by Tim Stead
There were three men on the wall above the gate. They looked alert enough, but so few only confirmed Fane’s assumption. Everard had precious few men. There was a light in the gatehouse, too. Fane looked up at the keep. From so close he had a better view of it, although it curved away, hiding much of its face from him. He could see a single window showing light and nobody guarded the door.
The men on the wall were all looking out, no doubt watching the false revelry in the camp, so Fane strolled across the bailey to the gatehouse window and peered in. There were three men inside. He watched them for a while. One of them was an officer, the other two just plain soldiers. The two were playing dice and the officer was eating – it looked like soup.
So, he had to dispose of six men before they could raise the alarm. That would be difficult. If he made a noise killing the first three the rest would react. He watched them a little longer, trying to get an idea of who would do what.
He stepped round to the door and knocked quietly. They wouldn’t expect an attack from within the castle, so a knock wouldn’t alarm them. The officer wouldn’t answer the door. He was busy eating. Of the two dice players it was likely that the one closest to the door would get up. That was unfortunate in a way. The other player was facing the door and would see him as soon as it opened. He would have to be quick and accurate. He drew one of his swords and his knife. He heard the latch lift.
He timed it perfectly. He thrust with his sword even before the guard had seen his face, catching him full in the chest and stepping forwards with the man impaled. He threw the knife, and the second dice player, who had just about registered that something was amiss, went over backwards with the weapon in his throat.
He dropped his first blade and drew the second, stepping forwards and cutting down the officer just as he rose from his chair. The man died with barely a sound.
It had taken less than five seconds, Fane reckoned. The only noise had been two chairs falling over and the muted sounds of steel in flesh. He waited, watching the spiral stair that led up onto the wall. Nothing happened. No voices called down. No steps sounded.
The mechanism to raise the portcullis was here. It was a capstan, designed to be used by four men. The rope from it fed through a pulley system to make the heavy steel structure seem lighter. He couldn’t raise it without the guards on the wall hearing it, so he’d have to deal with them first.
He went up the stairs as quietly as he could. At the top he paused and looked out onto the parapet. The three men here had moved since he’d seen them from the bailey. They had been close together. Now one of them had wandered back past the stair and stood a few steps away to his right. The other two were twenty paces to his left.
He sank back out of sight. His best option was to wait. He could retreat to the guard room and wait for them to come down, but he had no idea how long their watch would last. It could be several hours and he had already told Wenban to make his way up to the walls in – what? – half an hour from now?
He had no choice. He could wait no more than a few minutes before he acted. But the situation was now almost impossible. If he killed the single man first, even with a thrown knife, the others would be aware of him before he could close with them. They would raise the alarm. If he attacked the pair, then the single man would doubtless do the same. If only there were two of him.
He retreated for a moment, going back down to the guard room. He sat in a chair and looked at the bodies he’d made. He needed time. He needed a way to separate the men on the wall above him.
He looked at the portcullis winch.
Why not?
If he wound it a few turns the men on the wall would hear it, but would they raise the alarm? There was a chance that they would, but then again there was a chance they would not. They might send a man down to see what was happening. The others, perhaps, would move towards the spiral stair to see what their comrade reported.
Perhaps.
But a slim chance was better than no chance at all.
He stood up and went over to the capstan. It had a pin locking it in place, a steel rod that passed through the wooden wheel and fitted roughly into a hole in the ground. Once removed he could probably turn it and raise the portcullis.
He took the pin out and laid it on top of the capstan. He drew a blade and laid it beside the pin. How far should he move it? He needed to be facing the door, so a full turn. It would raise the thing by less than a foot, but that would be enough for the men above him to hear.
He laid hands on one of the capstan rods and braced a foot against the angled bricks laid as a track for those who normally worked the device. He pushed.
The wheel groaned, the chains rattled, the capstan turned reluctantly. He pushed harder and it moved a little more easily. Now the tension was out of the chains the portcullis rose smoothly. He could feel it.
One of the bricks under his right foot broke. He slipped. The capstan, driven by the weight of the steel it lifted, lashed back at him and for all his Farheim strength he barely caught it. For a moment he thought it would win and pitch him backwards, but it stopped, and he pushed forwards again. They would have heard that, all right. How could they not?
He made the full circle and stopped. He braced his shoulder against the rod and dropped the pin back in its hole. He retrieved his blade. It was then he realised he’d made a mistake. The spiral stair was stone, and the descending guard would see nothing until he came around the final corner, but the first thing he would see was the dead officer slumped across the floor. He could see that and shout up the alarm even before Fane saw him.
That wasn’t what Fane wanted at all.
He heard the scrape of a boot on stone, and he knew he had only seconds in which to act. He leaped forwards and ran up the spiral stair with Farheim speed.
The guard was half way down and, luckily, he was looking at his footing when Fane came round the corner. It was dim on the stairs, only the lamplight from the guard room helped his eyes, but it helped the guard more. He would have seen Fane as a fast-moving silhouette against the light, but only for a moment.
Fane hit him, slashing with his blade at the same time, and the guard went down with a terminal grunt. But there was a problem. A second guard stood a few steps higher up the stair, and he didn’t wait. He turned and ran.
Fane cursed. All that thinking hadn’t helped at all. He set off after the second man, stumbling slightly over the corpse of the first, and that gave the fleeing guard time to make it to the top. Fane caught him just as he stepped out onto the parapet, a couple of paces too late.
“Rayman…!” he shouted, and then died, a blade through his back.
The remaining guard turned, blade in hand. Perhaps Rayman didn’t know he was alone, but he didn’t shout an alarm. He set himself to stand and fight. Fane advanced quickly. He had to get this done before Rayman changed his mind.
But he was too slow again. Perhaps it was something in the way Fane walked, or the look on his face, but the guard turned and fled. Fane set off after him.
A sudden pain seared his left calf and he found himself sprawling face down on the parapet. The shock of it nearly cost him his life. He looked. There was an arrow through his lower leg, the bloody, barbed spike protruding from the muscle. Where had that come from? He realised that he’d dropped his sword and turned to retrieve it.
Rayman had turned on him. The guard was already swinging at his head, and Fane barely had time to pull his dagger and lay it along his forearm before he blocked the blow.
That hurt. If he’d been a lesser creature it might have broken his arm. Without the steel blade to protect it he would have lost his hand. Rayman had put everything into the blow.
Fane spun himself around, kicking at Rayman’s feet and slashing at him with the dagger. The guard avoided both, jumping back.
A second arrow smacked into the wall beside Fane’s face, throwing stone chips into his eyes. The situation was becoming difficult. Half blinded for a moment, Fane knew that the
guard would attack again. He did the only sensible thing. He rolled off the parapet and plunged down into the bailey.
The impact was unpleasant. The arrow in his leg snapped and sent a bolt of pain through his body, and the wind was driven from his lungs, but at least he had a moment’s respite. He reached down and ripped the remains of the arrow from his leg. The limb healed at once, and a few blinks, a shake of his head, cleared his eyes.
He drew his second blade and ran back towards the guard room. An arrow tugged at his shirt and spun away, shattering against the wall. At least he’d seen where they were coming from now. There were a number of slit windows facing this way in the keep, embrasured, he guessed, and the archer was in the one above and to the left of the keep door.
He ran into the guard room. Now they would have to act. He pulled the pin on the capstan bent his back to it. He managed three full turns before he heard running steps in the bailey. He locked it with the pin and turned to face the door.
They came through in a hurry, which was a mistake. He killed the first with a simple thrust. He was just too fast for the man to counter it. The other two made it into the room and stepped apart. The idea was to attack from both sides. Fane wished he had his other blade, but he stooped and picked up the dead officer’s weapon, and that was good enough.
They attacked, and Fane allowed himself the luxury of defending, assessing their skill, deciding how to defeat them with elegance, rather that brute strength.
He heard the whisper of a footfall behind him.
Rayman.
He’d expected that, prepared for it, and he was in exactly the right place. He spun on his heel just as the guard was stepping forward, his blade catching the man in the throat even as he raised his weapon. He spun back, all one smooth motion and the same stroke caught the first of his remaining opponents on the side of the head, shattering his helmet, knocking him down.
The last man seemed stunned by the sudden reversal of his strong position and took a step back, but he was too slow. Fane followed him and batted his blade aside with one sword, running him through with the other.
Done.
He went back to the portcullis and wound it a full ten turns. By his reckoning it would be seven feet off the ground by now, and that was enough. He walked out into the bailey again.
The archer in the keep shot at him but he was expecting that, too, and beat the arrow aside with his blade. He went to the gate. The inner wooden doors were held in place by a thick beam. He turned his back on the archer and, setting his legs apart, lifted it from its brackets. He threw it aside and dragged the doors open.
Wenban was standing outside with a crowd of men.
“Took you a while, general,” he said. “Saw the gate start up three times.”
Fane turned and pointed.
“There’s an archer in that window. See if you can make him pull his head in.”
Wenban nodded and called to his archers. He’d brought twenty and they lined up in front of the keep, bent their bows and rattled the slit window with three volleys. Only a few of the arrows got through the slit, but that seemed to do the trick.
“Looks solid,” Wenban said, looking up at the keep. It did, Fane had to admit, but he was in no mood to wait for its surrender.
“Two hours,” he said. He walked over to the guard room and picked up a jar of lamp oil that he’d seen in the corner. He took a lamp out into the bailey with him and walked across to the keep door. The keep door was almost at ground level, which was unusual but convenient. He smashed the jar against the wooden door and waited until the oil had soaked in a bit, until it had pooled and crept beneath the base. He took the cover off the lamp and touched the naked flame to the glistening liquid.
The flame crept up the wood and sank down into the pool below it. Fane stepped back as it grew fierce. It seized hold of the old, dry oak and, within a minute was a roaring tower of flame reaching up the side of the keep. He could even see smoke seeping from one of the slit windows.
“How many men does he have in there?” Wenban asked.
“Can’t say for sure,” Fane said. “Maybe twenty. Maybe fewer.” Maybe a lot fewer. It struck him that there had been only one bow shooting at him, and that when the whole keep must have been in uproar.
They waited and the door burned. Nobody tried to shoot at them again. It was almost as though the keep was now empty. Even so, Fane knew that Everard must be somewhere inside. He couldn’t have left.
The door failed with a crack, the thick planks separating and tumbling down in a heap of charred wood and ash. The hinges still held a third of it, burning less intensely now. Fane pushed the stump of the door aside with a blade and stepped over the embers. Stairs led upward.
He led the way. He could hear Wenban and the others following him, but he didn’t look back. He had to admit that he was curious as to what he would find here.
The stairs ended in a great hall. There was a banqueting table here, an array of hard backed chairs pushed against the walls, but no people. There were six doors. Two led to staircases, the others to small rooms. Fane went and looked at the chamber on his left. It was from a window in here that the archer had shot at him.
There was blood on the floor, but not so much that a man had died of it. A trail of drops led out into the hall. There were arrows, too, scattered about the floor. He went back out.
His men had checked the other rooms. He saw shrugs, shaken heads. There was nothing here.
The stairs led up and down. The kitchens and storerooms would be below, he guessed.
“Send ten men down,” he said. “You’ll find servants and stores, but look for Lord Everard. He may be hiding there. Don’t kill anyone or damage anything unless you have to.”
Wenban picked his ten and sent them down. Fane and the rest went up.
It was usual for a keep of this sort to have a number of apartments on the upper floors. The attics would be given over to servants, but Fane guessed there would be two floors of luxurious accommodation. All of it would have to be searched.
At the top of the next flight he paused. There was still no sign of anyone. He heard no voices, no movement other than the men on the stair behind him.
“Search everything,” he said. “Call me if you find anyone.”
He went into the first apartment himself. It consisted of two rooms – a sitting room and a bed chamber. He opened a tall wardrobe and found it full of fine clothes – a young woman’s. He checked under the bed. Nothing, and there was nowhere else a person could hide. He went out again and found Wenban waiting.
“It’s all empty, General.”
It seemed that Everard had retreated to the highest point of his keep. Perhaps he thought it was more defensible, but Fane couldn’t see the point. Even with the fifty men Wenban had brought it wouldn’t be a contest.
He led the way up, wondering what he would find. There was a door, and he pushed it open. This was obviously Everard’s own home. The door opened into a large hall, almost half the size of the banqueting space downstairs, and here at last he saw people. There were six of them. Lord Everard and a single soldier stood to the front, their blades already drawn. Behind them a young man lay on the ground being tended by two women – Everard’s wife and daughter by the look of their clothes. The young man was probably the archer and also probably Everard’s son by his clothes.
There was another man there, unarmed – Everard’s steward at a guess.
Fane didn’t draw his own blades. He stepped forwards until he was ten feet from Lord Everard.
“Will you now surrender?” he asked.
But Everard wasn’t in a mood to talk. Some people are like that in defeat. They prefer to die than admit they have been bested. The Lord of Great Howe leaped forwards swinging his blade, and his armed companion followed.
Fane had been half expecting it. He sidestepped the Lord’s blow, putting Everard between himself and Everard’s companion. He seized the Lord’s wrist, forced the blade from his fingers
and threw him aside like a child. He parried the other man’s first blow and punched him in the face hard enough to knock him off his feet. He tossed Everard’s blade back to Wenban.
“Will you now surrender?” he asked again.
Everard was clambering back to his feet. He still had a dagger, and reached for it.
“I will guarantee your lives,” Fane said. “None of you will be harmed.”
Everard hesitated, a spark of reason appearing in his eyes once more. His hand stopped.
“What will you do with us, then?” he asked.
“You can live here,” Fane gestured to the luxury around him. “We have no need for these rooms, though the rest of the castle will be ours. You will be guarded, of course, but otherwise you’re more use to me alive than dead.”
Everard looked at his wife and children. His wife looked back, and Fane could see in her eyes that she wanted the fighting to end. She wanted her children to live.
“And the boy will need treating,” Fane said. “We have a physic.”
That seemed to swing it. Even the daughter turned and looked at Everard now, pleading with her eyes.
The Lord of Great Howe found it hard. That much was obvious. He drew his dagger and threw it to one side with a jerk of his reluctant hand. He glared at Fane.
“I surrender to you, Lord Fane,” he said. “And charge you with the welfare of my family, home and servants.”
Fane bowed, and even he was not sure if it was mockery. “I accept, Lord Everard,” he said.
Great Howe was his. His mind turned back to the rumour of a Farheim Gate in the howe beneath him. There was no doubt that he would have to search for it. Such a thing could be invaluable.
56 The Place
Francis Gayne turned the piece of paper over and over in his hands. Mordo stood on the other side of the room and watched him with growing satisfaction.
“So the man that tried to kill me was Chaini’s nephew,” Gayne said.
“Yes.”
“But Chaini’s name isn’t on this list.”