Stronghold (8 page)

The serjeant nodded and stumped away, only for Ignatius to suddenly point and shout. "Ho!"

They glanced south, to where the silver disc of the moon hung beyond the ridge. Two twisted tree trunks were framed against it.

"I thought I saw something," Ignatius said. "
Someone
."

"Someone?" Guiscard asked.

"He was against the moon. Coming over the rise."

"Probably a stag," d'Avranches said.

"It was a man. Look...
another!
"

This time they all saw the figure. It was tall, rail-thin, and it came quickly over the rise and descended through the darkness towards them. Another followed it, moving jerkily. This one too vanished into the murk. The crackling of wet undergrowth could be heard as the figures drew closer.

"Beggars?" d'Avranches said.

"In the middle of a war?" Guiscard replied. His gloved hand stole to the hilt of his longsword.

"Refugees?"

"And they'd approach an English baggage-train?"

"We should have sent outriders," Ignatius said in a small voice.

"When we give alms to the poor, you can tend to
our
business," d'Avranches advised him. "We'd have lost all contact with outriders in that storm."

"No, he's right," Guiscard said. His voice rose as he spied another two or three figures ascend over the rise. "We should have sent outriders.
Alarum! Alarum! Master-Serjeant, your trumpeter if you pleee..."

His words ended in a hoarse shout, as he was dragged from his saddle.

D'Avranches and Ignatius were at first too startled to respond. Guiscard shouted incoherently as he wrestled with someone in the muddy ditch on the north side of the road - which, it occurred to them, meant that danger was not just threatening from one side, but from
both
.

Ignatius now spied flurries of movement ahead of them. The point-footman, who'd been carrying a lantern on a pole as he marched at the front of the column, had been knocked from his feet. The pole stood upright in the mud, its lamp swinging wildly, only partly revealing two ragged shapes that were setting about the footman like wolves on a carcass.

"Good God!" d'Avranches said, focussing on dozens of forms suddenly streaming through the misty woods towards them.

Cries began sounding along the road behind. A carrion stench pervaded the entire column. Ignatius stood up and peered back. It was difficult to tell what was happening, but figures seemed to be wrestling between the wagons and carts. Horses whinnied. Someone gave a gargled shriek. Ignatius looked towards the moon - more and more shapes were coming over the rise: tattered and thin but moving with strength and purpose.

Alongside the wagon, Guiscard got back to his feet. He hadn't had time to free his longsword from its scabbard and his shield was still strapped to his back, but he'd managed to draw his dagger and plunge it into his opponent's breast before rolling the body away. However, there was no respite. Another twisted shape lurched at him through the gloom. Guiscard drew his sword and pulled up his coif. In the brief half-second before this new foe attacked, it passed through a ray of moonlight, and he glimpsed its face - its mouth yawning open and glutted with black slime, its eyes hanging from its sockets on stalks. What looked like a rope noose, its tether-end chewed through, was tight around its neck.

Guiscard struck first, swinging his sword in an overhand arc, splitting the abomination from cranium to chin. It still grabbed hold of his tabard, and he had to strike it again, this time hewing through its left shoulder before it overbalanced and fell. He raised his sword a third time, intent on chopping it to pieces, only to be halted by a searing pain in his right calf. Gazing down, he saw his first assailant, the one he'd thought stabbed in the heart, biting through his tough leather leggings. Thrusting his sword down, Guiscard transfixed it via the midriff and leaned on the pommel heavily. With a wet
crunch
, he sheared through its spine and pinned it to the mud, whereupon, rather than dying, it commenced a wild, frenzied thrashing.

Guiscard staggered backward, stunned. There were shouts and screams all around him, along with a weird, inhuman moaning. The stench had become intolerable - thick, putrescent, redolent of burst bowels, stagnant waste. He was leaped onto again, this time from behind. He flipped his body forward and threw his assailant over his head. But more of them ghosted in from the front and side. He unslung his shield and slammed it edge-on into mouth of the nearest one, but the thing only tottered. Guiscard's coif was then ripped backward; cold, mud-covered fingers rent at his hair. He tried to spin round, but hands were also on his throat. He was dragged back down to the mud, where he was unable to use his sword. He unsheathed his dagger again, but it was wrested from his grasp. He hammered at them with his gloved fists, but it made no difference. Fleetingly, a face peered into his that was little more than raddled parchment; its nose was a fleshless cavity, its eyes shrunken orbs rolling in bone sockets.

On the wagon meanwhile, both Hugo d'Avranches and Brother Ignatius were rooted to their bench. They pivoted around, helpless to move or say anything.

"They can't die!" a man-at-arms screamed as he went haring past. He made it several yards into the trees before he was bludgeoned with a knobbly branch. He sank to his knees, only to be overwhelmed by more dark, stumbling figures.

Ignatius shook his head dumbly. He didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know what he
could
do. But then a weight fell on him from behind. A ragged shape had scaled onto the back of the wagon and scrambled over its canvas-covered cargo. The sheer weight of it bore him from the bench and into the mire.

As a rule, Ignatius didn't like to fight. He felt it incompatible with his vocation. But as scribe and accountant to a professional soldier, it was impossible to avoid the occasional confrontation. He'd prefer not to be wearing mail over his black burel; he'd prefer not to be carrying the cudgel, the round-headed iron club by which clergymen were permitted to wage war. But he was glad of both now. The thing that had him down was cloaked by darkness, though a sickening reek poured off it. It ripped at his throat with bare hands that were slimy and flabby. He kicked at it, making good contact, though of course this was with a sandaled foot rather than a boot or sabaton, and the assailant would not be deterred. Ignatius grabbed the cudgel from his belt and smashed it across his foe's skull, which flew sideways at an angle that surely betokened a broken neck. The thing's grasp was weakened and Ignatius was able to push it off and scramble up.

It was still too dark to see what was happening. Strangely, there was no clangour of blade on blade or blade on shield, but the woods were filled with gruff shouts and agonised shrieks, and always that eerie dirge of moans and mewls.

Stammering the Act of Contrition, Ignatius tried to climb back onto the cart, only for a hand to catch his mail collar and yank him backward. He fell again into the mire. He couldn't see his attackers properly, though they were ragged and wet and stank to high Heaven. The skirts of his robe had flown up and, though he always wore under-garb in winter, this was made of thin linen and was easily torn aside. The next thing he knew, a hand that was hard like wood but as strong as an eagle's talon had gripped his genitals. Ignatius screamed in outrage, but another of them fell on top of him, smothering him with a torso that was like sticks under rotted leather.

Teeth snapped closed on his manhood like the jaws of a steel trap.

Ignatius's shrill squeal, as his maleness was torn from its root, pierced the night. Such pain and horror briefly gave him new strength, and he was able to throw off the figure smothering him, only to see that yet another was standing astride him, silhouetted by the moon. With skeletal arms it raised a heavy stone above its wizened head, and slammed it down onto his face. Blow after mighty blow crushed the monk's youthful features, flattening his tonsured skull until a hideous porridge of blood and brains oozed from his eyes, ears and nostrils.

On the other side of the wagon, Guiscard, caked in mud and filth, was being rent slowly apart. His mail had protected him to some extent, but now they lay on him in a heap, gnawing at his scalp, numerous pairs of claws trying to throttle him. Only with Herculean efforts, did he throw a couple of them off, and kick himself around in a circle to try and scramble back to his feet - but that was when the wagon began to move. On the driving bench, d'Avranches, white-faced with shock, was snapping the reins like a madman. Unnerved by the pandemonium, the horses ploughed forward, the wagon's heavy wheel passing over Guiscard's right leg. Bones exploded as the limb was crushed. Guiscard's ululation was deafening, but d'Avranches didn't hear it. He kept on snapping the reins.

All Guiscard's other cuts and sprains sank to insignificance as he rolled in the treacle of blood, mud and brains. He barely responded as his assailants swarmed back over him, fleshless fingers pinching his tongue, trying to rend it from his mouth, a stinking maw clamping on the side of his face and, with a vicious jerk, gouging out his left eye.

D'Avranches himself didn't get far. The wagon rolled perhaps ten yards before running into deep ruts. For all his whipping and cursing the animals, and for all their strenuous efforts, they made no further progress. Drawing his sword, the aged knight jumped down, but immediately turned an ankle and fell on his blade, snapping it in two. He clambered back to his feet, managing to draw his mattock and bury it in the skull of a figure lurching towards him. It tottered away, taking the mattock with it. D'Avranches's ankle-joint was on fire, but the urge to survive numbed it just enough for him to stumble off along the road. The pole-lantern was still planted a few yards ahead. The point-soldier who'd been felled lay next to it, his crimson innards scattered around him. Those responsible had moved on to attack the wagon train, but of course there were others - many others. D'Avranches hadn't reached the light before he sensed their contorted shadows skulking from the undergrowth to either side, tottering onto the road ahead.

Sweat-soaked and gasping for breath, he halted beside the light. He stared around, but from every direction they were pressing towards him.

He puffed out his chest and thrust back his shoulders. He might have run a few paces when panic overtook him, he might have left his comrades to die, but now he was about to die himself, and he would meet the challenge resolutely - as he'd always been determined to. He drew his final weapon, a small crossbow. Cranking the string back and fitting a dart onto the stock, he took aim. Though aged and corpulent, with legs bandied beneath his immense gut, Hugo d'Avranches was still a knight in the service of Earl Corotocus of Clun and King Edward of England, and he would make sure these rapscallions knew that.

But when they came into the light, it was a different story.

When he saw their cloven skulls, their smashed jaws and eyeless sockets, the clotted brains that caked their blue-green faces, the ribs showing through their worm-eaten rags - his courage failed him.

They were inches away from falling upon him when d'Avranches placed the crossbow at his left temple, and shot its lethal dart deep into his own head.

CHAPTER NINE

Ranulf was in the castle kitchen, with a hunk of bread under one arm and a bowl in his hands, when Hugh du Guesculin caught up with him. After the events of the last few days, Ranulf wasn't particularly hungry, but he now had a full night's watch duty ahead and knew that he had to get something into his belly. In addition, the game broth, which Otto, the earl's corpulent Brabancon cook, now ladled into his bowl from a huge, steaming pot, smelled delicious.

"I've been looking for you," du Guesculin said.

Ranulf didn't at first respond, even though, with nobody else in the kitchen, du Guesculin could hardly have been addressing anyone else.

"FitzOsbern, I said..."

"I hear you," Ranulf said, picking up a spoon.

Du Guesculin smiled in that usual self-satisfied way of his. Stripped of his mail, he now wore comfortable clothes: green hose and a hooded green tunic, with long, unbuttoned sleeves. He had donned a dagger at his belt in place of his sword. He'd even brushed his bobbed black hair and clipped his short moustache; all the more remarkable given that he was sharing the earl's spartan accommodation in the Constable's Tower.

"I hear you've formed quite an attachment to our prisoner?" he said.

Ranulf shrugged. "Then you hear wrongly."

"Ahhh... so you object to being replaced as her personal jailer because you deemed that an easier tour of duty than standing sentry on these walls?"

"At least I'd be out of the weather." Ranulf made to move through the archway into the refectory, but du Guesculin stepped into his path.

"Except that I don't believe a word of it, FitzOsbern."

Ranulf feigned shock. "You don't?"

"I believe that you feel sorry for the girl, or guilty about the way she's been treated, and are now concerned for her welfare."

"What you believe or don't believe is of no importance to me."

Ranulf pushed his way past and sauntered down a flight of four steps into the refectory, a low, vaulted chamber, lined with benches and long tables, but currently empty due to the lateness of the hour. He sat, tore his bread into pieces and, one by one, began to dunk them in the broth. He tried not to show irritation when du Guesculin sat down across the table from him.

"You really dislike me, don't you, FitzOsbern?"

"I don't have any feelings about you at all."

"Do I disgust you?"

Ranulf smiled. "You don't really want me to answer that question, do you?"

Du Guesculin pursed his lips. "You consider that you're not part of this tragic affair, is that right?"

"I wish I wasn't."

"How noble of you. But let's not conveniently forget the past, FitzOsbern. You are only in the earl's service because you yourself are a murderer."

Ranulf eyed him coldly, but continued to eat.