The Iron Castle

by Angus Donald

  They came through the gate of the middle bailey at a bouncy trot and by the time they had crossed the courtyard and their iron hooves were hammering on to the stone bridge they had reached a full canter. A pounding, clattering, bellowing river of muscle and mail charging straight towards our position – and we did nothing. Not an arrow flew, not a spear was cast. The horsemen surged over the gore-dyed bridge unchallenged, the leading two knights jumped their horses on to the rocky slope and with much skittering of iron-shod hooves on loose rubble, and harsh cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’ they began to urge their mounts up the scree.

  A single arrow looped down from the top of the keep, the head of the shaft a red-orange flag. It slammed into the rubble a bare three yards ahead of my waiting Wolves, who were crouched among the stones at the lip of the breach, and immediately a fat line of pine tar-soaked straw that Robin had caused to be stuffed into the cracks burst into dancing flame. A second fire arrow followed, again with perfect accuracy, and a third – but no more were needed for the sticky black road of straw that ran all the way across the breach from wall to wall flared into life in a couple of heartbeats. The flames jumped up higher than a man, the fuel roaring and crackling like a beast of Hell, clouds of thick smoke boiling upwards. Through this wall of fire and smoke I watched the leading horse, two paces from me, rear up in terror, its forelegs paddling the air and the knight on its back falling helplessly backwards to crash down on the slope. A second horse, too, was shying and rearing, barging into the horse behind it. The animals were neighing, screaming almost, in atavistic fear of the flames. They would not charge forward into fire, which was now leaping ever higher and higher. On that treacherous incline, the horses stumbled and fell, their frail legs snapping like kindling, crashing into their fellow beasts as they tumbled, crushing riders between slope and saddle as more and more knights forced their way off the bridge and into the crush.

  And into that chaos of panicking horse, shouting knights and roaring flame, into that holocaust of dying men and burning animals, Old Thunderbolt loosed his first deadly iron shaft.

  At a distance of fifty yards, the shaft sliced through men and horses like a giant blade, punching away two or three mounts and riders in a burst of guts. And then the arrows began to zip through the leaping flames – Robin had held back all his stocks of shafts, save for the three fire arrows, until this moment. Yard-long shafts tipped with bodkin points smacked into thick horse muscle and mailed bodies alike, and the men on the other side of that wall of leaping flame tasted the horror of damnation before they left this good, green Earth. Crossbows cracked and hissed through the fire, thumping into the foe, tumbling them back.

  I could see only intermittently through the blaze, and I was grateful for it. For the little I saw, sickened me to my soul. Blood upon blood, men stuck like hedgehogs, falling forward to roast in the pine-tar fire, burning alive, their hair flaring briefly like torches; massive horses flailing helplessly on their sides or backs, broken limbs flopping obscenely; a brave man here or there, dismounted but miraculously unhurt, trying to charge the fire-wall and being slammed off his feet by a quarrel or bow shaft. Then Old Thunderbolt loosed again and swiped another bloody channel through the mayhem. And, at that, the French knights had had enough. A pathetic handful – the fortune-blessed tail-enders of the forty-strong column – clattered back across the bridge, back into safety, back into life.

  Not one enemy knight made it through the wall of fire.

  We had not lost a single man.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  We sluiced down cold well-water as if it were wine; and we felt a euphoria overcome us, lift us, send our souls soaring joyfully to Heaven. God was surely aiding us, as well as Robin’s cunning trick, and between them they had wrought destruction on our foes. We had utterly destroyed the enemy knights who came against us, the cream of the French forces, with not a single loss to ourselves. They and their horses had torn themselves apart on the treacherous slope, the corpses reeking and twitching and the wounded crawling away to die in the ditch. We were victorious. Is there any better feeling that a fighting man can have? The men sang snatches of song, laughing and calling out the old jests to de Lacy’s men next to us, and I even caught a careless smile from Sir Joscelyn on the far right of our line, where he stood and surveyed the carnage through the dying flicker of the pine-tar flames.

  The first ball from the enemy trebuchet smashed directly into an English man-at-arms called Rowan, one of the castle garrison, who had been ordered to serve under me. One moment he was standing on the breach, with his hands jauntily on his hips, his head thrown back in song, the next he was little more than a bloody stain against the remaining walls of the inner bailey gatehouse. His legs jiggled a little even after they had been severed from his disintegrated torso. His head rolled to my feet, the mouth wide and gaping in surprise. I shouted, ‘Back, Back. Get back in cover, all of you men!’

  But my words were needless; at the first crash of bloody ball against standing masonry, the men had ducked into their safe places, just back from the lip behind any sizeable chunk of solid matter. One moment the breach was filled with jolly, laughing men, the next all that could be seen was a helmeted head or two poking out from beyond the rubble. I stood my ground, in the centre of the breach, alone. De Lacy and Sir Joscelyn had disappeared, too. I was not being foolhardy, I was not being brave: a mangonel or trebuchet, while very powerful, did not have the accuracy of a bow or even of a springald. The odds were in my favour and, to be honest, I wanted to cut a figure for the men, to hold on for just a moment longer to the euphoria we had all shared. I determined I would stand there until the next missile struck and then I would seek shelter.

  I made a few words to pass the time, as I stood there, trying to look unconcerned. ‘We have shown them,’ I said, my voice unnaturally loud in the quiet after the shriek of shattering stone, and pitched a little too high. ‘We have shown them we are not afraid. We have shown them we are their masters in valour – and in cunning. They know this in their hearts. But Philip is a cruel master – he will force them on to our swords one more time. Just one more time will they come against us – and then they must concede defeat. If we can hold them, just once more, my brothers, if we can throw them back once more, we shall have won this day. Not even Philip’s killers have the stomach for this slaughter. So I say this: hold them, kill them—’

  A missile crashed into the breach, two yards from me, spraying my back painfully with shards of limestone, the ball skipping onwards into the courtyard and rattling harmlessly against the thick walls of the keep. My nerve failed me. My mouth was dry as dust; I had no more brave words for the men. I was empty.

  I climbed down as calmly as I could to a place next to Claes, who was bedded in snugly behind a yard-thick section of the inner bailey walls. I leaned back against the cool, dusty stone and tried to breathe normally. My right hand was shaking like a waking drunkard’s. I clamped it tight with my left, as if in prayer.

  When the bombardment ceases, I thought, they will come. Another stone cracked against the breach, an awful sound – it seemed almost angry, resentful, as if cold stone could be seeking revenge for the havoc we had wrought on the horsemen. The missile stopped dead, burying itself in the rubble of our ramparts, becoming part of them. When this is over, I thought, the real battle will begin. And we will all die. I felt the ice-snake of fear uncoil in my lower belly.

  They did not waste much time. I could feel the fury at the loss of so many of their knights reach out towards me from their advancing men – a sea of men. Hundreds. This must be Philip’s last throw, I told myself. Even his resources are not endless. But he had more than enough men for one more massive assault.

  The bombardment cracked and shrieked and whistled all about us – all five of Philip’s war machines, and whatever small fry he had, too, were concentrated on our twenty yards of breach – and we cowered behind stones, making ourselves as small as we possibly could. Another man was crushed outright, and two
other men were badly gashed by flying splinters of rock, but the rest of us made it through the maelstrom more or less unscathed. My stomach ached, both fear and lack of food, I believe. Yet I wanted to vomit. I wanted to run from the hellish noise, as fast and as far as I could to somewhere clean and green and quiet; I would never lift a sword again in anger, I vowed to God, as long as the hellish noise would cease.

  Then it did cease – and things became infinitely worse.

  The footmen came first, an unending sea of them, eschewing the stone bridge, which was dyed a rusty brown with blood and half-clogged with the corpses of men and horses, and hurling themselves directly into the ditch with ladders and shouts of rage. Moments later they were climbing out the other side and scrambling up the scree towards us like monkeys. Half a hundred men in leather, wool and linen, waving swords and spears and spitting their fury, clambered up rocks, in a lather to get at us, and behind them came another half-hundred and more beyond that. And now, through the gates, I could see a score, two score of dismounted knights and squires, in surcoats of red and yellow and blue, running along with the common men-at-arms.

  This is it, I thought. This is Philip’s full strength. Robin’s men managed two scanty volleys, a handful of enemy men-at-arms staggered and dropped, but then the twang and hiss of our bows fell silent and the wave of Frenchmen crashed upon us.

  We fought them, shields locked, shoulder to shoulder. I tried to summon the white-hot fury that had often possessed me on the battlefield, and failed. I battered at enemy helmets with Fidelity; I concentrated on keeping my feet and holding the line against the press of foes. I shoved with my shield at the snarling sea of humanity, and jabbed and smashed and spat at them. I know that I killed one or two, wounded a few more. But I was not the master of that mêlée, I was its servant – buffeted by the surging of a host of men, my sword arm leaden, my knees weak.

  We held them, just. Amid the clang and clatter of steel against wood, I felt the pressure ease and for a moment my heart soared like a lark. The French men-at-arms were pulling back, if we could just push forward one last time …

  But the men-at-arms were not retreating, they were not beaten; they were pulling back to let the dismounted knights come forward.

  From hope to despair. The two lines of foes parted for a dozen heartbeats, then the bright knights’ surcoats filled my vision. For an eerie instant, everything was still: the French knights, fresh, well-fed, full of fury at their noble comrades’ ugly deaths in the wall of fire, glared at us over their shields, swords raised and ready to smite us down. I looked along our lines, thinner now, with more than half of the original men down, the remaining faces sallow, bloodied and bruised.

  I found a last crumb of strength in my belly and shouted, ‘Hold hard, Wolves; hold hard for Locksley and for England!’

  And was rewarded by a hair-lifting howl in response.

  The French knights growled back at us, hefted their shining swords. I found, in that very moment, that I was staring into the face of my well-loved cousin, Roland d’Alle, who was standing in front of me, not two yards away, looking tall and grim.

  ‘Yield, Alan, I beg you,’ he shouted. ‘Yield to me; I swear you will be safe.’

  I shook my head and lifted Fidelity a fraction.

  ‘Yield, Alan, yield or I fear I must harm you.’

  ‘You can try,’ I grated.

  I threw back my head and howled.

  The two walls of fighting men came together with a clash of steel and a bedlam of roaring that should have awoken the dead. I had eyes only for Roland, but I was dimly aware from the corners of my vision of knights carving their way into the ranks of the Wolves – and the slaughter of my comrades had begun.

  Roland did not hold back. He loved his honour as much as I did and I felt the power of his first cut, which crashed into my ragged shield, right down to the soles of my feet. I was stunned by the vast energy at his command, and knocked back a pace. I was so weak I could barely lift sword and shield. He came at me again, a backhand that hammered at my right shoulder. I parried it and warded him away with a lunge at his throat. He dodged easily and smashed a counter blow into my shield once again that knocked me sideways and had me stumbling into a wounded Wolf. I slashed at him wildly, a poor blow that missed his belly by a good foot. My legs were trembling uncontrollably, my sword seemed a dull bar of lead.

  Roland frowned. ‘Fight properly, Alan,’ he snapped, his familiar voice coming clearly to me over the tumult. ‘I will show you no kindness, I swear it. You must also fight me for real.’

  And, for my cousin, I tried. I really tried. I exchanged a cut or two, vicious strikes, that rocked him back on his heels, and executed a parry and lunge that nearly ripped off half of his face. The Wolves were no longer tight around me; they lay dying or wounded on the stones of the breach, conquered by the knights, but reinforcements were arriving from all over the inner bailey, and the breach still held, the last of our men, the final fifty, the reserve, charging into the fray in a desperate attempt to hold the line. The bowmen from the keep had joined us by now, strong men who had exchanged bows for long swords and axes. I could hear de Lacy calling urgently, roaring, rallying the defence for one final effort, and Robin’s battle voice bellowing directly behind me urging his Wolf archers to kill, kill, kill. So I summoned all my strength, leaped forward and tried to kill my own flesh and blood.

  I feinted a lunge to his left that turned halfway through into a diagonal hack at his neck. It was a killing blow … that never landed. Roland half-turned smoothly and Fidelity sliced through empty air, and I was off balance, my battered shield sagging low, when Roland’s counter strike smashed into my left arm at the mid-point between shoulder and elbow. My mail stopped the blade’s progress but I heard the snap of thick bone and felt a lightning bolt of agony stab directly into my heart.

  I screamed once, overwhelmed by pain, and barely saw the flash of Roland’s blade as it cracked into my helmet an instant later and knocked me into the darkness.

  I awoke to the sound of moaning. I was lying in my cot in the keep and all around were wounded men, groaning, crying, fighting their agony. Somebody had stripped the mail from my body and I felt curiously light and buoyant, almost caressed, as if floating in a warm bath of scented oil. My left arm had been strapped up between four thick sticks of kindling and wrapped tight in clean white linen bandages, and strangely I could feel no pain, but for a dull throbbing in my temples.

  ‘It’s a clean break, which is a blessing,’ said Robin. He was sitting on a stool beside my cot, with a big wooden mug in his hands. ‘And the physician has given you a good strong draft of the poppy – there is not much to go around; you are one of the lucky few,’ he said, inclining his head towards a man to my right who was whimpering, his midriff a mass of bloody bandages.

  ‘What … what happened?’ I croaked. My tongue felt as rough and dry as old leather. Robin handed me the mug – a pint of cold, watery, nameless soup that tasted like the finest ambrosia to me.

  ‘We held them just long enough to get you back to the keep,’ said my lord. ‘But Sir Joscelyn’s men broke – and once the right had crumbled we all had to scramble back here, fast as we could. We’ve lost the inner bailey, it’s just this, now.’

  He waved a hand around at the dank gloom of the keep.

  ‘What about the boat? What about our escape?’

  ‘I’m truly sorry, Alan,’ he said, the weight of his failure hanging from his face. ‘They are all over the inner bailey now. All who survived are trapped here.’

  I tried to sit up but everything swirled before my eyes, and Robin caught me and pressed me back down. ‘Stay down, you idiot. You are not getting up for a long while,’ he said. ‘Don’t fret, these walls are very thick. I believe we can hold Philip off for a while – even without you – and I will think of something, never you fear. Rest now.’

  As he walked away, I briefly tried to calculate how many times Robin had saved my life – half a dozen? A dozen?
– and set against that, how many times he had plunged me into mortal danger … before I fell into a shallow, dream-filled sleep.

  The next time I awoke, I thought I was dreaming. Roland was standing beside my cot in full mail, helm and shield, and he was holding his naked sword to my throat.

  ‘Yield to me, Alan. I need you to say you yield. Say the words.’

  I looked at him wildly and saw Robin sitting on his stool once again, his long face even more drawn, tired almost to death. I noticed belatedly that the keep was full of unfamiliar knights, big, well-fed, laughing men who were shoving the unwounded prisoners in the far corner of the chamber. There was a commotion at the entrance to the stairs to the upper floors and three men fell through it, one man struggling between two captors. It was Roger de Lacy – his face purple with rage, his torso jerking madly, his arms pinioned by two huge French knights.

  ‘Yield to me, Alan, you must yield or I cannot help you,’ Roland was pleading with me, the sword tip still at my bare throat.

  ‘Just say the damn words, Alan,’ said Robin. ‘I have. So must you.’

  So I did.

  I was my cousin’s prisoner.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I do not well recall the aftermath of the siege of Château Gaillard. I was sick and wounded, weak from lack of food for so long, and the knock on the head had made me dazed and confused. I ate a little – Robin and Roland, between them, were very careful not to allow me too much food, although there was now plenty to be had, for gorging after famine can kill a man as surely as a slit throat – I slept a lot. I remember the terrible sight of Roger de Lacy, a brave man for all his stubbornness, his legs roped together, being dragged slowly at the tail of a horse across the courtyard of the middle bailey and out the main gates in front of a jeering crowd of drunken French men-at-arms. But apart from that ritual humiliation, the enemy treated us well. They could, by all the laws of war, have executed every man in the keep – but Philip chose not to. God be praised for his mercy – although I believe he merely wanted to prove himself the moral superior of King John.