Stronghold

by Paul Finch

  "Will your fellow countrymen define the betrayal of an overlord as 'good'?"

  Ranulf couldn't conceal his conflicted feelings about this. The knightly code stated that duty to your lord should be the keystone of your life. Duplicity with the man who had clothed you, fed you, trained you, the man in whose service you were bonded was supposedly a grave sin - even if it was to the benefit of others. Judas Iscariot had handed Jesus to the temple guards because he worried that Jesus's preaching might bring Roman retribution on the Jewish race. It could be deemed that such an act was well intentioned, yet Judas had been reviled throughout eternity as the arch-traitor. And still - Ranulf again recalled his father's words: "Be true to your heart, lad. In the end, when all has come to pass, it'll be the only thing you can trust." And what his heart told him now was that Earl Corotocus had gone too far. In Gascony it had been slightly different - that had been a bitter war waged against an enemy who would stop at nothing to wrest control of English sovereign territory. But here against the Welsh, for all their oft-professed hatred of the English, it had gone too far. There had been too much blood, too much cruelty, too much terror. Little wonder the dead themselves were now rising in retaliation. And that in itself, of course, made all other considerations pale to insignificance.

  "You haven't seen what's gathering outside, my lady," Ranulf finally said. "The customs we live by, the canons we've tricked ourselves into believing... they don't mean anything any more. The world has turned on its head. All that's left is the difference between those things we know to be right and those we know to be wrong."

  She handed him the parchment. "Here's your letter. God speed you with it, for the sake of both our peoples."

  He folded it, inserted it into a pouch - and froze. Gwendolyn glanced past him. They'd both heard a scraping sound as of leather or metal on the other side of the door. Ranulf looked around too and saw that the small hatch in the cell door was wide open.

  Cursing, he raced across the room and barged out into the passage. Murlock was twenty yards off, walking quickly. When Ranulf started to run, Murlock started to run too.

  Ranulf caught up with him at the top of the first flight of steps. Just as he did, the big mercenary swung around, striking with his dagger. Ranulf threw himself to one side and the blade flashed past, jamming point first into the wall and snapping. Then Ranulf was onto him. They tumbled down the steps together, clawing, wrestling. At the bottom, Murlock landed on top and for crucial seconds had the advantage. He pinned Ranulf down, clutching his throat with bear-like paws, head-butting him in the face. Ranulf struggled wildly, but only dislodged Murlock by driving a knee up between his legs. Murlock rolled away, gagging.

  Ranulf got groggily to his feet. His nose, already broken once, was now broken again. Hot tears blurred his vision.

  Murlock tried to crawl away on all fours. Ranulf lurched after him, grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head back and fumbled for his own dagger. Before he could draw it, the mercenary slammed an elbow back, catching him in the ribs. Ranulf was mail-clad but the impact was agonising and the air whistled from his lungs. He tottered backward. Murlock spun around, this time drawing his scramsax and swiping with it. Ranulf dodged away, the keen but heavy edge missing him by inches, clanging on the brickwork.

  Ranulf drew his own sword in time to deflect the second blow, forcing the mercenary to step backward to the edge of the next stairwell. Murlock lunged as hard as he could with his blade. Ranulf again parried and smashed his left fist into Murlock's jaw. It was as hard a punch as he'd ever thrown. Murlock's head spun right as bloody phlegm spat from his mouth; his very neck seemed to shift on its axis. Ranulf kicked him again, this time with a stamping manoeuvre on the side of his right knee. Murlock's leg buckled inwards and he gave a shill, bird-like squawk. With Murlock's guard now down, Ranulf hove at him a final time, slamming the pommel of his sword between his eyes.

  The mercenary stiffened and toppled backward like a felled tree, bouncing end-over-end from one step to the next, his limbs splayed. When he finally came to rest at the bottom, he was face-down and motionless. Ranulf scrambled down after him. The blood from the mercenary's nose and mouth was spreading in a wide puddle. There was no hint of life in his apparently broken body.

  Ranulf sat back on his haunches, panting.

  Of course, even in this drear and filthy place, so much fresh blood would need to be cleared away if suspicion was not to be aroused. Ranulf sheathed his blade and got quickly to work. He dragged the body by its feet into a dungeon and dumped it in the dimmest corner, where he covered it with matted straw. Taking two more handfuls of the stuff, he went back outside and began to mop the floor.

  "What if someone misses him?" came a nervous voice.

  It was Gwendolyn. In his haste to catch up with the jailer, he hadn't thought to lock her in again.

  "Go back to your cell," he said, scrubbing up the gore.

  "But he'll be missed."

  "The only time he'll be missed is when we retreat to this final refuge and, trust me, if we get to that stage it won't matter anyway."

  "But I..."

  "Go back to your cell!" he shouted. "I'll lock you in anon."

  She scurried back up the steps.

  "You may not believe it," he said under his breath. "But that's by far the safest place in this castle at present."

  He heard her door grating shut as he continued to scrub the flagstones hard, conscious that time was running out. The hour was getting late and he was soon due to meet the rest of the raiding party in the courtyard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They met just before midnight in the main courtyard. Ranulf, Garbofasse and four others: a tenant knight, Roger FitzUrz, a household squire, Tancred Tallebois, an archer, Paston, and a mercenary called Red Guthric - a beanpole of a man, with a hatchet face and straggling carrot-red hair, who Garbofasse said was one of his best.

  In torch-lit silence, they removed their mail and their leather and their under-garb, until they wore only loincloths and felt shoes. They then rubbed themselves with black soot - heads and hands as well as bodies and limbs and slathered it with pig-grease to hold it in place. The only weapons they armed themselves with were knives and daggers. Corotocus, du Guesculin and several dozen others watched in silence. Doctor Zacharius had come over from the infirmary. A full day having elapsed since the last attack, he had finally managed to get on top of his casualty list, but he was sallow-faced and covered with other men's blood.

  "You fellows look like Moors," he said, rubbing his hands on a towel.

  There were nervous chuckles.

  "They'll smell like Moors too, when they've finished climbing down the garderobe," someone replied, to more chuckles.

  "I knew campaigns in Wales were notoriously hard," FitzUrz said. "But I never thought I'd finish up eating shit."

  "Enough!" Corotocus said. "All of you listen to me. No matter what your position, for the duration of this mission you are under the command of Captain Garbofasse and Ranulf FitzOsbern, whose errant status is to be of no consequence. Anyone disobeying their orders will answer to me personally on his return."

  There were mumbles of acknowledgement.

  They moved to set off, but now Zacharius spoke up. "If you can capture an intact specimen, perhaps I can examine it. Even dissect it. It would be an ungodly act, but are these things godly in any way? It might help us to understand how they are as they are."

  Ranulf glanced at him. By his expression, the doctor was perfectly serious. Everyone looked to Earl Corotocus, who seemed briefly intrigued by the proposition, though eventually he shook his head.

  "This mission is difficult enough already. If it doesn't succeed, we'll be up to our ears in intact specimens."

  The doctor shrugged as if it didn't matter. But Ranulf couldn't help wondering about the wisdom of ruling out such a plan. At present, given his own secret agenda, it would be difficult to the point of impossibility to carry such a thing off, but maybe - if his own scheme
failed - it was worth bearing in mind for some time in the future.

  "You men need to go," the earl said. "We don't know how long these creatures will hold back for."

  They took their ropes and tackle and trooped up into the Keep together, ascending from one level to the next without speaking, their thin-clad feet slapping the dank flagstones. Ranulf was fleetingly unnerved, wondering if Murlock's absence would be noticed. But as it transpired, they were all too focussed on their task. Even Garbofasse, Murlock's immediate commanding officer, paid the missing jailer no heed. They at last entered the garderobe and lowered their ropes down the chute.

  Almost as one, they looked frightened. Beads of sweat sat on the dark, oily film coating their brows. In the flickering torchlight, the squire, Tallebois, regarded his comrades with eyes that had almost bugged from their sockets. His lips were wet with repeated licking.

  "Looks like the entrance to the underworld," FitzUrz muttered, peering down the black shaft.

  "From here on no talking unless you're given leave to," Corotocus said. "We know too little about these Welsh dead. Maybe they can hear you, maybe they can't, but it's a chance you mustn't take. Now... God go with you all."

  Ranulf wound a rope with a grapple attached around his body, and clambered over the low brick wall rimming the chute. As he did, he wondered at the irony of the earl's last comment. God go with them? With the dead rising en masse, ravening for the blood of the living, did Earl Corotocus seriously think the Almighty was anywhere near this place? And after the slaughter the earl had himself wreaked, did he genuinely believe there was the remotest chance the Almighty would look to English welfare during this tragedy?

  They made the descent in twos, for the chute was not wide enough to accommodate all at the same time. Ranulf and Garbofasse went first. As FitzUrz had feared, the brick sides were slimy with human waste. If the stench had been bad outside of the castle, down here the men found themselves in a cloying, malodorous fog, which almost suffocated them. They could virtually taste it - not just on the tips of their tongues, but in the backs of their throats.

  The climb itself was exhausting - made in complete darkness, with hands and feet rendered slippery by grease. Several times the men almost slid from the ropes. Frequently, they thrashed about in the blackness, bumping into each other, swinging against the walls. When they reached the bottom, the ordure was over a foot deep, though, thanks to the recent cold, neither as soft nor repulsive as it might have been. Ranulf groped around and found the arched entrance to the drain. This was another nerve-wracking moment. If it was too small for a man to fit down, the mission would need to be abandoned. Thankfully, it was about two feet across and a foot and a half in depth, which meant that, though difficult to crawl along, it would not be impossible.

  Their next problem was turning around in the narrow space at the bottom of the shaft, but this Ranulf finally managed to do with much twisting and grunting. Pushing his head and shoulders into the drain, with his hands fumbling ahead of him, again finding more brickwork clotted both above and below with human excreta, he felt as though he was burrowing into the stuff, burying himself alive. How far did this drain run for? If he became stuck, would anyone be able to get him out again? Would the earl care enough to try? The only way was to keep going forward. He'd assumed it would slope downward beneath the east bailey and discharge into the moat. That was a mere fifty yards or more, though, now that he was here, his body enclosed by tight, rugged architecture, with progress only possible by worming forward like a slug, even fifty yards seemed like a massive distance.

  He wasn't sure how long it was before he smelled fresh air again. He was already wearied to the bone and felt he'd rubbed his naked skin raw. But at last his hands encountered hanging vegetation. The next thing, he was hauling himself out of a vent that felt no larger than a rabbit hole, and falling face down onto steeply sloped rubble. It was still dark, but Ranulf could now sense the night sky overhead, and, compared to the subterranean realm he'd just emerged from, that was something to offer prayers of thanks for.

  Glancing up, he saw stars glimmering through a wash of turgid cloud. The floor of the moat was stony and jagged. The vent was rimmed with brick and, as he'd expected, set into the side of the moat. Much soil had crumbled down from above it, and it was half hidden behind hanging weeds. He remained crouched as he waited for the others, glancing up again, scanning the parapets overhead, which at present were devoid of sentinel forms. A grunting and scrabbling noise reached his ears. It was Garbofasse squirming along the drain towards him.

  The mercenary captain was larger in bulk than Ranulf, and was having a torrid time. He only made it to the end of the pipe with difficulty. Ranulf had to reach in, take him by wrists, and pull him the rest of the way. Garbofasse had to suppress cries of agony as he was finally released. Even through his covering of soot and grease, the skin on his ribs and hips was scored by the brickwork and bled freely in many places.

  "Name of a name," he panted, crouching. "Name of a God damned name, this had better be worth it."

  The other four followed over the next few minutes, all emerging in a similarly filthy and dishevelled state. One by one, they crouched, shivering with the cold and now with the wet as well, for in the last few moments a drizzling rain had commenced.

  "Where to next?" someone asked.

  "We're on the east side of the castle," Ranulf replied. "If we follow this moat around to the west, we'll likely meet those dead who were cast into it from the bridge and weren't able to climb out again. So we need to get out on this side. After that, we circle around to western bluff via the moors to the north."

  There were grunts of assent. If anyone disliked the idea of having to circumnavigate the castle out in the open, he didn't voice it. The thought of having to face the dead down here, in the confined space of the moat, was equally, if not even more, horrifying.

  Ranulf swung the rope with the grapple, and hurled it. He had to do this several times before it caught on something that could bear their weight. One by one, they scrambled out, finding themselves on open, grassy ground, where each man lay flat to wait for his comrades. By the time they were all together, their eyes had attuned. Ranulf saw a line of trees to the east of them, but to the north a sloping expanse of star-lit moorland. Nothing moved over there, though it was difficult to see clearly beyond fifty yards or so.

  "It's a long way to the western bluff," Red Guthric said quietly. "How long until dawn?"

  "We have a few hours," Garbofasse replied. "So we'd better not waste them."

  They proceeded north in single file, moving stealthily through thorns and knee-deep sedge. All the way, the mammoth outline of the castle stood to their left, but it provided no comfort, for if they should be attacked now there was no easy way back into it. Despite the darkness, they felt badly exposed. Their nerves were taut. The slightest sound - the cry of an owl or nightjar - brought them to a breathless halt.

  Only when far to the north of the castle did they turn west, having to thread their way through swathes of sodden bracken, the stubble of which prickled their feet through their felt shoes. Here, on this higher ground, they encountered the first of the dead. A large, heavily-built woman, naked, with flesh mottled by bruising and a chewed-off noose tight around her throat, lay still in the vegetation. Slightly further on, a youth with an arrow through his neck - it passed cleanly from one side to the other - also lay still. The raiders crouched again, waiting and watching for some time, before Ranulf found the courage to approach.

  He crept forward quietly and stood surveying the two bodies, neither of which stirred. At length, he summoned the others, and they hastened past.

  From this point on, the hillside was strewn with similarly inert forms. Soon, corpses lay so thick that it was like a benighted battlefield. All of them had done this before, of course: walked dolefully among the slain after some catastrophic engagement. All were familiar with the sight of tangled limbs, hewn torsos, faces frozen in death and spattere
d with gore. On this occasion, though, it was different. For these beings, though visibly rotting in the mist and rain, had been walking around as though alive not two or three hours earlier. Why they were now 'dead again', if it was possible to describe them in such a way, was anybody's guess.

  "Maybe it's over?" Tallebois whispered hopefully.

  "Quiet!" Garbofasse hissed.

  They continued, keeping low, moving as stealthily as they could. But as the great slope of the western bluff hove in from the left, this became increasingly difficult. There was now scarcely any uncluttered ground to walk on. Ranulf found himself edging uphill towards the higher ground, where a cover of trees had appeared. All the way, he fancied the eyes of the dead were upon him. Were they watching his progress? Could they see anything? Did any functions occur in the addled pulp of their brains? Though he didn't say it, he too felt a vague hope that somehow the spell had been broken, and that these dead were indeed dead again. But he doubted it.

  Among the trees, the raiders felt they'd be less visible, though to reach that higher point they had to venture even further from the east moat and their so-called place of safety. The west side of the castle made a dark outline in the night. They could just distinguish the rounded section that was the Barbican, and beyond that the upper tier of the Gatehouse. Further south, at the end of the causeway, was the tall, angular shape of the Constable's Tower. A handful of lit torches were visible on its roof. They looked to be an immense distance away, which was not comforting.

  Equally discomforting, in its own way, was the wood they'd now entered - not just because there were further corpses scattered between its roots, but because of its dense thickets and skeletal branches, all hung with cauls of mist. If nothing else, however, the party were soon on a level with the top of the bluff, which meant that they couldn't be too far from the artillery machines. Ranulf halted and again dropped to a crouch. The others did the same. They breathed slowly and deeply, listening for any sound that might indicate they'd alerted sentries, but hearing only rain pattering on twigs and the chattering of their own teeth; every man there was now shivering with the cold and damp.