by Paul Finch
The two men, wracked with coughing, had to leap around like marionettes to avoid being burned themselves. But the Korred remained standing, and piece by piece its linen shroud was incinerated and fell away. At length it tore the few remaining fragments off itself, before kicking aside the burning bundle of fuel that was the mattress.
They regarded it in disbelief.
Its limbs smoked thickly and its pelt was charred to stubble. The misshapen geometry of its skull was now visible. Facially, it was down to the skin, large patches of which had bubbled and melted. It resembled a colossal human child, though outlandishly deformed.
With a mewling growl, it turned again to face them.
There were no arguments from Eric this time. As one, they fled for the chamber’s second door, beyond which a final stair connected with the rooftop battlements.
*
Dagobert of Caux had spent his entire adult life, and much of his childhood, in military service.
Knighted in 1037, at the age of sixteen, he had ridden in more tournaments, fought more duels, engaged in more full-blooded battles than he had any right to remember. In his time, he had killed over two-hundred men that he knew of, had been wounded over a hundred times, on three occasions so severely that he had received the Last Rites, had built a fortune on the booty and tribute he’d seized in support of his overlord, not just in England since the invasion, but before that in Normandy, during Duke William’s many wars and campaigns, and had earned a reputation for personal courage and military skill that was second only to the Bastard himself.
Unfortunately, he was now fifty years old, and heavier and slower than he’d ever been. Though he fought Reynald up and down the keep’s great hall, he was soon gasping for breath and stumbling from foot to foot. Only his bear-like strength now kept him in the contest. Reynald, a lithe and proficient fighting man himself, had judged that his opponent’s stamina – of lack of it – would be his weakness, and had worked hard to keep him on the move, driving him from one end of the great chamber to the other.
The longsword, a yard and a quarter of burnished steel, was not a weapon for someone who was growing tired. One look at Dagobert’s pale, sweat-drenched face was enough to tell Reynald that victory was almost his
“You’re tiring, count!” he laughed. “That weight you feel on your shoulders. It’s death. It’s the cross they’ll nail you to when you get to Hell.”
Dagobert grunted as he fought on.
“You’ve nothing left, old man,” Reynald taunted him. “Drop your guard and I’ll make it quick.”
Dagobert was determined not to surrender. If nought else, he had to avenge Rolf, whose body still lay not twenty yards to the left of him, but now he was blinded by sweat and having to fend off blows left and right, the sword limp in his weakening grasp. Finally, it was smitten loose and clattered to the floor. Dagobert found himself against a corner of the hearth, his heaving back pressed into the carved stone.
The tip of his opponent’s steel pricked his throbbing throat.
“Now Count Dagobert,” Reynald chuckled, “you too will pay the price of sedition.”
“Drop your sword!” came a strident voice.
Reynald took a step away from Dagobert, and glanced over his shoulder. When he saw that Gilbert had entered the hall, he grinned scornfully.
“Another old man,” he said. “Somehow I don’t think the scales have tilted.”
“Make it another old man and a loaded crossbow,” Gilbert said, raising the weapon to his shoulder and taking careful aim.
Despite his confident tone, Reynald’s features betrayed a flicker of fear. “Shoot that barb at me, white-beard, and you break every rule of your knighthood.”
“Sometimes sacrifices must be made,” Gilbert replied, advancing slowly. “Move away from Count Dagobert.”
This was no ordinary crossbow, Reynald saw. It was a heavy one, of the sort the Flemings favoured. It was loaded with a large bolt, which it would project with such force that the bodkin point would easily penetrate ring-mail. Not that Reynald was even wearing ring-mail, he recalled with a jolt.
“Until this moment, you were an innocent bystander to this nest of vipers,” he warned.
“Drop the sword,” Gilbert told him again.
“Now you’re part of a capital crime.”
“The sword!”
With no other choice, Reynald opened his hand and released his sword. Dagobert slumped down against the stonework, his chest still heaving.
“Kick it over here,” Gilbert said.
Reynald shook his head. “Your punishment for this will be unimaginable.”
“Kick it over here, and move right away from his lordship.”
Reynald did as he was told, and circled away from Dagobert, his gloved hands raised to his shoulders. His posture was still arrogance personified; his face written with a sneer. “You poor, addle-brained oaf. You really don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
Gilbert peered along the central stock of his crossbow. Count Reynald was directly in his sights, and Count Dagobert no longer occupied the background.
“I think you speak from the heart, my lord,” the old retainer said. “My punishment will be unimaginable. But you won’t be there to witness it.”
With a twang of cat-gut, the bolt was discharged. When it thudded into Reynald’s flesh, he screeched both with agony and disbelief.
*
Eric and Turold hobbled out onto the battlements, exhausted to the point of collapse. The only way they could stand was by leaning on each other. The snarls of the Korred sounded in their ears as it wormed its burned, twisted form up through the tight spiral passage behind them.
Morning had broken in the form of an aching, apricot sky. Its eastern flank glowed salmon pink as the sun threatened to rise, though on all sides of the castle both land and sea were blanketed by white dawn-mist. Even the booming impacts of the waves sounded hollow and distant.
With legs that were more lead than flesh, the knights tottered along the southern walkway, until they came hard up against the crenellations. Eric leaned through an embrasure and gazed down. Fleetingly, the crazy notion had occurred to him that they might be able to leap from here into the sea, but though on this side the waters of the Wash were close, first they would have to clear the stable yard and the various roofs of the outbuildings, then the spike-topped stockade that was the outer curtain-wall, and beyond that another twenty yards of rugged, downwards-sloping rubble.
He turned back to Turold. “How are your ribs?”
Turold wasn’t so much grey in the face now, as green. “I’m struggling to breathe.”
“Just remember the plan,” Eric said. “Whichever one of us it follows, the other can circle around behind.”
Turold nodded. “And escape while he can …”
The Korred’s snarls became roars as it lumbered up onto the battlements, and headed along the southern walkway towards them.
Eric ventured forward. “I’ll try to lure it towards me. You can barely stand …”
But before Eric had advanced a couple of yards, Turold pushed past him and staggered straight for the monster, drawing his dagger. “Here I am, demon! Here I am!”
“Turold, you maniac!”
“Flee, Master Eric!”
Turold actually ran the last few yards, attempting to strike for its heart. But it met the dagger blade-on-blade with the sword, and sent it spinning far out over the ramparts. At the same time it caught Turold in a one-armed bear-hug, and clamped him to its barrel body with what should easily have been enough force to grind his bones to powder – except that, suddenly, it was distracted by something.
Its gaze had followed the spinning dagger, and even though this had now dropped from sight, it continued to stare out over the gulf, as though mesmerised.
Turold, unable to believe his luck, dropped onto the walkway at its feet, and crawled frantically away.
15
Why was courage not enough? Why was p
hysical strength insufficient? Why, above all, were there so many of them? Always more to fill the gaps that we tore in their ranks. Enough to flow over us like a river bursting its banks.
Perhaps, like Balor, I was gifted with the all-seeing eye, for as I stood there on that final day, and looked out from my lofty perch, I saw beyond the immediate sea a great mass of land that seemed to unfold forever, yet was a quilt-work of fiefs and duchies and princedoms and empires. I also saw that in each one our enemies reigned supreme. Their power stretched from the frozen crags of the north, across the plains and forests of the great continent, over the next sea and beyond that even, over more mountains, over deserts, far south into the dark lands of jungle and swamp, to the very edge of the world, beyond the moon, beyond the stars, where only darkness and chaos lurk. Everywhere, I saw their forts and palaces, their walled cities, their temples. No matter how hard the land, how torturous the clime, they were there, farming, building, often as not fighting. Always they warred among themselves, yet never to the entire detriment of their race, for campaigns of extermination, such as the one we had faced, were a thing of the past.
Long had I preserved the memory of my people. Reduced to slinking through caves and hiding in the deep cover of the woods, I’d awaited the day when new warriors would cross the sea to strengthen us. When I’d be freed from exhaustion and famine. No vain hopes, these. No futile dreams. I knew the day would come. It was a matter of endurance, of patient survival.
Until then.
Until that moment.
When I saw the ant-like multitudes of our foes. Only then did the truth strike me with awful, fatal clarity … I was the last of my kind.
Eric took the only chance that was open to him.
He couldn’t explain why the Korred seemed to have lost its concentration. He couldn’t understand why it turned away from the fight, and climbed into the embrasure of the battlement. He couldn’t understand why it stared out as if mesmerised into the great emptiness beyond.
He didn’t even attempt to understand.
He just pushed it.
Without resistance, it fell.
It was a chance Eric had neither looked for nor anticipated. It had come so unexpectedly that it still seemed unreal. So unreal that when he leaned through the embrasure, he imagined the creature would still be there, clinging on just out of sight, waiting to drag him over. Instead, he saw that it had plummeted all the way to the bottom, and now lay sprawled in the stable yard. Grooms and servants emerged wonderingly from the surrounding outhouses. It lay among them perfectly still, visibly twisted and broken.
When Turold came and stood alongside him, Eric could only shake his head. “I don’t … don’t understand. I barely touched it.”
“God fought for us again,” Turold observed.
There came a distant cockcrow.
“Dawn at last,” Eric said.
“It’s been a long night.”
“It’s going to be an even longer day.”
*
Rolf lay in state on the altar table. He was bound head to foot in linen bandages, though inevitably, here and there, reddish stains had seeped through.
Eric and Dagobert stood side by side in the first pew. Candles burned at either end of the body, casting a wavering glow, though now, at mid-day, strong sunlight also shone into the room, and pink hues lay over the painted faces of saints and angels.
Eric had washed and shaved, and now wore a clean russet tunic and breeches, though he was still cut and bruised about the face, and one arm was fixed in a sling.
“I said foolish things about him,” he muttered, his eyes moist.
Dagobert, a black woollen cloak thrown over his hunting garb, retained the more familiar granite exterior of the Norman lord. His eyes remained dry, his lips pursed. “We both did. Maybe that provoked his final bravery.”
Eric shook his head. “It’s no real consolation to think that.”
“He died a man, Eric. A true knight. There must be consolation there.” Dagobert made to leave. “We can’t afford to stand around here. What’s done is done.”
They left the chapel and entered the hall, where the floor had been washed clean of blood, and fresh herbs burned on the hearth to re-scent the tainted air.
“How is Isabel?” Eric asked.
“Abed … but she’ll recover,” Dagobert said. “She’s strong. And determined.”
“God damn it, man!” came an angry voice. “I need a surgeon!”
It was Reynald, now enclosed in the Korred’s cage. He was bedraggled and dirty, his shoulder bandaged but still soaked with blood where the crossbow bolt had pierced it. To one side of the cage, Turold was seated on one of the few benches that had survived the battle. He too was stripped to his breeches, his ribs bound tightly. For all this, his longsword lay drawn across his lap.
“We both need a surgeon, my lord,” he replied. “We’ll both of us need to be patient.”
“Everything alright here, Turold?” Dagobert asked.
“Dagobert, this is an outrage!” Reynald bellowed.
“How smells the Korred’s shit, Count Reynald?” Eric laughed.
“Are you mad, Dagobert?” Reynald said. “To throw your lot in with this wolf’s head! This is treason, damn you!”
“Any sign of Trewan yet?” Dagobert asked Turold.
“Not yet, my lord.”
“I hope he’s safe,” Eric said.
“He’ll be safe with Anselm,” Dagobert replied. “I’m not sure whose idea it was to disguise him as you, but it worked for us. Once Reynald’s men catch up with him, there’ll be nothing they can do. What law forbids a young man riding with his priestly older brother?”
“Even empty-handed, my men will return for me,” Reynald warned them.
“And they won’t get in,” Dagobert said. “This is the strongest castle on the east coast, or had you forgotten?”
“Dagobert, can’t you see there’ll be consequences for this?”
“Of course,” Dagobert said. “And we intend to face them now. We’re headed for the Royal Court. Hopefully, after his adventures in the north, the king’s blood-lust will be sated.”
Reynald almost laughed. “What … you’re expecting a sympathetic ear?”
“Just an audience. We’ll do the rest.”
“He’ll hang the pair of you.”
“Turold, keep your eye on this wretch,” Dagobert said. “He’s resourceful, but he’s also rich. Should the Danes put in here, he’ll make a useful bargaining chip.”
Reynald was already pale in the face, but now he paled even more. “You’d give me to the Vikings?”
“After you cost the life of my eldest son?” Dagobert leaned towards the bars. “More gladly than you can imagine.” He turned and stalked away.
“You traitor!” Reynald called after him.
Eric picked up the canvas sheeting and tossed it over the cage, muffling all further outcries. Father and son strode from the hall and down the stair to the front entrance of the keep. Outside, two grooms waited, each with a saddled horse. Both animals were loaded with water-skins and bolsters filled with food. Dagobert and Eric mounted up, and steered the beasts down the track towards the gatehouse. The castle servants stood watching in amazed silence, for only now was the full story spreading about the terrible struggle the previous night.
“Is this a wise course?” Eric wondered.
“I’d say it was the only course,” his father replied.
“I’m grateful for your assistance, but you don’t have to get any more involved. I can go alone.”
“We go together. You wouldn’t even get near the king on your own.” Dagobert called up to the gatehouse as they rode beneath it. “Gilbert … raise the drawbridge behind us.”
Gilbert signalled his acknowledgement from the gatehouse hatch. Various other men-at-arms were ranged along the curtain-wall, watching the road across the fens carefully.
“You really think the king will be in the mood to be merciful?�
�� Eric asked, as they emerged outside. “After everything that’s happened?”
“No,” Dagobert replied. “No, but he might be pragmatic. After butchering his foes in the field, it’s normally his method to pacify the remainder. It still makes sense to have a lord at Wulfbury who is married to a descendent of the original Saxon ruler.” And he reined up.
Beside the road stood a roan mare, saddled but chewing the verge grass. Ella was also present. She was cloaked and booted, and crouching to pick early blooms of marsh orchid and yellow iris. Her tresses hung in a flaxen glory.
Eric regarded her, astonished. “You plan to re-marry … ?”
“Not me, you fool,” Dagobert said. “I’m an old man. I need an heir. But Rolf is dead, Anselm a priest, and Trewan still a child.”
“I see …” Eric was briefly dazed. His heart might have leapt, had a thousand worries not suddenly crowded in on him. “But what’s to stop the king sending a suitor of his own? He’s done that before.”
“You’ll already be married to her,” Dagobert said. “I’ve sent word to Father Osric at Kexley. We’ll call on him before heading to Court.”
Eric dismounted and limped across the road to where Ella was still collecting spring flowers. “Are you happy with this arrangement?” he asked her, conscious of his father waiting and watching.
“And why should I be happy?” she said tersely. “Being made wife when I might immediately afterwards be made widow?”
“Don’t you want English blood to rule at Wulfbury again?”
“I’m not fertile at present, Eric. Married or not, you can’t get me with child before we see the king.”
“I can try,” he replied.
“You must try,” Dagobert put in, wheeling his horse around. “It will strengthen our hand immeasurably. Now come … we can’t tarry here. If Reynald’s men catch us on the road it won’t matter either way.” And he set off ahead of them.
Eric climbed painfully back into his saddle, before turning to his fiancée. “Are you coming?”
