The Iron Castle (Outlaw Chronicles) (9 page)

The order was given for the canter. A hundred yards out, we came up to full gallop, heading straight for the charred ruin of a wood and stone fortification that had once been the eastern gatehouse of Mirebeau. A thick surging column of armed and mailed men, a fat iron-clad snake, poured down that road towards Mirebeau – riding to glory. A trumpet sounded on the battlements of the town, and I could see a dozen black heads peering over the stone walls. We thundered forward, a vast jostling crowd of men and horses aimed like an arrow at the heart of our enemies. My own beast was snorting with excitement; I had my sword, Fidelity, in my right hand; my left arm was slotted through the loops of my shield and gripped the reins; and I used my spurs to drive my unfamiliar mount forward without mercy. I could hear shouts of alarm, of fear, from the gatehouse, and saw a low, makeshift barrier of sheep hurdles, boxes and bales had been set up, no higher than a man’s shoulder.

At the head of the column, des Roches bellowed, ‘For God and King John!’ and the horde of five hundred galloping men behind him roared approval. Then he and his knights were at the flimsy barrier, their bodies leaning forward eagerly and their horses leaping high to clear it. They poured over in a glittering cascade of steel and iron, crashing down into the soft bodies of sleep-fuddled men the other side, swords swinging, dipping and rising red. The handful of terrified men-at-arms who had charge of the ruined gatehouse had little chance – they were chewed to ragged bloody pulp by our iron-clad men and their huge, plunging destriers. The press of our mounted Wolves coming up fast behind des Roches’s foremost knights – Robin laughing with joy just ahead of me – swept the remnants of the barricade away like a river in spate, hurling defenders on foot and mounted attackers all together down the street with the force of a mighty sluice gate being opened. We were swept along into the streets of Mirebeau – and Hell was washed along with us.

I was hemmed in on all sides by horses and men. I looked down to my left and saw a whey-faced enemy man-at-arms running by my stirrup. He looked into my face, his mouth wide with fear, and I smashed my shield into his forehead and he disappeared beneath my horse’s hooves. We surged forward inexorably, swords high, screaming our war cries. A spearman on my right, with his back to the wall of the narrow street, lunged his point at me, missed, and I split his face with Fidelity. The Wolves were still all around me – there was Claes up ahead, hammering his sword down on to the shoulder of a running man-at-arms. I saw Christophe casually lop the wrist from a half-naked madman who lunged at him with a dagger. Little Niels was on the ground, stabbing a wounded enemy with a long dagger. The defenders of the gate were all dead or gone under our hooves, and a crowd of mostly townspeople, men, women, children, fled before our snorting beasts. A man in a bloody-butcher’s apron waving a cleaver hurled himself at me from out of a doorway and I killed him with a straight lunge through the throat before he could strike. But most of the folk were in full flight, and by and large we let them be. I shouted, ‘Westbury!’ and spurred after a fleeing man-at-arms who darted down a side-street, slashing wildly at him. But I mistimed the blow and merely scored the back of his scalp, and he ducked and dodged away, streaming blood. I found myself, with a dozen of the Wolves, out of the press of the main surge, in a narrow cobbled street with white-washed walls and dark timbers on either side.

And suddenly in a real fight.

A dozen men-at-arms on foot came round the corner and charged us. There were horsemen hard behind them. A spear jabbed at my face from the right. I saw the twinkle of steel and ducked and the blade screeched across the top of my plain, dome-shaped helmet. I lashed out with my sword and hacked into the arm of a man-at-arms in a padded gambeson, cutting deep, and he screamed and fell. A half-dressed knight, mounted but bare-chested and carrying mace and shield, shouted something in the Breton tongue as he charged me from the left. His spiked mace swung at my head but my guard was up and I took the blow safely in the centre of my shield, the force of it shaking the bones of my forearm. I saw then that he had outlandish blue tattoos marking his snarling face. Fidelity lanced out, over the top of my horse’s neck, and plunged down into his naked hairy belly, punching through and through, the tip of the blade jarring against the high wooden cantle of the saddle behind his back. He looked shocked, almost offended, red mouth wide open, fierce blue tattoos suddenly seeming oddly childlike, and swung again weakly at me with his heavy mace, but I smashed the weapon aside with my shield, tugged my gory sword from the suck of his innards and spurred forward. As I passed, the shoulder of my horse crashing into his, he screamed high and wild in his barbaric tongue and slid from his saddle.

We pushed forward into a bigger street, wide enough for two carts, and rejoined the rest of the Wolves in a wild free-for-all with a group of Poitevin knights. Kit was at my right by now, his young face eager, his sword flecked with red. I saw Vim, the mercenary captain, two horse-lengths ahead, killing a knight with an effortlessly skilled backhand blow. And, a yard or two to my left, there was Robin dispatching a crossbow-wielding footman with a sword thrust through his yelling mouth; and Little John beside him, surrounded by half a dozen enemy squires his great axe swinging and spraying blood with every wide arc. As I watched, a man-at-arms wielding a poleaxe with a long vicious spike at the end ran forward from behind John and slammed the point deep into the big man’s lower back, punching through his mail just above his kidneys. I saw John flinch from the blow, then turn, swing and sever the top of the man’s head with a backhand sweep of his own huge axe. The noise was deafening: the screaming of men in mortal pain, the crack and crash of metal on wood, the shouts of outrage, the neighing of frightened horses. The stink of opened bowels, horse sweat and hot blood poisoned the air.

‘Sir!’ Kit grabbed my arm and was pointing to a knight in the black-and-white surcoat on a beautiful horse, who was advancing on me down a side alley. He had a golden coronet fixed atop his open-faced helmet, and his shield bore the arms of the ducal house of Brittany. There were a pair of household knights just yards behind him. ‘Sir,’ yelled Kit, ‘it’s Arthur, it’s Arthur. It’s the Duke!’

The three knights rode at me and I spurred away from my friends to meet them with only Kit at my shoulder. Duke Arthur, if it were truly him, came on at a canter; he swung at me with his sword, quick and hard. I caught the blow on my shield, and returned it, hacking overhand at his head. But the man was lithe and fast, and his black-and-white shield took the blow that would have opened his skull. I had a glimpse of a pale young face screwed up in anger, a boy’s face framed with ginger locks, and then he was past me and the household knight behind him was lunging at my face with his sword. I ducked, his blade clanging against my helmet, and I snapped up and punched him in the teeth with the crossguard of Fidelity as he passed. He rocked back bloodied, stunned, and Kit knocked him out of the saddle with a vicious sword chop that crunched sickeningly into the side of his mailed neck.

I looked around for Arthur with one blazing thought in my mind: his ransom, a duke’s ransom, it would be more money than I could ever need. The fight had taken us into a small square with an elegant stone fountain in the centre. The whole town now echoed with the yells, the mad shouts and screams of combat. Somewhere a dog was barking. I saw the Duke on the far side of the square, with the second knight, and he saw me and lifted his sword in salute. He spurred back, aiming to come at me again, but after a dozen yards the knight managed to get hold of his bridle and halt his progress. He was shouting something urgent at his lord. To my left I saw what the household knight had seen: the square was filling with Wolves and men-at-arms in William des Roches’s colours and King John’s livery, too. The knight was tugging at the Duke’s bridle urging him to come away. I shouted, ‘Fight me, Your Grace!’ and I imagined I saw a look of regret in the young man’s face as he allowed himself to be pulled away by his vassal. I spurred towards him, but my path was blocked by a rush of jubilant Wolves who came in from the side pursuing a pair of fleeing enemy footmen, then my horse and I were swept to the far side of the square by the press of mounted men. A small window popped open from the wall just beside my head and I found myself staring from a distance of about two feet into the terrified face of an elderly woman in an elaborate white headdress. She hastily withdrew and slammed the shutter behind her.

‘On me, the Wolves, on me!’ Robin was shouting. His bannerman was waving Robin’s snarling-wolf standard above his head, calling the men to his side. My lord’s horse was drinking from the fountain forty yards away. And his men obeyed. Wolves were coming in from all quarters, some bloody from their wounds, but most laughing with battle joy. Kit and I spurred over to him. They came in dozens and scores. Little John was there, chalk-faced, thick blood sheeting his right leg, but still in the saddle. On the other side of the square, I saw a gang of unhorsed men-at-arms in the surcoats of Hubert de Burgh’s castle garrison battering at the doors of a tavern with axes and hammers, and I heard the desperate screams of women and children coming from inside. Brave Sir Benedict Malet, I noticed, was personally directing their labours.

‘The castle, we must reach the castle,’ Robin was still shouting to his men, at me. ‘There beyond the church.’ He was pointing up the narrow street, now empty of living enemies but strewn with bodies. Beyond it men scurried past. A knight rode by, looked at us for an instant and spurred quickly on. We trotted over blood-wet cobbles, fifty of the Wolves, war-grimed and savage. Vim beside me had a bad cut on his gaunt cheek. The heavy stench of burning thatch caught in my throat. I coughed, spat thickly and rode on. We emerged into a wide oval space, the centre of the town, I judged, and into the shadow of a handsome yellow-white church with a tall spire. And there were the enemy, drawn up in good order on the far side, blocking the road to the castle, a dozen knights on horseback, Lusignan men to judge by their surcoats, and some thirty footmen with long spears and big round shields crouched in two ranks before them.

‘They will not stand!’ said Robin, gripping my shoulder as he passed, and he pointed his long sword at the ranks of men, and shouted, ‘Locksley!’ then thrust back his spurs and charged directly at them. The Wolves howled their agreement, throwing back their heads and imitating the eldritch call of the pack, and fifty bloodied, battle-happy sell-swords barrelled towards the line of enemies in a screaming mob.

The enemy fled. The men-at-arms dropped their spears and shields and squirmed away through the shifting legs of the horses behind them, but the well-born men, too, the Lusignan knights, were turning their mounts, refusing the engagement – but not nearly fast enough. Robin was in among them, his sword slicing and plunging, hacking and biting into the backs of the knights as they split apart and spurred up the street back towards the castle. I killed a wounded knight as I passed him, slicing Fidelity across the bridge of his nose, cutting deep into both his eyes. But most escaped, galloping desperately, the iron of their horseshoes striking sparks on the cobbles, disappearing like scurrying rats in ones and twos down the warren of streets. We followed, striking at men’s unguarded backs and horses’ rumps. A few knights dropped their weapons and raised their hands in the air, shouting, ‘Quarter, quarter. I yield, sir!’ to delighted mercenaries, who grabbed their horses’ bridles, physically laying claim to these valuable prisoners.

And then we were outside the high curtain wall of the Castle of Mirebeau.

Inside, I could hear the foul shrieks of battle, curses and shouts of joy and agony and the ringing of metal, the cracking of wood, and saw a black column of smoke rising above the walls with a scattering of orange sparks. Twenty yards ahead of us were the gates of the castle, a pair of massive wooden squares reinforced with strips of hammered iron and studded with broad iron nails.

‘Axes, axes – who has an axe?’ Robin was searching the faces of his men. He called to Little John, slumped low in the saddle on the edge of the crowd of jostling bloody mercenaries. ‘John, can you break that gate for me? I must get inside.’ His voice was filled with an almost desperate urgency. I kicked my horse over to Little John and pulled the massive double-headed axe from his limp hand – the big man smiled into my eyes, a wan acknowledgement. I paused for a second – the sounds of battle coming from inside the walls had ceased, apart from a lone voice alternately screaming and whimpering his way into the next life; smoke and sparks still poured from a burning building, but it seemed the battle, whatever it had been, was over. I paused and looked uncertainly at Robin. He shrugged. And then, like a miracle, the big black gates began slowly swinging open. The Wolves were frozen in their saddles; scarcely a man coughed or shuffled. Even the horses were strangely stilled. A dark-haired much-scarred man stepped out from behind the gate into the street, a bloody sword in his right fist and an axe in his left, a look of grim triumph on his face.

Robin rode forward and reined in a yard or two from the man, who bowed before Robin’s horse with a flourish.

‘How does my lady, Sarlic?’ said Robin.

‘She has not been harmed, my lord,’ he said.

‘I thank you, Sarlic, truly I am in your debt.’

And just then, a slight figure in a blue dress, with long uncovered chestnut hair, stepped daintily through the now wide open gate, with a dozen green-cloaked men hurrying just behind her, yew bows in hand, arrows nocked on strings.

Robin vaulted off his horse like a tumbler. He took two steps towards her, pulled her in and enfolded Marie-Anne in his arms.

It took four hours before King John could be cajoled into entering Mirebeau. But when he finally summoned the courage to enter the recaptured town, he was delighted with what he saw. The enemy had been comprehensively beaten. Taken completely by surprise, many of Duke Arthur’s men had indeed been asleep when the royal army smashed through the east gate just after dawn. Many died in the streets under the thundering hooves of the attackers and a goodly number managed to flee, some avoiding the screen of men that William des Roches had put out to the west. But as many as two hundred knights and barons were captured – including Duke Arthur himself, who surrendered to William de Briouze after being surrounded by his men near the western gate, along with Hugh and Geoffrey de Lusignan, Raymond de Thouars, Savary de Mauléon and dozens of other important men. I cursed my luck that I had missed capturing the Duke myself, but I had survived the battle more or less unhurt and we had achieved a famous victory, and perhaps even won the war. In one extraordinary
coup de main
, the King had decapitated the rebellion in the south and quashed the cause of Brittany – with the majority of his enemies in the south and west now bound or caged and awaiting his pleasure.