Winterbirth (40 page)

'It's food for rats if we leave it,' Rothe said. 'We've done the best we can for them. They'd not begrudge us it.'

They walked in silence through the afternoon. As the first greying of evening had begun they came to the edge of the woods and the Glas valley was before them: a few rolling, sinking slopes shorn of trees, and then the flat lands of the valley floor. It was a huge plain laid out like a blanket of green patchwork.

Farmhouses were scattered across it, and a few cattle could be seen here and there, but it was a lifeless view. There were no people in sight, and no smoke rose from any of the buildings. Orisian had a fleeting sense of apprehension. Now, the forest felt safe and concealing compared to that open, exposed ground.

Anduran was out in the centre of the valley, couched in a lazy curve of the Glas some way to the east of where they stood. The river still had a faint shine to it even though the sun had almost fallen from the sky.

The castle stood tight up against the riverside. The town it guarded lay to its south, a dark discoloration upon the valley. Orisian did not experience the surge of relief he had expected.

Rothe was standing beside him.

'What do you think?' Orisian asked.

Rothe frowned in concentration as his narrowed eyes swept over the landscape.

'A camp,' Ess'yr said. 'There.'

Rothe and Orisian looked. Orisian thought he could see what she was talking about: an indistinct, pale shape sprawled around a darker point at its centre, not far from Anduran. It might have been a camp of tents radiating out from a big farmhouse. Certainly, whatever it was, it had not been there when he and Rothe had ridden out from Anduran all those days ago.

'Now what is that?' Rothe was murmuring.

'The enemy,' Ess'yr said.

'White Owl,' said her brother, and for once there was clear emotion in his voice. He spoke the words as if they tasted vile.

Rothe almost laughed. 'White Owls? There'd have to be hundreds for such a camp, and out in the middle of the valley, right next to Anduran? You're mad.'

'No,' was all Ess'yr said.

'It's impossible,' insisted Rothe. 'Inkallim at Kolglas and Tarbains here are strange enough, but White Owls at Anduran?'

Orisian was frowning. 'It was impossible for Inkallim to reach Kolglas, but they did it. The White Owls helped them do it. In'hynyr said as much, back in the
vo'an.'

Varryn had squatted down. He was no longer paying any attention to the discussion. He stared rigidly out at the camp on the valley floor. Orisian turned to Ess'yr.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes,' she said.

Rothe gave an exasperated snort. Orisian ignored him.

'How many?' he asked Ess'yr.

'Many.'

'Well, I won't turn back now. We'll just have to go carefully, and see what we find.'

'Wait for dark,' Ess'yr said. 'We go too. We must know what the enemy does. Where you are blind, we can see.'

THE CATAPULT'S ARM snapped forwards and an arc of fire vaulted the wall of Castle Anduran. The barrel of oil and pitch roared as it blazed through the air. The thump of its impact somewhere within the fortress was heard by the besiegers. It brought a ragged cheer from the warriors who hid amongst the crude siegeworks facing the castle. They shouted encouragement to the men straining to crank back the throwing arm. There were three catapults in all, and they had been at their work for some time. The smoky stink of their missiles had settled over the whole area. For a time, the castle's defenders had attempted to pick off the men working the machine with arrows, but the range was too long for accuracy and there were shieldbearers standing guard. Now the burning barrels, the rocks, the severed heads went unanswered as the day sank into dusk.

In the streets and houses that faced the castle across the killing ground, there was a subdued bustle of activity. Small bands of warriors, their feet muffled with cloth, moved along alleyways, gathered in abandoned houses and taverns. Their captains silenced any murmur of conversation with murderous gazes. They carried no torches, and in the deepening dark there were trips and falls and strangled curses.

Beakers of bracing grain spirit were passed around, one swallow only for each. Some of the warriors slept, some did not. Some murmured in the shadows: 'My feet are on the Road. My feet are on the Road.' And on and on into the night the catapults kept up their thumping rhythm and threw ribbons of fiery gold into the black sky.

In the last few hours before dawn, the temperature fell. The day's first light brought with it a bitter chill.

Clouds piled up around the summits of the Car Criagar to the north. The men atop the battlements shivered and peered out over the town as it emerged from the darkness. The catapults had fallen still, and there was no sign of movement around them. Here and there in Anduran the odd light glimmered.

Somewhere a fire-weakened timber gave with a resounding crack.

It was a calm scene, until the eye looked closer. Amongst the barricades and low earthworks that had been thrown up beneath the walls, crowds of Tarbain tribesmen were packed more thickly than ever before. They thronged the ground, pressing themselves down and jostling for any scrap of protection. A few arrows flashed down from the walls, until hurried commands were shouted to save them. Figures were moving amongst the houses that fronted on to the castle; not many, but they moved with haste and purpose. The sentries looked more closely, and they saw spears and polearms. They saw more figures, pressed in beneath overhanging eaves. The Black Road had gathered its full strength.

Word ran through the castle like wildfire. 'They're attempting the walls,' some cried; 'They'll force the gate,' others. Most of the shouts were nothing more than: 'To arms, to arms!'

Warriors and farmers, shieldmen and townsfolk took up whatever weapon they had to hand and went to the walls. They were hungry and cold. They were tired, for the bombardment had denied many sleep.

But they went to the walls and they promised one another the Black Road would be bloodied today.

Croesan and Naradin, Thane and Bloodheir, stood together atop the gatehouse. They risked no more than the briefest of glances out over the grim scene.

'They grow impatient,' murmured Naradin. 'That's a pity.'

Croesan grunted. He wore polished mail; a gleaming silver shield hung on his arm.

'They'll not find us easy,' said the Thane.

Naradin looked around and back, over the courtyard of the castle. Most of the wooden outbuildings by the keep - stables, blacksmith's forge, hay store - were ruins, burned out during the night's incendiary bombardment. A new fire was being kindled even now: a pyre, on to which the bodies of men and horses had been piled, along with the heads thrown into the castle by the catapults. The keep itself was intact, though it bore the scars of several impacts. A fire had started on one of the upper floors in the night, but it had been quickly extinguished. Naradin cast his gaze along the walls that flanked the gatehouse. More than half of those now gathered to defend them were not warriors at all. They were townsfolk trapped here and left with no choice but to take up arms: apprehensive, exhausted.

'If we had only another couple of hundred trained spearmen they'd find us impregnable,' the Bloodheir reflected.

'Well, we don't have those men,' said Croesan firmly. 'So we trust to the courage of those we do have.

If we fail, there'll be others to avenge us: Lheanor, Kennet if he lives. Taim Narran. First, though, let us try to ensure that their vengeance is not required. Our Blood has life in it yet.'

Naradin nodded.

'Go to the keep,' Croesan said. 'Wait there with your Shield, and anyone else you can find in there.

Keep Eilan and your child safe. Leave the courtyard and the walls to me. We will meet again once all is done.'

Naradin embraced his father. They stood thus for a few moments, clinging to something, then parted and went their separate ways.

The arms of the catapults were cranked slowly back. Baskets of rocks and rubble were manhandled into place. Kanin nan Horin-Gyre stood at the mouth of an alleyway, within sight of Castle Anduran's gate but shielded from arrows by the overhanging roof. A man standing by the nearest of the catapults, twenty paces ahead, watched the Bloodheir intently. Kanin nodded, and in a great crash the three machines sprang once more into life.

Kanin turned to the thin, gap-toothed figure at his side.

'Go, then,' he said to the Tarbain chieftain.

The man's eyes were hostile, his lip curled as if preparing an angry response. But he bent his grey head and took a single long stride out into the open. He sucked in a rasping great breath, spread his arms and howled with all the strength his ageing lungs could muster. It was a wordless, formless cry.

Hundreds of Tarbain warriors huddled amongst the siegeworks rose up as one, howling in their turn, baying in the sudden release of tension. A seething mass, bearing huge ladders that rocked like twigs on a fast-flowing stream, they poured forwards to the castle walls. Many fell, trampled or brushed aside by their comrades. Arrows and rocks showered down from the battlements. Boulders flung by the catapults rebounded from the walls and fell amongst the tribesmen. Still, the ladders reached the castle and were flung up against it.

As the Tarbains scrambled upwards, ants on a great boulder, another band of thirty or more men - the strongest of Kanin's own warriors - barged through the throng and up to the gate. They pushed a massive wheeled ram, fashioned from a single straight oak and capped in iron. Before they could bring it to bear on the great timbers of the gate, a cascade of stones and arrows had felled a dozen of them. Others ran up from behind to take their place.

Atop the walls, blows were traded, blood shed. Tarbains fell screaming from the ladders back into the press of their kin below. Some spilled out on to the battlements. Against them, women, old men and boys fought alongside the castle's warriors, hacking and swinging with staffs and clubs, axes and kitchen knives. They killed and were killed.

Croesan the Thane came surging along the wall, his Shield all about him. They pushed to the fore and swung their long-bladed swords. The Tarbains had no protection save their tunics of marten and lynx fur.

The dead piled up. The wounded groaned and writhed, and were trodden underfoot. Croesan came to the head of a ladder and shouted out in fury as he slashed at the man ascending it. His shieldmen levered the ladder away from the wall with poles and it toppled. Below, the battering ram was crashing against the gate.

The Thane wiped flecks of blood from his eyelashes. He looked to left and right. There was still fighting, but the castle's defenders had the upper hand. Nowhere had the Tarbains gained a secure foothold. A great boulder smashed against the battlements nearby, and spun on and over down into the courtyard.

Croesan glared out at his besiegers, and saw that there was to be no respite. A host of Horin-Gyre warriors was now drawing up in open sight, spears to the fore, swords and axes behind. A desultory volley of arrows came down from the sections of castle walls that were not yet beset. The crack of splintering timber said the castle gate was yielding. The army of the Black Road were swarming around the foot of the walls; more ladders were being thrown up. A flurry of crossbow bolts hissed overhead as Croesan turned away. One of his shieldmen fell at the Thane's side, his helm stove in by a bolt.

When the main gate broke open, Horin-Gyre warriors poured into the breach, pushing back the fractured timbers and spilling through into the passageway beyond. Their way was blocked by the inner gate and there, in the gloom beneath the great mass of the gatehouse, dozens died as missiles darted out from holes and alcoves. The ram rolled in, grinding the dead and wounded beneath its wheels.

The strength of the Tarbains on the walls was spent. They died, or fell back. They had served their purpose, though. The mail-shirted warriors of the Black Road who now swarmed up the walls to take their place found fewer, tired defenders. Croesan was drawing up his Shield, and as many other fighting men as he could muster, in the courtyard, facing the inner gate. When he lifted his eyes to the walls he could already see how this day would end. The Black Road would pay a heavy price for Castle Anduran, but it would be theirs. There were too many of them. However much courage and determination burned in Lannis hearts, it was not enough to outweigh the enemy's numbers. The inner gate shook, shedding splinters and dust as the ram smashed against it once more.

'Lannis!' cried the Thane. He held his sword and shield above his head.

'Lannis!' he shouted, and the men all around him took up the cry.

Then the inner gate surrendered. Croesan charged forwards to meet the Black Road .

In the shadow of the gatehouse, around the abandoned ram, back into the passageway, the battle crushed itself into chaos. Spears crashed against shields, were parried, broke, drove through into flesh. It came to the push of body against body. Knives came out and stabbed and slashed furiously amongst the press of legs and bodies. The attackers were driven forwards by those coming up behind them, and the fighting began to fragment as the Lannis-Haig defenders were overwhelmed. Entangled groups of combatants spilled back into the courtyard.

Naradin the Bloodheir burst from the keep with a score of men. They cut a swathe through the ranks of the enemy and fought their way to the Thane's side. A spearpoint gouged a bloody track across Croesan's cheek. He slashed it away and hacked down the woman who directed it. Naradin, unbalanced, took a savage axe blow upon his shield, and his arm broke behind it, but he cut through his assailant's wrist, and sent hand and axe tumbling. The Horin-Gyre attack faltered, and was pressed back. The cobblestones were slick with gore; the dead formed banks like windblown leaves. Fighters lost their footing and were pinned down and killed. The Lannis-Haig warriors pushed on.

'To me! To me!' Croesan was crying, at the heart of the fighting. He buried his sword deep in the side of a foe. The blade caught between ribs, and when the man slumped to the ground the Thane for a moment could not free it. He cursed, and hauled at it, and in that moment a sword came down on his shoulder, snapping bone and driving jagged edges of metal into his flesh. Croesan fell to his knees, and took his hand from his sword to steady himself. His shieldmen brushed past him, guarding him as best they could.