by Gordon Ryan
“Let’s go. Keep it tight.”
The tip of the spear. Maximum force. Weak spot of the enemy.
The right flank of the enemy, opposite their left, was still a jumble of men, and it was here that she thrust forward. The enemies parted. One dropped his sword as he fell and the man who’d knocked him over snatched it up. He tossed his own, blunt weapon aside. A moment later and Tess took her own sharpened sword from an enemy.
After the first few seconds, the enemy closed around them on all sides. Peter’s retreat picked up speed. They’d have only moments before every man in Kirkov’s army had turned to eliminate this small group of outliers.
“Go. Faster.”
Tess lost herself in a blur of heaving, sweating, cursing men, thrusting swords and shields. But she was armed now with a killing edge. And her muscles knew what to do.
The last contact with Peter’s force ended. They were surrounded. Eight men against sixty.
Chapter Thirty:
The battle began just as Niels reached the encampment. Kirkov’s men—most of them had once been his own—flooded from the tents. They raced down the hillside with shields and drawn swords, shouting.
Running was a mistake. Whatever they gained in speed they would lose through exhaustion. A man could only sustain a sprint in full armor for a few seconds.
And with the running, clanking, and shouting, nobody seemed to pay any attention to the hooded man who hurried in the opposite direction. He tucked away Henri’s dagger and grabbed a blunt sword from the blacksmith’s tent. A moment later and he found the only tent that still had guards.
“Move out of the way,” he said. “I need to see the prisoner.”
One of them started to move, but the other leaned forward and squinted. “It’s Grunberg.”
Niels had his sword in hand and was at the attack before they could draw their weapons. He went after the more alert of the two first, then turned his attention to the other after the first fell. The second man fell back, fell back, and then fled. Niels let him go. He pushed his way into the tent, sword-first.
Three bound men lay on the floor, and a fourth slumped in the corner, unbound, semi-conscious. He used Henri Fournier’s dagger to cut their bonds.
“Get up. Hurry.”
They stood and rubbed wrists and ankles.
The fourth man was Borisenko. Niels helped him into a sitting position. His eyes were streaked with red from broken blood vessels. The bastards had pulped his lips and knocked out several teeth. One hand hung limp and every movement brought a groan.
“Can you stand up?”
“I don’t know.”
Niels turned to Miko Talo, Borisenko’s Finnish bodyguard, now unbound. “Take my sword. You three go to the armorer. With any luck it won’t be guarded. Bring back swords.”
“There will only be dull stuff. They’ve got all the sharp blades in the battle.”
“Better than hands and teeth. Go.”
Borisenko couldn’t get to his feet. One of his ankles was a mess. Niels tried again, but settled back in frustration by the time Talo and the others returned.
“We set a couple of tents on fire,” Talo said.
“Good.”
The Finn looked at his boss and winced. “I shouldn’t have been asleep. If I’d been awake they never would have taken me, I could have come back here and—”
“It was his own wife,” Niels said. “If you can’t trust her, you can’t trust anyone. Anyway, I was awake, and they still took me.”
“You have to go,” Borisenko said. “You know it.”
Niels clenched his teeth. “Goddamn it.” His mind struggled for a way out. They needed to move and move now. And they couldn’t waste their strength carrying Borisenko.
Niels pulled out Henri’s knife and pressed it into the man’s hand. “You get the chance, you kill Kirkov.”
“I’d rather kill my wife.”
“I’m hoping Tess has her.”
“No way. Katenka would never go in there unless she knew how to get out.”
“Then kill her,” Niels said. “Or your cousin. One of those two, either one, we need it.”
Borisenko gave a grim nod. The man had no chance. Niels should have kept the knife. Or better yet, used it to put the man out of his misery. Save him the hell of more torture.
“Good luck, Niels.”
“You, too.”
Niels turned and gave a gruff order for the other four men to follow him. Short of Tess herself, there was nobody Niels would rather have at his side than Miko Talo. Niels and Talo led the charge down the hill. They were on the attack before the others even realized they were enemies.
It took him a moment to understand the battlefield. At first he thought that Kirkov had divided a chunk of Tess’s army and now surrounded them with the intention of annihilating them. The others fought their way back inside the castle.
But then he saw Tess, at the center of a half a dozen men, and he realized she was fighting her way back up the hillside, toward the tent where they’d held him that morning. She wasn’t going to make it. And there was nothing to rescue but Henri’s corpse.
“Tess!” he shouted. He waved his sword.
She looked up and a grim nod passed between them. Several men broke from the enemy ranks and rushed to engage them. Tess attacked this weak spot. They came together a few minutes later.
“Good morning, Tess.”
“Morning, Niels. You look like shit.” She turned, bashed swords with an enemy, drove him back.
“Yeah, I forgot to shave this morning, and I skipped breakfast. That never helps.” He flinched back from a sword thrust.
“You know what they say about breakfast. Most important meal of the day. I’ve got coffee and bacon back there.” She hooked a finger over her shoulder, then used both hands on her sword to drive back an enemy who tried to break his way into the shield wall. “Shall we retire to the castle?”
“Yes, let’s do.”
There was a pause as both sides regrouped, then the enemy was on them again. Swords clashed and men shouted. Talo cursed and drove back an attacker. His arm streamed blood.
Their progress down the hill came to a halt. There were simply too many men blocking their path. For a long moment neither side moved, but the enemy kept shifting forward new men. Niels felt ready to drop from exhaustion.
“Where’s Peter?” he asked the next time he found himself next to Tess.
“He’s coming. Look.”
Peter’s men poured back out of the castle. They formed a blunt line, maybe five across with the front men holding oversized shields and the men behind them armed with spears.
“Let’s go,” Tess shouted. Then, in a lower voice that Niels barely caught, “Where the hell are Lars and Dmitri?”
They’d have never made it without the defectors. Just as the two groups stalled with a bulge of the enemy between them, six men spontaneously broke off from Kirkov’s left flank and attacked their own men. Even with superior numbers, the surprise of this new battle weakened the enemy’s entire center. Their line did not hold.
The three groups met in front of the gates with the enemy at their front. Peter had left nobody above, only a single man to raise the portcullis. They had no way to keep the enemy from pressing after them.
But a cry went up from the back side of the enemy. Niels saw Kirkov shouting orders. “I said pull back! No, back!”
Kirkov stomped and cursed as his men obeyed his orders. No doubt he’d thought to end it in one blow, but Niels thought the retreat was sound strategy. Otherwise, the portcullis might have fallen and divided Kirkov’s army in two, with half on the inside, half outside.
“My god,” Tess said, after the portcullis fell and they could look out with safety. Men gasped and moaned all around him, bent over double. “Niels, look at it.”
The battlefield was a mess of mud and bodies. Wounded men struggled to stand. Others lay face down in the mud. Tents burned in the enemy encampment. Men now c
ame with buckets of water or knocked them over with swords. His trebuchet stood, and looked more deadly from this angle than he could have imagined.
It was horrible, and yet wonderful at the same time. Like a time machine, straight into the middle ages. He was shaken by the enormity of it.
“It’s a war,” Niels said. He looked down at his sword. It was nicked and coated with blood and hair from someone’s scalp. He wiped it on his cloak. “It’s a real war. Thank god you’re on my side.”
“Your real ally is this castle. Let’s make sure we know how to use it.” She turned away from the battlefield to look him in the eyes. “Where is Borisenko? Did he do this?”
Niels opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment a fight broke out behind them, in the middle of the bailey. Two men grappled on the ground, swinging fists. Two more stood in front of Peter and shouted in his face. Peter held up his hands, shook his head and backed away, but the men grabbed him and intensified their screams. Other men shouted and argued.
Tess turned and strode into the bailey, her bloody sword still in her hands. Niels followed, just behind her left shoulder.
He didn’t think the sword would be necessary. Whatever else happened, Tess would take charge.
Chapter Thirty-one:
Tess shoved her way through the men sniping at Peter. “Move. You, out of my way, move.”
When people didn’t listen, she slapped them on the side the helmet to get their attention. Niels followed. He pushed to help clear a space. In a moment she was by Peter’s side. He looked shaken.
One man didn’t move out of the way. He glared at Peter. “I want some answers, Gagné, and I’d better goddamned get them now.” The speaker was Rick McIves, his Texas accent incongruous behind a dented helmet and blood-stained jerkin.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Peter said. “And it’s insane to fight among ourselves when there’s an army out there trying to kill us. Right, Tess?”
Tess spoke as loudly as she could without sounding shrill. “Are you kidding? I’m with them, I want answers. I want all of the answers. And I think everyone here should know it all.”
Nods and shouts of assent. An argument broke out to one side and threatened to come to blows.
“Will you guys shut up for one minute?” she snapped. She turned back to Peter. “You don’t tell us what you know and I’m going to kick your ass right through those gates.”
She stopped and took deep breaths. Let them see her take control of her emotions. When she continued, it was in a calmer voice. “But first, let’s get our act together. Right now, we need to stay alive.”
“You’re right,” Niels said in a loud voice. He stood back with the rest of the men. “We don’t have time for this. Not now.”
“Look, I’ll make sure everyone has the answers, just as soon as I get them. Anyone have a problem with that?”
The looks remained sullen, but their anger seemed focused on Peter, not her.
“What should we do?” Niels asked.
“I want anyone with an injury by the well. If there’s anyone who has any medical training at all, I want him on the job. Quickly. Come on, who?” A couple of guys raised their hands, reluctantly, she thought.
“I was a med student,” the first one said. “Never completed my residency because I took a job with the family company.”
“That’s better than me,” the other man said. “I’m just a volunteer paramedic.”
“You’ll have to do,” Tess said.
She turned to Peter. “Find Nick. Take McIves. I want Yekatarina Borisenko down here now. And find Lars and Dmitri.”
She sent men to the gatehouse and three others to patrol the castle wall. “Keep down,” Niels told them. “Those crossbows have real bolts.”
“Now,” Tess said to Niels. “Tell me what happened.”
She wiped off her sword and put it away. She’d taken a sharpened sword from an enemy and it didn’t fit properly in the sheath.
Niels told how he’d been scouting the castle last night for an old entrance, recently sealed. A point of attack.
“That flaw is real,” she interrupted. “There’s a garage under the castle. I think it has a service entrance, we’ll need to find it. Sorry, go on.”
He explained how he’d seen men approach his camp and had followed them. He told how they’d taken him captive. Yekatarina was a ringleader. The other leader was Borisenko’s cousin, Anton Kirkov, but there were others in camp who seemed in on the plot.
“That means Borisenko must be in on it,” she said. “He hand-picked a lot of these men, according to Peter.”
“No, he was taken by surprise. I think Yekatarina did most of the choosing. And then she betrayed him. I see you don’t believe me, but it’s true. Yekatarina betrayed him. He suffered one hell of a night, I saw a lot of it.”
“Worse than what they did to you?”
“Yeah.” Niels didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I thought at first that the worse thing was knowing what his wife had done. Not so sure anymore. They left him a broken wreck. Pulled out his fingernails, broke his bones, smashed his teeth. I tried to get him out of there but he couldn’t even stand up.”
It was horrible to think about. “So why did you get less of it?”
“They tried to turn me. They pulled back when I told them what they wanted to hear. Well, almost what they wanted. Left them thinking I was almost turned, seemed more believable.”
“Do you think they’re going to kill him?” Tess asked.
“I don’t know, probably. He might even die from his injuries if he doesn’t get help.”
“We can’t do anything about that now. Right now, we have to secure the castle. What’s out there? The trebuchet, and what? You must have had some other plans.”
“I was going to mine the east side of the castle.”
“I’ll prepare countermeasures. And mining will take a lot of manpower. “
“I know,” Niels said. “It was a test. See if you were paying attention and maybe distract you. I didn’t think it would work. I’ve also got a siege tower, but it’s only half built. I don’t know if Kirkov can figure out my drawings or not. They’re mostly scribbled notes. And who knows if he’s smart enough to use it?”
She thought about how he’d nearly killed her on the tournament pitch. “Don’t underestimate him. That would be a fatal error. Okay, what else?”
“I’ve got another, stronger battering ram,” Niels said. “Question is, how close did I come to breaking in last time.”
“Too close.”
“Hmm. I was hoping that was a trick, make me think you were weak.”
“I wish it were,” Tess said. “Honestly? I wasn’t ready, I was messing around with something else.” She thought about how Peter had found her coming out of his warehouse, after the attack had already started. “We were lucky to fight you off. I’ve been working on that portcullis, but it’s still subpar. What I really need is a moat, and a drawbridge.”
“Well, you don’t have them,” Niels said. “You’ll have to make do.”
“Right. But the gloves are off now, aren’t they? There’s a reason they built those murder holes and arrow loops. Kirkov breaks through the portcullis and he’ll discover this castle has teeth.”
Peter waved to her from a window of the keep. “Nick’s okay. Don’t worry.”
She waved back, relieved. And there was Lars, entering the bailey. She’d been worried about him, too. He turned and took in the men working on the walls and the men getting bandaged by the well. He frowned and shook his head.
“Where’s Dmitri?” she asked.
“In the dungeon, where I left him. He went down with Yekatarina.”
“You put her in the dungeon? I don’t think that’s necessary,” Tess said. “Post a double guard at her door. I’ll talk to her later and see if I can get anything out of her, but she’s not going to start talking just because we throw her in irons.”
“Oh, you misundersta
nd me, I think.” Lars spoke with an ironic tone. “Dmitri didn’t throw Yekatarina in irons. He went down there to let her escape. She went out the service entrance.”
The news rocked Tess. “No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t.”
“Yes, he did. I just happened to look down in the middle of the battle, and saw the two of them enter the keep. I caught him when he was coming back out again, he was drugged or something. I have no idea why.”
“I bet I know why,” Niels said. “Dmitri was going to make it look like he was drugged so Yekatarina could escape. That way he could stay on the inside, throw open the gates in the middle of the night.”
It made her sick to her stomach. Why would he do such a thing?
“He pulled this on me.” Lars showed a dagger. “We fought, but he collapsed. Damn lucky, too, probably saved my life.”
“And you put him in the dungeon?” she asked.
“I locked him up. Someone is guarding him.”
“I want two someones. Make that three. God, I can’t believe it.”
There had to be some other explanation. But how could she be sure? How could she get the truth out of Dmitri?
“Tess?” Niels said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’ve got to make him talk.” She turned, feeling defensive, angry, and betrayed, all in a jumble. “What would either of you do? Tell me.”
Someone on the castle walls shouted. Men stood over the edge of the merlons and pointed.
“Get your heads down, for god’s sake!” Tess shouted.
There was a whooshing sound and a snap from beyond the castle walls. She recognized the sound at once from her time at La Baux, but she shouldn’t have heard it, not from this distance. It was as if everyone and everything had hushed.
She looked to the sky. Something came flying down. It looked like a giant bird with black, flapping wings. And a scream, like a raptor in its dive. She cringed.
It landed in the bailey and bounced off the ground. It came to rest a second time and didn’t move. A body. The flapping wings were arms, and a cape that had flapped behind it, like a parachute that refused to deploy.