Hélie sprang to the left, across the knife's path instead of away, his sword beating inward. It bit and jarred on bone. The knife leaped high, a ruddy sparkle; a warm sticky fountain spattered Hélie's face, and the knave reeled away screeching and sank against the gatepost. An arrow tugged sharply at Hélie's tunic, its feathers brushing his skin. Gino and Stephen tumbled shouting out of the stables. The second man checked. The archer drew again, and as he sighted along the shaft, Durande, running along the wall out of his line of vision, hurtled at him and struck up his arm. The arrow sang harmlessly over the palisade. Her right hand drove at his side, and he folded up. She pounced for his fallen bow and crouched over his squirming body.
The survivor raised a piercing screech. Hélie ran at him, and Gino and Stephen came pelting from the stables. Another shaft whistled past Hélie's nose. The firelit courtyard, all leaping reflections and flickering flamelight, was alive with skipping shadows. Pale smudges of faces on the outer fringes of night lifted over the palisade, dropped and scattered. Spear-points and knives glinted. The dry old thatch and the rafters beneath were roaring ablaze from end to end, and the walls taking fire; by the crimson glare Hélie engaged with the spear. The fellow backed, jabbing clumsily; he had never fought anything deadlier than a bayed wolf. Hélie parried contemptuously. The man threw himself headlong, rolled clear and to his feet as Gino reached him and struck home. Durande came running, the archer's quiver over her shoulder and an arrow ready nocked. The men closed about her.
At least half a dozen shadows ringed them, and a screeching beyond the palisade told of others outside. Durande's bow twanged, and was answered by a howl and a clatter. The skulking shapes merged back into the darkness. These were not hardy veterans but untried peasants daunted by unexpected resistance, not yet aware of their overwhelming advantage.
Hélie was piercingly aware of it. Once this rabble nerved itself to murder they were finished, surrounded and pinned down by archers. To take refuge in any of the buildings was to be burned alive, to stay unmailed was to be shot down at the first volley. Above the squealing of swine, the neighing of horses, the clamour of poultry and the blaze's roar he heard a high voice yelling orders. A couple of ill-aimed shafts sang between them.
'Durande, Stephen, the gate! Gino, the horses!'
A shadow started round the blazing hall with a brand flaring in either hand and ran across the open, hair streaming and kilted skirts flying. With a hoot of malevolent triumph she reached the stables untouched by Stephen's hasty shaft, and hurled her flaming fragments, one upon the roof and one inside.
Thatch and straw erupted into instant conflagration. Even as they ran the dry old wood was catching alight. Sparks spat, flames licked at them, and the horses' blood-freezing screams obliterated all other sound. Hélie slammed his sword into its sheath, flung up his left arm to shield his eyes and plunged after Gino into Hell's mouth.
Loose straw blazed fiercely yellow under their feet; Gino kicked it right and left. Smoke gushed choking and blinding into their faces, sparks spun before their streaming eyes, and the horses plunged and reared beyond the fire, screaming in terror and dragging back from the halter-ropes that tethered them to the long manger, where already the hay was flaring. Hélie lunged at the nearest, Durande's palfrey. He dodged the frantic brute's hooves and teeth by a marvel, snatched at ear and nostrils and tried to drag down its head. He had nothing to fling over its eyes and blindfold it. Gino's knife flashed, sawing at the halter until it parted. Choking and coughing, he hauled on its mane. The thatch was all but consumed, the flimsy bough rafters ablaze and crackling. Embers rained through. Hélie stamped at flames licking round his bare legs, kicked away loose fire, wrenched savagely at the maddened palfrey's head. By main force he and Gino dragged it from the blazing manger, got its head down so that the Italian could throw an arm across its eyes, and pulled it to the door. Scenting clean air, it tore from them and bolted out.
They turned back, dizzy, scorched, half-stifled and nearly blind, to the other beasts, screaming in pain and fright and struggling in such panic that there was no sense to be had from them. The roof lurched inward with an ominous rending and a gush of fire. A hoof sent Gino spinning against the wall. He slid down it and lay writhing and coughing in the red-stranded black ashes. Fiery fragments showered from the disintegrating roof, and the wall over the manger split and reeled, fire lacing every seam. A furnace-breath seared Hélie. He stooped to grab up Gino and flung himself somehow through the doorway as the whole shed collapsed. He fell to his knees, struggled half-up, tangled with Gino's dragging legs and fell flat. The trapped horses' appalling shrieks filled his brain.
He gulped air into his scorched lungs and twisted his head. Stephen and Durande had reached the gate; his half-brother was struggling one-handed with the heavy bar and trying to shield her with his body. A shaft stood from his left shoulder, and his arm swung uselessly. Durande laid her sturdy body to the pull with sure strength, her long hair that had enmeshed his heart flung loose over her shoulders. Her palfrey was threshing in its death-throes, an arrow between its ribs. He struggled up as the high voice screeched commands. Behind him the burning horses fought and screamed.
Out of the shadows they came like a pack of curs, vicious and scared together, yelping to hearten themselves. There were women among them, skirts hitched about bare legs; it was a woman who led them, a pitchfork levelled in her two strong hands. He drew his sleeve across his streaming eyes and knew her, the virago ale-wife who had fired the stable. Hélie twisted free of Gino's coughing body and heaved himself to one knee fumbling ineffectively at his sword, urgently realizing that they must win out into the friendly night. Then he heard the drumming thunder of hooves up the slope, the shouts and oaths, and over all else a high clear voice yelling in French.
'Rescue! Rescue! Open the gate!'
The closing pack faltered. Stephen threw all his weight and force against the stubborn bar and heaved it groaning from its sockets. He raised a gasping cheer as it clattered from his grip, and dragged the gate round. Durande whooped and loosed another flashing shaft. Hélie lurched gasping to his feet and fumbled his sword out. The virago shouted, and a man ran against him with a boar-spear, his spider-limbed shadow jerking before him to give warning. Hélie leaped inside the thrust; the spear's cross-bar jolted his ribs as he hacked. In the instant of impact he knew the malevolent young face, no longer vacuously witless, and then it was split and hurled aside. The mother's wolf-howl chilled him. He swung round. The gate stood wide. Already the wolf-pack had scattered into the darkness. Stephen reeled against the gate and lifted his good hand in thankful salute to the first mailed rider spurring for it. He waved an imperative arm and pulled his horse round, and the half-dozen men at his back clattered headlong into the firelit bailey and parted to seize it. Hélie drew a long breath of relief and reached a hand to Gino, staggering to his feet. Durande stepped to Stephen's side, and he lifted his head to grin, his fine teeth and tawny thatch catching the firelight. The captain wrenched his horse round on its haunches beside him, his sword flashing high.
'That for you, ravisher!' he yelled, and split Stephen's defenceless face apart.
As he slid down Durande screamed. The rider swung down and grabbed at her, and she dragged back and beat at his helmet with her bowstave. He grappled with her. Hélie hurtled at him, ducking under the loosed horse's pawing hooves. The fellow had one arm round Durande and was trying to catch her flailing arm, pressing close as she battered at him. Hélie checked his swing at their locked bodies, and turned it into a thrust as a mailed back glinted. The iron rings held, thwarting the point, but the murderous force behind it broke his hold and sent him staggering. He tripped on the fallen bar and went rolling under the sword's sweep. Hooves thudded. Durande's warning cry whirled Hélie round to see her striking at a rider's face with her bow. Gino leaped out of darkness as the horse reared, his dagger ramming into the brute's straining barrel. Horse and man clattered over. By the blazing buildings others charged
.
Hélie abandoned vengeance, grabbed his wife's arm and plunged through the gateway. 'Left!' he gasped, and they leaped from the bridge and fled along the shallow ditch, under the palisade's shadow. Beyond it hall and stables flared to the stars in crimson wrath, signalling across the valley, but the village below lay silent and dark, deep-sunk in the ale-barrel stupor of Hélie's own providing. Yet there were vague shadows fleeting in the dark, voices calling to and fro, and through all Gytha the ale-wife crying curses on him who had killed her son. Hooves crashed on the bridge-planks, and torches flared.
They gained the corner unseen; torches blinded their holders' eyes for looking into darkness. Hélie scrambled up the nettle-grown slope, swearing under his breath, and paused a moment on all fours at the scarp's top. Behind were mailed horsemen, before them the witch-rabble; the night was alive with foes.
A bush nearby rustled. He jumped straight through it like a pouncing lion, and a half-seen black bulk went down under him with a grunt and a jarring thud. He fell soft, knees in a quailing belly, pushed up with a hand on the winded body and hauled his sword round for a thrust. Abruptly he checked. Under his left hand was the flaccid roundness of a breast. He could not strike home. He saw the open mouth gaping for air, reversed the sword and smote sharply with the pommel behind the ear. The jerking body stilled. He scrambled erect to find his companions on either hand.
'Up to the woods!' he muttered, and led the way at a lope. The moon had not yet risen, and drifting clouds obscured the stars, but the sky gave light enough for him to pick a way across the waste between black thickets and pale rocks, though stones and tussocks forced him to a walk. They gained the woods unchallenged, and turned to look back. Torches flickered back and forth like bright moths, shouts came thinly to their ears, and behind the palisade every building flamed skyward for vengeance. Figures crossed the glare, black and sharp. Hélie saw spindle-shanks nimbly bearing an incongruous pot-belly, and his fist closed fiercely on his hilt.
Bearing south, they presently sighted the horsemen, gathered in a group below the gateway, torches flaring high. They showed no interest in such ignoble quarry as the witch-pack, which was still ranging the darkness, shouting back and forth. Only the collision between the two companies of killers, Hélie knew, had let them escape alive, and the alliance made ugly logic. And he had seen no more of Stephen's murderer than hauberk and helmet.
‘Who was he, Durande? Fulbert?'
‘My cousin Oliver.’
‘We under-rated him,’ he said grimly, once his tongue had freed itself from the fetters of shock. Yet Oliver, however determined to enforce his ordering of Durande's future even at the sword's edge, was less likely than Fulbert the goat-man to join himself to this monstrous brood.
‘The Devil fry him!' snarled Gino. ‘My lord, he mistook your brother for you!'
‘And by now he will have learned his error,' agreed Hélie, and led them on, south by the edge of the forest. The sky was paling in the east for moonrise; it was not yet midnight. Even as the surprise of that struck him, he heard the wolf-pack's questing howls change to a concerted yell. The woman he had stunned had recovered and set them on the trail. He glanced back. Far-spread torches whirled and gathered into a constellation, and then mounted the slope. He broke into a trot, aware for the first time of bruises and burns, and an angry sorrow for his half-brother.
The trees pushed them eastward with the clearing's fringe. Under them lay impenetrable blackness where they might blunder blindly until disaster tripped them. Yet they must venture; to linger in the open was surer death. Hélie glanced up constantly at the screening canopy overhead, and at last found a slight break in it, an irregular line of star-pierced sky threading through. He turned into it, and felt with vivid relief, beneath his feet, the hard-packed earth of a trodden path.
They followed it hand in hand, breathing hard and occasionally stumbling. No one spoke. All faculties concentrated on the effort of walking. The trees closed overhead, but the bare ground seemed to have gathered from the air a dim greyness that guided Hélie. The path twisted and turned; he crept with painful slowness, a forearm up before his face, almost feeling his way. Every instinct urged him to hasten, to crash headlong into cover from the peril behind, but he harshly held himself to nerve-stretching patience. When he blundered he was speedily halted by fallen trees, dense thickets or rocks, but in time he found a kind of knack in remaining on the stone-hard track. He felt he had been straining his five senses for a week when a silvery radiance groped through the trees, the high clouds shone white, and the path became a twisting grey streak.
Hélie drew a long, thankful breath and rubbed his free hand across his smarting brow. His hair was crisped and brittle, his skin cracked and peeling, and his eyebrows broke away in fragile wisps as he touched them. He realized that he was gripping Durande’s hand in as fierce a grasp as a raptor's, and slackened it with a shamed murmur of apology. Her clasp tightened. She had no word of reproach for him. Neither had Gino, yet his was the blame; his the quarrel with the witches, his the mistake of entering Ashley, his the heedlessness that had ignored Stephen’s warning. And Stephen had died for it. He had found and lost his half-brother in one short day’s span, and aching regret for what they might have shared was bitter within him.
Gino jerked them to a halt with a tiny hiss, and they turned to see him prick-eared and tensely listening. A thudding of hooves reached them also, and Hélie’s hand leaped in futile menace to his sword. Then he turned off the track, feeling his way cautiously through noisy hazels and clashing brambles, and they crouched among nut-laden boughs as the jingle and clatter rang close and a torch’s ruddy glare glanced among the leaves and set wild shadows whirling. Three riders trotted past, stooping and peering, but the light rocked past and the clatter faded into quiet. Hélie lifted his face that he had buried between covering arms lest its pale gleam betray him.
‘Further in and lie close! They will be back!’
They crawled into the thicket’s heart and huddled there. He drew Durande close. He could feel her heart pounding against his side, but she made no stir. It seemed hours before the riders returned, even more slowly, mail and helmets sparking back the guttering torch-flame. All sight and sound of them had been long gone before he dared straighten his cramped limbs and turn back to the path. It led south, to Warby and Trevaine, the way they would be hunted.
‘The witches will be after us at first light with dogs,’ he said flatly.
‘Dogs?' Durande echoed sharply.
‘That swine Osbern was among them. He has a hunting-dog.’
Gino comprehensively cursed Osbern and his unlawed dog as they made the best speed the track's surface and the moonlight permitted. Their start was none too long. Several times furtive rustles started hands to hilts, and once a heavy body plunged noisily in the undergrowth, so that they stood sweating and tense, blades half-drawn, until they heard a retreating grunt and clash of tusks and gasped with relieved laughter. They crossed an open glade, and surprised a tall hart in his new-polished antlers. The sky was greying thinly on their left when they scrambled down a steep slope to a little brook chuckling among rocks.
‘If we wade along the stream the dog will lose our scent, my lord,’ suggested Gino, veteran of a score of manhunts.
‘It will not suffice; they will hunt us to Warby gate,’ Hélie answered grimly. ‘They dare not leave us alive.' He led on without further parley. Their lives were in his hands, his wits elaborating Gino's suggestion and his own knowledge of the country into some sort of plan. If they merely ran for Warby they would be hunted down afoot and shot to death as helpless as deer.
The path tilted up from the stream, rougher and more rocky. Their soft shoes had never been made for hard usage, and none of them had an entire sole left; they were already footsore and limping. The trees scattered apart and humped themselves into crooked, crippled shapes among out-thrusts of grey limestone. Gorse and high bracken spread in the gaps, and an open ridge-top upheaved
itself against the paling stars. Grey dawn was dimming the moon. They reached the top, and the track plunged down again into dark woods. At its foot, as Hélie had expected, ran another stream.
On its bank he turned, and led them back at the best pace he could maintain. The grey sky was brightening in the east, and all but the strongest stars had blinked out. Durande and Gino had too great need of their wind to waste it on questions; like him they had never walked a mile on their own feet since first they possessed a horse to straddle. The blood beat in Hélie's ears, and he gulped like a stranded fish when at last he halted at the summit.
Here they had light enough to distinguish each others' grimly set faces, and the sky was flushing for an angry dawn. A few yards away the path twisted round a jut of rocks. Hélie vaulted up onto a waist-high slab and reached down a hand. 'Up without touching!' he warned, and his wife's comprehending grin lighted the dawning as she caught hold and sprang to his side. 'Keep to bare stone; scent holds best on trodden plants.'
'A good thought,' Gino professionally commended him. 'Our scent being above the dog's nose—'
'It may win us an hour,' Hélie finished. 'And with the Saints' aid—'
His head jerked up, and all the blood in his body froze. A horse had neighed, thin and clear in the dawn. He and Gino gazed white-lipped at each other. Their foes had combined. Dogs and horses together made a hunt they had little hope of evading. Every ruse would consume more time in contriving than mounted men would spend unravelling it. The whole day was before them. They could not dodge and double until another night succoured them.
Power of Darkness Page 19