Stronghold (tomes of the dead)

by Paul Finch

  The rain didn't just fall over Powys; it fell all over north and central Wales, thrashing on mountain, forest and valley.

  The narrows tracks linking the region's hamlets had already been churned to quagmires by the passing of Earl Corotocus's army, but now became rivers of slurry. The charred shells of the cottages and crofts shuddered and sank in the deluge. Those Welsh who'd survived the earl's passing hid, weeping and gibbering, under any cover they could find. And those who hadn't survived, those whose ragged forms adorned the gibbets and gallows on every road and ridge to the English border, started twisting and jerking in their bonds. To the north, on the tragic field of Maes Moydog, the mountain of Welsh corpses, cut and riven and steeped in blood and ordure, was also washed by the rain — and slowly and surely began to twitch and judder. In the chapel graveyards — even those graveyards that were long abandoned and overgrown — the topsoil broke and shifted as the rain seeped through it and the green, rotted forms crammed underneath slowly clawed their way out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The skies over Grogen Castle were black with swollen clouds. Torrents of rain poured, drenching the mighty walls, flooding the walks and gutters. Even indoors there was no respite. Cold, wet wind gusted through the rooms and tunnels, groaning in the chimneys, extinguishing candles, whipping the flames in the guardroom hearths. Rainwater dripped from every fault and fissure.

  In the Keep it was too dark almost to find one's way. Ranulf ascended from one level to the next, with a loaf, a bundle of blankets and a water-skin under his right arm. In his left hand he carried a flaring candelabra; an oil-lamp hung from his belt. He added a little fuel to each wall-sconce he passed and put a candle flame to it, creating a lighted passage, though all this really did was expose the cockroaches scurrying across the damp flagstones and the bats hanging from the arched ceilings like clusters of furry fruit.

  When he unlocked the door to the cell it was so heavy that he had to heave it open. Gwendolyn was sitting in a far corner, knees clasped to her chest, her back rigid. The only window was a high slot, too narrow for a human to pass through, and deeply recessed — it must have been ten feet from the start of its embrasure to the finish. Even in bright sunshine, it admitted minimal light.

  "I've brought you this," he said, placing the lantern at the foot of the steps, and lighting it with a candle. "I'll replenish the oil every so often."

  Gwendolyn didn't reply. She looked pale, her pretty features smudged with dirt and tears. Her hair, once like spun copper, hung in grimy rat-tails.

  "I've also bought you these." He laid the blankets down, walked over and offered her the loaf and the water-skin. She still said nothing, gazing directly ahead as if seeing neither him nor his gifts.

  "You need to eat, my lady."

  "My lady?" She seemed surprised, before giving a cackling laugh. "I see your bachelry still deceives itself with Arthurian pretension?"

  "You need to eat."

  Reluctantly, she took the bread and water. At first she only nibbled, but soon capitulated to her hunger, tearing the loaf apart with her teeth and fingers. Ranulf glanced around the cell. The filthy straw gave it the stench of a stable. Water ran down its black brickwork. Having seen the quarters allocated to the men in the barrack house, there were few facilities at Grogen that were much of an improvement on this. Though of course the men hadn't been violently abducted, stripped naked, beaten and sexually assaulted.

  "I don't suppose…" he said. "I don't suppose it would do any good to apologise?"

  She looked up at him, again surprised. "On behalf of whom — yourself, or the bloodstained madman you serve?"

  Ranulf wasn't sure how to respond.

  "Let me spare you the trauma of trying to answer," she said. "You're right, it won't do any good."

  "I'm not happy about what's happened here."

  Ranulf wasn't quite sure why he'd admitted that. Before coming up into the Keep, his father had reminded him that the girl was nothing more to them than a prisoner, the spoils of war, a pawn in a greater game. It was unfortunate for her, but there were always winners and losers in the politics of strife. Ulbert had concluded by strongly advising that whatever was going to happen to Lady Gwendolyn would happen, and that their first duty was to themselves and their family name. They mustn't allow "futile sentiment" to endanger their cause.

  Yet, if the prisoner was aware that Ranulf had taken a risk expressing sympathy to her, she was unimpressed.

  "I'm sure your unhappiness will be great consolation to those who've died," she said. "Or who've been maimed, or left destitute."

  "I understand your anger. Earl Corotocus is a pitiless man."

  "And those who willingly serve him? What are they?"

  "We don't all serve him willingly."

  She smiled, almost maliciously. "Spare me your conscience, sir knight. If it's torturing you, I'm glad. You'll find no absolution here."

  "To make things easier, I can only suggest that you comply with the earl's wishes." He retreated towards the door. "No matter how distasteful you find them."

  "Comply with the earl's wishes? I think you mistake me for someone else. I will do no such thing, not least because in a very short time the earl and you murderers he calls his retainers will all be dead." Ranulf waited by the door as she laughed at him. "You think this fortress will protect you, Englishman? Welsh vengeance is about to fall on you people with a force you can't imagine."

  "Your spirit does you credit, my lady. But don't hang your hopes on how easily the previous garrison here was overwhelmed. To call them 'foolish sots' would be an insult to both fools and sots. Earl Corotocus is of a different mettle; a monster yes, but a soldier through and through. His mesnie has been hardened by battle over many years. In addition, they're nearly all English-born. From birth, they've been raised to view the Welsh as the foe over the mountain, as an enemy existing purely to be crushed."

  "Foe over the mountain?" Like many who obsess that they are oppressed, Gwendolyn found it difficult to grasp the concept that her oppressors might feel they acted from a just cause. "What have my people ever done to you? You are the aggressors! You always have been!"

  "When I was a child, miss, I lived on the shore of the River Wye." Ranulf mused. "I grew up hearing stories of how Prince Gruffud burned Hereford, the capital city of that region, and slew its entire population."

  "That was nearly two-hundred years ago."

  "King Edward has learned from the mistakes his forebears made. He won't tolerate hostile states on his borders."

  "We're not hostile to you."

  "Even neutral states must be viewed as hostile. Better to have a wasteland at your door than a tribe of barbarians whose loyalty your enemies can buy for a few cattle." He shrugged. "At least, that's the king's view."

  "By the sound of it, it's a view you share."

  "I understand the reasoning, even if I disapprove of the methods."

  "Well in that you've set me a good example." She smiled coldly. "When my kinsmen get hold of you, forgive me if I understand their anger and merely disapprove when they tear you apart between their horses."

  There was a sudden echo of voices from the passage. Ranulf withdrew from the cell, closing the door and locking it. At the next corner, he met Navarre carrying a flaming torch, and one of Garbofasse's mercenaries.

  "Where did you put the Welsh slut?" Navarre asked.

  "Who needs to know?" Ranulf said.

  "Murlock needs to know, if he's to look after her."

  Ranulf looked at the mercenary properly. Murlock was a brutal, bearded hulk, several inches taller than most men, his massive, ape-like frame crammed inside a steel-studded leather hauberk. When he grinned, fang-like teeth showed through a mass of dirty, crumb-filled whiskers.

  "You're no longer the official jailer here, FitzOsbern," Navarre explained. "I thought you'd be pleased — one less onerous duty for you."

  "And this whoreson is taking over?"

  "The earl asked Captain Garbofas
se for a man whose special skills fitted the task. Garbofasse nominated Murlock."

  In the Welsh villages Corotocus had attacked en route from the Ogryn Valley, Garbofasse's mercenaries had taken a lead role in terrorising the populace; setting fire to cottage roofs, slaughtering animals in their pens and raping women and girls. Murlock, for one, had barely been able to keep his breeches laced. But he hadn't just raped them, he'd sodomised them, he'd beaten and kicked them, and made them watch as he'd personally tied the halters around the necks of their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons, and hoisted them up until they swung and kicked in the smoke-filled air.

  Ranulf fixed Navarre with a disbelieving stare. "Are you out of your mind?"

  "Are you out of yours, FitzOsbern? I wouldn't like to report that you've objected to yet another of the earl's orders."

  "This boor… this animal, will hurt her."

  Navarre shook his head soberly. "No. He's under orders to be gentle."

  Murlock gave a snorting, pig-like chuckle, and Ranulf launched himself forward, grabbing the fellow by the Adam's apple and slamming him back against the wall.

  In the same second, the tip of Navarre's dagger was at Ranulf's throat.

  "Yield now!" Navarre snarled. "Right now, or I'll slice you open like a pear."

  Ranulf didn't yield; not at first. He leaned on Murlock harder, mailed hands clenched on his windpipe, squeezing. Murlock's breath was caught in his throat. He couldn't breathe, yet he was grinning. His teeth showed like rotten pegs; his piggy eyes had narrowed to murderous little slits.

  "You think I won't?" Navarre said. "I warn you, FitzOsbern… you know the earl likes nothing better than to make an example of one of his own. Nothing has made him more feared."

  Ranulf finally stepped back, glistening with sweat, breathing hard. Gasping, Murlock sank to his haunches.

  "You're swimming against a tide that will overwhelm you, boy," Navarre said, withdrawing his blade.

  Ranulf turned and stalked down the fire-lit passage.

  "FitzOsbern!" Navarre called after him.

  Ranulf was ten yards away when he glanced back.

  "The key, FitzOsbern! A cell door is no use without its key."

  Ranulf took a long, heavy key from his pouch and dangled it from his fingers. "Come and get it."

  Murlock lurched along the passage. He reached for the key and Ranulf dropped it into his palm, but then grabbed his wrist, yanked him forward and met him on the point of the chin with a club-like fist. Murlock was hurled sideways, caromed from the wall and collapsed to the floor, where Ranulf kicked him in the guts, dropped onto him with his knees and pounded his head and face, knocking out his teeth and smashing his nose like an over-ripe plum.

  "That was nothing personal," Ranulf hissed into Murlock's ear. "Just a lesson I learned at the abbey school in Leominster. Prior Barnabus taught it us each morning with a willow switch — in case we transgressed during the day and he wasn't around to witness it. So be warned, you harm a single hair on that girl's head and this isn't even a hint of what awaits you."

  Ranulf straightened up, kicked the fallen mercenary once more, for good measure, and glanced around. Navarre was watching intently, his mouth frozen in a half-snarl.

  "Don't look so outraged, Navarre. I gave him the key, didn't I?"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Earl Corotocus's military might was the envy of his fellow magnates.

  As controller of a troubled corner of the kingdom, he already had rights to maintain armed forces that went far beyond his normal feudal obligations. In addition to this, as one of the foremost barons of the realm, descended in direct line from Roland la Hors, one of the original Norman warlords who'd descended on England like a pack of rapacious wolves in 1066, he had greater influence than most and even greater wealth. His estate comprised innumerable fiefs, castles, honours and titles, every one of which could be used to generate additional soldiery and military funding. Very quickly and perfectly legally, he could put a private army into the field that was almost of a size to challenge the king himself. The warriors he had at Grogen were only its spear-tip.

  He was also a student of the most modern methods. Where Earl Corotocus was concerned, battle could no longer be left to the wild chance of heroic charge over level field, nor a single combat between picked champions. Though both the Church and the knightly code frowned on him for it, he had an avowed belief in the usefulness of irregular forces, in hit and run raids, in assassinations and ambushes. His personal household was supplemented with warriors drawn from far beyond his demesnes. Not trusting exclusively to such fanciful, out of date devices as homage and fealty, the earl would willingly take scutage from those less able of his vassals, and use it to obtain quality swords and lances from much further a-field. Hence the presence in his mesnie of paid war-dogs like Navarre, originally from the Aquitaine, and the employment of free-companies like Garbofasse's band who came from all parts of the country and were largely felons and cutthroats.

  Yet the most feared section of the earl's military power was provided neither by knights nor mercenaries, but by machines. He'd long studied Greek, Roman and Saracen documents brought back from the East. He'd read detailed books written by the master siege-breaker Geoffrey Plantagenet, and now regarded machines not just as the key to destroying enemy citadels and strongholds, but as the ideal means to inflict vast casualties on enemy forces. Even before his campaign in Gascony, where the fighting was so bitter that all rules of gallantry were dispensed with, Corotocus had been collecting these monstrous contraptions — sling-throwers, ballistae, arbalests — either capturing them, purchasing them or having them custom-built. He now possessed three mangonels that any king or emperor would have been pleased to have in his arsenal, and which he'd christened War Wolf, God's Maul and Giant's Fist. These were gigantic counterweight catapults, which could hurl immense grenades fashioned from rock, lead or iron over huge distances. He'd also acquired a scoop-thrower, similarly designed to the mangonels, but with a broad bucket for discharging masses of smaller projectiles such as fire-pots or heaps of chain and rubble.

  All of these siege engines, and many others like them, were now en route to Grogen Castle, disassembled and packaged in over a hundred wagons, travelling west along the Tefeidiad Valley. The earl had initially summoned them because he'd expected that he'd need heavy weapons to strike the castle walls. In the event, they were no longer a necessity, but it had seemed sensible that the equipment should still be brought. Of course this hadn't allowed for the weather.

  It was now late at night and the rain had ceased, only to be replaced by a cold, wraithlike mist. The forest tracks had turned to quagmires and, with loaded wagons sinking to their axels and horses to their fetlocks, progress was torturously slow. The infantry guarding the artillery train were also having trouble. Each man carried his personal supply pack in addition to being well armed and wearing a thick mail hauberk. Thus heavily burdened, they'd been marching three days, were already footsore and exhausted, and now had liquid mud to contend with. While it was misty between the trees, the sky had cleared so it was also ice-cold. Men and horses' breath smoked as they trudged along. Every piece of clothing was wringing wet. Every boot or shoe squelched. The black mud coated everything.

  Two men were perched on the driving bench of the foremost wagon: Hugo d'Avranches, a portly old knight, who served as quartermaster at Linley Castle — one of the earl's smaller bastions, but the place where the bulk of his artillery was usually stored — and Brother Ignatius, a young Benedictine, who served as Hugo's clerk. Another of the earl's knights, Reynald Guiscard, famous for his quick temper and mane of fiery-red hair, but prized for his self-taught skills as an engineer, came cantering up from the rear.

  "God's blood, d'Avranches!" he bawled. "How could you bring us along a road like this? The wagons are tailing back for miles."

  These weren't the first angry words they'd exchanged in the last few hours. Brother Ignatius sighed, anticipating yet another loud, fu
tile argument.

  "Do you think there are any proper roads through this wretched country?" d'Avranches growled.

  "You should have found something better than this! The earl gave you maps!"

  "I can't read a bloody map in the bloody dark and the bloody pouring rain!"

  "No, and you're too old and bloody blind to read one in the bloody daylight as well, aren't you! But you're too worried about keeping your precious position to let anyone bloody know about it!"

  "Name of a name!" d'Avranches swore. "I'll not be spoken to like that! Come near me, my lad, and you'll feel my gauntlet!"

  Both men were among the highest ranking in the earl's circle of tenant knights, each sporting the prized black eagle crest on his crimson livery, but they rarely saw eye-to-eye. Guiscard leaned forward from his saddle, deliberately putting himself in swatting range.

  "If you'd given as much effort to watching what you were doing, Hugo, as you do to talking out of your backside, we wouldn't be in this predicament!"

  "I'll not be blamed for the weather!" d'Avranches howled. "You blasted tyke!"

  "My lords, please," Brother Ignatius said as patiently as he could. "Please. We can't be more than five or six miles from the castle."

  "Except that we're on the wrong side of the river," Guiscard retorted. "Because this dolt insisted on fording it back at Nucklas."

  D'Avranches swore and brandished his whip. "The earl's first message said that it was best to travel south of the Tefeidiad because the bulk of the rebel forces were north of it!"

  "And his second message detailed the Earl of Warwick's victory at Maes Moydog," Guiscard replied, "and his own victory at Ogryn Valley. They're beaten, for Christ's sake!"