SirenSong (21 page)

Raymond had the reins of the horse clutched with the
handgrip of his shield and he pulled the animal forward to afford a rough
shelter for William, but William shook his head impatiently.

“I can still stand,” he muttered, “but not for long. Burn
the barn. Burn it!”

“No need, sir,” Raymond replied, shoving William forward
with his shoulder.

William turned his head to stare, stumbled, recovered.
“Mauger is come?” he asked, his voice slurring.

“No, I set the roof of the house alight as soon as I heard
you cry out. It will make as good a smoke. The men will soak the walls with the
other skins of oil if they can.” Suddenly he pushed William harder. “Put your
back to the wall, sir.”

Wall? William wondered what wall? Where was the wall? He
felt the pressure against him relax, heard the clang of metal and a shout.
Dimly he realized Raymond was engaged again. He began to turn toward the sound
but had sense enough left to understand that he would be more a danger than a
help to the young knight. It was dark ahead. Sight fading? Perhaps, but… The
wall! He lunged forward, felt a glancing blow on his right shoulder and swung
his sword blindly in that direction as hard as he could. There was a thwack
that should have been satisfactory, but it nearly jarred his sword from his
weakening grip.

“Ware! Guard!” an anguished voice bellowed.

It was too late. William made a convulsive effort to lift
his shield, but it was too heavy, too heavy. He plunged forward into a most
welcome darkness in which there was no pain and no duty.

To Raymond it seemed as if the blow launched by the Welshman
had struck William’s unprotected head with full force. With a roar of fury, he
whirled away from his own opponent and slashed at the man who had struck
William down and was still off balance. The edge of his blade bit deep,
severing the leather corselet and breaking the bone. He shoved the screaming
man off with one foot and swung around, not bothering to lift his sword but
using the force of his whole turning body to drive it.

He barely missed the legs of his own stallion, but did not
miss the man who had leapt forward hoping to catch him from behind while he was
engaged with the one who had struck William. His sword hit just above the knee,
sheared through the unarmored leg, and bit into the other. The wail of agony
was soon cut off. As the man toppled, lowering his shield, Raymond’s second
blow nearly severed his head from his neck completely.

In the relative silence that followed, Raymond could hear a
hoarse panting. He looked down at William hopefully, but his body did not seem
to be moving. The sobbing breaths were those of the other man who was not yet
dead. Raymond was suddenly filled with grief and hatred. He took half a step
forward to finish the work he had begun, but shouts and sounds of battling men
made him aware of his responsibility.

It was only then that he realized he had let go of his
horse’s rein in the few past wild minutes. The destrier was young, not
completely trained, and was totally confused by a lack of weight in the saddle
and a loose rein. It was rearing and fighting, but too far away for Raymond to
reach without abandoning William. Raymond cursed the luck that had strained the
foreleg of his own horse, but he did not waste time. He dragged William the few
feet to the barn wall, pushed him against it, and took up his stand. At least
he would bring her father’s body home to Alys, he thought, not realizing he was
crying until the salt tears wet his lips.

Soon, however, he was too busy to cry. He fought and
bellowed “Marlowe! Marlowe!” One man of the troop found him, then another. All
raised their voices together, and little by little the remains of the troop
rallied around William’s still body. Fortunately there were enough of them to
make a turtle because, after several rushes had left more Welsh, dead and
wounded than English, the wily fighters withdrew and strung their bows again.

Seeing their intention, Raymond considered ordering the men
to take shelter in the barn. In the next instant he realized that could easily
lead to disaster. With the house burning already, they would not need to look
for ideas on getting their enemies into the open again. Then, thinking of the
house afire, he realized it was long, very long, too long since he had set that
blaze. Mauger should have come long ago. In the heat of fighting and the cold
of grief he had forgotten that they were bait, a force deliberately too small
for the odds they faced.

Guilt grasped at him with poisoned claws. He had been too
hurried. His firing of the thatched roof had failed. With the thought his eyes
rose, and his breath caught with fear. He had not been too hurried. The house
was in flames, plumes of smoke being swept up and out by the wind, up and out
over the barn!

It came to Raymond then that he would not have the grief of
bringing William home to Alys. How fortunate he had covered her father’s letter
with his own addressed to the king. Raymond heard his own voice giving orders
to the men, some to kneel with their shields before them, others to stand to
guard the heads and middle, still others to hold shields above their heads so
that a near-invulnerable surface would be presented to the Welsh archers.

Useless, all useless, his mind cried, simultaneously
surprised at the firmness of his voice, at the cheerful way he was urging the
men to be steady, promising that they would not be abandoned, that even if Sir
Mauger was by some cause delayed, the Earl of Hereford himself would soon be on
his way with the whole army. That might be true, Raymond thought, but it would
make little difference to them. Soon the barn would be in flames and they would
have to move. And he would not leave Sir William to burn. He would not!

They withstood that volley and another. Now, however, some
of the men were craning their necks to look above. Raymond urged them sharply
to look to their shield wall. “The fire is on the other side,” he assured them.
“It will be long before it eats through the beams.”

But he knew he could not hold them still much longer. They
were fighting men and feared the fire far more than they feared the weapons of
the Welshmen. He feared it himself and knew the fear was muddling his mind,
making him slow to think of expedients that might save them.

William had fallen forward on his shield, his arm sliding
out of the hold as he went down. His right hand, still clenched on the pommel
of his sword, had been jammed against his right side, pressing the torn shirt
and tunic under the mail directly against the wound. The pressure had stopped
most of the bleeding and the heat of his body with the group of men crowded
together for the defense had dried blood and cloth together into a hard plug.
This held tight, even when the feet of the men backing tight together pushed
him so that he rolled to the left. The broken shaft of the arrow was pressed
into the ground, driving the head deeper under his collarbone.

Pain lanced redly into the pleasant black nothingness that
had enveloped William. He moaned, his left hand scrabbling weakly on the ground
in an effort to lift himself away from what was stabbing into his shoulder. His
fingers found a purchase and clutched. Raymond, who had been standing above
him, bent down with a cry of joy. He had been so sure William was dead, having
seen the stroke on his head and blood running down his neck that he had never
bothered to confirm it.

“Sir William is alive,” he cried.

Momentarily, all spirits were lightened. Those of the troop
who had survived were the more experienced men William had taken from Marlowe
and Bix to strengthen his force of recruits. They were used to thinking that
Sir William would get them out of any trouble he led them into. He always had
in the past. They were willing to fight for Raymond, who was brave and steady.
They liked him and trusted him, but they
believed
in Sir William.

The lines of the turtle, which had been wavering as one man
and then another inched forward away from the sounds of fire above and behind,
firmed. Raymond knelt, lifting and turning William so that he was face up,
propped against his knee. The whole side of his face was plastered with mud and
blood, but the eyes blinked as light hit them. Before Raymond could speak,
another volley of arrows came, but the men had pulled together just in time.
The chinks that had been in the shield wall seconds before, which had induced
the Welsh to shoot, were closed.

The men knew it, recognized their escape, and their spirits
rose still further. Taunts and catcalls came from behind the shields. Volleys
of abuse flew in answer to the volley of arrows that had failed its purpose.
The sound of their own voices launching insults for want of better weapons was
cheering also. It made them feel less helpless, less trapped, even though the
situation had not changed.

“We are trapped,” Raymond was saying urgently to William.
“Sir Mauger has not come, and the barn behind us is afire.”

William’s hazel eyes lifted to Raymond’s face. They were
dazed, but William’s lips moved. Raymond bent closer, struggling to understand
the indistinguishable mumble. “South,” he made out and then, “to Hereford.”

Revelation came to Raymond. What a fool he was to keep the
men standing here. Softly he began to give orders. The men were to close the
turtle further so that four of them could load William on his shield. Then they
were to move down along the barn, that was south, as Sir William said. This
would take them much closer to the huts.

The change in position, Raymond realized, would provide a
number of advantages. First and most important, it would give the men something
to think about, a feeling that they were doing something to save themselves
rather than simply waiting to be burnt or slaughtered. Perhaps they actually
could do something—make a dash for the huts when the barn became too dangerous.
Among the huts it would be far more difficult to shoot at them and almost
impossible for a large group to rush them.

A real roar came from the roof of the barn. Instinctively
Raymond looked up. He was aware, even while he stared, frozen, at the pillar of
fire that had shot up, that the voices of the men had fallen into silence, the
taunts and laughter dwindling away. It was time to move, to give them a second
dose of hope. Raymond brought his eyes down to gauge what the Welsh would do,
and his voice froze in his throat. He stared every bit as blankly as the men
around him. There were no Welsh. The area they had occupied was empty. Even the
old cow and the few sick sheep that had been left in the field to the north of
the barn had disappeared.

Chapter Eleven

The comfortable dark would not enfold William properly.
Little red flickers and flashes of pain kept piercing it. From time to time
there were sounds, most of them were distant, but a few times his name was
called loudly and persistently. He tried to answer. There were tears in the
voice, so it was important. However, when his eyes opened, a whole pitch barrel
of agony burst in his head and he slipped back into the dark with relief.

Then, suddenly, fire blazed in his shoulder, and it did not
die but burned fiercer and fiercer until he struggled against it, crying out,
trying to quench it with his hands. But he was bound. Torture? The Welsh? But
why? Who? He forced open eyelids weighted with stones, but the blur beyond them
was meaningless. At last, as suddenly as it had flared up, the flame of pain
diminished. The blur congealed into a face—old, concerned, with a rim of gray
hair.

“What…” William whispered.

“You will be easier now.” The voice was also old, very
gentle. “The arrow was lodged under the bone and it was needful to cut deep,
but it is out now, my son. Sleep.”

“Water,” William pleaded.

“Yes, of course.”

His head was raised and a cup held to his lips. He drank
thirstily, drank again, and lay back. His eyes closed. He forced them open once
more. But the man had already turned away, and William caught only a glimpse of
a gray robe belted with a rough cord. Not the Welsh, he thought muzzily. That
was the robe of one of the new orders of friars. He must be in the infirmary of
a holy house.

Later, William knew it was later because when he was
awakened he was aware of a raging thirst. Since the last thing he remembered
was drinking, he knew time had passed. However, it was not the thirst that woke
him now, it was voices and one of them was familiar. Somehow, he did not wish
to answer that voice, and he lay limp.

“Are you sure he will live?”

“My son, all things are in God’s hands, but there is no
reason why he should die. He is strong, and no vital organ was touched, no
inner part of the body. The wounds are large, but they are of the flesh and are
clean. God willing, yes, he will live.”

“I am glad of that. He is a longtime friend and my close
neighbor.”

Mauger, William thought, and was flooded with a double and
triple guilt. He was ashamed of disliking the man, knowing that he disliked him
because of the many injuries he had done him. Worse yet, he was aware that he
had not wanted to recognize the voice nor answer because he did not want it to
be Mauger. Quicker than thought, he had hoped that Mauger had also been caught
in the trap and was dead. Now William would have spoken out of shame, but guilt
intensified his weakness, and he could not find his voice.

“I do not like this place you have laid him,” Mauger was
saying.

“We are crowded, my son,” the friar answered. “There are
many wounded.”

“I know, but you could take away that table under the window
and turn the two other pallets. Then he could lie near the window where there
is better air. If you will do that, I will make an offering to the church.”

William felt even worse, but he could do nothing. He could
not bear to be beholden to a man he had cuckolded, whose fond hope of alliance
he must oppose.