The Knight: A Tale from the High Kingdom (43 page)

The last set of doors would not hold for long. Moreover, the Yrgaardians would soon overrun the ramparts via the stairs running up from the gate’s archway.

‘You must leave while there’s still time,’ Lorn urged. ‘Laedras is not yet master of this fortress. Take advantage of that. Escape.’

‘No. There’s no question—’

Lorn seized Alan brusquely by the neck and shoved him against a wall.

‘Come to your senses, Alan!’

‘Let go of me, Lorn!’

‘Start by listening! I was mistaken, all right? I thought we could hold the ramparts for a few days, but I was wrong. Now the game’s up. Those who lock themselves away in the Castel will either be killed or taken prisoner.’

‘Let go of me …’ Alan said in a menacing tone.

But Lorn wasn’t paying any heed.

‘You are a prince of the High Kingdom, Alan. If tomorrow we die alone, people will remember us, remember our battle here, and our deaths will not be in vain. But if you stay, if you are captured or killed, our defeat will be complete. It … It will be a catastrophe. The High King’s own son, a prisoner of the Black Dragon? Can you even imagine it?’

Alan brutally freed himself.

At that same moment, the sound of muffled pounding against the doors reached their ears.

‘Listen to Lorn,’ Enzio intervened. ‘You’re wounded. You fought for as long as you could. Now, you must think of the High Kingdom.’

The prince hesitated.

‘It’s your duty, Alan,’ said Lorn. ‘Besides, perhaps you’ll have time to raise troops and return with reinforcements. You can still save us. You alone.’

Defeated, resigned, Alan nodded.

‘All … All right. But I will return. With troops.’

Lorn smiled.

‘I’m counting on it.’

They exchanged an embrace.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lorn glimpsed silhouettes outlined on top of the ramparts.

‘Get out of here, now.’

‘Stand fast. I promise you I’ll—’

‘I know.’

Lorn turned to Enzio.

‘Go with him. Make sure nothing happens to him?’

The Sarmian gentleman nodded. They too exchanged an embrace, and Enzio murmured in Lorn’s ear:

‘You know we won’t return in time, don’t you?’

Lorn did not reply, but his gaze said that he knew.

‘Knight!’ called Logan. Despite Lorn’s orders, he had waited. ‘We must go!’

Lorn nodded.

After a last salute, the three friends separated and moved off quickly in different directions.

Alan and Enzio escaped across the ramparts.

Chance led them to the spot where the Yrgaardians had climbed the wall. They found the body of the giant lizard which had collapsed there, dead from exhaustion. They made use of the ropes left by the assailants and quickly covered a good distance in the darkness, keeping well away from the road along which the dragon-prince’s troops were marching in an orderly fashion.

They arrived at the city’s port and knew they were out of danger when Alan turned back towards Saarsgard with a sorrowful expression. Enzio guessed what he was thinking and told him in a compassionate tone:

‘We can do nothing more for them, Alan. Come on.’

22

Lorn and Logan caught up with some stragglers whom they accompanied as far as the old tower guarding the sole bridge linking the Castel to the rest of the fortress. It was a massive structure, its thick walls pierced with arrow slits. Crossing it was the only means of reaching Saarsgard’s heart, by way of a long and narrow stone arch straddling a deep abyss. The besieged, as a last resort, could take refuge within the Castel. But a battle could still be waged from this guard tower, which a handful of men sufficed to hold.

Lorn found Dorsian there, organising its defence.

‘How many men do we have left?’ the knight asked him.

‘Thirty or so.’

‘Select the fifteen most valiant among them. They will stay behind to defend the tower with me. I want you to fall back with the others into the Castel’s keep and place the most seriously wounded, the ones who can’t fight, in a safe spot. Perhaps they will be spared. I’m going up to see how the Yrgaardians are progressing.’

Dorsian seized Lorn’s arm.

‘Wait.’

‘What?’

Dorsian led Lorn slightly apart within the great hall, where men – sombre and attentive – were preparing to fight, bandaging their wounds, and awaiting orders.

‘Does it make sense to resist any longer?’ asked Dorsian in a low voice.

‘You want to surrender?’

‘How much longer can we hold out? A few hours? If we only had the means to fall back and blow up the bridge …’

‘We’re out of powder,’ said Lorn. ‘And besides, if we did that we’d trap ourselves. And it would allow Laedras to take the rest of Saarsgard without a fight. He would not even need to raze the Sanctuary with his cannons. He would simply let us die of hunger.’

‘I know,’ said Dorsian. ‘We needed to put up a fight. But only as long as it had a meaning.’

‘It still does.’

‘Really? Where’s Alan?’

Lorn realised that Dorsian already knew the answer.

‘I told him to flee,’ he acknowledged nonetheless.

‘You were right to do so. But that means the game is lost, doesn’t it?’

Lorn gave no reply.

‘I’m not speaking for me,’ added Dorsian. ‘I’m speaking for them. These men have displayed great courage. They followed you when they knew this battle could not be won. They deserve not to die in vain. To not be sacrificed. And what difference does it make if Saarsgard falls now or in an hour’s time? Everyone will know what you accomplished in the High King’s name, Lorn. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Because you believe I’m doing this for glory?’

‘Then for what? For whom? For them?’

Lorn turned towards the men in the hall.

‘Soldiers!’ he called out. ‘Soldiers!’

The men fell silent. Some stood. All of them waited.

‘What we have done here will be recorded in the
Chronicles
,’ said Lorn to all those present. ‘It will be written that we have fought and that we have suffered and that we have resisted for an ideal: that of the High Kingdom. And for a cause: that of the High King whose banner flies above this fortress. Now we face a choice.’ He paused. ‘We can surrender now, and all will remember that we fought well. Or we can go on fighting, and people will remember that we were victorious.’ He paused again. ‘You are free to beg clemency from a dragon-prince.’ Then Lorn suddenly raised his voice. ‘But I shall not surrender! I shall not give up! I shall never lay down my sword!’ He drew forth his Skandish blade. ‘So, I ask you this: are you with me? Will you be at my side when Yrgaard charges? Will you be at my side when my blood is spilled? And will you fight so that once more, just once more, the sun shall rise at Saarsgard above the colours of the High King?’ He brandished his blood-stained sword. ‘
FOR THE HIGH KING
!’ he cried.

‘FOR THE HIGH KINGDOM
!’ the soldiers roared back.

Lorn turned to Dorsian.

‘You’ve just condemned these men to death,’ the latter said.

Lorn did not blink.

‘Your fifteen bravest,’ he reminded the rebel leader before making his way to the stairs, with Logan at his heels.

Liam and Yeras were at the top of the tower.

‘Well?’ asked Lorn.

Instead of replying, Yeras motioned with his chin towards the torches of the column which was entering Saarsgard and advancing towards them accompanied by the slow, steady beat of war drums. A rider wearing a scarlet cape rode at their head. It could only be the dragon-prince.

‘Do you think they’re going to attack tonight?’ asked Liam.

‘I think Laedras will want to deliver the final blow, yes.’

Lorn then noticed his lieutenant’s pallor, and recalled seeing Logan and Yeras helping him leave the archway, in the smoke and dust, after the explosion of the outer doors. Liam had his left arm in a sling and his hand wrapped up to the elbow in a bloody rag.

‘Show me,’ said Lorn.

The veteran shook his head.

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

Yet he was visibly suffering. His eyes shone and sweat beaded upon his brow.

‘Is it serious?’ asked Lorn. ‘Don’t lie to me!’

Liam hesitated, and then nodded regretfully.

‘I want you to go down and get that properly bandaged,’ said Lorn firmly. ‘Then go and assist Dorsian in the keep.’

‘But—’

‘That’s an order, Liam. We’ll hold on as long as we can here, but we’ll end up falling back towards the keep and we’ll need help then. I want to be able to count on you when the time comes. Understood?’

Liam resigned himself to the assignment.

‘Yes, knight.’

He withdrew just as fifteen men arrived.

‘Did Dorsian send you?’

They nodded.

‘Are you all volunteers?’

‘Yes, knight,’ one of them answered.

‘Good. You five, remain with me here. The rest of you, at the arrow slits. Yeras, position them as you see best and make sure they all have enough munitions. Grab all the arrows and bolts you can.’

‘Yes, knight.’

Yeras left with the men under his command.

‘Logan,’ said Lorn, turning towards the mercenary with the twin swords. ‘You will fight at my side.’

The guard tower could be reached by means of a ramp which rose between two walls. It was otherwise inaccessible, backing onto thin air, the bridge spanning the abyss resting upon the upper portion of its structure.

The drums still beat.

Leaning on the parapet, Lorn watched the Yrgaardian troops who were now merely waiting for an order to attack. Patient and disciplined, unmoving, they were perfectly silent in the torchlight. Their numbers would favour them insofar as Laedras could launch wave upon wave of assaults, but the ramp would force them to present themselves only ten or twelve abreast at the bottom of the tower and Lorn planned to make the most of this advantage.

His gaze moved further out, to the ramparts, and he wondered if Alan and Enzio had managed to escape. He hoped so …

The drums beat on. Slow and steady as the pulse of a sleeping giant.

What time was it?

Lorn raised his eyes towards the Great Nebula, which seemed very pale and very distant to him. It would be daylight in a few hours, but Lorn did not know whether he would see the sun rise and – strangely enough – that did not seem to matter much.

All was ready within the tower.

The men were at their posts and waiting in a silence punctuated by the drums. An uneasy silence soaked in the sour odour of sweat exuded by fear. The silence that comes before steel, screams and bloodshed.

Lorn reviewed the events that had led him here, to this hour. He had endured some of them and provoked others, sometimes urged on by a destructive impulse, sometimes by a desire for justice, and sometimes by a thirst for vengeance. And at times, that impulse, that desire and that thirst had all been one and the same sentiment that moved him. Lorn wondered if he really sought peace, as all those who had suffered were supposed to be seeking. He had believed that at first, but now he doubted whether it was true. Was it because he had changed so much? Only a few months had gone by since he had been liberated from Dalroth. That had been in the spring, and now it was autumn. Yet an eternity seemed to have passed between the two seasons. An eternity that was the beginning of a new life.

For his liberation had been a rebirth.

In pulling him out of its Dark-infested depths, Dalroth had given birth to him.

Lorn lifted his hand wrapped in leather and looked at it carefully, as if discovering it for the first time. Slowly he unwound the strap which concealed the mark of the Dark.

He would not wear it any longer.

The drums suddenly fell silent, leaving behind an emptiness which filled the night.

In the tower, each of the defenders held their breath.

Lorn exchanged a grim glance with Logan who was positioned on his left. Then he turned to the young soldier who stood to his right and who gripped his crossbow in his damp hands.

‘What’s your name, soldier?’

‘Glenn, knight. Esko Glenn.’

‘Why are you here? Why didn’t you leave with the others when it was still possible?’

The young man thought about it before replying. He could hear his heart beating, and his answer almost astonished him.

‘My father. He … He would have been proud, I think. He would have stayed, if it were him.’

‘Thank you,’ said Lorn. ‘I wish you luck, Esko Glenn.’

Horns sounded.

The drums abruptly resumed at a mad tempo and, in one mighty warrior clamour that gripped the guts, the Yrgaardians charged.

23

They repelled the first assault.

Without having even placed a single ladder against the wall, the Yrgaardians retreated, leaving behind a dozen bodies and carrying away an equal number of wounded. The defenders gave victorious hurrahs and Lorn let them, although he knew this assault had only been intended as a test of their resistance. At least they hadn’t suffered any casualties, as he confirmed by yelling down the stairs:

‘REPORT!’

Yeras, who was in charge of the crossbowmen at the arrow slits on the lower floors, answered:

‘NO DEAD, NO WOUNDED.’

Lorn returned to the parapet.

‘Here they come again,’ Logan said.

Indeed, the Yrgaardians were already returning in greater numbers, along with two large ladders, a battering ram and broad shields to protect those who were carrying it.

‘Aim at the men with the battering ram,’ said Lorn, shouldering his crossbow. ‘On my command …’

The assailants ran up the ramp screaming, backed by the frantic beat of the drums.

‘NOW!’

Lorn, Logan and the five soldiers defending the parapet loosed their bolts together, almost immediately imitated by the crossbowmen below, Yeras having waited until the same moment before giving the order to fire. Fifteen bolts sped towards the soldiers carrying the forward end of the ram. Some buried themselves with a thump in the shields. A few scored hits. Two leading men collapsed and caused the others to stumble. The ram fell heavily to the ground and rolled on the paving while the charge continued.

‘RELOAD!’
ordered Lorn.

The crossbows were tautened by their levers and shouldered. The attackers had almost reached the foot of the tower.

‘
THE LADDER BEARERS!
’ yelled Lorn. ‘
SHOOT THEM D—
’

Lorn did not finish, surprised by the sound of cannons being fired from the fortress’s ramparts.

‘Take cover!’

But cannonballs were already striking the tower and its parapet, passing over their heads or whizzing between the merlons. Laedras had deployed cannons on Saarsgard’s outer ramparts, aimed inwards at the Castel’s defenders. That was why he had waited to attack, allowing the defenders time to organise themselves.

He had been preparing too.

Lorn stood up, feeling slightly dazed, but quickly recovered his wits. The dragon-prince’s troops had placed their ladders against the towers and were climbing up them.

‘With me!’

Drawing forth his heavy Skandish blade, he killed the first man to appear at the embrasures, smashed the shield of the next, and, still striking with both hands, split his skull. Three soldiers moved to support him while Logan and two others drove back the assailants who were climbing the second ladder.

Dull blows struck the gate below: the battering ram was at work despite the bolts shot by the crossbowmen from their slits. When one man fell, another immediately replaced him.

‘HOLD THEM BACK!’
Lorn cried.
‘DON’T LET THEM SET FOOT ON THE PARAPET!’

The cannons fired a new salvo as Logan pushed a ladder out into thin air and took a wound to the side. The cannonballs’ impacts shook the tower. One of them lodged itself in an arrow slit, sending stone shards flying which killed a crossbowman. Another whizzed past Lorn and decapitated a soldier fighting on the parapet. A third smashed a merlon into a cloud of dust.

The ram was still battering at the gate.

With his men, Lorn pushed off the second ladder. Then he looked below, took stock of the situation, and turned to Logan.

‘
THE GATE IS GOING TO GIVE WAY SOON. HELP ME
,’ he said, before straining against a merlon that had been struck by a cannonball.

Logan pushed with him and the loosened blocks shifted, slowly tilted, leaning out above the gate, and finally toppled in an avalanche of stone and dust which crashed fifty feet below onto the men wielding the ram. It killed and maimed, crushing bone, flesh and metal. Horrible cries rose and the hammering against the great gate, at last, halted.

The respite, however, was of short duration.

Already, the cannons were thundering again.

Already, more ladders were being raised.

The fighting resumed at the embrasures. Abandoning the arrow slits, Yeras and his crossbowmen came up to assist Lorn and the others, who risked being overwhelmed. At the top of the tower, they loosed a last volley of arrows at the Yrgaardians straddling the parapet, then they drew their swords and threw themselves into the melee.

Their arrival made all the difference.

The assault was repelled, the ladders destroyed and the attackers who still remained on the tower were quickly eliminated, launched into space without there being any question of taking prisoners. But the Yrgaardians had dragged the battering ram clear, pushed the bodies out of the way and, once again, under the orders of a big black drac, the gate was subjected to the device’s mighty blows.

Lorn realised they would have to abandon their positions if they did not want to be trapped here once the doors below gave way. Moreover, of the fifteen men who had been defending the tower with him, seven were dead and three were no longer capable of fighting.

His gaze fell on the body of young Glenn.

‘We’re falling back,’ he said, just as the tower suffered another salvo of flaming cannonballs.

‘Knight!’ Yeras called, while Logan led the men down the stairs, supporting the wounded. ‘Come and see.’

Lorn cautiously approached the ruined parapet.

He noticed that the horizon was growing lighter, and then saw what Yeras was pointing out.

Laedras was heading towards the tower, leading fresh troops marching to the beat of drums, all perfectly aligned, their red-and-black banners floating above them.

‘Quickly,’ said Lorn.

They hastened to the stairs.

On the bridge side, the tower could be closed by a portcullis. The latter was half-lowered, propped up by a solid wooden beam that Lorn and his men had placed there, just before destroying the mechanism keeping the barrier raised.

Lorn made sure they had not left anyone behind in the tower. Then, with the help of Logan and Yeras, he removed the beam and the portcullis slammed down into place, Yssaris passing beneath it with a bound before streaking, belly to the ground, towards the Sanctuary.

At the same instant the gate opened, smashed apart by the battering ram.

They were running across the bridge when Lorn heard a loud squealing of tortured metal that chilled his blood. Letting the others outdistance him, he turned and saw the portcullis twisting, opening up as if claws had dug into the middle of it and were spreading it apart.

The soldiers continued to flee towards the Sanctuary whose gate stood wide open for them, but Yeras and Logan had also halted and were coming back, cautious and worried.

‘What is it?’ asked Yeras.

‘Laedras is fed up with the damage we’ve inflicted upon him,’ Lorn replied.

‘Somehow, that idea comforts me,’ remarked Logan.

‘He’s using his Dark powers.’

‘The ones that come to him from the Black Hydra,’ Yeras thought aloud.

‘From his mother, yes …’

‘Then we’d better hurry,’ said Logan. ‘We’ll be a lot safer behind the Sanctuary’s walls.’

The soldiers and the wounded were entering the keep while, at the embrasures on top, Liam and Dorsian observed the scene without comprehending.

‘Those walls won’t hold him back,’ said Lorn. ‘Not while he has possession of his Dark powers. Fortunately they’ll be used up quickly.’

He was perfectly calm.

‘Knight?’ Yeras asked anxiously.

Lorn watched the dragon-prince who was now crossing the ripped-open portcullis. Laedras was in armour but bare-headed, his red hair falling upon his cape and his spaulders. He walked alone, his sword unsheathed, surrounded by a mist which shifted about as if animated by a life of its own and took on the appearance of a dragon made of shadow and night.

So that’s the form the Dark puts on for you
, thought Lorn, not moving an inch.

‘Knight!’ snapped Yeras.

The blasts of a horn could be heard coming from the Sanctuary. They seemed to be desperately calling Lorn to fall back.

In vain.

Lorn looked down at his marked hand.

A feeling of warmth had invaded his fist and then his arm, radiating from the stone seal engraved in his flesh. It was a burning, familiar heat, but this time it was beneficent.

The Dark was calling the Dark.

‘Leave,’ said Lorn. ‘Join the others in the Sanctuary.’

‘You can’t defeat a dragon-prince, knight,’ said Logan.

‘I can slow him down. If he reaches the Sanctuary while in this form, it will be a massacre. And believe me, it’s better to be killed by Yrgaardian steel than by the Dark …’

Yeras tried to protest but, without taking his eyes off the dragon-prince, Lorn overrode him:

‘Leave, now. That’s an order. No turning back. Tell Dorsian that I’m giving him command. It’s been an honour to have fought at your sides.’

Yeras hesitated but Logan took his arm, signalling to him not to insist, and led him away.

They jogged off, leaving Lorn alone in the middle of the stone arch, standing at its highest point above the crevasse. A lugubrious groaning rose from its apparently bottomless depths.

The sun was rising.

Lorn took out his dark spectacles. One of the lenses was cracked, but he put them on anyway. His wounded shoulder no longer hurt. He was calm and almost confident.

In fact, he was perfectly indifferent to his own fate. Didn’t he have a destiny?

He drew his sword and waited.

‘You don’t actually imagine you can stop me, do you?’ Laedras asked in amusement.

‘I can always try.’

‘Surrender. I promise you a quick and honourable death.’

Lorn smiled.

The dragon-prince stared at him and Lorn was unable say which of the two, Laedras or the Dark dragon surrounding the Yrgaardian, was examining him more closely. He could make out two bright eyes in the statue of living mist.

‘Then I should like you to answer a question for me … Did you really do all this …’ Laedras made a gesture that encompassed the fortress all about them ‘… for that?’ He pointed a finger at the High King’s banner which floated in the light from the rising sun. ‘For the High King and the High Kingdom?’

‘They’re not the same thing,’ said Lorn.

But the dragon-prince wasn’t listening.

‘Or did you do it, as I believe, to set all the Imelorian kingdoms on fire?’

‘Why does it matter?’

Laedras pulled a face.

A few yards still separated the two adversaries. Only the two of them seemed to exist in the whole world, on a great stone arch spanning nothingness.

‘Farewell,’ said the dragon-prince.

Lorn adopted a defensive stance, his sword gripped in both hands. Laedras raised his towards the sky, before pointing it at the knight. The Dark dragon accompanied this movement. It reared up …

And spat out a black, opaque fire which engulfed Lorn.

The malevolent blast went on and on, obscuring its victim – in flesh and in soul – entirely. A terrible metallic scream bore into the temples and stirred the guts of those witnessing the scene. The air vibrated and the bridge itself seemed to tremble, dust escaping from beneath its stones.

Finally, Laedras lowered his sword and his dragon ceased to belch.

There should have been nothing left but a broken, deformed being, a cringing and wretched madman pleading to be killed with whatever sanity he still retained.

But instead Lorn pounced, delivering a slashing stroke to the middle of the dragon-prince’s chest with enough strength to split a tree stump.

Laedras reeled under the impact.

The dragon arched its back and screamed in pain.

The dragon-prince’s armour had saved him, but he was wounded. Astonished that Lorn had somehow withstood the full force of his Dark blast, he barely managed to counter a flurry of attacks.

What had just occurred was impossible.

Unless they were protected by the Dark, no one could …

The dragon-prince was unable to solve this conundrum, being too busy saving his own life. Transported, exalted, Lorn gave him no respite. The moment that Serk’Arn had spoken of had arrived. The Dark within him was triumphing. Pressing his advantage, carried away by his fury, he struck and struck again without letting up.

Upon the Sanctuary’s walls, horror and then incredulity had given way to delight. Hurrahs and cries of encouragement rang out from the defenders. In the guard tower, on the other hand, there was fearful consternation …

Laedras attempted to riposte, but again, Lorn surprised him. The knight dodged, grabbed the dragon-prince by the wrist and delivered a violent headbutt to his face. Laedras staggered backwards. The Dark dragon vanished, as if carried away by a whirlwind which tore it into shreds. Lorn continued his onslaught, delivering a hook to the jaw with the fist holding his sword. The basket guard of the Skandish weapon stunned the dragon-prince, who dropped a knee to the ground. Then Lorn spun him round to face the tower and, seizing him by the hair with his left hand to force the Yrgaardian to lift his chin high, he slid his sword under the other’s throat and waited.

The dracs belonging to the dragon-prince’s personal guard were already coming out onto the bridge. But they halted on seeing their master at Lorn’s mercy. With a single gesture, the knight could slaughter their commander.

Would he dare?

Lorn heard the Sanctuary’s doors opening behind him. He glanced back and saw his own men emerging but hesitating to advance too far, in case they provoked a catastrophe.

‘And now?’ asked the dragon-prince, his teeth pink with blood.

From the top of the guard tower, fifteen crossbowmen had taken aim at them.

‘I won’t let you capture me,’ continued Laedras. ‘If you try, I will order them to shoot.’