Stronghold (7 page)

"Foe over the mountain?" Like many who obsess that they are oppressed, Gwendolyn found it difficult to grasp the concept that her oppressors might feel they acted from a just cause. "What have my people ever done to you?
You
are the aggressors! You always have been!"

"When I was a child, miss, I lived on the shore of the River Wye." Ranulf mused. "I grew up hearing stories of how Prince Gruffud burned Hereford, the capital city of that region, and slew its entire population."

"That was nearly two-hundred years ago."

"King Edward has learned from the mistakes his forebears made. He won't tolerate hostile states on his borders."

"We're not hostile to you."

"Even neutral states must be viewed as hostile. Better to have a wasteland at your door than a tribe of barbarians whose loyalty your enemies can buy for a few cattle." He shrugged. "At least, that's the king's view."

"By the sound of it, it's a view you share."

"I understand the reasoning, even if I disapprove of the methods."

"Well in that you've set me a good example." She smiled coldly. "When my kinsmen get hold of you, forgive me if I understand their anger and merely disapprove when they tear you apart between their horses."

There was a sudden echo of voices from the passage. Ranulf withdrew from the cell, closing the door and locking it. At the next corner, he met Navarre carrying a flaming torch, and one of Garbofasse's mercenaries.

"Where did you put the Welsh slut?" Navarre asked.

"Who needs to know?" Ranulf said.

"Murlock needs to know, if he's to look after her."

Ranulf looked at the mercenary properly. Murlock was a brutal, bearded hulk, several inches taller than most men, his massive, ape-like frame crammed inside a steel-studded leather hauberk. When he grinned, fang-like teeth showed through a mass of dirty, crumb-filled whiskers.

"You're no longer the official jailer here, FitzOsbern," Navarre explained. "I thought you'd be pleased - one less onerous duty for you."

"And this whoreson is taking over?"

"The earl asked Captain Garbofasse for a man whose special skills fitted the task. Garbofasse nominated Murlock."

In the Welsh villages Corotocus had attacked en route from the Ogryn Valley, Garbofasse's mercenaries had taken a lead role in terrorising the populace; setting fire to cottage roofs, slaughtering animals in their pens and raping women and girls. Murlock, for one, had barely been able to keep his breeches laced. But he hadn't just raped them, he'd sodomised them, he'd beaten and kicked them, and made them watch as he'd personally tied the halters around the necks of their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons, and hoisted them up until they swung and kicked in the smoke-filled air.

Ranulf fixed Navarre with a disbelieving stare. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Are you out of yours, FitzOsbern? I wouldn't like to report that you've objected to yet another of the earl's orders."

"This boor... this animal, will
hurt
her."

Navarre shook his head soberly. "No. He's under orders to be gentle."

Murlock gave a snorting, pig-like chuckle, and Ranulf launched himself forward, grabbing the fellow by the Adam's apple and slamming him back against the wall.

In the same second, the tip of Navarre's dagger was at Ranulf's throat.

"Yield now!" Navarre snarled. "Right now, or I'll slice you open like a pear."

Ranulf didn't yield; not at first. He leaned on Murlock harder, mailed hands clenched on his windpipe, squeezing. Murlock's breath was caught in his throat. He couldn't breathe, yet he was grinning. His teeth showed like rotten pegs; his piggy eyes had narrowed to murderous little slits.

"You think I won't?" Navarre said. "I warn you, FitzOsbern... you know the earl likes nothing better than to make an example of one of his own. Nothing has made him more feared."

Ranulf finally stepped back, glistening with sweat, breathing hard. Gasping, Murlock sank to his haunches.

"You're swimming against a tide that will overwhelm you, boy," Navarre said, withdrawing his blade.

Ranulf turned and stalked down the fire-lit passage.

"FitzOsbern!" Navarre called after him.

Ranulf was ten yards away when he glanced back.

"The key, FitzOsbern! A cell door is no use without its key."

Ranulf took a long, heavy key from his pouch and dangled it from his fingers. "Come and get it."

Murlock lurched along the passage. He reached for the key and Ranulf dropped it into his palm, but then grabbed his wrist, yanked him forward and met him on the point of the chin with a club-like fist. Murlock was hurled sideways, caromed from the wall and collapsed to the floor, where Ranulf kicked him in the guts, dropped onto him with his knees and pounded his head and face, knocking out his teeth and smashing his nose like an over-ripe plum.

"That was nothing personal," Ranulf hissed into Murlock's ear. "Just a lesson I learned at the abbey school in Leominster. Prior Barnabus taught it us each morning with a willow switch - in case we transgressed during the day and he wasn't around to witness it. So be warned, you harm a single hair on that girl's head and this isn't even a hint of what awaits you."

Ranulf straightened up, kicked the fallen mercenary once more, for good measure, and glanced around. Navarre was watching intently, his mouth frozen in a half-snarl.

"Don't look so outraged, Navarre. I gave him the key, didn't I?"

CHAPTER EIGHT

Earl Corotocus's military might was the envy of his fellow magnates.

As controller of a troubled corner of the kingdom, he already had rights to maintain armed forces that went far beyond his normal feudal obligations. In addition to this, as one of the foremost barons of the realm, descended in direct line from Roland la Hors, one of the original Norman warlords who'd descended on England like a pack of rapacious wolves in 1066, he had greater influence than most and even greater wealth. His estate comprised innumerable fiefs, castles, honours and titles, every one of which could be used to generate additional soldiery and military funding. Very quickly and perfectly legally, he could put a private army into the field that was almost of a size to challenge the king himself. The warriors he had at Grogen were only its spear-tip.

He was also a student of the most modern methods. Where Earl Corotocus was concerned, battle could no longer be left to the wild chance of heroic charge over level field, nor a single combat between picked champions. Though both the Church and the knightly code frowned on him for it, he had an avowed belief in the usefulness of irregular forces, in hit and run raids, in assassinations and ambushes. His personal household was supplemented with warriors drawn from far beyond his demesnes. Not trusting exclusively to such fanciful, out of date devices as homage and fealty, the earl would willingly take scutage from those less able of his vassals, and use it to obtain quality swords and lances from much further a-field. Hence the presence in his mesnie of paid war-dogs like Navarre, originally from the Aquitaine, and the employment of free-companies like Garbofasse's band who came from all parts of the country and were largely felons and cutthroats.

Yet the most feared section of the earl's military power was provided neither by knights nor mercenaries, but by machines. He'd long studied Greek, Roman and Saracen documents brought back from the East. He'd read detailed books written by the master siege-breaker Geoffrey Plantagenet, and now regarded machines not just as the key to destroying enemy citadels and strongholds, but as the ideal means to inflict vast casualties on enemy forces. Even before his campaign in Gascony, where the fighting was so bitter that all rules of gallantry were dispensed with, Corotocus had been collecting these monstrous contraptions - sling-throwers, ballistae, arbalests - either capturing them, purchasing them or having them custom-built. He now possessed three mangonels that any king or emperor would have been pleased to have in his arsenal, and which he'd christened
War Wolf
,
God's Maul
and
Giant's Fist
. These were gigantic counterweight catapults, which could hurl immense grenades fashioned from rock, lead or iron over huge distances. He'd also acquired a scoop-thrower, similarly designed to the mangonels, but with a broad bucket for discharging masses of smaller projectiles such as fire-pots or heaps of chain and rubble.

All of these siege engines, and many others like them, were now en route to Grogen Castle, disassembled and packaged in over a hundred wagons, travelling west along the Tefeidiad Valley. The earl had initially summoned them because he'd expected that he'd need heavy weapons to strike the castle walls. In the event, they were no longer a necessity, but it had seemed sensible that the equipment should still be brought. Of course this hadn't allowed for the weather.

It was now late at night and the rain had ceased, only to be replaced by a cold, wraithlike mist. The forest tracks had turned to quagmires and, with loaded wagons sinking to their axels and horses to their fetlocks, progress was torturously slow. The infantry guarding the artillery train were also having trouble. Each man carried his personal supply pack in addition to being well armed and wearing a thick mail hauberk. Thus heavily burdened, they'd been marching three days, were already footsore and exhausted, and now had liquid mud to contend with. While it was misty between the trees, the sky had cleared so it was also ice-cold. Men and horses' breath smoked as they trudged along. Every piece of clothing was wringing wet. Every boot or shoe squelched. The black mud coated everything.

Two men were perched on the driving bench of the foremost wagon: Hugo d'Avranches, a portly old knight, who served as quartermaster at Linley Castle - one of the earl's smaller bastions, but the place where the bulk of his artillery was usually stored - and Brother Ignatius, a young Benedictine, who served as Hugo's clerk. Another of the earl's knights, Reynald Guiscard, famous for his quick temper and mane of fiery-red hair, but prized for his self-taught skills as an engineer, came cantering up from the rear.

"God's blood, d'Avranches!" he bawled. "How could you bring us along a road like this? The wagons are tailing back for miles."

These weren't the first angry words they'd exchanged in the last few hours. Brother Ignatius sighed, anticipating yet another loud, futile argument.

"Do you think there are any proper roads through this wretched country?" d'Avranches growled.

"You should have found something better than this! The earl gave you maps!"

"I can't read a bloody map in the bloody dark and the bloody pouring rain!"

"No, and you're too old and bloody blind to read one in the bloody daylight as well, aren't you! But you're too worried about keeping your precious position to let anyone bloody know about it!"

"Name of a name!" d'Avranches swore. "I'll not be spoken to like that! Come near me, my lad, and you'll feel my gauntlet!"

Both men were among the highest ranking in the earl's circle of tenant knights, each sporting the prized black eagle crest on his crimson livery, but they rarely saw eye-to-eye. Guiscard leaned forward from his saddle, deliberately putting himself in swatting range.

"If you'd given as much effort to watching what you were doing, Hugo, as you do to talking out of your backside, we wouldn't be in this predicament!"

"I'll not be blamed for the weather!" d'Avranches howled. "You blasted tyke!"

"My lords, please," Brother Ignatius said as patiently as he could. "Please. We can't be more than five or six miles from the castle."

"Except that we're on the wrong side of the river," Guiscard retorted. "Because this dolt insisted on fording it back at Nucklas."

D'Avranches swore and brandished his whip. "The earl's first message said that it was best to travel south of the Tefeidiad because the bulk of the rebel forces were north of it!"

"And his second message detailed the Earl of Warwick's victory at Maes Moydog," Guiscard replied, "and his own victory at Ogryn Valley. They're beaten, for Christ's sake!"

D'Avranches grunted, unable to deny this.

As the earl's official quartermaster, his priority was always to protect the heavy weapons. Corotocus had once said: "If men's lives are forfeit, it's a sacrifice I must live with. Men can be replaced. My mangonels cannot!" But on this occasion d'Avranches knew that he'd been over-cautious. Now on the south side of the Tefeidiad, the next point at which they could ford the river again was a good five miles west of Grogen Castle. Which meant they weren't five miles from their destination, as Brother Ignatius had suggested, but more like fifteen. In addition, there was still the possibility that, after the afternoon's rainstorm, the river level would have risen and the ford might not be useable for some considerable time.

"Maybe we should camp here?" Ignatius said.

Guiscard glanced around. He'd been thinking the same, but wasn't happy at the prospect. The wagon train snaked far back through the darkness, making the erection of even a temporary stockade impossible. They were in a forest, but ironically there wasn't much cover. High ground rose to the south and sloped away to the north, but it was thinly treed.

"Up to our knees in sludge and dung," d'Avranches complained. "It'll hardly make for a comfortable night."

"If the Welsh are beaten, there's nothing to stop us lighting fires," Ignatius said.

Guiscard was undecided. He wheeled his horse about. They were still relatively close to the English border, but there was something about this place he didn't like. The woods were eerily silent even for March. There wasn't a hint of wind, so the mist hung in motionless cauls between the black pillars of the trees.

"Is there a delay, my lord?" came a gruff but tired voice. It was Master-Serjeant Gam, who'd plodded up from the rear.

"Aye," Guiscard said. "Send the word. We bivouac here."

"Here, my lord?" The seasoned old soldier sounded surprised.

"I doubt we'll find anywhere better on this road. Tell the men to pitch their tents among the trees, but in circles, with thorn switches for cover. Draw lots - one in every ten to stand on guard duty. Four-hour shifts. Make sure you find decent picket points, Gam. We don't know that the enemy's
completely
defeated yet."