A terrifying howl was already filling their ears as they leaped up and fled. Lightning blazed across the dark to betray and blind them. Before they had taken six strides Gino tripped on a large stone in the grass and fell full-length, and Hélie, too close behind to avoid him, blundered over his legs and went down with a breath-snatching crash.
The witches swarmed upon them, clawing hands, trampling feet and snarling faces. The goat-man and Rohese were yelling orders, the pack yelling in frenzied hate and rage. Clutching fingers closed on Hélie's arms and throat and hair, reeking bodies piled upon him, a wooden shoe cracked against his ribs. He heaved and twisted, his lungs gasping for air, trying instinctively to snatch his dagger, but he was rolled onto his back and pinned down by too many hands. A torch spluttered almost in his face, a great shout of triumph and execration blew over him, and then authoritative voices were yapping commands. His belt tugged sharply at his middle and was gone, his knightly sword a trophy to this rabble.
Italian curses were spitting from a muffled scuffling beside him. The torch swung. Lightning spurted. Rohese's high voice gave command. Steel flashed. The oath broke in mid-syllable to a grunt and a gurgle almost obliterated by a crash of thunder, and then figures were rising from a black huddle stilled upon the ground. Realization pierced Hélie like a sword. Gino was dead; Gino, perfect servant, constant companion, caustic critic, dear friend. He heaved himself up and onto his knees by sheer strength, wrenching at the hands that held him, snarling like the lion of his shield and crazily set on hurling himself at the goat-man who balanced on his wooden hooves before him, his horn eyes blankly and balefully reflecting the torchlight. He lifted his trident in alarmed menace. Lightning ripped the darkness behind him, tracing jagged streaks of green that lingered inside Hélie's eyeballs, and he towered immense and terrible as evil straddling the world.
Grappling hands and heaving bodies overthrew Hélie, and he sprawled sideways. The masked monster clopped nearer and was a man again, stooping a little to peer at him through the horn eyes. The crouching group turned scared faces up to him, gabbling fear and alarm, three or four crying out together of the Lord of Trevaine seized and manhandled and still alive. Incipient panic spoke.
‘What'll us do wi' the young lion? What'll us do, lord?'
'Cut his throat!' Gytha's voice suggested harshly.
A moment’s ugly hush followed, as those whose comprehension had not run so far realized that he could not be allowed to live, and then any feeble protests were overborne in one mingled snarl of approval and execration. Gytha spat full in his face. Mabille leaned past her shoulder to screech at him.
'It was your own cousin loosed me, lion-cub—your own kin who betrayed you!’
She clawed at his eyes, her nails tearing his brow as he rolled his head aside. Pinned helplessly, it was all he could move. Gytha crouched over him. Lightning blazed blue-white upon her comely shoulders and full breasts spilling from the torn smock that was all her covering. One of her braids brushed his face, and he jerked from the touch. Then her hand was in his hair, thrusting back his head, and steel touched coldly on his straining throat in the blinding blackness that followed on the glare. She cried words that were lost in one tremendous crash of thunder. The edge bit. Hélie commended his soul to God and the Saints and drew a last breath.
A staff thwacked sharply on full flesh. Gytha yelped. Her hand tugged shrewdly at his hair and fell away. Hélie’s dazzled sight cleared to take in the torchlight. Rohese stood black and vast beside the goat-man, and her stout staff swung again to crack on the other woman’s buttocks. She scrambled clear on all fours, cursing savagely.
‘Who set you to do judgement, farthing drab?’ the high thin voice demanded.
'My right—for my son—my sure right!’
'You claim any right before me, who was Maiden of this Coven before a chance-met wastrel coupled with your dam in a roadside ditch to beget you? Out!’ She turned to the half-crazed, half-scared assembly, and as the white blaze streaked jaggedly across the sky flung up her arms to its dazzle. 'The God has provided for himself a sacrifice!’ she cried thin and clear, and on her last word the thunder bellowed.
The pack howled acclamation. Hands clawed and buffeted Hélie. He was hauled to his knees, his hands wrenched up behind him. His tunic, torn asunder in the first onset, slid in tatters over his shoulders. At a gesture from Rohese they ripped it from him. He heaved and twisted vainly in shamed fury. About his wrists he felt the bite of rope, drawn tight and quickly knotted. Many hands seized him and dragged him towards the altar. They struck and kicked and spat on him. Jagged light tore the sky, thunder drowned the jeers and curses that assailed him. Then he was flung face-down, and writhed onto his side to stare at the masked man looming over him with levelled trident.
‘Where is the girl?' he demanded, his voice oddly muffled and inhuman inside the mask.
Hélie lifted his head, blood and spittle running down his face. ‘Your cousin,’ he said deliberately, ‘is beyond your reach.’ And inwardly he prayed God to make his words true.
Oliver de Collingford's breath hissed sharply. ‘So you know!'
‘Do you take me for as thick-witted a numskull as yourself?'
The trident-points jabbed through skin and flesh to jar against his ribs, stabbing red pain through his chest. He clenched his teeth on a brief prayer, and for a long moment waited on the thrust that would crunch through the thin bones' resistance to his vitals. Then the trident lifted.
‘Tell me, and I will do you the favour of cutting your throat before we throw you on the fire!'
‘No!’
He laughed softly and malignantly. ‘I would rather see you squirm,' he said. ‘The girl is not far; we shall find her by daylight.' A stronger flash blazed above his black head with its out-thrust ears and sweeping horns. He minced round Hélie's head and stooped at his back. Sweating fingers fumbled at his numbing hands and tugged at the amethyst ring. Instantly Hélie clenched his fist and twisted his right hand in the rope's grip to cover it. The man straightened, and the wooden hoof stamped viciously, once and twice. Bones snapped. Sickening pain knifed through him, surprising a sharp cry from his lips; then he ground his teeth together to enforce silence. The ring was wrenched off. Over his head he heard the ugly crow of triumph, and twisted like a broken-backed snake to kick at the monster who stole Durande's ring. He skipped nimbly aside.
‘Hermeline shall have what you denied her!'
‘In your craven carcase?' Hélie gasped, and then clenched his jaws as the hoof crunched down again. His head sank to the flagstones, his body writhed. His hands were a blaze of agony, and it was as much as he could do to keep his mouth shut and his senses in his skull.
Oliver de Collingford gave an order. Men lashed Hélie's ankles with the end of the rope about his wrists, so that his spine strained backward like a bent bow as they drew his hands and feet together. Every muscle in his body was wrenched into torment by the unnatural position. The rope ate into his flesh, his right hand thrust fire through him, and his head swam. He lay naked at his enemy’s feet with no recourse but prayer. And Durande was in the woods, abandoned alone, and by daylight the pack would be ranging wide to hunt her down. He had been Stephen’s death and Gino’s, and he would be his love’s. That was the bitterest anguish of all he must suffer.
The witches had closed about them, silent now, their faces shining greasily in the torch-flame. Here and there Hélie picked out one he knew; Osbern, the Warby miller’s gangling son and bony wife, the wizened cowherd who had tended Tancred, a kitchen-servant from his own Trevaine. The white dazzle of lightning showed them clearer than sunlight. Rohese stepped to his head with a curious massive dignity, and lifted her arms to still the last whisper.
‘The god shall have his meed of blood,’ she pronounced, ‘as he did in my father’s day. So we shall prosper, and all men do him homage!’
They acclaimed her with wild outcry, and the storm saluted her with white fire and clamour. The goat-man gestu
red with his trident. They threw themselves on Hélie, clawing and shrieking like vultures on a carcase, and a dozen hands found hold, heaved him up and flung him upon the unlit pyre. Torches and lightning warred to reveal their faces, vacant and bestial with lust and frenzy. The goat-man chose a brand from the dying altar-fire and gently swung it to renew the flame.
Hélie lay rigid on the crackling faggots, fighting the frail flesh’s shrinking from death by fire, throttling the terror he would not betray. Oliver de Collingford giggled hollowly inside the mask. Rohese had the majesty of true faith in evil, but he was as crazed and fearful as his followers who shoved and crowded with greedy faces to see their victim burn.
‘So die all who oppose me!’ he cried, lifting high the torch, and the avid throng howled assent.
‘As Robert of Warby died?’ snapped Hélie, snatching opportunity at death’s opening gate.
'He threatened me, and drank the cup I gave him!' he avowed in mad exultation. 'No man defies my power!' And he stooped to thrust the brand into the pyre's base.
Hélie caught that final victory to him. Rohese had heard him, and Mabille, who would remember however the rest of the rabble forgot. If the one did not end him, the other would betray him when tardy justice overtook them. Then he heard the brisk crackle as the dry twigs flared, and braced himself, praying now for fortitude to die as the martyrs had died, not twisting and squealing like a trapped animal. The branches snapped and spat, and the first heat fingered up through the loose pile to warn his naked flesh of what was to come. Gytha lifted her arms to the sky and screeched like a moonlit cat. The ring suddenly joined hands and began to caper about him, and the pipe skirled and twittered into its thin little tune again as the bright flames took hold on the wood. Only Rohese stood over him, her broad face a ghastly moon in the orange glow, her arms in their wide sleeves death's own waiting shadow above him. Hélie stared past her at the black sky, cringing as a little tongue of flame licked up the pyre's side and fluttered by his head. Another few inches and his hair would blaze, the fire would lap about him and he would live for a little time that would be an eternity, craving death.
Over his head sang a familiar whistle and smack. An arrow feathered itself flight-deep between Rohese's huge breasts, and her mouth and eyes widened in a vast astonishment before she bowed forward, her black arms dropping, and toppled like a landslide. Then the sky shattered apart in jagged fragments of searing light and a crash as though Heaven's gate clanged apart for Saint Michael and all his host to charge through. A gust of cold wind swooped through the flagged space, tearing at hair and clothing, flattening the eager flames sideways and thrusting them through the pyre. Before they could leap up afresh the rain roared upon them.
It fell in rods of solid water. The fire hissed once and was drowned dead, without a wisp of smoke to say it had been. It battered cold and stinging at Hélie's flesh, and half light-headed he wondered whether God's angels had indeed opened Heaven's windows to save him. It lashed the witches, cringing and crying; it doused the torches without a flicker; it streamed from the goat-man's leather clothing; it flooded clean the altar and drummed on the flagstones, rebounding in ankle-deep spray. Lightning blasted through it, turning it to a brilliant white curtain hung between sky and earth. The thunder bellowed. The witches milled and yelled in the blinding darkness, and their leader cowered. The power they invoked had answered. The fire was quenched, the sacrifice rejected, and Rohese had been smitten down as the skies roared wrath.
Lightning exploded again over the huddled, demoralized mob, surprising some in the act of crossing themselves. It briefly revealed a huge body hurtling among them, and then the green-black darkness swam back in dazzled eyeballs. Something blundered over Rohese’s bulk. A hard hand pawed over Hélie’s side and thigh, found his conjoined wrists and ankles, tugged at the rope. Cold steel touched his skin, sawed at the wet hemp. It parted, and his feet fell free. He gasped as his cramped limbs stretched and life drove hot needles into his numbed muscles. An arm hoisted him, a thick shoulder propped his armpit, and he was reeling on his own feet.
Hail hammered down. Stones larger than peas pelted Hélie’s bare skin, slid and rolled underfoot, rattled and bounded on the stones. The rabble yelped and flinched, shielding heads with ineffective arms. The goat-man shouted something that went unheeded in the uproar. Hélie’s wits roused, purpose returned to his muscles as his rescuer plunged through the disrupted throng, and he lurched somehow along with him, the hailstones slithering under his feet, the tall grasses and weeds beaten flat, the bare earth churned to icy mud.
The ruin’s broken wall loomed blacker than darkness, and then shone lividly white as a flash blazed through the rain. It lighted Durande, glistening terrible and splendid on a heap of rubble, her gown plastered to her flesh and her strong body straining to her bow. It uttered a dull, sodden note as the arrow leaped over their heads. The string was wet and springless. The useless weapon clattered aside; she was with him, gripping him in a fierce embrace, her wet hair against his cheek, her body shaking. Any words she spoke were drowned by the thunder’s crash, and instantly she recovered herself, grasped him by the other arm and tugged him forward.
'This way—quick! Hélie, Hélie!’
The man grunted something that must have been agreement, for between them they hustled him round the building’s corner, while the disorganized witches still shrieked their terror and confusion. Flashes followed incessantly, blinding bright, and the thunder was a constant roar. The hail ceased to flail them, though the rain still fell solidly as a waterfall. Yet he could hear Durande’s disjointed voice, sharp at his ear.
'Thank God—oh thank God we were in time! We could not reach you—could not see—not until he lighted the fire—Hélie, Hélie!’
Hélie dizzily snatched at his senses, bracing himself in their urgent grasp without which he would have fallen. Life was returning to his numbed hands in fiery pricklings, and in his right hand a pain that made him grind his teeth. He gasped between crashes, 'Into the woods—the horses—’
A wrathful clamour lifted through the tumult. Too late, he realized instantly; they would be overtaken before they could win clear of the ruin into the shielding trees. His naked body took the light at every flash, a plain betrayal. He floundered forward, necessity spurring his spent powers.
'Never do it! Into the ruin—hold the stair!’ he panted.
Some heavenly guidance this time kept their feet from the lurking rubble. They won round the second corner, the howls still blind and aimless behind them, and flickering flame-light pulsed through the breached wall to guide them the last few yards. Lightning spurted as they reached the gap, and a yell of discovery pursued them as they flung themselves within illusory shelter. A torch flared in a bracket by the stair. By its light Hélie recognized the man supporting him, and halted in cold shock. Then strong rage blazed through him. He jerked free, shot out his sound left hand and twitched Thomas’s dagger from its sheath. Instantly the girl swung round him to menace Thomas from the flank.
'At his first treacherous move, Durande, sink steel between his shoulders!’
'Treacherous—Hélie!’ he croaked.
'You have betrayed me thrice, and that suffices. Back!’
Renewed yelling outside for the moment had no meaning as the two big men confronted each other and the girl warily poised with the light winking on her dagger-point.
'Hélie, you are run mad! You call me traitor—’
'You loosed that wench to be my death!’
'But—but Warby is not yours—you had no right—as God sees me, how could I have guessed at this?’
'Get out to your fellows! Go!’
'Hélie—my lord—how could I tell—dear God, I saw him! The Foul Fiend himself!’
'Your dear friend Oliver de Collingford!’ Hélie told him brutally, and left him to realize the full truth of all he had done. With savage satisfaction he saw his kinsman’s appalled horror, the shattering of his arrogance, and turned aside from
him. He snatched down the torch and thrust it into Durande’s hand. The stone slab stood aside; he groped in the black space behind the newel, and his fingers encountered the unmistakable hard leather length of a sword-scabbard. Against all expectation the light flickered on his own gilded hilt, and he gripped it thankfully and stumbled up the first steps. Thomas suddenly uprooted himself from the cobbles and came after them at a blundering run, and they crowded up the narrow spiral. Durande thrust the torch into another rusted iron bracket, and stared at him in horror.
'Hélie—your hand!’
He lifted it to see the damage, and then wished he had not; the feel should have sufficed him. Durande, biting her lip, caught his wrist and held the swollen bloody mess to the light. Thomas stood speechless below them, his eyes blank as a sleep-walker’s with shock. Traitor or fool, he was nothing to fear now.
'He broke it to take your ring, Durande,’ Hélie said simply. Then, 'Let be! Here they are!’
He glimpsed vague movement in the broad gaps that opened on the rainy dark. A harsh shouting announced their finding, and voices called back and forth in the bailey. Hélie shifted his grip to the sword-hilt, won purchase with his toes on the chape at the scabbard’s tip, and awkwardly drew it. Then it struck him like a blow that the sword was useless to him, even had his strength been equal to the work. Had he been used to wielding it left-handed, he could not defend the stair so. Like all castle-spirals it turned to the right, the newel a shield for the defender’s body and the open curve a clear swing for his right arm. Left-handed he must expose himself to strike, sorely hampered by the newel, with no free space to use his blade.
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