Stronghold (32 page)

One by one, they circled around the altar table.

For the first time in his life, despite all that he'd turned a blind eye to in the service of Earl Corotocus, Benan felt his faith begin to ebb. Never had he imagined he would face an enemy like this, though perhaps, in private, he might have said that he could manage it - that with the fist of the Almighty clenched above him he could stand off the hounds of hell. But still they approached.

"We exorcise thee, cursed dragon!" He lifted the cross as high as he could. "And all these, thine apostate followers! By the living God, by the true God, by the holy God!"

Their hands clawed as they reached for him.

"Flee, Satan!" he screamed. "Thou inventor and master of every deception, thou enemy of Mankind!"

As one, they halted.

Benan gazed, blinking, from one to the other. Though they crowded around him, only affording a few feet of safety, an absurd hope suddenly rose in his breast.

Had the ancient rite succeeded? It would have amazed him if it had. Though Benan had scorned Earl Corotocus for his excesses, he'd feared from the outset that his long record of collaboration with the nobleman had damaged him in the eyes of Heaven. He had simply
known
that God would not send his angels down to assist. That Christ would
not
appear by his side, armed with a flaming sword.

And yet the devils' advance had apparently ceased.

Benan glanced down. The fragments of sacred wafer lay in a distinct line between him and them - like a barrier. Not one of them had set foot across it. His heart rate increased; he felt the beginnings of hope.

"We command thee! We command thee..." Benan's voice rose triumphantly, only for his words to tail off again.

For with slow, malicious pleasure, the thing in the Episcopal vestments shook its head from side to side and with a single, deliberate step, crossed over the holy fragments. The others copied it and, raising their claws, took hold of the shrieking priest from all sides.

Benan dropped to his knees. His eyes were screwed shut as multiple dead fingers groped through his hair and over his tear-sodden face. His heart throbbed in his chest, but, with a core of steel that even he didn't know he possessed, he proceeded with the exorcism.

"Make way for Christ, in whom thou couldst find none of thy works! Bow beneath the mighty hand of God..."

He dared to look up at them again. It seemed that every demonic face in creation was peering down at him. Crushed, pulped, rotted, scabrous masks of what they'd once been, and now possessed by some force of evil no man could understand, exuding it like a fog of death.

"Tremble and flee at the invocation of the holy name of Jesus, before which all Hell will shake. At the name of Jesus, to which all powers on Earth and in Heaven are subject, which the cherubim and seraphim unceasingly praise, saying 'holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts."

Fascinated, they ran their hands over his plump, naked flesh. They found his many welts.

"Our help is in the name of the Lord," Benan croaked. "The name of the Lord! God of Heaven, God of Earth, God of angels, God of apostles and martyrs..."

His voice rose to a castrato screech as, one by one, they dug their bony claws into his wounds.

"...who has the power to give life after death because there is no other god than Thee."

And then they ripped, tearing the wounded tissue from his body like fabric from a seamstress's dummy. His keening howl might have shattered the eardrums of anyone human.

"For thou... thou art the creator of all things visible and invisible," he sobbed. "To whose reign there shall be no end. We humbly prostrate ourselves before Thy glorious majesty... deliver us..."

He screeched again as more meat was rent from his bones.

"... deliver us from the infernal host..."

He batted at them with the iron crucifix, until the bishop-thing snatched it from his grasp.

"Hear us, Father. Hear us..."

But his words ended and all that came from his mouth were scarlet bubbles. The white-hot fire that engulfed him was fading, but he had no strength to stand, and they had to hoist him to his feet. His vision was darkening. The end was coming, he knew. Though it hadn't quite come yet, and he was still compos mentis enough to feel wonder that the bishop-thing was now offering the crucifix to his lips.

How strange, Benan reflected, that after everything they'd subjected him to, they were giving him a chance to make good his martyrdom. He leaned forward to kiss the holy symbol, as so many saints had done in the past while bound to racks or nailed to crosses - but the object was withdrawn before he could make contact.

To his pain-fuddled bewilderment, it was lifted up above his eye-line, where he lost track of it altogether, until he felt its cold iron base placed on top of his cranium, in the very middle of his tonsure. Other dead hands now clamped Benan's head to keep it steady. His confusion lingered a little longer, but a whimper of understanding broke from his blood-slathered lips as the bishop-thing began to press the crucifix downward with crushing force, driving it inch by agonising inch through his skin, his bone, and finally into his brain.

The last thing that Father Benan realised, before his world winked out of existence, was that, if nothing else, when he too walked with the dead, the sign of his faith would be planted in the top of his skull.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Like the Great Hall, the State Rooms, which would normally form private apartments for the castellan of Grogen Castle and his family, had been ransacked; their exquisite furnishings were smashed or stolen, their tapestries and wall-hangings torn down. Welsh profanities had been written in excrement on the whitewashed walls.

The casements here, while not exactly arrow-slits, were still tall and narrow, set in deep embrasures, and had been covered with sheets of tinted horn, though many of these had been shattered, for grapples had been shot through them.

"Which way?" Gurt said, as he and Ranulf entered the first room, breathless.

Ranulf knew that these State Rooms were located in the southeast corner of the inner court and, indeed, casements looking down into the bailey stood in front of them as well as to the right. This meant that, to reach the Keep, they had to head through the arched portal on their left. Before they did, they closed and bolted the door behind them, but almost immediately there were smashing impacts on the other side. Gleaming axe-heads appeared through the shuddering wood.

"That way," Ranulf said, pushing Gurt towards the arch.

"What are you doing?"

"I'll try to slow them down."

Gurt nodded and hurried out of sight. Ranulf turned back to the door, against which a storm of axes and hammers was now raging. Amid the shattered furniture, he found a wrought iron candelabra, the central stem of which was a tall, spear-thick shaft tapered at its tip to a needle-point. He rammed it against the door, wedging its base under the central transverse plank and planting its tip between two floorboards. This braced the door well, though more axe-heads burst into view. Now they were being twisted, worked from side to side in the gaps they had made, cracking the wood, forcing the planks apart. Ranulf backed away. The inside of his mail was awash with sweat. He suddenly felt intolerably tired; every cut, bruise and sprain ached. He turned to follow Gurt - only for something to catch hold of his bitten ankle. Glancing down, he saw an arm extended from beneath an overturned divan.

Another of the dead things now dragged itself into view - or rather, it dragged its upper half into view. It had been severed at the waist, and not by a clean blow either. A jumble of ropy innards slithered behind it, drawing a slug-like trail of crimson slime. Ranulf tried to yank his foot free, but the thing had a firm grip and now sank fingernails encrusted with grave-dirt into the injured joint. Ranulf yelped. Instinctively, he drew his sword and prepared to slash through the offending limb, only to remember that his sword was now a third of its normal length. He cursed.

The monster reached with its left hand and took hold of his sword-belt, by which it hoisted itself to waist height. It was climbing up his body, bringing its face ever closer to Ranulf's - though so caked with mud and blood was that face that only its gaping maw was visible; a maw in which the tongue was alive with maggots, in which only brown shards remained of its teeth.

Ranulf stabbed frantically down at it.

The squared-off sword was still sharp enough to rip repeatedly through flesh and bone, to plough what remained of that countenance to vile jelly. With its left hand, the monster tried to grab his sword arm, but this weakened its purchase on his belt, and he was able to fling it to the floor. Before it could right itself and come after him again - he had a crazy mental image of it running crab-like, balanced solely on its hands - he snatched the candelabra, and thrust it down into the horror's chest, driving the point through its heart, and, with a grinding squeal of wood, transfixing it to the floorboards, where it commenced to thrash and bellow like a maddened bull.

No longer braced, the door shuddered and split even more violently, but the bolt seemed to be holding - at least for the moment.

"
Ranuuulf!"
Gurt's distant voice halloed from beyond the archway. "Where in God's name are you?"

"I'm coming!" Ranulf replied, tottering after him.

He entered a lengthy gallery, which, half way along, turned from stone to timber and thatch and opened on its left hand side, where it overlooked the courtyard. At its far end, he could see the gantry drawbridge connecting with the portal in the Keep's south-facing wall. A figure had just emerged from that portal, walking backward onto the drawbridge. Its grimy green livery revealed it to be Gurt. He was arguing with someone.

"Just wait!" Gurt shouted. "Damn your eyes!"

Ranulf was perhaps twenty yards away when he realised what was happening. The drawbridge, which of course spanned a ninety-foot drop into the Keep's dry moat, was rising slightly. It seemed that somebody inside the Keep was determined to close it. Gurt had clearly argued for it be kept open for Ranulf, but had now had been forced to add his weight to the bridge.

"You damn slave!" Gurt shouted in through the Keep entrance. "Less than a minute is all I ask!" The drawbridge had risen half a foot. Gurt, struggling to maintain his balance, drew his sword and pointed it into the darkness. "I swear, I'll take this out of your hide!"

"I'm coming!" Ranulf cried hoarsely.

Gurt glanced along the gallery and his bloodied face split into a relieved grin.

"He's coming now," he said loudly.

Ranulf reasoned that one of the earl's men-at-arms would be inside there, working the drawbridge wheel. But the fellow who now stepped from the darkness behind Gurt, unnoticed by him, was no man-at-arms - it was Navarre. And he had drawn his trusty dagger. Without a word, he raised it over his head and drove it down hard, ramming it between Gurt's shoulder blades.

Ranulf slid to a stunned and breathless halt.

Gurt had gone rigid; his expression of relief had rapidly transformed to one of bemusement. He half-smiled and tried to speak - though no words came out. With a weak gesture towards Ranulf, he tottered slightly, his knees buckling. But it took a shove from Navarre to help him on his way, pitching him head first into the gulf.

"
Guuurt!"
Ranulf screamed, as his friend dropped from view.

Navarre glanced uninterestedly across the drawbridge towards Ranulf, before turning and walking casually back into the darkness of the Keep.

"Raise the bridge," he told someone.

Five seconds later, Ranulf arrived at the end of the timber gallery, but the bridge had already been drawn up out of his reach, marooning him there. With a heavy
clunk
, it came to rest against the facing wall - a good ten yards away.

Ranulf teetered on the terrifying brink. Far below, the tiny shape of Gurt lay still in the foot of the dry moat. Even from this distance, a crimson stain could be seen creeping out around his splayed green cloak. Ranulf might have gone cold at the thought that this shattered fragment was all that remained of the closest comrade he'd had during the fight for Grogen Castle. He might have gone colder still at the thought that, with all the other indebted knights slaughtered - in fact with all of those not bound in Earl Corotocus's personal
mesnie
dead, including his father - he didn't have a friend left in the world. But he was already cold, deeply cold. Not just clammy with sweat, but chilled to the marrow by the nightmares he'd witnessed and partaken in.

He was so numbed that it was tempting to simply remain here and await the inevitable. There was nowhere else to go anyway. Every ten yards along this timber gallery, a stout post connected with its roof, so it would not be difficult to climb up there. But the roof was of thatched straw, which could easily be penetrated by spears or eaten by flames, and beyond that there was nothing. The only solution it seemed was to kneel and offer contrition for his sins, praying that the end might come quickly.

But Ranulf did none of these things.

Instead, he turned and walked back along the gallery towards the State Rooms. He now understood what had motivated his father during his final years: that the antidote to a wasted life could only be a worthwhile death; that the price of living without honour could only be to die covered with it.

Yet Ranulf did not intend to die.

Not yet.

As he'd fought through the barrack house and the Great Hall, it had occurred to him several times that his demise was nigh and that perhaps he should welcome it as a just desert rather than fear it. But now he consciously and determinedly sought to avoid it - because there was something very important that he had to do first.

He entered the room where the legless monstrosity was pinned to the floor. It remained fixed down, but on seeing him became wildly animated, struggling, grunting, tearing handfuls of flesh from its own torso as it sort to dig the implement out. Meanwhile, the door connecting with the Great Hall had almost been battered through. One hinge had come loose, and great chunks of woodwork were missing. The parchment-faced figures beyond gave shrieks of glee when they saw that Ranulf had returned.