The Siege of Macindaw

32

Horace had gone up the ladder at a run, while Will kept up a constant stream of arrows, picking off any defender who showed himself over the ramparts. Nearing the top, the warrior paused for a second, then hurled himself upward, rolling into a ball and somersaulting high into the air so that he sailed over the top of the ramparts and the two defenders who crouched there, waiting for him.

He landed lightly on his feet, turning and drawing his sword in the same motion. The two startled defenders recovered their wits and began to move toward him. He cut the first man down with ease. As the second came at him, Horace deflected his halberd thrust, seized his collar and propelled him over the inner edge of the walkway. The man's startled cry cut off abruptly with a heavy thud as he hit the flagstones of the courtyard.

More defenders were moving toward him, coming from the north wall. He turned to face them.

"Will! Up here! Now!" he yelled.

The warning cry of "Here they come!" caused immediate panic among the men on the south wall. Thinking that the terrifying ap- paritions were now attacking the castle, three of them broke and ran for the stairs. Keren moved too late to stop them. But the next man who tried to follow them met the point of his sword.

"Get back to your position!" Keren told him, and the man backed away.

Keren felt the bitterness of despair. Deep down, he had known that he couldn't count on men like these in a real battle.

" They're coming!" the voice cried again, and this time Keren realized it was from the west wall, now dangerously short of defenders. In the dim light, he could see a tall figure, his sword rising and falling as the few men left tried to stop him. As he watched, a smaller figure appeared over the top of the ramparts. He balanced on the battlements themselves, and unslung a longbow from his shoulder.

With a sick feeling, Keren realized he had been deceived. Worse, he had deceived himself. The real attack was on the west wall and it was happening now. He grabbed Buttle's arm and pointed.

"I told you it was a trick! That's where the real attack is coming from!" he yelled. "Get the men over there and hold the west wall! I'm going to call out the rest of the garrison! I'll bring them up the northwest tower stairs and we'll catch them between us!"

Buttle, seeing a human enemy he could attack, nodded briefly. He turned and bellowed orders to the men on the south wall and then led them at a run along the walkway to the southwest corner.

Quickly, Will took stock of the situation. Horace was holding his own with the defenders from the north wall and needed no immediate help. But then the door to the southwest tower banged open and a group of armed men emerged. Will's first arrow was on its way almost immediately and the soldier leading the charge went down. Then another behind him fell silently and a third staggered, screaming, as an arrow appeared in his thigh.

Three men dead or wounded in a matter of seconds. Those behind them suddenly lost their enthusiasm for the battle. Perhaps the strange monsters in the sky might be preferable to this deadly rain of arrows. They faded back to the shelter of the southwest tower. As the door slammed behind them, they heard two more arrows thud into the hard wood.

Keren had bolted down the stairs to the courtyard. He ran toward the garrison dormitory in the southeast tower. Men were spilling out the door, confused and disorganized, still fastening their armor and buckling on their weapons. They saw their commander and hesitated, waiting for orders. Keren gestured to the west wall.

"They're on the west wall!" he said. "Go up the northwest tower and flank them!"

Still the men hesitated, and he stepped toward them, threatening them with his raised sword.

"Get moving!" he yelled and, reluctantly at first, then with growing conviction, they began to run across the flagstones of the courtyard to the northwest tower. Keren started after them, then paused. He knew their resolve wouldn't last long once they faced the Ranger's arrows. Coming to a decision, he stepped forward and held out his arm to stop the last three men.

"You three come with me," he ordered them. Then he turned toward the keep – and the tower above it.

The Skandians were swarming over the rampart now. Will wasn't surprised to see that Nils Ropehander was in the lead. The man had become Horace's shadow.

"Help the general!" Will said, pointing.

Nils nodded and rushed to support Horace, his battleax already whirring in a giant arc.

The soldiers engaged with Horace, already hard pressed, were horrified by the sight of the huge, yelling Skandian charging at them, grotesque in his fur vest and massively horned helmet. They began to back away, trying to force their way through the men behind them.

Nils hit them like a one-man battering ram, scattering them in all directions. Their cautious backpedaling became a panicked rush to get back to the shelter of the northwest tower.

Will was directing traffic, sending a few more men to reinforce Horace and Nils, then setting up a defensive screen to engage the men from the southwest tower whenever they decided to renew their attack.

Satisfied that they had a secure foothold on the west wall, Will now cast around anxiously for Keren or Buttle.

They were the two danger men, and Will knew it was vital to find them quickly and deal with them.

In the southwest tower, Buttle peered through a spyhole set into the oak door. He could see the Skandians on the ramparts and he knew that it was vital that they be driven back now. In a few more minutes, their position would be unassailable.

He had a dozen men with him and he drove them toward the door, threatening, cursing, hitting with the flat of his sword.

"If they get any further, we're all dead men!" he yelled as he drove his reluctant warriors out onto the ramparts ahead of him. They charged the Skandian line with the courage of desperation. The Skandians saw them coming and smiled.

Behind them, Buttle quietly closed the door and ran down the stairs to ground level.

He had recognized the tall warrior fighting the men from the far tower. They had met some weeks before, by Tumbledown Creek, and the freelance knight had been arrogant and dismissive of Buttle's authority. That was a score to be settled, he thought. There was a trapdoor in the walkway just behind Horace's position, with a stairway leading up to it from the courtyard below. Buttle headed for it now.

In the forest to the west, someone else was remembering events from the past few weeks.

Some days prior to the attack, Trobar had been quietly patting Shadow when he felt the ridge of a massive scar under her soft fur. He parted the black hair gently and saw the livid sign of a recently healed wound there. He shuddered at the size of it. It was a miracle the dog had survived such an injury. When he had asked Will about it, the Ranger had related the story of how he found the dog, severely wounded and close to death, by the roadside in Seacliff Fief. Buttle, the dog's original owner, had tried to kill her when she rebelled against his brutal treatment. Will had nursed her back to health.

Trobar knew Buttle. He had watched him from the forest when the dark-bearded murderer had ridden through the countryside, recruiting new troops for the castle.

Now, Trobar thought, Buttle would pay for the injury he had done to Shadow. The huge man was normally a gentle, peaceful soul. But the thought of his friend's agony, and the savagery of the man who had caused it, hardened his heart. As the sounds of battle raged on the castle ramparts, Trobar retrieved a massive club he had fashioned from a tree branch earlier in the day and loped quietly across the open space to the now-empty ladders at the foot of Macindaw's west wall.

+ + ¦

Horace stepped aside as Nils led a group of twelve Skandians in a wild charge at the men who had emerged from the southwest tower. Nils could handle that situation, he thought, as Buttle's men fell back before the Skandians' terrible axes. At the other end of the rampart, Gundar and the rest of his men had the upper hand over the defenders Keren had sent to the northwest tower. The Skandians could manage without him for a few minutes. He'd suffered a dagger slash on the wrist of his sword hand and he took the opportunity to bind it with a clean cloth. He leaned his sword against the battlements as he concentrated on winding the cloth around the wound, stemming the blood that ran down over his sword hand. "Horace!"

He looked up. Will was at the edge of the ramparts, pointing to the courtyard below. Horace moved a few paces from the wall for a better view. He could see nothing to explain Will's interest. He looked up inquiringly.

"It was Keren!" Will explained. "I saw him go into the keep."

With the battle raging on the walls, there was only one possible reason why the renegade would head for the keep – and the tower above it. Instinctively, Will knew what it was.

"He's going after Alyss!"

Horace thought quickly. Will wasn't needed here anymore – the situation was well under control.

"Go after him!" he called back. "I'll take care of things here."

Will nodded and looked around. There was a derrick close by, with a rope dangling from it down to the courtyard. He leaped for the rope, grabbing it and wrapping his legs around it to slow his descent.

Horace gave his attention back to the rough bandage. Holding one end with his teeth, he tied a clumsy knot with his left hand. He inspected the result. It would do for the moment. And besides, the fighting was almost over. Almost.

Horace's fighting instincts were finely tuned. Any foreign, unexplained sound was a potential threat, and he heard one now behind him – a slight grating noise as seldom-used hinges were forced to turn against the light rust that had coated them.

He turned toward the sound in time to see John Buttle emerging from a trapdoor in the walkway.