Stronghold (14 page)

"God help us," d'Abbetot stammered. "We can't post anyone on the Barbican or Gatehouse under conditions like these. They'll be massacred."

"We need to demolish the bridge," Ranulf said. "That's one thing we
must
do before yielding these posts." He took d'Abbetot by the elbow and forced him down the stair, both struggling not to trip over corpses or slip on treads slick with gore. "How long before the scoop-thrower's ready to discharge again?"

"Several minutes. But that won't be long enough for us." Panic grew in d'Abbetot's voice. "I have to find the range, and that could take four or five shots. And if I can't turn the damn thing around, we can't even aim." They'd now reached the trebuchet, but every Welshman in the vicinity seemed to be dead or critically injured. "For God's sake, FitzOsbern, get someone else down here... we can't turn the damn thing round on our own!"

Ranulf called back to the Gatehouse. In response, Navarre tottered down the steps, with Tancarville close behind. Navarre's shield had splintered and he was bloodied around the face. As they came, they rounded up several of the walking wounded.

"Christ help us!" d'Abbetot moaned. "Look at this!"

Even to Ranulf's untrained eye, it was clear that the first two volleys of hail had done severe damage to the trebuchet. The sling ropes had been severed, the padding on the crossbeam ripped asunder.

"How long to repair it?" Ranulf asked.

"Damn it, I don't know. Have we even got replacement materials?"

"Mind your heads!" someone shrieked.

Yet another shadow fell over them. Again, Ranulf grasped the engineer and dragged him beneath his shield. Tancarville raised his own shield and squatted. Navarre now had no shield. Maybe eight or nine of Garbofasse's mercenaries had joined the remaining ten Welsh still alive on the Barbican roof. Only a couple of these were quick enough to take evasive action. When the next deluge struck, it was mainly stones - of all sizes, from cobblestones, to pebbles, to pellets - banging on iron, cracking on brickwork, ripping through flesh and wood and hide. There were more screams, more gasps and grunts. Ranulf didn't know how many hundredweight of minerals were impacting on his shield as he tried to hold it aloft. His forearm ached abominably, but long before the storm ceased an even more frightening problem arose - for three human bodies also landed on the Barbican.

One came down on the top of its skull, which imploded so completely that there was nothing left of it. The others bounced across the roof like sacks of broken crockery, finally rolling to a standstill. Ranulf had heard about this before, though he'd never witnessed it - the catapulting of diseased or decayed corpses into fortifications. Normally it was an aspect of prolonged sieges, signifying that the besiegers were becoming desperate and would use any means, no matter how ghoulish, to force a capitulation. It rarely happened as early in the conflict as this.

That was when the three bodies began to twitch.

Slowly, Ranulf lowered what remained of his shield. He'd seen much here already that defied description, but what he now beheld set his senses reeling.

A trio of twisted forms rose clumsily to their feet.

They were better armed than the majority of the enemy he'd so far seen. Two were in leather jerkins and leather breeches. One had bare feet but wore gauntlets, while the other was shod with metal sabatons but barehanded; one of those hands had been severed at the wrist. The third figure, the headless one, was naked except for a mail hauberk, which hung down as far as its knees and looked something like a shroud. It soon dawned on Ranulf how appropriate this analogy was - the hauberk was indeed a shroud, for it had been put on the figure after death. They'd all of them been dressed like this after death, for evidently they
were
dead.

Ranulf now understood this fully.

These creatures were dead and yet somehow they were also alive.

The rest of the men on the roof were too preoccupied to have noticed the figures stumbling towards them. D'Abbetot was seated groggily on the trebuchet turntable. He'd been struck in the face by a stone, which had slashed his brow and spit his nose. All of Carew's malcontents had now been floored. Only one clambered back to his feet. Navarre removed his battered helmet and shook out fragments of metal, blood dripping from his brow. Tancarville was on his knees, stunned. Five of Garbofasse's men were still upright, but all were visibly injured.

"The enemy's with us!" Ranulf shouted, unsheathing his sword. Only slivers remained of his shield, so he threw it down. "In God's name, the enemy's here!"

Still the others didn't react. He swung back to face the demonic threesome, now only a matter of yards away. The headless figure was armed with a spiked mace. The one in the gauntlets had landed with a spear, though this had shattered on impact, so it had scooped up a falchion with a curved blade. The third carried a pollaxe which, though it would normally require two hands to wield it effectively, was being brandished in one hand with no difficulty.

They were true visions of horror, these walking dead men. Broken bones ground together as they advanced, white shards protruding through their pulverised flesh. Of their two remaining faces, one had been crushed to the point where a vile sewage of blood and brains flowed from its nasal cavity. The other had been pierced through the mouth by an arrow, the barbed head of which projected beneath its chin, digging into its throat. One of its eyes had been eaten away; the other was a maleficent orb glinting from a cradle of splintered bone.

"Off your arses!" Ranulf shouted, though it was more of a howl. The tough young warrior, who'd known almost nothing but war and strife since he'd first been knighted, literally
howled
. "To arms, I say!"

The three figures approached like marionettes jerking on invisible strings. But gradually they seemed to focus their energy. They became stronger, faster; they walked with a heavier, more determined tread. Even Ranulf, who'd seen them coming first, was mesmerised. He only just raised his sword in time to parry a downward blow from the spiked mace, before retaliating with a huge crosscut, which caught the headless horror across the chest. He failed to cleave the mail, but sent the creature tottering backward, and now at last the other troops realised that the Barbican had been infiltrated.

D'Abbetot's eyes goggled, even though blood was streaming into them. Navarre went for the one-handed monstrosity, thrusting and hacking with all his strength, though it fended him off with unnatural skill, catching him across the chin with the point of its pollaxe, laying open his disfigured face once again. Two mercenaries went for the one in gauntlets. One of them swung a morningstar, only for the chain to wrap around its forearm. It yanked him forward and drove the falchion into his belly, his entrails flopping out in glistening coils. The other mercenary thrust a poniard into its skull, ramming it through the bone into the tissue beneath, but it swept him aside and, snatching the morningstar, looped it around his throat and threw him over its shoulder, snapping his neck. The surviving Welshman came for it with a spear. A massive, two-handed blow took the monster in the midriff, impaling it clean through. Again it showed no pain, no weakness. Neither blood nor mucus spilled from its jammed open mouth. It grappled with the Welshman and, raising its falchion, sundered his battered helm and the cranium beneath. A third mercenary hurled a javelin, which buried itself in the corpse's gaping socket. Now there were two implements protruding from its head. Instead of succumbing, it broke the javelin's haft, grabbed the shrieking mercenary by the throat and thrust the haft's dagger-like shard into his groin. The mercenary's scream became a shrill screech of emasculation.

A few yards away, Navarre clove his opponent through the right shoulder and, with a mighty backstroke, lopped off its head. But it still came on. Only when he severed its left leg just above the knee did it topple over. Ranulf made equal gains, using massive, swinging strokes to fend his opponent to the battlements, where he was able to chop the mace from its grasp, and kick it backward through an embrasure.

Yet, they'd no sooner destroyed the assault party than a fourth avalanche of rubble struck them. On this occasion, nobody was prepared for it. One second Ranulf was standing, blade dripping, the next he was beset from above by rocks, stones and lumps of metal. His scalp and face were ripped open and he took an agonising blow on his collar bone before he was able to pull up his coif and hunker down, his arms crossed over his head. Others followed suite, though not all. Robert Tancarville flailed uselessly at the sky with his sword, and was hit in the face by a coping stone. William d'Abbetot shrieked incoherently as he was hammered to the floor, one missile after another bouncing off him, smashing his hands as he tried to protect his head.

And again there were corpses. This time a couple of them missed the Barbican altogether, crashing down its wall into the moat. But at least eight landed cleanly, and were very quickly upright. They were equally rent and mutilated, but again were clad in mail and leather and armed with every type of weapon.

Ranulf had to push himself back to his feet on the tip of his sword as the horrible spectres lumbered forward, groaning and mewling. He met the first with a two-handed blow that severed its trunk at the hips, but then was grabbed around the head and flung to the floor. He cried for help.

Garbofasse and a dozen more men hobbled down from the Gatehouse roof. All wore crushed helmets and carried bent shields; their faces were gashed and bruised. They were in a poor state to meet seven ravening corpses, and could barely defend themselves as the dead things raised their mauls and mattocks. Navarre was also back on his feet. Like Ranulf, his mail had protected most of his body from the hail's edge, but his face was almost unrecognisable. His sword had snapped mid-blade. Disgustedly, he cast it away, grabbed up a flail and rejoined the fray.

For minutes on end, battle raged across the Barbican. When the cadavers' weapons broke, they tore into their prey with claws and teeth. They rode every counter-blow, though their limbs were hewed, their skulls shattered. One after another, Garbofasse's mercenaries were despatched. One's helmet was struck with such force that his churned brains spurted through its visor. A second was skewered through the midriff with a broken axe handle. A third was beaten to the ground with an iron bar. A fourth was lifted bodily into the air and carried towards the battlements; his spittle-filled shrieks rang aloud as he was flung over. Garbofasse strove at the monsters with a battle-axe in each hand. Ranulf clove one's head cross-wise, slicing through its open mouth with his blade, shearing off the top half of its skull, though it stayed on its feet, foul fluids gargling in its opened oesophagus.

More of Garbofasse's troops limped down from the Gatehouse, only to be met by another iron hail. This was heavier than any thus far. The usual debris was laced with razor-edged flint. Again, the men were slashed and brutalised. Ranulf staggered towards William d'Abbetot's body, belatedly thinking that saving the engineer's life should be a priority - only to see that what remained of him was being pounded like mulch into the rubble. Even those much younger and stronger than d'Abbetot were cut down. Once the hail had finished, only Ranulf, Navarre, Garbofasse and three of his mercenaries remained on their feet; all had been freshly wounded. The only ones unaffected were the corpses. Though torn anew, in some cases reduced to parodies of humanity - grisly effigies of exposed bone and filleted flesh - they came on as before.

"Back to the Gatehouse," Ranulf called.

These Welsh - if they
were
Welsh, and not from Hades itself - could not be slain or hurt. They could march through their own artillery storm, while the English fell under it like wheat to the scythe.

"Back to the G-Gatehouse...
now
!" he stammered. "We can't win this!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In the disorder that followed the retreat onto the Gatehouse it was impossible for coherent orders to be issued. Five maniacal corpses still held sway on the Barbican, but attempts to place a shield-wall at the top of the Gatehouse stair and bar their path were hampered by yet another iron hail, which now swept the Gatehouse roof, driving those remaining to the downward hatches. In the cramped rooms below it was a chaos of blood, straw and smoke. Throats were raw with shouts and gasps. Men were slumped with exhaustion, caked in dirt and gore, their tabards and surcoats in tatters.

At last Earl Corotocus arrived, forcing his way through, with du Guesculin and more of his household men struggling along behind. Father Benan, white-faced and tearful, brought up the rear.

"What is this madness, Corotocus?" Garbofasse roared, shoving men out of his way. "A third of my troops are dead and they've barely struck a blow yet!"

"They've struck plenty of blows," Ranulf interjected. "Mainly against women and children. This may be the price of that victory."

Corotocus couldn't respond. He was too startled by the bloodied, battered state of his lieutenants.

"What devilry have you unleashed on us?" Garbofasse demanded.

"My lord," Father Benan simpered, "my lord, this is too terrible..."

"Earn your corn, priest!" the earl barked. "Confess the dying, help Zacharius succour the wounded."

"Those... those men," du Guesculin stammered, his eyes bulging as he recalled what he'd seen from the Constable's Tower. "Catapulted alive onto the... and to fight and kill. It must be some kind of illusion."

"You dolt!" Garbofasse threw a crimson rag into his face. "Are these wounds an illusion?"

"Navarre?" the earl said, turning to his most trusted henchman.

Navarre was seated on a stool, sweating, breathing hard, his scalp and face horribly cut. He could only shake his head.

The earl swung to Ranulf. "What of you? You were hand-to-hand with them, damn it, what did you see?"

Ranulf looked him straight in the eye. "I saw dead men walking like puppets, but wielding weapons like Viking berserks. I saw mildewed lumps of carrion, some still coated with grave dirt, raging at us like barbarians."