by Dan Davis
Walt and Rob were on the other side of the house and their task was to scale the perimeter wall from the street side without being observed or stopped by the citizenry. It was at least a far shorter climb that would allow them to carry their swords. Rob wanted to bring his damned war bow with him, but I ordered him to stop being so foolish.
Our assault was to be coordinated, as far as we could, and I was supposed to be in position near the top of the tower when the signal was given.
I climbed, as quickly as I dared. Breathing heavily, I chanced a look up at the wall and tower above me. It seemed almost impossibly far.
If I survive this night, I swore to myself, and even if I should live a thousand years, I shall never climb a wall again.
From the other side of the building, Stephen banged on the front door and cried out for them, in the best imitation of my voice he could muster, to answer the damned door and to let him in.
That was the signal.
I was far from the top of the tower.
Stephen was supposed to flee from the door after he cried out, and Walt and Rob would then throw themselves over the wall from the street below and begin their attack.
Gritting my teeth, I climbed faster up the crumbling, aged stonework, aiming now to climb up not to the top of the tower but the top of the perimeter wall directly above me. The top was almost within reach.
A man coughed, so close that I looked up, imagining that he would be looking down at me over the side.
There was no face there and a foot scraped on the boards of the wall walk as he moved on away from me.
I let out the breath I had been holding and launched myself up the final stretch, throwing myself over the top. The soldier stood twenty feet away at the end of the section of wall, about to turn to return along the wall toward me.
I yanked my dagger out and sprinted toward him.
He flinched in surprise but recovered quickly and drew his sword, stepping forward to break off my timing. He thrust the blade smartly, which suggested that he knew his business, but I twisted around it and slipped my knife hand up inside his arm and pushed my dagger into his throat as I checked him with my shoulder and brought him to the ground. I ripped my blade back, tearing his throat out and bathing the wall walk with his blood before he could let out a cry.
Nevertheless, I found myself exposed.
Looking down into the shadows of the inner courtyard below, there was a soldier looking up at me. He stared, as if unsurprised and unafraid.
I turned and looked up as a voice cried a warning from the top of the tower, echoing between the wings of the house.
“He is here! The river wall!”
Snatching up the dead man’s sword, I pulled open the door at the end of the wall walk to find two soldiers rushing toward me from within, both dressed in armour and helm. One had a mace and the other a short-hafted war hammer, both men began roaring like madmen as they came on.
Retreating outside, I stepped over the dead man lying in the shadows and the first armoured man, his vision limited by his helm, tripped over the body and fell flat on his face. The man behind did not hesitate but jumped over his comrade and swung his war hammer overhead, trying to crush my skull. I rushed in, grasped his hand and ducked low into his body. Lifting him up, I heaved him over the side of the wall and a moment later I heard him splash into the black Loire below.
The first man was getting to his feet when I pulled up his helm and sawed through his throat with the sword.
A cry behind me forced me to spin about and back away. Good thing, too, because a crossbow bolt cracked into the stone where I had been standing. The man on the tower had shot down and then his shouts, too, joined the others echoing in the courtyard. More soldiers rushed from the wings of the house into the courtyard, a couple carrying lanterns that they held high, illuminating the lot of them.
I realised then that the trap Gilles de Rais had set was greater than I had imagined.
He had filled his house in Orléans with his veteran soldiers. The few on the outside were but a hint of what lay within. I wondered how many of the armoured veterans he had made into powerful revenants by the power of his blood. And I had climbed into the trap without armour, armed only with a dagger and now with a dead man’s sword.
How many more were within? A dozen? A hundred?
I considered bellowing a warning for Walt and Rob to fall back, thinking that perhaps we could retreat from the building to try a better approach another time.
Yet, how could I flee? Even the slim chance that Ameline was still alive within somewhere meant that I could never have left her to her fate. No doubt, Gilles de Rais had known that about me and used my sense of honour, faded and fragile though it may have been at times, as a weapon against me.
And anyway, there could be no safe retreat. More soldiers were coming up behind me to close off the way out and so I plunged deeper into the east wing, where three soldiers met me in the first chamber.
They each brandished polearms with deadly hammers, axes and spear points arranged on the ends, but the ceilings and close walls meant they could hardly swing the things. Each man thrust his weapon at me and I darted forward past the iron heads and thrust my weight against the wooden shafts, sending the men reeling against each other. Quickly, I slashed at them with my sword and cut each of them down.
Shouting echoed through the wing and footsteps pounded on the stairs. When they came rushing from the stairwell, I came at them from the side and bundled them to the ground, my two blades, the sword and the dagger, flashing and stabbing them to brutal, bloody deaths.
Jumping over them, I hurried down the stairs only to find a dozen men below waiting for me in a small hall. Without hesitation, I rushed into them trusting my speed and skill and aggression to carry me through.
Killing three immediately, the others cornered me and I found a wound in my shoulder streaming blood. I had not noted receiving it and the sudden anger and fear pushed me to rush them again. They were fearful of my speed. They could not have witnessed anything like it in their entire lives and after throwing down a pair of them, the rest fled. Or rather, they tried to. I caught up with each man and speared and slashed and hammered them to death with their own weapons.
A gash had appeared over my temple and I recalled the desperate swing that caused it, fast and strong enough to cleave my head into two pieces had I not slipped the blow.
As I pushed open the door that led out into the courtyard, eight more men rushed me and pushed me back into the hall with a fury that for a time I could not match. These men were certainly revenants, and their speed was greater by far than any I had fought so far that night. In desperation, I retreated further and found myself with gashes opening on my arms and hands and on my jaw.
Still, as they cut me, I cut them, and my strokes had precision and timing that theirs lacked and soon the eight attackers became six and then I was chasing down the three that fled toward the front door of the house.
The wounds all over my body were terrible but I had cleared the entire wing of the house and no more came for me. I rushed back to the hall and out into the central courtyard, where I found an armed man creeping along in the shadow. I swung my gore-spattered blade at his face but he spoke and I checked my blow.
“Richard!”
“Walt? What are you doing? Come in here, out of sight.
When we stepped back into the doorway to the hall, I saw that he was breathing heavily and had blood all over his face and mouth.
“Thank Christ it’s you, sir. Me and Rob cleared the other wing, murdered the lot of the bastards.” He looked at the bodies in the hall. “As you did, it seems.”
“And where is Rob now?”
“Got separated,” Walt shook his head. “Heard him fighting for a bit but then I couldn’t find him and when I called, he didn’t call back. Hiding maybe, or he’s dead.”
“Damn. What about Gilles? Joan?”
“Killed about a dozen of the bastards when I clea
ned that wing.” He jerked his thumb behind him. “No Gilles there. No demon maidens, neither.”
“I also killed many soldiers and yet found no sign of our true enemies.”
“Maybe they ain’t here at all.”
“The tower,” I said, easing open the door to look up at it across the courtyard. “I was supposed to clear the tower but I never reached it. Come, through the courtyard, we shall finish this one way or another.”
We crossed the dark courtyard quickly and Walt heaved open the door at the bottom which led into the base of the stairwell beyond.
“Thought it’d be locked,” Walt said, a grin on his face as he half turned to me.
A crossbow clanged from the darkness within and I shouted a warning but the bolt hit Walt somewhere between his chest and his face with a wet thud. He fell back, his cry of pain cut off almost before he could utter it.
I charged through the doorway just as another bolt clanged from within, throwing myself down onto my face just in time so that the bolt missed me and shot over my hunched back.
Knowing I was close to death once more and at the mercy of anyone close by, I rolled over in order to get up.
A hand grasped my hair and a knife slashed over into my belly, cutting me deep once, twice, and almost a third time until I caught the attacker’s wrist in both of mine. The wounds were agony and I was sickened greatly by the damage done. By God, he is strong, I thought, as strong as I, at least, and perhaps stronger. As I held his wrists and twisted, trying to pull him down off his feet while avoiding his blade, another man fell upon me, wrapping his arms about my legs.
I kicked out, not thrashing but with a swift blow from my heel. Through luck rather than judgement I caught him clean enough to crack his jaw or perhaps his nose.
The other man yanked his knife away from my grasp and swiftly drove that blade into my chest.
I had twisted before it plunged into my heart but still it pierced me between the ribs and I knew I would instead soon drown in blood if they did not slay me first.
Still kneeling behind my head, he drew his knife out and tried to cut my throat. Somehow, I got my hands up to my neck just in time and so instead of sawing through my neck he frantically worked the blade back and forth, cutting deep lacerations into my palms and fingers.
Grasping the sharp blade and twisting, I pulled it from him and rolled over. He lost his grip on his knife and I got my knees under me and drove myself into him so that he fell back against the lower steps of the stairwell, pulling the knife from his hands and stabbing it into his body once, then twice, and I was about to finish him off when the other man rushed me from behind.
I twisted and slashed out, catching him across the face. The blade cut across his eyes and through the bridge of his nose. Screaming, he fell to the side and I turned to finish off the wounded man under me at the base of the stairs.
“Please,” the man said, almost wailing. “No, no.”
There was no reason to hesitate and yet I recognised the voice and it stilled my hand.
“It is you,” I said, in the dim lamplight seeing that it was in fact Gilles de Rais cringing beneath my knife. He was the man who had almost killed me. Blood welled out of the wounds on my chest and I knew that he had done me mortal damage. Without human blood I would myself swiftly die and so I wanted nothing more than to cut off his head. He deserved to die, for all the murders he had committed, least of all my own.
“Where is she?” I asked, coughing up blood along with my words.
His eyes flicked up the stairs above us.
“Thank you,” I said and placed the knife against his neck, though blood streamed from my lacerated hands and I struggled to keep hold of it.
“Wait, wait,” he said, lifting his chin and inching up the steps as he strained to pull away. “Your woman will be killed.”
“Ameline?” I stopped. “She is above us?”
“With my lady,” he said, gasping and wincing.
I gritted my teeth. “With your..? Joan the Maiden is up there?”
His mouth twitched at the corners. “And she will kill your woman before you can stop her.”
The flicker of hope kindled in me but then faded as I realised he would say anything to prologue his life a moment longer.
“If the Maiden harms Ameline then I will kill her immediately. Nothing will stop me.”
“I can save her,” he replied, coughing up blood. “Save your woman. If you let me.”
“A trick,” I said, shaking my head as blood dripped from my mouth.
“I swear it.”
“Meaningless words,” I growled and pushed the knife against his neck.
“Kill me then,” he said, closing his eyes and lifting his chin. “I beg you. End it, please. Please. End me now as I pray.”
I rolled him over and pushed him. “Up, then. Up, up.”
Staggering up the stairs with one hand over my chest and belly, I crept up behind him with my knife at the ready. The soldier I had blinded below continued to wail about his blindness, banging around at the base of the stair. I wondered if Walt was dead yet or if he was still lying in the dark courtyard, dying alone and in agony. He would have wanted me to try to save Ameline, for he was a knight at heart. It galled me to leave him behind but I was dying myself and I had only so long before I would bleed to death.
Shoving Gilles faster and faster, I crawled up, step after step. My head swam, and my vision clouded. One of my bloody shoes slipped on a step and I fell to a knee. Whipping my knife up, I saw Gilles peering down at me. He made no move to attack and instead turned and continued up.
We rounded the final bend and came immediately into the chamber at the top of the tower. A fire burned in a hearth on one side. A ladder led to a closed hatch in the ceiling.
Ameline stood upright in the centre of the room, her hands bound and her face a mask of terror and exhaustion. Behind her, a low iron cage. Inside that cage, three young children huddled together in the far corner.
And there stood Joan. La Pucelle. The Maiden of Orléans. I recognised her pug nose, small mouth, and her wild, shrewd eyes.
Joan held a knife to Ameline’s throat. Though the Maiden was far smaller, she was possessed with an immortal’s strength and so kept her prisoner from freeing herself with a hand wrapped like a vice around Ameline’s upper arm.
“Halt there, Richard,” Joan said, sneering at me and pushing her knife against Ameline's skin, threatening to break it. “Unless you want to see this girl’s blood spilt.”
“How is it that you live?” I asked her, inching forward.
“My Gilles saved me,” she said, smiling at me and then at him. “You did something right, once.”
I inched forward again. “Who was it that you burned?”
She scoffed. “It is a simple thing to find a girl that the world has discarded. They are so many, and they can be bought, threatened, and owned, really rather easily. If you take one more step I shall cut this bitch’s throat.”
I froze.
Gilles cried out, clutching the wounds I had given him. “Joan, please, no.”
“I knew you would fail,” Joan said to Gilles, bitterly. “You useless dog. Look what you have brought us to. He has killed you.”
“He dies also,” Gilles said, gesturing to me as he fell sideways against a table near to the fireplace. “And his men are dead.”
Joan looked me up and down. “Yes, yes, I see it. So, Richard, my useless Gilles has killed you after all. Finally.”
“Not yet,” I said, coughing up blood and spitting it to the floor after I spoke.
Joan scoffed. “Drink one of the children,” she said to Gilles, jerking her head at the cage behind her.
“No,” he said, slumping against the wall. “No, I will not.”
“Do it,” she hissed. “Quickly, while you still can.”
“No more,” he said, weeping and leaning his head back against the wall. “No more killing. No more. Not the children.”
“
You are weak,” Joan said. “You were always weak at heart. Die, then. You may as well die, for your will is long broken. When my lord returns, you will be no help like this.”
“Your lord?” I said, a chill about my heart because I thought I knew who she meant. And I dreaded it.
“My lord,” Joan said, her eyes shining in the lamplight. “My lord, the Archangel Gabriel.”
“She means Milord William de Ferrers,” Gilles said, glancing at me as he pulled himself to his feet once more. “Your brother, sir.”
“Brother,” Joan said, scoffing at him before turning to me. “You are Judas. My angel said that he would deal with you when he returns to these lands.”
I laughed but the pain of it racked my body. “Yes he said that,” I said, wincing. “Said it a long time ago.”
She lifted her chin and glared triumphantly. “He sent word. He comes. Even now as we speak, he comes with a great army that will save France and all Christendom from the heretics.”
“You are the heretic,” I said, not believing a word. “And a lunatic.”
She ground her teeth then snapped at Gilles. “Take a child before it is too late.”
Gilles slid along the wall toward the fireplace where an ornate short sword leaned. I forced myself to straighten up, feeling my wounds open and more blood seep from me, and prepared to defend myself with my knife. Gilles grasped the sword, turned and brandished it.
Brandished it not at me, but at her.
“No more killing, Joan,” he said, almost wailing. “I cannot bear it. I want only peace. All I did, for nothing. William comes not to save Christendom but to destroy it. Everything he said, everything he promised. It was all lies.”
Joan snarled like an animal. “Unfaithful. Heretic!”
Beside her, Ameline attempted to pull away but Joan held her fast.
I was fading quickly, my sight darkening. My wounds were not healing swiftly enough and I lost more blood by the minute. I meant to save Ameline before I fell but could think of no way to achieve that. So I sought to draw things out further.
“Destroy Christendom?” I asked Gilles. “What does William mean to do?”
Gilles scoffed, disgusted. “He comes from the East with an army of Turks to overrun us. An army of a hundred thousand Turks who come to conquer Christendom forever, to conquer us and subjugate us under his rule for a thousand years. So his messenger said. I do not believe it, but the man swore it was true. He has betrayed Christ.”