Stronghold (tomes of the dead)

by Paul Finch

  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 slope
d 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 spattered 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.

  "We don't know exactly where the scoop-thrower is located," Ranulf whispered. "It must be up here on the treed ground, because it was concealed from the battlements. Judging from its angle of shot, it can't be more than a hundred yards or more to the south of us, but the exact position is uncertain."

  "We should spread out," Garbofasse said. "Form a skirmish line. Twenty yards between each man. That way we cover more ground."

  Ranulf nodded; this would suit his plan as well.

  "There's still no movement from these… these things," FitzUrz said. Of the horrible shapes lying around them, some were more decomposed than others, several little more than bones wrapped in parchment. But again, in many cases, their heads were turned towards the raiding party, as though watching them carefully.

  "The puppets don't sleep, but maybe the puppet masters do," Ranulf said. "It probably only needs one command to be issued and they'll come raging back to life." He mopped his brow. He was sweating so hard that the grease and soot was running off him in streams. "Form the line. We're moving south… slowly. Keep your eyes and your ears open."

  With some hardship in the darkness and undergrowth, they spread out into a skirmish line, Ranulf anchoring it at the north end and Garbofasse at the south, and proceeded again along the top of the bluff. The ground became even harder to negotiate; it wasn't just bulging with roots, but it had been churned to quagmires by thousands of trampling feet. In some cases, the bodies of the dead lay in actual piles, as if they'd been heaped together by gravediggers. Subsequently, the skirmish line extended and warped as the men struggled to keep up with each other. But on flatter ground, they came across the first of the heavy weapons. Many were still in their wagons, unpacked. Several onagers and ballis
tae had been taken out and were partly assembled, though further corpses were strewn around these. More work-gangs, Ranulf realised with a shudder. This army of reanimated clay could be turned just as easily to tireless labour as it could to war, and of course it never asked for pay. The full extent of the power this gifted its controller was quite chilling.

  There was still no sign of the scoop-thrower, though ahead of them, they now sighted firelight. They slowed their advance to a crawl.

  In a small clearing, a circle of tents had been raised, with snores emanating from inside them. In the middle of the circle, raised on a mound of hot coals was a large cauldron or cooking-pot. It bubbled loudly as it pumped a column of foul-smelling smoke into the night sky. They halted, wondering what this meant, though each one of them was thinking the same thing: the dead don't need shelter against the elements; nor do they need to sleep, nor to eat warm food.

  Ranulf felt a sudden urge to draw his blade, though he knew he had to resist. Glancing down the line, he saw the next man along, Robert FitzUrz, watching him intently, one hand on his dagger hilt. Ranulf shook his head. They weren't here to perform assassinations. How did they know who actually controlled these dead? How would they know they had killed the right people? In addition of course, Ranulf had his own scheme to attend to. He shook his head vigorously.

  FitzUrz nodded and passed the message along the line. They continued to advance, skirting around the small encampment, but now with their eyes peeled for the massive, distinctive shape of the scoop-thrower. They'd penetrated maybe thirty yards further on, again having to thread between piles of corpses, when Ranulf spotted something else. Twenty yards to his right, half-hidden by trees, there was a stockade with torches burning on the other side of its open gate. Inside, he made out what looked like a gold pavilion covered with red lions. He glanced left again. Only a couple of the other men were visible beyond FitzUrz. He slowed down so that soon they were ahead of him by several yards. Concentrating on what lay in front of them, they didn't notice that he had fallen behind. He now ceased advancing altogether and, as soon as they'd vanished into the mist and rain, turned and hurried towards the stockade.