gurt Louvain was spitted through the palm of his left hand. Cursing, he snapped the shaft and, with clenched teeth, yanked it free. He bound the wound with an old rag, but it had soon turned sodden with gore. Hugh du Guesculin, who had hung back as much as he could during the fray, was struck a glancing blow to the helmet, which made him hang back even further, though he continued to bark at his master's underlings, calling them cowards and curs.

Also shouting like a madman, Earl Corotocus stalked up and down, striking at any corpse that vaulted through onto the battlements and, where possible, sending men to the south side of the tower, where, beyond a narrow gate, the wall-walk of the Inner Fort began. Diverting along this, they were able to cut many of the climbing ropes that had so far been attached. Large numbers of the dead were thus precipitated a huge distance into the south bailey, where they were literally broken into pieces.

But this wasn't the whole of it.

Some of the bolt-throwers had projected their missiles through the arrow-slits on the Inner Fort's south-facing wall. These connected with buildings inside, such as the barrack house in the Inner Fort's southwest corner, and the great hall in the southeast corner. Frantically, small groups of defenders, led by archery captain Davy Gou, hurried indoors. In the barrack house, where most of their bedrolls were spread on piles of hay, several of the dead were already forcing their way through the arrow-slits. It would have been impossible for living men to enter via these horribly narrow apertures, but the dead cared nothing for crushed bones and torn skin. Gou and his men met them in a whirlwind of blades. As throughout the battle, only complete evisceration and dismemberment would account for the intruders, and, long before this was achieved, many an Englishman's throat had been torn, eye plucked, or limbs sheared.

The battle now girdled two thirds of the castle, and raged on in this murderous fashion for the entire day. On top of ramparts now washed with blood and strewn with dead and dying, the English held out as best they could. Whenever one ladder was thrown down, another replaced it. When one marauding band was repulsed, a second would immediately follow. More and more dead archers were gathering on the causeway. Thanks to their capture of the earl's heavy weapons train, they appeared to have limitless ammunition, and with arms and shoulders that no longer tired, with bowstring fingers that no longer bled or blistered, they poured it over the battlements relentlessly.

And all the while cacophonous booms sounded through the structure of the Constable's Tower, for the burnt wreckage of the siege-tower had been hauled away and an iron-headed battering ram brought forth. A band of corpses, maybe thirty strong, slammed it again and again on the central gate. No amount of pelting with rocks, stones and arrows would dissuade them. So immune were they, they didn't even carry shields over their heads.

Down in the courtyard, the infirmary had been swiftly overwhelmed. Zacharius and Henri laboured feverishly in the midst of blood-drenched bodies piled three deep. Having long exhausted their supply of intoxicants, they concentrated on those who required the least painful procedures, moving straight from one man to the next, pumping sweat as they extracted arrow heads and broken shafts, stitched or cauterised gaping wounds, severed shattered limbs with as few clean strokes of the saw as they could manage. The shrieks and gasps rang in their ears.

Experienced as he was, Zacharius was strained almost to breaking point. On previous battlefields, he'd had orderlies to assist him and, if not orderlies, volunteer monks and nuns from nearby communities. Now there wasn't even anyone to hold or tie the struggling patients down. And there was no end to these patients. Beyond the stinking confines of the infirmary, they were scattered like leaves on the cobblestones of the courtyard. More and more were brought down, many in so dreadful a condition that nothing could be done for them.

Ranulf FitzOsbern came shouting and pushing his way in. He was half-carrying and half-dragging one of his comrades, a fellow knight called Ramon la Roux. From one quick glance, Zacharius deduced that la Roux was already dead. An arrow had pierced his chest clean through; he'd already bled so much that his entire tabard was slick with gore — there could scarcely be a drop of the precious fluid left inside him.

"For God's sake!" Zacharius shouted. "I'm not a miracle worker!"

Ranulf shook his head. "There's nothing you can do?"

"Surely you know the answer to that, you damn fool! Haven't you fought enough wars?" Zacharius whipped around to where other maimed soldiers waited to be treated, watching him with harrowed eyes. "Haven't you all fought enough wars?"

"He helped me earlier," Ranulf muttered. "I thought I should at least try."

"A nice sentiment. But somewhat misplaced in this pit of Hell!"

Ranulf finally nodded and let the dead weight that was Ramon la Roux slide to the floor.

"Not in here!" Zacharius bellowed. "This is a hospital, not a blasted mortuary!"

Without a word, Ranulf took la Roux by the heels and dragged him outside onto the cobblestones, where he had no option but to leave him among the other piles of dead or dying men.

Briefly, Zacharius followed him out, mopping his hands on a crimson rag. "Dare I ask how the fight is going?"

Ranulf gave this some thought. "No."

"What's that?"

"You asked me a question, did you not? I gave you my answer. 'No'." Ranulf turned and trudged back towards the Constable's Tower. "For the sake of your own sanity, don't dare ask how the fight is going."

It was now late afternoon and just as Ranulf re-ascended to his post, word reached Earl Corotocus's ears that bolt-throwers were assailing the Inner Fort from the east side, a part of the stronghold which, up until now, had not been struck at all.

"We're spread too thinly," he said to Navarre. "We haven't enough men to cover the entire perimeter."

"My lord, if we retreat now the Inner Fort will fall. We'll only have the Keep left."

Corotocus nodded grimly. "Agreed. We must hold at all costs. The king will come. I know he will."

But beyond Grogen Castle, there was no sign of the king. In fact, quite the opposite. For a brief startling moment, Ranulf had a chance to glance out over the Constable's Tower parapet, and found himself focussed on a landscape literally swamped by tides of the dead. For as far as the eye could see, from all directions, their cursed and bedraggled legions were advancing towards the castle. This vision alone might have been enough to send a man mad, but then, if it were possible, something even more frightening happened.

With a collision like a thunderclap, an object impacted in the middle of the tower roof. It was a massive thirty-gallon barrel, which partially exploded and ejected burning naptha in a wide arc, engulfing maybe twenty of the earl's men. It didn't break apart totally, but bounced thirty yards, crashed through a door and hurtled down a spiral stair in which numerous wounded awaiting transport to the infirmary were crouched or lying, immersing and igniting them one by one. A second such missile followed immediately afterwards, this one a colossal earthenware pot. It struck the western battlements, blew apart and spurted liquid flame all along the rampart, swallowing some half a dozen defenders who were cowering there.

Every man still on his feet spun around towards the western bluff, where the three great siege engines, War Wolf, Giant's Fist and God's Maul had finally been assembled. Tremulous prayers seeped from throats already hoarse with shouting and screaming, as a third incendiary came tumbling down across the valley, black smoke trailing through the air behind it.