Valour

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

MAQUIN

As the sun rose, Maquin stared down into the streets of Dun Kellen. Bodies buzzing with flies littered the ground.

The night had been long and hard fought, Jael’s warband assaulting Dun Kellen’s walls with growing desperation. There had been a dozen moments when Maquin expected to hear horns call the retreat to the keep, but somehow they still held the outer wall. Orgull had played no little part in that. Jael’s assaults had focused on the parts of the wall that had been rebuilt, a patchwork of timber and stone. Wherever the fighting was fiercest Orgull was there, dealing death with his giant’s axe, and Maquin had been glad to follow, his hatred of Jael fuelling his body well beyond its limits. As he snatched some rest now he felt muscles and tendons complaining, his shoulder throbbing, blood and sweat stinging his eyes. Not dead yet. His thoughts drifted to Kastell and he felt his stomach knot, his eyes drifting to the streets, searching for Jael.

Warriors were busy at work amongst the streets, chopping timber from houses, constructing makeshift ladders and battering rams. More than one of those lay discarded at the fortress’ gates, surrounded by corpses. Even as Maquin scoured the enemy lines a knot of men stepped forward, Jael emerging from amongst them. He stopped a distance from the gates, mindful of spear throws, and cupped his hands to his mouth.

‘Is there any of a rank left to speak with me?’ he called.

Muttering swept the battlements and Gerda came forward, dressed now in an ill-fitting cuirass, a short sword in her hand. Maquin smiled. She had grown in his estimation during the night, refusing to leave the wall, fierce in her exhortations to her warriors, terrifying in her cursing of Jael and his men. She had even charged forwards and swung blows at one point, when men had threatened to breach the wall. Warriors flanked her now, holding their shields ready as she approached the wall, no doubt remembering Varick’s fate.

Maquin felt a presence at his shoulder — Tahir, moving up to view the street. He had a cut on his cheek, a gash in his chainmail, but he seemed free of serious injury. He smiled at Maquin. ‘Still standing, then.’

‘Just,’ Maquin said, looking back to Jael.

‘What do you want?’ Gerda shouted down.

‘Are you all that Dun Kellen has left?’ Jael said, laughing. ‘No lord, no battlechief, just a fat old woman?’

‘Who are you calling a woman?’ Gerda yelled back, her warriors laughing at that. ‘Not too old or too fat to teach you a few lessons in warfare, you snot-nosed brat.’

Even Maquin laughed at that. He saw Jael scowl as laughter rippled along the battlements, even some from behind Jael, within his own ranks.

‘If there is anyone up there with rank to treat with me, I will gladly do so,’ Jael yelled. ‘If there is only a woman left to lead you, then Dun Kellen has fallen far already. Let me make this clear to any with intelligence enough to hear. Gerda and her son Haelan are the walking dead. This is only the van of my warband — more are coming. You cannot win, and I will have their heads on spikes before the next moon rises. Hand Gerda and her brat over and I will let you live, even welcome you into my own warband. Fight on and I will kill every last one of you. Not just you: your wives, your women, your children too. There will be no captives — no surrender.’

‘He talks a good talk,’ Orgull muttered, moving up beside Maquin and Tahir.

Maquin glanced along the battlements, saw fear amongst the warriors there.

‘Hard words break no bones, as my old mam used to say,’ Tahir shouted down.

‘Well said,’ Gerda laughed.

‘I’ll break bones soon enough,’ Jael said, then turned, raising his arm as he did so. Warriors swept forwards from the shadows and ran towards the fortress’ wall. At a horn blast they stopped and hurled a mass of spears, Maquin and his comrades ducking low. A man close to Tahir moved too slowly and a spear buried itself in his chest, hurling him back over the battlements’ edge. Maquin peered over the wall into the street, saw more of Jael’s warriors hurrying from the town’s side streets carrying ladders, others holding shields high over men that dragged a thick battering ram between them.

Warning shouts ran amongst the defenders; spears and rocks were hurled onto those below. A ladder slammed into place close to Maquin. He leaned out and stabbed down at a man climbing; his sword-tip glanced off an iron helm, burying itself in the man’s shoulder. The man screamed and fell backwards, replaced by another who swung at Maquin’s exposed arm. Orgull dragged Maquin back, then swung his axe at the enemy as he appeared at the top of the wall. In a spray of blood his head spun through the air, Orgull using his axe to push the ladder away, the headless corpse still draped over the top rung. The ladder wobbled in space, then crashed back to the street below, men screaming as they fell or were crushed.

More ladders appeared along the battlements and Maquin lost himself in the fight. A booming thud marked time to their violence as the ram crashed ceaselessly against the gates, fading to a blur in Maquin’s mind as he slashed and stabbed and snarled at the legion of faces that appeared before him. Always Orgull and Tahir were close by, his Gadrai sword-brothers, beating back the tide wherever they stood. When Maquin paused, his limbs heavy and weak, his lungs burning, he saw Gerda standing on the wall above the gates, yelling defiance, encouraging her warriors, even lifting rocks and heaving them over the battlements at Jael’s men below. As Maquin watched, jars of liquid — oil, he guessed — were thrown from above the gates, burning torches cast after them. There was the sound of flames igniting, then a terrible screaming. Maquin leaned over the wall and saw the ram and those holding it ablaze, some running yelling through the street, many rolling on the ground. The smell of charred meat hit his throat and he ducked back behind the wall.

Children moved along the top of the wall, taking skins of water to the defenders. Maquin beckoned one over and gulped from the skin. A shadow fell over them as Orgull reached for the water. The young lad’s eyes wide as he stared at Orgull’s axe dripping with blood and gore.

‘Thirsty work,’ Orgull muttered between gulps.

The battle lulled again and Gerda walked along the walls. She reached them and paused. ‘You know Jael well?’ she asked Maquin.

‘He was cousin to my lord.’ He shrugged. ‘We lived in Mikil together, but Jael and Kastell, my lord, they were never friends.’

‘His claim that more men are coming — do you think he tells the truth?’

‘He is a snake, would lie to his own mother. He betrayed his uncle and murdered his cousin in the caverns below Haldis. I would not trust anything he says. Most likely he was trying to spread fear amongst your men, hoping one would take your head and accomplish his goal for him. And he must know that you have many more men mustering in your outlying lands. He will be scared, knowing that time is against him.’

‘That is what I thought, too,’ Gerda said. She raised her voice. ‘Jael is a liar, he has no more men coming to aid him. We must just resist, hold them off until our banner-men from the outlying holds arrive.’ A ragged cheer rippled along the battlements and Gerda strode away.

Someone shouted a warning as ladders slammed against the wall.

‘Back to it,’ Orgull said, patting his axe.

They fought on, time losing all meaning to Maquin. Again and again Jael’s men assaulted the wall, and every time they were thrown back. As the sun dipped into the horizon, reflecting blood red against low clouds, a cry went up and Jael’s men finally broke onto the battlements, first one man gaining a foothold, then another, then a handful.

Maquin was fighting over the gates, guarding Orgull’s flank as the big man swung his axe into a warrior who had just leaped from a ladder-top onto the wall. The man was off balance and Orgull’s axe smashed into his chest, cutting through chainmail, leather, flesh and bone in an explosion of gore. Maquin heard a change in the battlecries behind him, turned and saw Jael’s men forcing their way onto the wall. Without thinking, he ran at them, shouting to Orgull and Tahir but unaware if they heard him or not.

He smashed into a man, feeling his teeth rattle with the force of the collision, and slammed the man over the wall with not even enough time to scream. Maquin set his feet and swung his sword two-handed, chopping into a man’s ribs, then bringing his blade up and down onto the man’s head as he crumpled. He stepped over the corpse, chopping, stabbing. His blade was parried, sending shivers along his arm, his wrist numbing. A hand grabbed him, dragging him forwards, and he stumbled over a fallen warrior and dropped to one knee. A man appeared before him, sword raised, Maquin’s death in his eyes. With a snarl, Maquin drew a knife from his belt, launched himself forwards, punching the knife beneath the line of his enemy’s cuirass, sinking to the hilt. He gave a wrench, saw fear fill the man’s face, the strength draining from him. Then he was shoving the dying man away and cutting at the man behind with sword and dagger.

He heard a battle-cry behind him, two voices shouting, ‘Gadrai,’ and he grinned, knowing his sword-brothers were with him. The battle-joy took him then, which he’d heard others call a madness but to him it was a fierce, pure ecstasy, new strength flooding his limbs, his lips drawn back in a half-grin, half-snarl. Soon the tide had turned, Jael’s men dying or fleeing before the three of them: Maquin, Orgull and Tahir.

As Jael’s men were killed or cast back over the wall, horn blasts called out from the streets beyond the fortress. The attack ended. Men withdrew quickly. All along the battlements the survivors sagged with exhaustion. Maquin gripped Tahir’s shoulder and smiled at him, too weary to speak.

There was a lull in the battle, all on the wall taking the opportunity to drink, eat something, some even leaning against the wall and sleeping. The sun sank into the rim of the world, night creeping up behind. Just before full dark Orgull stared out over the wall, frowning.

Men were running from the side streets, some carrying timber beams between them, others with arms full of straw and thatch. They ran to the gates and the sections of the wall that had long been repaired with wood instead of stone. Soon there were high piles spread along the wall’s base.

‘Don’t like the look of that,’ Tahir muttered to Maquin when he saw great jars of oil being carried to the piles of timber and thatch. Warriors on the wall began throwing spears and rocks, and screams told that some found their mark, but almost immediately sparks were being struck and flames were curling up.

‘They’re going to bum their way in,’ Maquin said.

He watched as Gerda and her captains organized the fetching of water from wells within Dun Kellen’s wall, but by the time the first buckets of water had arrived the fires were burning bright, the thrown water hissing into steam. They managed to put one fire out, but a dozen others raged against different sections of the wall, the wood used to repair it charring and crackling, smoke billowing over the ramparts.

The boy that had given them water earlier in the day hurried along the wall, scurrying over when he saw Maquin and his companions.

‘The lady wants to see you,’ he said to Orgull, who nodded and followed the lad into a cloud of smoke. Soon he returned.

‘Gerda’s calling a retreat to the keep,’ he said, but quietly. ‘She’s leaving a handful of warriors up here to watch the back of those leaving, and to give Jael the impression we mean to fight on.’

‘A suicide watch, you mean,’ Tahir said.

‘No. Her orders were that whoever remains must leave as soon as the first ladders hit the wall.’

‘They’d better be quick about it — those walls won’t be standing all night,’ Maquin said, and as if to prove his point timbers nearby creaked, part of the palisaded walkway collapsing with a crash.

‘I suppose you volunteered us for the rearguard,’ Maquin said.

Orgull grinned.

‘Best show our faces, then. Give Jael and his lads something to be scared of,’ Maquin said, walking into view on the wall.

‘Just make sure we keep our feet on stone,’ Tahir added, stepping close to Maquin.

The retreat of Dun Kellen’s warriors to the keep did not take long. Soon Maquin, Orgull and Tahir stood with a handful of others left to guard the wall.

It was not long after that the first wooden section of wall collapsed, flames and smoke roaring up in its aftermath. Jael’s warriors rushed forwards, but the fire flared in their faces, burning fiercer as it was fed by the timber. In their eagerness, Jael’s men lifted ladders to the stone walls, done with waiting.

‘Best be out of here,’ Tahir said, looking over his shoulder at the dark shadow of the keep behind them. Orgull barked an order at the other warriors ranged about them, only a dozen or so, and they began filing down a wide stairwell.

Maquin put a spear to the ladder that appeared nearby, pushed with all his strength, but the weight of the warriors climbing it held it pinned to the wall. Orgull saw and added his axe, bracing the head against the ladder and leaning into it. Nothing happened, then an iron-capped head appeared on the ladder.

‘Come on,’ Tahir yelled.

Maquin and Orgull gave a last effort and the ladder swayed away from the wall, teetering for a moment before it hurtled backwards into the darkness. Maquin smiled at the screams that drifted up to them. Then the three of them were running, leaping down the stairwell and sprinting for the keep. A warrior stood guard, keeping the doors open. They slammed shut behind them and were barred with iron and oak.