The Castle of the Winds

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Olvar, gasping, was flagging, and the bolts were coming closer; and Kunrad’s anger and shame grew. Suddenly he broke the big prentice’s grip on his arm, and kicked free. In that moment he had little hope, and cursed himself yet again for having brought all this upon those who had trusted him. The first faint gleam of light shone between the deep mountain notches, and touched the armour Merthian bore with brilliant, triumphant gold. Kunrad, barely keeping above water, could not forbear to shake his fist and shout some fool’s defiance, but his folly was made clear to him at once. Merthian saw him, heard him, and gesticulated frantically to the crossbowmen. Suddenly the bolts were raining down around him alone, and it would be only a matter of time. But no less suddenly they were flying wide again, and faltering.

  A rumour came from the shore, and from the bridge still more excited shouts. Kunrad saw heads turn among the jostling corsairs. Olvar, rested, reached out and pulled him irresistibly the few remaining strokes to the bridge, but Kunrad shook him off and clambered around to its shoreward side, dipping now as men rushed to the rail. Somewhere up the shore there was noise and movement, and there was no mistaking the tone of dismay in the corsairs’ shouts. The grey light was growing by the second, and suddenly it was clear – a line of horsemen coming down out of the hills to the north, whence Kunrad had fled. A double line, he realised, or treble, moving at a swift trot; and he saw banners, and the cold glint of lanceheads. Three hundred at the very most; but that was ten times the corsair horse he could see, and nearing fast.

  Kunrad caught hold of the rail, and with an arm-tearing effort he hauled himself from the water. Hands reached out to him, but he hung there, staring. Alais fought her way through with Gille, who cried out and pointed to the bank. The corsairs, their attention held by the bridge that moment too long, were in milling disorder. Merthian’s mount plunged this way and that as he fought to chivvy them back into line, but they flowed around him like oil. His shouting carried across the water, but not his words; maybe there were none. He was too far back, and too late. As the newcomers came out on to the wider shore war-horns brayed, harsh and cold, and they opened out into mailed ranks of six, and then of twelve, sweeping the shore from wood to water. Another blast, and the lances dipped in a single rippling wave, the trot became a swift canter, the canter, with almost eerie ease, a gallop. The dull tremor of hooves reached the men on the bridge.

  ‘That’s order!’ sobbed Alais, drumming her fists on the rail. ‘That’s true cavalry!’

  The first rank crashed into the corsairs.

  On the bridge they leaped and capered and shouted, until the timbers creaked and cracked, and Kunrad was almost tipped off. The corsair ranks flew apart like a rotten fruit. The first corsairs went down before they could level pike or sword; the ones behind did not try, but sprang wildly for the steep hillside, or spilled into the lake. The water there was deep, and they had no time to remove their mail.

  The bridge shook to the shouting, but Olvar’s voice rose above it. ‘Look at them! Look! Fur cloaks over their mail, and a few honest brownskins among them! They’re Northerners, Gille!’

  ‘Dunmarhas!’ sighed Gille, half laughing his relief. ‘The Dunmarhas City Guard! Your message got through, Kunrad!’

  ‘Northerners!’ ran the ripple of voices through the crowd. ‘Nordeney horse-soldiers! On our side!’

  Men pounded Kunrad’s back as he struggled over the rail, and the prentices as they helped him, and cheered the Lady Alais whom, they said, had brought the wild men of the North to their aid.

  ‘Wild men!’ sniffed Gille.

  Up to the bridgehead the horsemen drove, as a chisel bites a trough through soft-grained wood. There, though, they ran into Merthian, and the men he had been able to gather about him – his own guard, probably, barring the path in a close double shield-wall. Their onrush stalled, and the corsairs, as quick to turn one way as another, swirled in around them. Merthian waved up the tail of the column.

  ‘They’re in toils!’ hissed Olvar.

  Kunrad scrambled clumsily up on to the rail. ‘Hey, you sothran lads! Are you going to let the Dunmarhas men have all the fun?’

  ‘No!’ roared another.

  ‘Let us back ashore!’

  Kunrad waved to the castle. ‘Gate, there! In the name of the Lord Kermorvan – Swing back the bridge!’

  The bridge had already stopped, as even the winch-crews ran to see the providential new arrivals. Now, suddenly, it juddered into reverse, and the massive chains and cables roared in torment as the overladen mass was sent sweeping in towards shore again. The undue weight grounded it with a jar some ten feet short of the landing stage, almost throwing Kunrad off again. It was Alais, leaping up and down in her sodden shirt until she all but danced, who waved her people on, screaming out, ‘Butcher the bastards! For the Lord Kermorvan!’

  And then, almost cracking her throat, ‘Morvan morlanhal!’

  There, in that tormented voice, the ancient battle cry brought chills even to Northern spines. On the sothrans it stung like a goad, and in a single crash of sound they echoed it off the mountains.

  ‘Morvan morlanhal! Morvan shall arise!’

  And even as they shouted, brandishing their weapons, the first of them streamed back off the bridge. Across the gap they sprang, or straight down into the breast-high water; it made little difference. The obstacles seemed not to be there. As they poured off the end, the bridge lifted again swung swiftly and crashed into place. Kunrad and the others, precariously placed, fell in a heap. The defenders needed no leader now, and their blood was up. In one great flow, like a dam unleashed, they went roaring out past the exhausted swimmers and, mad for revenge, hurled themselves into the confusion on the shore. Down from the castle gate, against all orders, came half the garrison after them, roaring and bellowing past.

  Into the midst of the corsairs they drove, and suddenly it was the outlaws of the Marshes who were caught. Merthian’s immediate line held, but the looser ranks of the rest were driven in by sheer press of men, and staggered back, crushed too closely to offer fight. The defenders, driven on by the same, rammed through them, right across the shore to where the Dunmarhas horses were being encircled. Right to the woods they came, and the hillside; and the corsair force, though greater in numbers still, was sliced in two like a serpent.

  To Kunrad’s eyes, as he looked exhausted from the bridge, it writhed thus. The upper half gave back from the Dunmarhas men in alarm. Merthian pulled back his precious lines to let more of the rear column through. But they had heard the shift from triumph to panic, seen the charge from the bridge, and few were so eager to follow now; while some already engaged seized the moment to break and slip to the rear, spreading the panic further. Robbed of their own chieftain, baulked of the swift and overwhelming slaughter they did best, the corsair force milled and boiled in confusion. But so might the defenders, in the developing skirmish; and then the corsair numbers, with Merthian to rally them, would surely tell. Again it seemed to Kunrad that he saw molten metal quiver and boil on the edge of the mould.

  He had no trumpeters, and needed none. Exhaustion fled; he swung himself to his feet, balanced on the rail, and shouted his commands with all the force of his forge-bellow lungs. ‘Kermorvannians! Shields, men with shields! Form a shield-wall! Around the horsemen! A shield-wall, quick’

  Without thinking he had translated a Northern word. A happy accident, if accident it was; for the image struck deep and immediate into the minds of untrained men to whom martial terms meant little, and showed them at once what they must do. Enough men obeyed for the few trained soldiers to rally the rest. The shapeless arrow of men hesitated, seemed to shiver an instant and then flowed right through the disordered corsairs to form a hardening ring of steel about the beleaguered horsemen. To the front crouched men who had shields, or had snatched them from corsair dead; and behind, close enough to strike over them, clustered the rest, so that each shield sheltered many bodies. The struggling outlaws suddenly found themselves facing a
ragged but deadly hedge. Kunrad swayed on the rail. There would be no mistaking these commands, anyhow.

  ‘Riders! Prepare to advance! Shield-wall – forward!’

  For a moment he feared they would ignore his directing arm, and rush out in all directions. But the riders shouted, the lances dipped, and the whole shield-wall around them, still holding, surged slowly forward like some sluggish armoured beast. The corsairs in its path tried to strike at it, but were caught by the lances that stabbed out across the shields, or, trying to avoid them, fell to the blades that licked out between them. Over them the wall passed, bristling like a porcupine. Fewer dared to challenge it, and let themselves be swirled away in disorder along its flanks.

  ‘Now!’ shouted Kunrad. ‘Shield-wall – ready! Horsemen, ready! Then open and let them through!’

  An instant’s confusion, and he held his breath. Then the Northern war-horns blared again, the defenders peeled back, and out of their midst the lances poured forward, lunging down at the already hard-pressed corsair line with the height and weight of horse. Merthian was lifting his visor-mask to scream orders, the line swayed an instant – then broke. The lances stabbed, the bright blades rose and fell like threshing flails, and suddenly the corsairs were turning their backs, spilling to left and right, uphill, along the shore, even into the lake again. ‘That’s it!’ roared Kunrad, waving so hard he almost overbalanced. A single crossbow bolt sang past his leg and stuck quivering in the rail, but he ignored it. ‘Shield-wall! Close!’

  The wall was ragged now, for many men were streaming after the horsemen, striking their advantage home; but with a great clatter of shields it happened ‘Good! Good! That’s it, that’s the way! Now – turn to the north!’

  Northward the great beast turned, bristling and unstoppable; and now the defenders hammered hilt and haft on their shields in a deadly thudding rhythm, and to that they advanced. The corsairs there, who had taken the brunt of the horsemen’s first charge, saw what bore down upon them. Before them were the hills, and beyond them to the east, the river and the ships that were a feint, and bore their supplies; for they had carried as little as possible, to let them march far and fast. That way was safety, whatever else befell; and in the swarming chaos of a shattered hive, they turned and fled.

  The shield-wall might have broken then, and pursued them; but Kunrad was watching. ‘No! Let them go! Shield-wall – southward! And harry all before you!’

  So great was the roar that went up that his words might have been drowned; but his gesture could not be mistaken. It was the last he gave in that fight; and it was decisive. He had split the corsairs, rescued the hard-pressed horses and brought them forward to break Merthian’s guard, the last core of order among the invaders. Now he would shatter them entirely. Southward the shield-wall turned, and the corsairs, already struggling to keep clear of the horsemen, faced that sweeping line of metal as it bore down on them, heard that dull relentless pounding, and gave back, swiftly.

  Olvar gave a great shout, and pointed. Merthian, by the sheer power of his will and word, still held fast a square of footmen together around his remaining horse, no more than twenty or so. But the sheer press was pushing them back from the bridgehead, back along the shoreline, almost to where the flames still smouldered. Here he sought to hold his men, screaming at them to but stand in this narrow way, and the day would still be theirs. Now, though, the rest of his force flowed around him like loose sand in the tide, and shook their fists at him as they did so, and brandished weapons, so that his defences were as much against his own as his enemies. Riches and conquest he had promised them, and now they were failing to regain what they had thought their own.

  Back into the fire the ragged square was pushed; and though most of the metal was dull now, it still held a fearsome heat. The rear of Merthian’s square disintegrated suddenly as men backed on to it unwarily, and screamed as their boots caught fire, and jumped for the lake, or fell and were further burned; till even the faintest touch of heat made men leap and run. The last semblance of order broke, and to the south, too, the corsairs turned tail and bolted. But in their traces, with baying horns and savage cries, ran the cavalry, and at their backs the shield-wall broke ranks and charged. Few could escape in time, not with Merthian’s remnant still blocking the path. The struggle dwindled from a battle to a hunt and a slaughter; and that too was by in a moment, leaving only a strew of bodies, as chaff on a threshing floor.

  Kunrad jerked his head wearily. ‘We’d better get ashore too. Find some weapons, and our armour, maybe, before somebody takes a shot at us!’

  With an arm around Olvar’s shoulder and another round Alais, he limped off the bridge and up the trodden way, sticky with bloodsoaked mud. He was glad now he had had no time to shed his boots, though they squelched uncomfortably. Gille stopped dead so suddenly they all barged into him. Kunrad, seeing the cause, tried to hold Alais back.

  She shook off his arm and ran to the hunched heap by the pathside, one leg impossibly twisted beneath the trampled black cloak. The bulky body had slumped into shapelessness, and the white hairs that escaped from beneath the shattered helm were sticky with blood, though the puddle beneath seemed absurdly small. Alais fell on him, sobbing wildly, while Kunrad and the others stood awkwardly by.

  At the sudden ripple of hooves, though, she sprang up. The others caught up swords and spears from the dead hands around them. But the horse that came trotting back around the corner of the shore was of a dark, shaggy heavy-shouldered breed, with no armour on it but a breastplate and headpiece. Its rider’s skin matched the bronzed gleam of his mail. He was a lean-faced man with a broad brow and dark straggling hair and beard that almost concealed the gold collar about his neck; a gold-hilted sword hung sheathed at his saddlebow. Other horsemen followed him, keeping a watchful eye around. He rode up to the party and saluted them, in strongly accented sothran speech.

  ‘I’m told it’d be some among you folk that’s in charge here? Aye, Mastersmith Kunrad, it would be. And the Lord Kermorvan?’

  ‘This is Lady Alais Kermorvan,’ said Kunrad. ‘The Lord Ieran, we fear …’

  ‘I see. My sympathies, my lady. I’m Arin Hergesson, captain of the Dunmarhas Guard, with two hundred horse and eighty to your aid. I’m sorry we could come no sooner. We rode as fast as we dared when we saw your great beacon.’

  Kunrad felt as if his grin would crack his exhausted cheeks. ‘It wasn’t a beacon, exactly. But it served us better than I dared hope. Thank you, captain. You broke them.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true enough, but yon gaberlunzies might not have stayed broken. Now it’s chiefly a matter of subduing the raggletag. These sothrans lads laid into them with a will, I’ll say.’

  Alais’s voice was bleak. ‘They had mortal wrongs to avenge, captain Arin. As have I. I am deeply grateful for your help, but I ask one thing more. I want …’ she swallowed. ‘I want the Marchwarden Merthian taken, on the counts of treason and murder. I set a price upon his head—’

  Olvar caught her arm and pointed. Far down the shore, beyond the farthest reach of the straggling battle, a small group of horsemen was speeding away down the shore. Into the first long rays of dawn they rode, and a blinding spot of fire flashed among them.

  ‘The armour!’ snapped Kunrad. ‘That marks him!’

  Arin shouted to his sergeant, and the man spurred away. ‘We’ll set men on his heels, lady! But he has a fine start on him,’ Arin added, ‘and we dare not hunt him far into the Southlands, for reasons you’ll understand, I think.’ He looked about him keenly. ‘As it is, we must look to our safety. With your leave, I think I had best be about securing the castle—’

  ‘Never!’

  The voice made Kunrad’s skin crawl. He knew whose it was; but it was horribly changed. Alais choked and half screamed.

  ‘Never!’ it rasped, as they turned to see the ruin of Lord Ieran Kermorvan, helm falling from a bleeding scalp, half raise himself in the dust, blood trickling from his broken mouth, and fall back with
a groan. ‘Never! Northmen holding Ker an Aruel – never, never! Blank treason … heads roll …’

  Alais, cheeks bloodless, caught his head as he collapsed into the dust once again. She looked up. ‘Olvar, Gille, get men from the castle, and something to carry my father in. And find a healer!’

  ‘We have two with us,’ said Arin, ‘if they’re not away getting their fool throats cut. Go, Hodir, bring ’em back! As to the castle, surely it’s best that it’s we who take command, with a strong force of—’

  She lowered her father’s head gently on to his pillowed cloak, and stood up. She was half dressed in a blood-smudged undershirt, her red hair was plastered about her like damp weed, her face was streaked with dust and tears and smears of blood, but she stood erect and unshakeable. ‘No, Captain Arin! My father is right. Could you allow a sothran force to hold your chiefest castle? You could not. No more can we, and however great our gratitude we would fight to prevent it, as we have fought here. We would far rather not, and welcome you as you deserve.’

  ‘She’s right, Arin,’ said Kunrad, and stepped to her side. ‘We’ve built a bridge here, of sorts. No point in breaking it down, all for one piece of brazen cheek! If anything can fire up the war again, that will; and Dunmarhas will be the first to suffer! And how long could you reasonably hold the place?’

  Arin swung his horse impatiently, while eagerness and greed flickered across his features. ‘Aye, well,’ he said at last. ‘It’d be a main fine place to be lord of, even for a little while. Still, you’ve the right of it, Mastersmith. We’ll not be the ones to start the stramash, not just yet. But what then? Are we to camp out yet another night on the damp sod?’