Stronghold (16 page)

Of course, even concentrating on these horrible scenes was preferable to watching the mass of dead and decayed flesh shuffling onto the bluff around her. On first arriving here, she'd tried to steel herself, to face the reality of what she was doing. Initially it hadn't been so bad - one stumbling, ragged figure had seemed much like another if you avoided looking at its face. But it wasn't long before she was noticing the various methods by which these pitiful forms had first been sent from this world: the nooses knotted at their throats, the spears that spitted them, the crazily angled torsos where spines had been broken.

In some cases it had hardened her resolve, reminding her in a way words never could of the depredations inflicted on her people. An old man - eyeless, tongueless, waving stumps for hands - made her weep. A young man - naked, a festering cavity where his genitals should be, a beam across his shoulders, his wrists nailed to either end of it, showing that he'd not just been emasculated but crucified as well - made her seethe with outrage. But as one apparition after another tottered past, it became increasingly difficult to focus on the injustice. A naked pregnant woman, her swollen belly slit open and an infant's arm protruding - and twitching - made the countess's gorge rise. A child torn apart by war dogs, and even now in death unintelligibly wailing - as though for a mother that would never answer its cries of pain and fear - made her clamp a hand to her eyes. A few hours later, even more grotesque figures had begun to appear: those who had died
before
this war - the diseased, the crippled, the starved. In some cases they had died months before. She saw stick limbs, worm-eaten ribs, skulls without scalps, faces that were green, faces that were black, faces that were hanging from the bone.

A tide of raddled flesh and filthy, leprous rags now jostled on all sides of her. The stench was unbearable, eye-watering even through her scented veil. She did her best to remain aloof, as Gwyddon and his acolytes were. But she could no longer look at these poor, corrupted husks. If they made contact with her stirrup-clad boots, merely brushing against them, she cringed. Her mount, which had once belonged to an English knight and had seen much battle, had become skittish, revolted by the smell and alarmed by the meaningless, mumbling discord of the dead. Every so often an instruction from Gwyddon - delivered in the hard pagan tongue of ancient times, rather than the melodious voice of her people now - would despatch fresh cohorts downhill towards the bridge. And how relieved Countess Madalyn was to see the backs of these, though always more would emerge from the woods and hills at her rear, and flow into the gaps.

She tried to console herself with thoughts of romantic myths. The histories of the Welsh had always been notable for brutality and malevolence. The fair Rhiannon tricked her fiancÈ Gwawl into a magic bag, where he was bludgeoned almost to death by her lover Pwyll, only at which point did he finally agree to release her from the engagement. The beautiful Arianrhod, angered that her family had discovered she was pregnant out of wedlock, cursed her own child, Lleu, for the entirety of his life, the ultimate culmination of which was his marriage to the hag Blodeuwedd, who gleefully murdered him. And yet it was no solace really - not
really
- for these were nought but fancies and folklore.
This
was altogether different. These lumbering wrecks, these sad, rotting travesties who once had been resting in God's sweet earth, who in most cases had paid their dues with agonising deaths and yet now had been called to die again and again and again - they were all
too
real.

The worst incident came in the middle of the day.

The largest projectiles so far impacted on the crenels of the castle's south wall and the roars of battle still echoed from the roof of its Barbican. But the countess was weary with it, reeling with the stench of death. In a moment of weakness, she happened to glance to her right. That was all it was - a glance, very fleeting. And yet, inexorably, as though fated, her eyes were drawn to someone she knew. Before she could think, his name broke from her lips.

"Kye!"

Again, fresh cohorts of the dead had been sent downhill to cross the castle bridge and follow the berm path, and her former bodyguard was going with them. Yet, unlike those others around him, Kye seemed to hear her.

He turned slowly - painfully slowly - to look.

Overjoyed, she dismounted and ran forward, oblivious to the carrion shapes that she thrust out of her way. Kye was a typically handsome son of Wales: tall, huge of build, with his great black beard, black bushy hair and piercing blue eyes.

"Kye!" she said again, elated.

She'd seen him struck down, but she must have been mistaken. He'd been struck, yes, but he'd survived. His even features were unmarked by flame or blade, unbitten by worm. He still wore his gleaming mail habergeon and the red leather corselet over the top of it. His eyes seemed to fix on her, their gaze clear and focussed. As she approached, she yanked back her hood and tore off her veil so that he would recognise her.

He extended a hand of friendship. She opened her arms to embrace him.

And then - horror, despair.

For he pushed her aside, and reached instead for the dragon standard in her horse's pannier.

Some soldierly instinct remained in Kye's curdled brain, some vague understanding that, though he was a combatant, he'd come to this place of battle without weapon or insignia. Now he remedied this, drawing the great banner free. Wielding it before him with both hands, he turned around and continued down the hill with his new comrades. As he went he half-stumbled on a boulder and his head fell to one side, lying flat on his shoulder. A crimson chasm yawned in the side of his neck.

Countess Madalyn tottered away, her veil clasped to her face again, now to stem a flood of tears.

Beyond the brow of the bluff, in a small birch wood, stood a gated stockade and within that a pavilion of gold silk decked with the dancing red lions of Powys. Inside this, the rough grass was laid with rugs and carpets, and there was a banquet table on which food and other refreshments were spread. A smaller table bore inkpots, quills and maps of the castle. In a rear compartment, there was a bed with a lighted brazier to one side, and on the other a silver crucifix suspended from a pole.

That evening, when Gwyddon entered, the countess was on her knees in front of this holy symbol, her hands joined in fervent prayer. Tears still streaked her pale cheeks.

"Countess," he said slowly, "might I remind you... the Cauldron of Regeneration, for all that it calls on great and unknown forces, does not signify the conquest of death."

"No, Gwyddon, it doesn't." She was breathing slowly, heavily. Her brow was damp with perspiration, her eyes red with weeping. "It signifies the conquest of
life
, and all that is fine and sweet and good in this world."

"Countess, we can live our fine, sweet lives when the enemy is destroyed. But to do that we need soldiers. And I have provided you with an inexhaustible supply."

"Leave me, Gwyddon." She went back to her prayers, but the druid did not leave. He rubbed at his beard.

"Tell me, ma-am, did your Jesus Christ not rise from the dead to show your people the way?"

"How dare you!" She whirled around. "How dare you mention our Saviour's name in this place! You are a necromancer, sir. This thing you have made is a pact with Satan, for which I fear I will pay with my immortal soul."

"Even if that were true, isn't it a price worth paying when so many others will be saved?"

She struggled to reply. It was difficult to counter this point even if she'd wanted to.

Ever since the Normans had captured England, progressively more Welsh land had fallen under their sway - either as punitive official policy or through the ruthless intrusion of the marcher lords. When they hadn't been seizing titles and territory, the Anglo-Norman barons had hatched schemes and offered bribes, stirring dissent, playing the Welsh princes against each other. Always, they'd sought new ways to encroach. Until at last, Edward Longshanks - the mightiest of all England's mighty warrior-kings - had proclaimed suzerainty over the entire realm, crushing the Welsh in all-out battle, then invoking English law and English custom. Castles like Grogen had been built to strangle the nation, not protect it. So the time for talking had passed - the most recent atrocities had surely proved this. The only solution was to fight. But fight with what? England was an empire and Wales had nothing.

"The destruction of Earl Corotocus and his murderous henchmen is the only response you can give," Gwyddon said. "It will signal that the sons and daughters of Wales are no longer English chattels, and that to make war on the Cymry is to invite annihilation."

"Annihilation, Gwyddon, is what I see all around me. I beg your pardon if it turns my stomach." She switched her attention back to her crucifix, rejoining her hands in prayer.

Before leaving, Gwyddon said: "I think you need to rest now, my lady. Your distress is quite understandable. War is indeed hell, and this one is no exception. But there is one thing about this war that will mark it out from all the others - it will be short."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The assault on the castle was now two-pronged.

A tide of the dead again forged across the southwest bridge and attempted to circle the stronghold via the berm path. At the same time, with the defenders having abandoned the Barbican, the attackers were able to catapult more and more of their soldiers over that blood-soaked northwest rampart. For every ten of these launched, five or six would be crushed by the impact of landing - often to the point where they were unable to stand - so even after several volleys of corpses had been discharged, only a relative handful, maybe twenty in total, were capable of continuing the assault. But this handful proved to be much more than just a thorn in the defending garrison's side.

With the roof hatches to the Gatehouse sealed, the Welsh corpses stumped through the postern and down the Barbican stair into the bailey. Here they met a few wounded stragglers who'd retreated without orders from the south curtain-wall, and tore them to pieces. Advancing past the Constable's Tower, they were deluged by more missiles, but bore through it without loss, as their comrades had done outside, and entered the southwest tower by its ground floor door. The ballista crews were too preoccupied trying to rain destruction onto the hordes of cadavers crossing the southwest bridge to notice. Only when blades or clubs fell on their backs or heads, or fleshless claws wrapped around their necks from behind did they realise the danger. Their gasps and grunts of effort became screams of fear and rage. They fought back with their spanners and mallets and knives, but the snarling dead fell on them with bestial fury.

The ballista rooms turned to abattoirs as their occupants were mauled and clubbed and hacked to death. The interlopers then climbed to those higher levels manned by the royal crossbowmen. Bryon Musard shrieked orders with froth-flecked lips as the dead clambered into view. They were assailed with every type of implement, but, already raddled beyond recognition as human beings, it made no difference to them. Hatchets clove their skulls, crossbows were discharged into their faces from point-blank range - and didn't so much as hamper them. Bryon Musard died as the bolt he'd just let loose was yanked from the throat of his target, and plunged to its feathers into his right eye. Others were strangled with their own bowstrings, or beaten with their own helmets until their heads and faces were black and purple jelly.

On the topmost turret of the tower, the bowmen, having recovered jugs and pots left by the drunken Bretons, had made naptha grenades. They lit these and flung them down through the hatches as the dead tried to ascend. Smoke and flame exploded upward, but still the dead came. Blazing from head to foot, they continued the fight, slashing the screaming crossbowmen with burning claws, embracing them in their flaming arms, falling over the battlements with them.

With the southwest tower and the ballistae lost to the English, the dead now thronged over the southwest bridge unimpeded. The berm was cluttered with rubble and charred bones, but they proceeded along it at speed. The English on the curtain-wall attacked them with whatever they could, but still had no shelter from the mangonels across the river, and now faced a new danger: on top of the southwest tower, the dead took possession of discarded crossbows and began discharging them. At the same time, those dead who had infiltrated the bailey began to scale the scaffolding or file onto the curtain-wall from the door on the southwest tower.

The troops on the south wall, mainly comprising men-at-arms and the earl's indebted knights, were made of doughtier stuff than the crossbowmen, but were unused to a foe like this. When Ulbert and Ranulf arrived there, having circled around the north and east-facing curtain-walls, they found a scene of total disorder. Wounded men staggered towards them along the parapet, stumbling through a wreckage of broken bodies and smashed timber hoardings. Even as Ranulf and Ulbert watched, three more projectiles came hurtling across the river. These were the so-called devil's sachets, each linen sack bursting in mid-air, raining colossal slaughter on the fleeing defenders.

"Move onto the east wall and the north walls," Ranulf shouted as men pushed past him. "Take up new positions. The mangonels can't reach you there.

"It isn't just the mangonels, FitzOsbern!" Walter Margas shouted, pointing behind him. "Look!"

The dead from the southwest tower were now half way along the south wall, shepherding the panicked defenders ahead of them. They were led by a particularly huge and horrible specimen. It was clad only in a ragged, muddy shift, which came down to its knees. Its bearded face was a sickly yellow. Black rings circled its sunken eyes. An odious red-grey gruel flowed from its flattened nose.

One after another, it grabbed any defender it could and flung him howling over the rampart. A longbow shaft slanted down from the southeast tower. It struck the monster squarely in the chest, but had no effect. Gurt Louvain moved to meet it. Ranulf shouted a warning and shoved his way forward, his father following him.