The Flint Lord

by Richard Herley

  The upper hinge and its cover had been reduced to a fibrous pulp. Chips and splinters of flying flint rebounded from the panelled staircase walls with each new blow and Tagart covered his eyes with his forearm.

  Suddenly Fodich’s axe hit the exact spot and the lower hinge parted from the frame. He kicked at the door: it twisted sideways and the upper hinge yielded.

  Freezing wind and daylight filled the staircase. Fodich was first on the roof, followed by Tagart, Berge, and a man from the Martens named Porth.

  They found themselves on a gravel-lined platform, thirty feet square, edged by a low wooden parapet. The main part of the platform was taken up by three stone hearths and a sort of shed. Tagart saw at once that this was the signal station: from each of the hearths there issued a column of white smoke.

  The fires had been fed with wet leaves by a small boy and a man of middle age with a bushy black beard, his hair plaited into a pigtail which hung to his shoulders. To judge by his horn and leather jerkin and fur leggings, he was not an ordinary soldier but held some official post. Tagart took him to be a signalman. He had armed himself with a pole and, the boy taking refuge behind him, was standing his ground on the snow-covered gravel near the edge of the platform.

  No one else was here. The Flint Lord had eluded them.

  “Put it down!” Porth growled. “Put it down or we’ll throw you into the enclosure!”

  The signalman laid down his pole. The boy clung more tightly to his jerkin.

  From below rose the sound of the slaves running wild, wantonly breaking down doors, wrecking furniture, pulling down and fouling shelves and stores in the workshops, the barracks, the armoury. And the Flint Lord had gone: it had all been for nothing. With his army and his network of outer forts, he could afford to vacate the Trundle if he wished and retake it at his leisure. But even that would not happen. The Trundle had not been abandoned; the soldiers had simply gone to defend the village, and nothing remained for Tagart but to make an ignominious retreat before they had a chance to get back.

  He went to the parapet. This roof was the highest point on the Trundle, which itself occupied the highest part of Valdoe Hill. On his left, to the south, spread a descending panorama of white and grey, running out four miles and more to meet the broad stripe of grey-green ocean. To the west he could see Bow Hill, to the north the wooded slopes of Levin Down and, in the valley at its foot, over a mile away and hundreds of feet below the Trundle, the eloquent smoke that described Bubeck’s work in the village.

  In a tingling premonition of horror Tagart’s gaze flashed from the village, farther to the right, and there, flowing up the road that zigzagged to the summit, already two thirds of the way to the Trundle, he saw a dark column of men: five abreast, extending like a vast snake hundreds of yards long, sinuously winding up the zigzags, and as he listened he could hear their chanting and the crash of their boots on the hard-packed ice of the road.

  “Shut the gates!” he yelled down into the enclosure, and cupping his hands he yelled again. “Shut the gates! Shut the gates!”

  Fodich and the others rushed to the parapet.

  “Porth! Berge! Keep shouting! Tell them to shut the gates! Fodich, come with me!”

  Tagart paused before jumping through the doorway and down the stairs. “Keep that signalman! We may need him!”

  * * *

  Gehan was at the head of the column, separated from the empty road and the unguarded fort only by a line of bodyguards. He was carrying no pack or weapons, but otherwise was keeping up exactly with the relentless pace set by the Vuchten at the rear. Behind him, powering him forward, he sensed the outrage of his men and heard it take form in their exhilarating battle-chant, the two syllables of his name: Ge-han Ge-han Ge-han, and he forgot that this was also the name of the Home Lord; it was his name alone, shouted by these men with their life’s breath, shouted in the rhythm of their feet as they surged up the hill and towards the fort, towards total and devastating revenge on the vermin of slaves and brigands who had breached the Trundle and profaned the sacred territory of Brennis Gehan Fifth.

  On seeing the white smoke from the Trundle, Gehan had sent Irdon, his lieutenant, to recall the soldiers from Levin Down. The slaughter at the summit had already taken place. A few brigands had escaped the closing circle; the rest, numbering about two hundred and seventy, had been caught and killed. A hundred and three soldiers had been lost. Irdon regrouped the remaining men and, together with six captive brigands, started back down the hill.

  During Irdon’s absence five units of Vuchten appeared from the west, drawn to the village by the smoke. These were the second set of reinforcements that had been sent to Bow Hill; their commander reported that the first, four units under Commander Chanvard, had been ambushed and exterminated on the road. The Vuchten had continued to Bow Hill, found that the brigands had departed, and at a forced march had returned to Valdoe.

  Under Gehan’s personal supervision the men were marshalled and the race up the hill began. Their goal was the north-east gatehouse; the gates yet remained open. Once inside they could sweep through the enclosure and if necessary pursue the enemy out through the south-west gates to carry on a running fight on the southern face of the hill.

  During the marshalling of the men, the captive brigands had been made to talk. In the brief time before the column set off, Gehan was apprised of the nature and size of the enemy: he could not bring himself to think of them as other than brigands, yet it appeared that his advisers last summer had been correct. The fort had been attacked by savages.

  The gatehouse was drawing nearer. Gehan was by now feeling the strain of the run from the village. His legs were aching; his brow was hot and wet. He grasped at each breath; the air scraped his lungs as he pushed himself on. He could not stop. The Vuchten were behind him. He hurriedly wiped sweat from his eyes and saw that beside the road, blurred by his own movement, were two figures, one a woman lying in the snow among the tussocks, the other a man kneeling by her, now rising and running forward to meet him.

  Gehan broke free from the column and allowed it to continue rushing past him, a stream of men still chanting his name. They were less than three hundred yards from the gatehouse, from the high black walls of the palisade; beyond the bobbing river of heads and weapons and armoured shoulders he was aware that the space between the gates was starting to narrow; and he was aware of Rald’s outstretched arm, but brushed it aside and went to the woman. To Ika.

  Somehow the final safeguard of the inner enclosure had betrayed him: the sanctuary of his residence had been broken open and defiled, and from the filth and chaos of the fort everything he loved and valued had been vomited forth. As he came to her he saw for himself what had been done. Stunned, disbelieving, he fell to his knees beside her.

  And, looking up, wide-eyed, his knuckles in his mouth, he saw the slit of daylight vanish as the giant gates slammed shut.

  PART THREE

  1

  Both gatehouses had been made to the same plan. With slit windows and raised roofs bristling with spikes, flanked by shielded walkways which gave access to the rest of the battlements, each gatehouse overhung a pair of massive doors composed of ranked logs set in ponderous frames. These swung inward and were secured with a grid of locking-beams, which rested in sockets in the jambs as well as in rabbets cut from the timber of the frames. The grid could be hoisted clear with pulleys operated inside the gatehouse. As a final precaution, oak buttresses could be slotted into special pits and jammed against the gates in times of siege.

  By now it was well past noon. The locking-grids had been in place for over an hour, ever since the Flint Lord had returned from the village. Finding both sets of gates shut, the army had withdrawn to the south-western side of the fort, a bowshot from the palisade. Fifty soldiers had been detached and sent down the hill; they had disappeared into the aspen break, the nearest group of standing trees of any size.

  Tagart could guess what they had gone to fetch. He was keeping watch from t
he signal station, not only on the soldiers but on the ominously quiet woods and fields round the village. The houses down there were still burning. He could just make out figures against the snow, approaching the compound in small groups, and from their behaviour it was obvious that they were villagers. Of Bubeck and his whole force of slaves and nomads there had been no trace.

  Tagart was desperately trying to suppress his fears. Without Bubeck there could be no chance of leaving the Trundle alive. Sixty of Tagart’s force had died during the assault, and a hundred more were too badly wounded to fight.

  He looked down into the enclosure. The arrival of the Flint Lord had quickly sobered the slaves and those nomads who had disregarded orders during the assault. All the soldiers in the fort, including an important one called Larr, had been senselessly killed. So had many of the overseers and other civilians. The survivors had been spared only by the intervention of the chief of the Crows, who had locked them all in one of the barracks.

  Even with the Flint Lord at the gates, it had taken time to establish some semblance of order, and it was not before an hour had been wasted that a slave was found who knew something of the Flint Lord’s army.

  His name was Correy. In his early twenties, with wide-set brown eyes and a fleshy, slab-cheeked face, Correy was even dirtier than most of his fellows, who were washed and deloused only in summer. His beard was dark brown, somewhat lighter than his hair, which hung in ill-smelling locks about his neck. There was a boil beside one lobe of his nose, and another was visible through his beard, distending the line of his jaw. His remaining teeth were black stumps, and when he spoke Tagart tried to avoid his breath. But he was articulate and voluble and had worked both in the weapons shop and on a maintenance team.

  Within a few minutes he had expounded the functions of the fort and the distinction between ordinary soldiers and Vuchten, whose darker uniforms could clearly be seen from the signal station. Tagart had estimated the total number on the hillside at five hundred and twenty, of which two hundred and ninety were Vuchten. It had been from the Vuchten that the tree-cutting detail had been taken: shortly after Correy had arrived, the men had reappeared, trotting up the hill, bearing something long and heavy which proved to be the trunk of a large aspen, newly felled and shorn of its branches.

  Tagart and Correy went down to the enclosure. Slaves had lined the battlements, striving for a view of the Flint Lord. On Correy’s advice the slaves were cleared and replaced with the best archers among the nomads, for whom extra arrows and bows were brought from the armoury.

  Tagart climbed the ladder into the south-west gatehouse, Correy behind him. The trapdoor opened into a plank-lined room three yards by five. The room was in semi-darkness. In the rear wall, overlooking the enclosure, was a narrow window beside which stood the stocks for the pulleys and tackle of the locking-grids: ropes passed down through neat ovals cut in the floor. On the outward wall were four slit windows and a larger, central, aperture, two feet square, provided with a hinged shutter. Hanging on brackets above it, running the length of the room, was a trough-shaped board; below this was a curious device, a pair of wooden handles five feet long, attached to the wall with pivots and supporting a shallow basket fashioned from heavy osiers.

  “That’s the hoist. Those hooks in the ceiling are for the chute guys.”

  At floor-level was a horizontal slit a few inches high and about four feet wide. “What’s this for?” Tagart said.

  “The hose.” Correy indicated the shutter. “You work it from there.”

  Tagart opened the shutter and looked out. The soldiers were so close that he could hear their voices. Just beyond the furthest bowshot, they had spread out on the hillside with an order and regularity which were themselves intimidating. In the middle of their ranks a tent, taken from the mine-workings, had been pitched, and next to it a fire, the largest of the several fires they had lit, was being fuelled with pit props by half a dozen men.

  The tree-cutting detail had not yet reached the main body of troops. Tagart turned to Correy. “You don’t think they’ll try it in daylight, do you?”

  “I do.”

  “They’ll be shot. We’ll hit them as they come.”

  “They have good armour.”

  Hanging just by the shutter, on a loop of cord, was a broad-mouthed cone about a foot in length, made from reed-leaves pressed together and laminated with glue.

  “What’s this?”

  “A shouting-cone.”

  Tagart took it down and examined it. “By what name should I call the Flint Lord? Lord Brennis?”

  “Yes. But he won’t answer.”

  Tagart put the smaller end to his lips and leaned forward. “Lord Brennis!” The sound was amplified by the reed-paper trumpet and it seemed no longer to be Tagart’s own voice. He shouted again. “Lord Brennis! I am the chief of the Shoden! I wish to talk!”

  The soldiers were behaving as if nothing had happened. No one made a move towards the tent, and no one appeared at its flap.

  “To speak to us would be to admit that we have taken the Trundle,” Correy said.

  Tagart tried again. “Lord Brennis! We must talk! Lord Brennis!”

  For reply came a few terse commands and responses; the aspen trunk had been made ready, with twenty-five equally spaced slings of rope. Fifty Vuchten went and stood by it. Two hundred of the other soldiers strung their longbows and formed into four rectangular squads, each five men wide and ten deep. These four squads now set off towards the gatehouse, flanking and keeping slightly ahead of the men with the tree-trunk.

  Behind Tagart, four nomads climbed through the trapdoor and took their places by the slits. Tagart looked impotently from side to side, at the approaching soldiers, at Correy: and suddenly Correy seemed seized with fright. He rushed to the ladder and scarcely touched the rungs as he slid to the ground. Tagart heard him shouting “The buttresses! The buttresses!” and, with the soldiers less than two hundred yards away, saw him directing a group of slaves as they manhandled across the ice, two for each gate, sloping frames made of oak beams.

  Although the gates had been correctly closed, the locking-grids alone were not meant to withstand a battering-ram. Most of the slaves had known what was being prepared; all those on the battlements had seen the aspen trunk being brought up past the mines, seen it being brought ever closer to the Flint Lord’s position, seen it being rigged with rope; but it was a measure of the confusion and indiscipline inside the fort that not one, not even Correy, had thought to mention to Tagart, or to Fodich or Crow or any of the established leaders, the existence and purpose of the siege buttresses. Only now had Correy remembered them, and without reference to anybody he had taken men from their posts and was shouting orders at them as they tried to drag the unwieldy frameworks into place.

  Fifty yards from the palisade the two hundred longbowmen, still in formation, had stopped to take aim and shoot, protecting the men with the battering-ram, who were keeping on, increasing their speed.

  Tagart dodged aside as the soldiers let fly a howling volley of arrows, fanning outward on spinning vanes to cover the whole defended width of the battlement, ending in shrieks and screams and a sudden loud crepitation against the logs of the gatehouse wall. Beside him one of the arrows had found a slit, found it and gone through, and the man standing there had been punched backwards, his throat pierced, his hands clutching the arrow and already bloodied as he fell against the pulley stocks and crumpled to the floor.

  The Vuchten with the battering-ram had kept on, and when Tagart glimpsed them in foreshortened view, fifteen feet below, it was as if he was seeing one creature, with one brain, blind, reckless, a gigantic insect with a tree-trunk for a body, horn and leather legs propelling it forward in a writhe of glinting grey and black, but each leg was a man, a human being, faceless behind an ugly visor, each one different, deformed, carved in the guise of nameless beasts and Tagart saw them no more and was thrown as the head of the creature struck its first tremendous blow.

&nb
sp; The whole gatehouse lurched. He grasped the shutter and pulled himself up. As one, with inhuman precision, the Vuchten had dropped the trunk and turned, ready to retreat for a second strike; but, ignoring the dense covering fire of the longbow squads, the men on the battlements had bent their bows and leaned into view. They let fly: a hailstorm of shafts and feathers converged on the Vuchten. Half fell dead or mortally wounded.

  Those who had not been hit tried to lift the battering-ram; others, with arrows sticking from their limbs, bodies, necks, added their ebbing strength and the tree-trunk actually moved a few inches. But the trunk was too heavy, they could not manage it, and with each moment more devastation was threatened from the battlements. The order came for retreat. Leaving their dead, they dragged the wounded to the cover of the four squads, whose men, shields held high to deflect the nomads’ arrows, were backing away.

  They reached the main position and were absorbed into the general body of soldiers.

  Tagart could see the casualties being attended to by their comrades, and from the tent appeared the figure of a man in a fur cape of the palest grey. As he passed among the men he was shown the greatest deference; he cursorily inspected the wounded and from his impatient gestures seemed vexed by what he saw.

  This surely was the Flint Lord himself. Under his cape he was wearing a high-necked tunic of what looked like ermine, leggings and knee-boots of sand-coloured hide, and gull-grey gauntlets; on his head was a black or dark grey stormcap with ear muffs and neck flap. Beside most of his soldiers he was not tall, but even at this distance his bearing and carriage could be seen to mark him out from all the rest.