Neither Shey nor his men seemed much perturbed by what was happening outside our walls. After a hearty breakfast of oats and honey, Alice and I joined him and the Spook on the battlements.
“Did you know they’d have a siege gun?” asked my master.
“I knew they had one in their possession. It was cast in Dublin more than fifty years ago and has seen action twice, proving itself to be a formidable weapon. The mages bought it and transported it here last year. But our spies report that they lack experienced gunners.”
The gun was dragged into position to the west of the castle. I studied the men clustered around it. At the siege of Malkin Tower, I remembered that the noise had been deafening, but I’d noted the skill of the gunners—how they had worked as an efficient team, each man performing his task with an economy of movement.
Among our armed defenders were about six or seven archers, and using their longbows, they now started to aim for the gunners. However, the distance was too great, the wind was against them, and their arrows fell short.
I watched the heavy iron ball being rolled into the mouth of the cannon and the fuse being lit. By now the gunners were covering their ears.
There was a dull thud and a puff of smoke from the mouth of the cannon as the iron ball began its trajectory. It fell far short of the castle walls and skidded across the rough turf to end up in a clump of thistles. This brought a chorus of jeers from the defenders on the battlements.
It took them about five minutes to fire the next shot. This one hit the wall of the castle, very low down. There was a loud crack on impact, and a few fragments of stone fell onto the grass. It wasn’t a good shot, but this time there were no jeers. The next one again fell short, but after that every firing of the cannon resulted in a strike somewhere against the stone walls of the castle. The noise was unnerving, but no serious damage was being done to the stone.
Shey went off to talk to his men, patting each one on the back in turn. He was a good commander, attempting to keep up their morale.
“You have to be extremely accurate and hit the same point on the wall each time,” I pointed out to the Spook. “These men lack the skill to make a breach.”
“Then let’s hope they’re not fast learners, lad,” he remarked, “because they’ve plenty of round shot down there, and a week or so to improve their aim!”
It was true. In addition to barrels of water for cooling the barrel and many bags of gunpowder, there were dozens of pyramids of cannonballs stacked close to the big gun, and wagons of more ammunition waiting in the distance. All they lacked at present was the expertise to use that potentially dangerous weapon effectively.
After about an hour the gun fell silent, and a man approached the castle gate. He was unarmed and carried a white flag that fluttered in the westerly wind. He stopped close to the gate and shouted his message up at us. He looked scared.
“My masters demand that you release the mage Cormac into our hands immediately. Do so, and we will leave in peace. Failure to comply will result in dire consequences. We will batter down your walls, and everyone within will be put to the sword!”
Shey’s face twitched with anger, and I watched the archers draw their bows and target the messenger, who was just seconds from death. But Shey gestured to them and they lowered their weapons.
“Go back and tell your masters that we refuse!” he shouted. “Their time is almost over. This castle cannot be breached by the fools they have hired as gunners. Soon it will be your turn to be under siege. We will tear down your fort until not a stone remains standing.”
The messenger turned and walked back toward the ranks of our enemies. Within five minutes the gun began firing again.
The Spook decided that this was an opportunity for me to catch up on my studies. Late in the afternoon he was giving me a lesson—I was studying the history of the dark. The Spook had been telling me about a group of mages called the Kobalos, who supposedly lived far to the north. Though they stood upright, they were not human and had the appearance of foxes or wolves. But there was little evidence that they really existed—only the jottings of one of the very first spooks, a man called Nicholas Browne. I had read about them already, and none of it was new to me, so I tried to get the Spook onto a subject that I found much more interesting. After all, we were dealing with hostile, malevolent mages who worshipped Pan.
“What about Pan?” I asked. “What do we know about him?”
The Spook pulled the Bestiary from his bag and leafed through until he came to the section on the Old Gods. He handed the book to me. “Read that first, and then ask your questions,” he commanded.
The entry on Pan was quite short, and I read it quickly:
Pan (The Horned God)
Pan is the Old God, originally worshipped by the Greeks, who rules over nature and takes on two distinct physical forms. In one manifestation he is a boy and plays a set of reed pipes, his melodies so powerful that no birdsong can equal them and the very rocks move under their influence.
In his other form, he is the terrifying deity of nature whose approach fills humans with terror—the word “panic” is derived from his name. Now his sphere of influence has widened and he is worshipped by the goat mages of Ireland. After eight days of human sacrifice, Pan passes through a portal from the dark and briefly enters the body of a goat. He distorts the shape of that animal into a thing awful to behold and drives the mages to perform more and more terrible acts of bloodshed.
“It’s a really short entry,” I commented. “We don’t know very much about Pan, do we?”
“You’re right there, lad,” my master replied, “so we’ll learn what we can while we’re here. Things have changed since I wrote that. Now we know that the ceremony takes place twice a year rather than once. But what I’ve always found interesting is the duality of Pan. In one form he’s a musician who seems almost benign. His other shape is terrifying and clearly belongs to the dark.”
“Why should there be such a thing as the dark?” I asked. “How did it begin?”
“Nobody knows that for sure—we can only guess. I have little to add to the speculations I made in my Bestiary many years ago. But I still believe that the dark is fed by human wickedness. Human greed and lust for power make it ever stronger and more dangerous. If we could only change the hearts of men and women, the dark would be weakened—I’m sure of it. But I’ve lived long enough to know that it would be easier to hold back the tides than achieve that. We can only hope.”
“If we manage to bind the Fiend, it would be a start,” I suggested.
“It certainly would, lad.” The Spook frowned. “Things couldn’t be much worse than they are at present. Why, even Farrell Shey, an enemy of the dark, is prepared to use torture in order to prevail. It shows just how bad things have become.”
I suddenly realized that the cannon had fallen silent. “The gun’s stopped firing,” I said. “Maybe it’s overheated and the barrel’s cracked.”
You needed lots of water to keep a barrel cool. If gunners became careless about that, a gun could even explode, killing all around it. Those men weren’t experts. There was a real danger of that happening.
Before the Spook could reply, a messenger rapped on the door and came into the room without being invited. We were urgently summoned to the battlements.
As we climbed the stairs, we were jostled by armed men who were also on their way up. Something must be afoot—was it some new threat?
Alice was already there; she came toward us as we blinked into the sun, which was sinking toward the sea. She shielded her eyes and pointed. “The mages are gathered around the gun,” she said. “They’re up to something. Shey is really worried.”
No sooner had she mentioned his name than he strode across to us, the soldiers on the battlements stepping aside to allow him through. “I think they’re going to attempt some type of magic,” he told us.
“There was little danger of them harnessing the dark in Killorglin because we only faced two of them.
There are nine now, and they are combining their strength….”
I looked down toward the cannon. The mages had formed a circle around it. Then I realized that the focus of their attention wasn’t the big gun itself: The gunners were kneeling, and the mages were laying their hands on their heads and shoulders. They were transferring power to them in some way. What kind of power? I wondered. The knowledge and skills of expert gunners? It seemed likely.
On the battlements, the defenders had fallen silent. But we could hear the wind from the sea sighing in the distance, and the faint chanting of the mages. Waves of cold ran up and down my spine. Even at that distance, I was able to detect the use of dark magic. It was strong and dangerous.
Just how dangerous we found out ten minutes later, when the cannon started up again. The gunners’ first shot made a direct hit on the wall, low and just to the left of the main gate. So did the second and the third. They were striking almost exactly the same spot with each cannonball. Even in the hour before dark, we could see clear damage. The wall was thick, but the outer layer of stones was already beginning to break away. There was a small mound of debris on the grass below.
Darkness brought respite from the assault, but it would no doubt resume at dawn, and it seemed to me that they might well breach the wall by the next sunset.
CHAPTER VIII
THIN SHAUN
DAWN brought cloud and the approach of rain, but the mages’ gunners recommenced their attack with their newfound accuracy. Though now the wind was blowing from the south rather than from directly behind the gun, our archers were able to rain arrows down in the vicinity of the weapon, causing a delay of about an hour while it was repositioned out of range.
That greater distance made no difference to the aim of the gunners, however, and the same point on the wall was subjected to a heavy pounding, cannonballs striking the same spot about every five minutes, with longer pauses while they used water to cool the weapon.
By late afternoon the situation had become critical: A small hole had been punched right through the castle wall. According to Shey, it would not take much further damage to undermine the battlements above, creating a heap of stones beside the gate over which our attackers could swarm to capture the castle.
In desperation, he led a force of about twenty mounted men through the main gate; they charged directly toward the gun, intending to kill the gunners. They were intercepted first by enemy riders and then by foot soldiers. Despite the enemy’s defenses, things seemed to be going their way: They were gaining ground, fighting their way toward the gun. Within a couple of minutes they would have achieved their aim, but then someone intervened.
A large, muscular man with a shaved head and goatee beard joined the fray. He carried a huge double-bladed battle-ax and used it with deadly effect. He cut two of our soldiers down from their horses, each with a single blow, and immediately the tide turned. Our enemies fought with renewed vigor, and Shey was forced to improvise a retreat back toward the gate. It was barely closed before the enemy was at the walls.
They didn’t stay long. The Alliance archers killed and wounded a few; the rest withdrew behind their gunners. I’d expected them to commence firing again right away, but instead the large man approached the gate alone. He carried no white flag but had that huge ax resting on his shoulder. Unlike the messenger, he looked confident and walked with a swagger.
Shey climbed back up to the battlements and stood beside the Spook. “That’s Magister Doolan, the Butcher, the leader of the mages,” he told him.
Doolan halted right below us and glared up at us. “Who will come down and fight me?” he taunted, his powerful voice booming upward.
He received no reply and gave a long derisory laugh. “You’re cowards, all of you. There’s not one real man among you!” he cried, and began to strut up and down before the walls, waving his ax at us in challenge.
“Kill him!” Shey commanded his archers.
They began to loose arrows at him. He was without armor and looked certain to die. But for some reason the arrows all missed or fell short. Was he using some sort of magic against them? If the mages could, with a spell, make novice gunners into experts, no doubt they could do the opposite. Then one arrow sped directly toward its target and seemed certain to bury itself in the big man’s heart, but he twirled his big battle-ax as if it were lighter than a feather and deflected the arrow harmlessly to the ground.
With another laugh, he turned his back and casually made his way to his own lines; each arrow loosed after him fell well short. Immediately the enemy gunners began to fire again.
Eventually the light began to fail and the gunners stopped pounding the weak point on the western wall, but we knew that the next day would be critical. A full attack on the castle was expected as soon as that wall collapsed.
Soon after dark, we had a meeting with Shey.
“The castle will fall tomorrow—probably shortly after dawn,” he admitted. “I suggest that as soon as the wall is breached, you make your escape, taking our prisoner with you. I can spare four soldiers to accompany you. I’ll stay here with the remainder of my men. We’ll make a fight of it and sell our lives dearly.”
The Spook nodded gravely. “Aye, that seems the best option,” he said. “But won’t we be seen?”
“There’s a small secret gate to the south, hidden by bushes and a mound of earth. The enemy’s attention will be on the breach. You’ve a good chance of getting away.”
“We need to keep the mage alive and out of their hands,” said the Spook. “Where should we make for? Is there another refuge?”
“No—you need to get back to my home in Kenmare. That’s the safest place.” Shey shook his head and sighed. “But it won’t be easy. You face a hazardous journey. To the south and east, there are extensive bog lands. I suggest you make for the River Inny. Then follow it upstream into the mountains. My men know the way. They’ll guide you through, passing well north of Staigue and avoiding the fort. Then back southeast to Kenmare again.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to do it now, long before dawn?” I suggested. “You say that the gate is well hidden, but the mages’ spies may well know of it. We’d have a far better chance under cover of darkness.”
Alice smiled in approval, but for a moment I thought the Spook was about to dismiss my idea. Then he scratched his beard and nodded. “The lad could well be right,” he said, turning to Shey. “Would that present a problem?”
“Not at all. We could have you away within the hour.”
So we made our preparations. The mage was brought up from his cell and secured with rope, his arms bound to his sides. He was also blindfolded and gagged so that he was unable to call for help, but his legs were left free. That done, we took our leave of Shey and wished him good fortune in the coming battle.
We were led to the southern gate by the four soldiers assigned as our escort; after climbing the stone steps up to it, they listened carefully for any sounds of activity outside. Satisfied that all was clear, they signaled to the leader of a small squad of armed troops who were standing by. This force was stationed here to prevent an attack on the gate from the outside.
Their leader unlocked the metal door with a large key. It opened inward, and he eased it back to reveal a covering of soil and rocks. Two of his men stepped forward with shovels and quickly cut their way through it; cool air suddenly wafted into our faces.
As they worked, the Spook looked at each of us in turn and spoke, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “If things go wrong and we get separated, meet up at the river.”
It was pitch-dark now. As we could use neither torches nor lanterns, it was vital to stick close together. There was a mound of earth about five paces from the gate—to hide it from distant observers—but there was still a chance that enemy soldiers were waiting just beyond it. What if the mages had discovered the existence of the secret gate? A powerful Pendle witch might certainly have sniffed it out.
This was a moment of danger, and
the four soldiers went out first, climbing the steep slope to seek cover in the screen of bushes at the top. We listened, but all was silent. Our avenue of escape was clear. The Spook pushed the stumbling prisoner ahead of him, and Alice and I followed. We knelt down on the grass, listening to the sound of the door being locked behind us.
We were on our own now; if attacked, we could expect no help from those within the castle. We climbed the slope and crouched alongside our escort. There were fires visible in the distance to the south, west, and east. The enemy completely encircled us, but there were gaps between those campfires, some larger than others. A few of the enemy would be on guard duty, alert for danger, but hopefully most would be asleep.
We began to crawl down the hill, one after the other. At the bottom we crept forward, three of our escort to the fore, the Spook next with the fourth soldier, carrying the prisoner between them. Alice was just behind them, with me bringing up the rear.
Every few minutes we came to a halt and lay perfectly still, face down on the damp ground. After about fifteen minutes of this, we were almost level with the ring of fires that encircled the castle. We were midway between two, each about fifty paces away. I could see a sentry standing in front of a shelter made from animal skins stretched over a wooden frame. There were also men in the open—those who couldn’t be accommodated in the tent—sleeping close to the warmth of the fire.
The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Page 161