Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  Down the lane, his men had concealed themselves against the sides of the road. While the army attempted to siege the castle walls to the west, FitzOdo meant to attack their flank here, luring them down the lane to deal with a small group of archers, while the bulk of his men waited to ambush from the sides. No doubt a dozen similar traps were waiting elsewhere, and FitzOdo could retreat through half the city and pick off soldiers all the way.

  “That is King Richard’s army,” Robert said again, perhaps realizing as he said it how little it mattered. “We’re trying to help them.”

  “Love Richard all you want.” FitzOdo nocked an arrow. “But if you think those soldiers are going to give a single fuck who you are then you’re even dumber than you look.”

  Quill looked to Beneger and the earl for support. Even the silent Gilbert seemed perplexed as to exactly what it was they were supposed to do now.

  “If you’re in the city, best get your nose underground,” FitzOdo sneered. “But if you’re up here and have a weapon drawn, you’d better as fuck be fighting for the same thing I am.”

  Sir Robert FitzOdo stood up, as did his four companions who’d been kneeling at the barricade beside them, and they pulled the cords of their bows back to their noses.

  “Nottingham!” the knight screamed, and they loosed their arrows.

  At the army’s flank, two soldiers fell and those around them startled, turned, and pulled away from the main company to respond to the threat, while every single thing that Quill had ever known for certain in life threw its arms in the air and scattered.

  SIXTY-ONE

  THE BEAST, WAR

  FUCKING HELL, EDWARD STRONG was closer now to his home in Preston than he had been in five long years, and he damned well wasn’t going to die here in the slop-bracken streets of Nottingham. His nerves flared as he stepped over Sutton’s flailing body—who was still struggling to figure out why there was an arrow embedded in his ribs. Edward had to leave him, swinging his shield to protect himself from whatever pissant city archers had done the wicked thing. He called for Gregory and Doran Grand who were both already one step ahead of him, creating a spear formation to peel off from the main assault and deal with the attackers down this side street.

  Not here, he swore. That wouldn’t be his fate.

  He’d spent too long on the wrong half of the world fighting for Richard’s lost war just to be killed by some hapless traitor at home. He meant to see his wife soon, and his daughter, Tilda, who was but two years old when he’d left. He felt a light thunk smack against his shield, but it was thick alderwood that had held up against months of strong Saracen bows, while these attackers were probably spitting warped arrows with makeshift weapons. King Richard had promised them a quick fight against an unprepared city, that there’d be spoils, too—which he could bring back to his family. Tilda had loved that straw doll as a baby, perhaps he’d find a new one for her in some respectable house here, a proper doll.

  Gregory and Doran leaned into a run toward a shoddy barricade strewn across the street and Edward followed—until his ankle caught against something and he toppled forward, his arm wrenching as his shield bit into the ground. Damn it! he cursed as he twisted to free himself from whatever had tripped him, just in time to see a group of strangers behind him, no, and a hairy face that screamed with fury as he swung a blade down between Edward’s eyes.

  * * *

  A CROSSBOW BOLT SHATTERED against the crenellated castle wall just beside Ricard the Ruby’s face, and he froze for only an instant. Had it flown a few inches closer, he would be plus court d’une tête, mais luck was on his side today. The French crossbowmen would need time to wrench their locks back, and Ricard could let fly five or six arrows before that. He peered down—the French army was crossing the divide between their front lines and the castle walls, gathered in columns of men with their shields above their heads. They were very likely protecting the wooden ladders he’d seen built earlier in the morning.

  “Take them down!” screamed the captain de Worcester, pointing his finger at the colorful leather sigils covering the French shields, but Ricard avait les meilleures idées.

  Even with bodkin points and gravity on their side, they could do little more than feather those shields, which wouldn’t stop the advance. Instead Ricard aimed true for the crossbowmen, who would soon let forth another volley to give the ladders cover. His first arrow fell short but his second and third found their homes.

  “C’est moi,” he whispered, every Frenchman a reminder of why he could never return home. “Je suis ici.”

  He flung another at a man cranking his shaft back—who was quickly eclipsed by another with a crossbow at the ready. The unnatural clatter of their triggers shocked Ricard—he had not realized they’d staggered their bowmen into two ranks. The castle wall around him erupted in splinters and chunks of rock, and he did not have enough time to curse as he was jolted back, his vision went blank, and he felt himself topple into la nuit noire …

  * * *

  JOHN OF ST. ALBANS gasped as an arrow landed before his feet, and his lips said a prayer on their own. The front of the siege ladder weighed down his shoulders and his shield balanced on top of it, so all he could see was the dirt a foot ahead of him. The noise of the war echoed in unnatural ways, balanced by his own rancid breath. That tooth has rotted, he knew. He’d barely seen any fighting in their last city siege at Acre, and had felt like an impostor for the better part of a year. Now he wished he were in the rear ranks again—this wasn’t worth it. He prayed to St. Albans that he would not be made martyr himself, and tried to think of summer nights by Daya’s side, memories of safety and comfort that could protect him more than his stolen shield.

  At the commander’s whistle he knelt and shifted to the side of the ladder, planting its feet on the ground in conjunction with Alain across from him. His shield had not shifted for more than a second when he felt a smash across his entire body, a wet slap that pounded his senses, followed instantly by a million searing pinpricks that drove miles beneath his skin. He screamed as the boiling oil turned every inch of his skin to blister, and his last thought was of Daya, turning her face away in horror at the sight of him.

  * * *

  RONNELL OF BLYTHE SWUNG hard and smacked the Frenchman’s shield wide, opening just so—that he could plunge his sword into the man’s open armpit. He heaved forward with the action, pushing the blade deeper as the blood poured out, and kicked the body free again as it slumped to the ground. But his eyes were on Sir Robert FitzOdo back at the barricade, and the men who had joined him there. Wendenal and Peveril, he recognized first, but at the sight of the pigfucking white glove beside them his blood hardened. Nothing, no army, no god, could keep Ronnell from Gilbert this time.

  He ran, twisted, slashing his weapon down and through the back of another Frenchman’s head, who had yet to realize the trap. The skull opened, spewing hair and meat and purple pulp into a pile—a practice swing, for Gilbert, Ronnell swore. That traitor had fucking dissected his brother Derrick. He swore now on their mother’s grave that he’d split the man in half as many times as it took until Gilbert could no longer be identified as human. Because he wasn’t.

  There was a Frenchman’s body on the ground before the wooden wall, and Ronnell used it to vault over—no, he lost his footing and smashed his face into the wood instead, he felt a crack in his jaw and teeth and a numbness smothered him, and then mother no, no, not before Gilbert, not now but there was something new inside him, blistering cold steel plying his ribs apart, pinning him down, no mother no

  * * *

  JACELYN DE LACY PEELED the arrows from between her knuckles, springing them into men who had not killed her uncle. Five ladders, from her viewpoint, had now found their footing on the north side of the curtain wall and were ascended by scores of men who had not killed her uncle. She directed the nearest kitchen cooks to pour their pots over the battlement edge, where more ladders had arrived, carried by a cluster of men who had not kille
d her uncle. It didn’t matter that Will Scarlet was captured. It had done nothing to quell the stone rage that lived beneath her muscles. She pawed out another fistful of arrows and waited at the wall’s edge for her next chance.

  Jacelyn did not intend on dying before she saw her uncle’s murderer hang, so she meant to survive this. She moved and let loose her arrows, but the wooden ladder before her was already at its peak and falling toward the battlement. Low walls, she cursed the entire castle, and when its wooden planks met stone she knew there was no pushing it away again. But they’d planned for this. A coil of rope was nearby with a barbed grapple, which she flung down until it clattered against one of the ladder’s rungs. Its other end stretched to the fulcrum arm of the nearest converted crane. “Make yourself useful!” she shouted to the crowd of men below, who scrambled for the turncock wheel that would pull the entire blasted thing up and over the wall before it was used. Jacelyn and the archers next to her just needed to pick off any men who were weighing the ladders down.

  She made brief eye contact with the archer next to her, whose eyes flicked. Even in the middle of this hellforsaken war, this stranger’s eyes flicked.

  They all flick. With only one eye that could see, it was always so obvious to Jacelyn when someone’s attention glanced over to her dead side. Gilbert was the only man whose eyes had never flicked.

  Somewhat happily, she enjoyed that the soldier’s eye was quickly replaced with a crossbow bolt from below, and he flicked himself right off the wall, backward into the bailey.

  * * *

  HENRY FLEETFOOT WAS NOT the first to the top of the ladder, but he was first of his company, which was enough to finally prove his name. He’d been mocked for months for being the last to finish their march north from Austria, but here he was ahead of every one of his companions, vaulting over the top battlements of Nottingham Castle. The archers on the wall were already retreating or pulling their short arms, but Henry had his at the ready. He lunged forward at a man but found nothing but air, and before he could reposition the man swung his bow—his bow! Which wasn’t fair at all—into Henry’s nose and he felt a burst of copper, then something moved beneath his chin and the next breath he took was all blood, his neck was cold, and he was certain his company was laughing at him again. His feet slipped through the rocks and darkness devoured him.

  * * *

  KELLE WAS ALREADY CRYING, but she found the smooth handle of the knife and pulled it from the wool bundle. “It’s worth more than everything I’ve ever owned,” her papa had explained to her, before he left for the war. “But don’t sell it unless you have no choice. I’d rather you have it when you need it.” She traced her fingers over the spiderthin black ripples in the knife’s blade. Damascus steel, her papa had called it, and just touching it made her feel invincible. She was old enough to know what the army would do to anyone who fought back as they sacked the city, just as she knew that she was not quite young enough anymore for her youth to protect her from them. Kelle glanced out the window, though she could hear it all—louder than she knew anything could be. An endless throng was dismantling her home and the buildings around it, tearing the wood planks apart with their hands and swords. The stone buildings were just being pillaged, while every wooden hovel was being destroyed. “For the ladders,” her brother had explained before he’d leapt from the window to fight back. His body was still there on the street where the army had marched right over him. But he didn’t know about the Damascus knife, and she gripped it harder with both hands, even as her stomach lurched, even as the wall across from her, her bedroom, where Kelle had gone to sleep every night for a year—it ripped open and men were there hacking at its timber. She held the knife out in front of her and screamed her papa’s name.

  * * *

  A ROAR WENT UP from the northern wall, and Roana twisted with the others to look. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” the older woman answered. “But nothing we can do about it.”

  Roana saw commotion at the top of the battlements, but little more than that. The French had gotten to the top, she guessed, at the farthest point before the bulwark dead-ended into the taller walls of the middle bailey. Everywhere else the invaders had climbed, they’d been beset upon on both sides by the wall’s defenders—but here, they only had to fight in one direction. “Hell,” she said, before the old woman grabbed her and tugged her forward.

  There was little else for her to do. She ran with the trio she’d been assigned and found another body to haul away. She’d never ran so much in her life. The moment that their first archer had fallen over the battlements back into the bailey, they’d been moving. Four of them grabbing each fallen soldier by their limbs, praying they wouldn’t recognize his face, and dragging him to the back of the baileyground. Taking any weapons, and armor. At first they looked for coinpurses, too. Now they just took a breath, and ran again.

  * * *

  SEBASTIEN CLUTCHED HIS BELLY, hoping he could keep the blood inside, his guts inside. He curled into a ball and prayed to every name he knew and looked up as people flooded over him, streaming over the wall, and he prayed and he prayed and his hands were so very wet.

  * * *

  NISSA LOCKED THE DOOR, but she could see the stream of soldiers passing by the Bell turn and look in, gaping, mouths open and hungry. Thirsty, weren’t they, and her inn was an easy target. She felt the weight of the cleaver in her hands, good for taking heads off birds but she wasn’t aiming to cook anything in the kitchen this day. Ollie wasn’t back yet, and wouldn’t be now, not with the Market Square filled as it was with the worst type of customer.

  “Keep your gawkin’,” she muttered at the next solider who paused to peer through the wooden slats. The gangs had already had their fill of the Bell, and she wasn’t lying down a third time. The first one—she swore, she spat—the first one would lose his hand, as God was her witness.

  A shake of the door, a knock, a slam. Fingers, next, prodding into the cracks where once had been her window, and that was good enough for her. She swung and three fingertips were hers now, bouncing from the fat of her blade like giblets. “Come on then,” she growled at the screams on the other side. The door slammed, the door slammed, the lock bulged, broke, and Nissa started swinging.

  * * *

  WILLEM THE GENTLE FLED. The barricade had been overwhelmed, and the French were now sacking the city rather than focusing on the castle. You brought this on yourself, he knew, flying down the lane, his lungs bursting with fire. This was all his fault, he knew it. God was damning him for what he’d done—for what that crazed bastard Korben had made him do—but as many times as he’d prayed for repentance he knew it wouldn’t matter. He’d never trusted Korben, but he’d never trusted any of the men he’d been paired with for those damned smuggle jobs.

  On their way back from York, they’d come across that carriage off the side of the road outside Nottingham, and found two nobles murdered inside.

  Willem had said they ought to bury them. But Korben had other intentions, and Willem had been too afraid … afraid of what Korben would do if he tried to stop it. What he’d done to the woman, it chilled Willem every time he closed his eyes, and the fact that he’d helped, had dragged the woman out of the carriage that Korben could do the thing, was the reason he was damned now, the reason that God had sent an entire army to burn Nottingham to ash for what he’d done.

  * * *

  “FUCK YOU,” THE FRENCHMAN grunted as Henry Three-Face drove his sword through his guts. The blade stuck and he tried to pull it out, but the man twisted and brought them both down to the ground. Henry’s back was exposed as more of them pushed forward onto the battlement. Again he tried to wrench his weapon out but there was no room now, so he let it go, wrapped his fingers around the man’s throat, and squeezed.

  “Fuck you!” the man said again, his fingers crawling up Henry’s arms, trying to find his own face. They wrapped into his beard and pulled and the pain made Henry wince, but he would
n’t let go. Even as he stared into the man’s face, almost certain, almost dreadfully certain that he recognized those features, and it wasn’t until after the man went limp that it occurred to him that he said “Fuck you” in English, not French. Before Henry could realize what that meant there were hands on his legs and his shoulders and suddenly the ground was gone, the castle walls threw themselves away. He’d been flung over the battlement, and never had a chance to tell anyone what he knew.

  * * *

  “OUR TURN,” DAWN DOG yelled as the first group of Frenchmen made it down the inner stairs alive, finally setting foot in the lower bailey. Will Scarlet—or Henry Russell, as he was hiding himself—had held them back until now, forcing them to watch as the battlements were overrun. Archers didn’t know but one way to kill a man, and once the enemy was within ten feet they’d chosen to die rather than do anything useful with their final moments of life. But still Scarlet had held them back, letting the prince’s men do a fine job of fucking the whole castle for the rest of them.

  But now there were people that needed dying in the bailey itself, and Dawn Dog had a double-headed battle axe that was itching to get its first bleeding.

  For a full month they’d been kept inside the castle’s walls and then the prisons, and Dawn was eager to let every goddamned inch of his fury about that out upon the first fucking French skull he could find. And then the second, and the third, and if he was lucky, a couple dozen more.

  “Hold!” Will Scarlet screamed, but Dawn Dog was at a run, as was the first Frenchman who’d seen him, and Dawn pulled his axe high and swung it clean and damn but if the Frenchman’s head didn’t pop right off. Dawn didn’t even wait, he carried the weight and swung the axe wide again, loving its heft, loving how it felt in his hands, and he buried its head right into the chest of the next man—mail shirt and all. Blood splattered his face and he smiled wide and he knew he was born for this, for this goddamned moment. No more street rabbles and bullshit. Dawn was born to kill, and he was going to prove how exceptionally good he was at it.