‘Archers’ he screamed suddenly. ‘To me!’
And such was the power of the sight they had seen on that hilltop, and the voice they had heard, that the ranks of Kermorvan’s archers came surging forward to the breast of the slope, drawing as they came.
‘Bring down those horsemen!’
As one, with a hiss of silken menace, the longbows swung up, and Kunrad felt the mighty tension in his own arms. Only about two hundred archers, but they were soldiers and hunters, men whose lives depended on the strength of their bows; they pulled the weight of a fairsized man, and their eyes and hands were steady. Kunrad realised suddenly he had no idea of the sothran commands, but he could not wait to ask; he shouted ‘Loose!’ in the Northern fashion, and they obeyed.
The night sang around his head, a great wing thrashed the air, a pale cloud glittered above the fire, and fell. The horsemen, looking up, saw what was descending, and their cries and exhortations broke off in yelling panic. Those who had shields swung them over their heads and spurred back; one or two fell or sprang headlong from their saddles into the lake. The ranks on the path mirrored the change. Men dived heedlessly for cover in either direction, or simply cowered down where they were. The arrows plunged among them in shining, rattling rain. They plucked captains from their saddles, or toppled the poor beasts themselves kicking into the darkening water. Men on the path jerked where they lay and went limp, or ran clawing frantically at the shafts that transfixed them. But the bright figure neither fled nor fell, but raised his shield high against the fall, and bent over his charger’s armoured head to ward it. Kunrad clearly saw at least two shafts shatter against the backplates he had case-hardened with such care, and go bouncing away. Then Merthian was upright again, and leading his surviving captains out of shot. Only one did not follow, a tall figure with a fantastically ornamented helm; he shook his fist at them, shouted as if he had lost patience, and turned his horse to the shore.
‘Follow me!’ yelled Kunrad, clapping on his helm, and went leaping and slipping away down the slope. The men of the castle’s advance guard heard him also, and stopped in their milling half-retreat; hands pointed to the hill, and the archers coming down surefooted behind him. But from his vantage he could see the corsairs also steadying and regrouping around the tall horseman as he rode up and down, heading off deserters and quelling disorders.
‘Halt!’ shouted Kunrad to the archers. ‘Draw! Into the vanguard this time! Into their faces! Loose!’
This time the trajectory was lower, the sound harsher, a spitting, sawing breath of death that made Kunrad duck involuntarily as it rushed past him. Corsairs at the fore screamed, turned and were struck down in the same moment. But fewer fell at the volley, and behind the fire a sound was swelling, a savage chant of acclaim. Above the flame he saw the rider with the gaudy helm come driving forward, with a tight knot of men behind him; and despite the arrows the corsairs followed. More and more of them, not in orderly ranks but in a tight-knit spearhead that looked almost as dangerous. The decorations on the tall man’s helm were the great spreading wings of a seabird, beating as he rode; and they sparkled weirdly in the night. He swept up an arm, pointing at the hill, and Kunrad caught his breath as he saw the flash and glitter of jewels at wrist and neck, and across the armoured chest.
‘That one!’ shouted Kunrad. ‘Mark him!’ Then he flinched, as something sang past his face. The nearest archer coughed and fell writhing, clutching at the stiff fletches of a crossbow bolt thrusting out through his red beard. Another plucked at Kunrad’s breech-leg, and the archers scattered as more thudded into the dark hillside around them. He ducked and ran to one side, waving the archers to do likewise, and an instant later the night sang again; they were being pinned down, unable to aim. The corsair chieftain swept out his sword and waved again, forward now towards the fire. Kunrad saw the crossbowmen bunch together behind him with the rest, shielding their faces against the heat of the flame. Once past they would have a clear shot at the hill.
‘Archers!’ he yelled again, but knew there was no time for another volley. ‘Their chieftain! Fire at will!’ The chieftain was already at the dwindling metal-flow, pulling back on his reins for the jump across the pools of fire. His horse lifted him high against the lurid smoke, a huge menacing shadow, his sword upraised as if to strike the flames asunder. The jewels on mail and scabbard glistened blood-bright in the glare.
Beside Kunrad’s ear a single bowstring snapped the air. So strong was the firelight he clearly saw the arrow in its flight, whipping its tail like a fish. Beneath the blazing foliage its arc took it, and its resined fletches flashed into flame, yet straight it flew to meet the crest of another leap. Straight under that upraised arm it struck, and no jewel or mailring turned it. The fire flashed and vanished, the sword flew up, wheeling against the light, and the reins snaked free as the impact shot the corsair chieftain from his stirrups and down into the roaring pools beneath. An uprush of blazing debris, like a fount of firegems, marked his fall. The horse bolted, mad with fright, and men shrank back at the terrible sight.
‘Well shot, that man!’ gasped Kunrad. Across his mind, for an instant, came those bloody moments in the ship. ‘See, that’s held them! Well shot, man, well shot!’
‘And it’s kind of you to say so!’ said Alais calmly from his side, choosing another shaft from her belt.
‘You?’
‘The others were running all over the place. And I’d promised to keep an eye on you. Somebody has to!’
‘But you can’t – I won’t—’ Kunrad’s tongue seemed to stick in his mouth. He looked from her to the shore, and back again, unable to form his words for excitement. The front ranks faltering, the rear in disorder, Merthian nowhere to be seen – surely now, if ever, the iron was spitting hot.
That thought freed his voice.
‘You below!’ he screamed. ‘Up and into them! Attack, damn you, attack!’
The men on the shore looked up doubtfully, and for an awful moment he thought they would not obey this Northern voice with the strange commands. He could see it in their very stance, tense as runners, unsure they had heard the start. He hauled out his own sword, brandished it above his head and went running down the slope, still shouting, dancing almost as he had at the furnace, to summon up the fire. ‘On! Now!’
The archers were running with him, shooting as they went; and seeing that, the front ranks stepped hesitantly forward, one pace, two, like pawns on a game-board. The next rank followed – and then, all at once, high on the hill the trumpets sounded. The great war-horns from the castle echoed them across the water and off the distant mountains, to wake the duergar in their beds of stone.
With a bloodcurling howl the whole mass of men began to pour forward. At most in that vanguard there was half the corsair strength; but on their chosen stretch of lakeshore they had formed wider ranks that made them appear more numerous. And while many behind still had only wooden spears, a fearsome wall of pikes and bills glittered before the front ranks, and among them many of the long spearheads of the duergar.
‘So’ yelled Kunrad, leaping in the air. ‘Archers, forward! Give them cover!’
He could order volleys no longer; but this close, and in the firelight, the hunters could move and skirmish, and pick their targets. Arrows whined overhead as he went bounding down the lower slope, still brandishing his sword. He promptly caught his foot in a tussock and fell headlong, sending his helm flying.
Winded, he fought to struggle up. The ground drummed under him, and he found himself surrounded by the legs of horses shifting excitedly. A hand caught him by the hair, and he looked up into Kermorvan’s baleful glare, pop-eyed with fury.
‘Since when were you made commander here, my lad? You’ll need a horse for that game!’ He more or less threw Kunrad against the horse behind him, whose saddle was empty. Kunrad struggled up into the stirrups, his boot slipped and he sprawled double over the saddle, to harsh laughter from around him.
‘Sit up!’ growled Kermo
rvan in a furious whisper. ‘Straighten your back, stop coughing! Look like a bloody commander!’ Then he added, as he hauled Kunrad up by the scruff of the neck, ‘Not that you’re not playing it well! Or else I wouldn’t have given you the trumpets. You saw the moment to strike, every time. I – well, I’m getting old. You’ve the command now, lad. You’ll do.’
Alais rode up beside them, winding her wild hair down beneath her helm. Somebody handed Kunrad his. He looked around, still gasping for breath. The lines on the shore were well ahead now.
‘Well then! My lord … Very well. Archers – you stay above the fight as long as you’ve arrows, then close with your blades! The rest of us’ – he copied the corsair leader’s sweeping wave – ‘Forward!’
He dug in his heels, and the horse went bounding easily down the slope. The soldiers saw him and Kermorvan at his side, and the black banner rising among the horsemen thundering behind, and raised a great cheer. But even as they parted to let him through, so another great shout arose from their foes. Through the barrier of fire another rider sprang, and through the mirroring metal he wore, the flames seemed to flow and kindle anew.
Not till then, perhaps, did Kunrad wholly understand what he had shaped, or perceive what had so immediately dazzled Merthian’s sight and scruple. Now, himself a leader, he faced a steely, impenetrable image of victory, a vision for foe to quail at, for friend to follow, even over such a barrier as he himself had created. Into the fight he had poured raw steel; but now it was hurled back at him, forged hard and bright about his foe.
And after Merthian the corsairs came streaming, crossing the fires at last. The flames were dying now, and they sprang through, or ducked and weaved between the pools of metal that still glowed and shimmered in the red air. Some trod on smaller fragments, screamed and fell, but with that bright vision to follow their fellows sprang across them as they writhed, and ran on. On came Merthian still, his few remaining horsemen gathering at his back, and the defenders’ spear-fence swept up to meet him. The first he met and dashed aside with his shield, slashed out with his lance and felled its wielder and the man beside him. The corsairs poured past his horse to engage the line, while pikes and spears clanged helplessly off his shoulders. Then, pulling his horse around, he picked out the captain of the line and rode at him. Again he batted aside the pikes to left and right, and as the captain thrust at him Merthian’s lance took him in the breastplate and transfixed the man, black pennons and all, and stuck in the ground behind. Out came his sword and slashed down the pikeshafts, and the corsairs pressed forward under the shadow of his shield.
‘Gathered them from the rear again!’ growled Kermorvan. ‘Where we couldn’t see him!’
‘He’ll break our line!’ said Kunrad. ‘We’ll have to try and hold him! Horsemen, forward!’
He had learned the principles of war for his weaponry; he had led one charge in a mock battle, one small group of town guardsmen against another, in bright day and unencumbered ground. Here in the firelight, with men striking and dying in the lakeshore mud under the very hooves of his horse, it was a confused, demonic vision in which that radiant armour was the only spot of clarity. The charge stalled in a milling tangle of foot-soldiers, a rough line that swayed this way and that like waving wheat. A mounted corsair plunged by him, driven by the press of men. They cut at one another, missed, and were driven apart in the mêlée. The sky was shedding its blackness, but in the firelight it was still hard to tell friend from foe.
Merthian, ranging up and down the line, suddenly waved to his horsemen, set the long shield before him and charged straight at the centre. There were fewer pikes now, and his sword scythed them away like very wheatstalks. His tall warhorse breasted the crush with its steel gorget, and bore down all in its way, while he hewed at the heads to either flank. The corsairs roared and drove in behind him, horse and footmen together, in the swift fast fighting they understood.
‘They’ll he through any moment!’ coughed Kunrad. ‘Kermorvan! Fall our men back, back towards the bridge! Hold the front lines as a rearguard! We’ve done what we could. I’m going to try and deal with him!’
The horns sounded, and the defenders checked and gave back, slowly, in good order as Kunrad forced his horse through. ‘Merthian!’ he roared. ‘Merthian! Marchwarden, master of naught! Thief and traitor! Ice-puppet!’ one or two crossbow bolts whirred past him, but he was too angry to notice, hot in pursuit of that shining vision that plagued his dreams and poisoned his life. ‘Merthian, you thieving get of a bitch! Give me back my armour!’
The high helm turned, its plumes bobbing, and seemed to hesitate. Then it reined in, keeping well back, and shouted to the footmen around, waving them furiously forward. Ignoring their retreating enemies, they swarmed towards Kunrad’s horse. Over his head a glimmer passed, and down into that living mirror. It struck the shield, but this was no arrow; its weight turned the shield sharply and clanged hard against the helm, rocking its wearer in his saddle. Shield and sword dropped from his hand, but the javelin simply glanced off that frozen light and fell with them. Merthian swayed drunkenly where he sat.
Beside Kunrad Alais yelled in thwarted fury, and snatched another javelin from her saddle. ‘Lock me up with your tame Ice-bitch, will you? Come, my darling bridegroom, come and be kissed!’
The advance halted. The corsairs looked around anxiously, expecting some new assault from the side, and the last of the castle rearguard took the opportunity to disengage and fall hastily back. But the corsair horsemen swiftly gathered in a knot around Merthian, shielding and supporting him, and the footmen came streaming towards Kunrad and Alais. More crossbow bolts sang around them.
‘Time to get back, my lad!’ snapped Kermorvan, waving the rest of his horsemen away. ‘But daughter, that was warmly kissed!’
Together they wheeled and spurred back, with screams of violent derision behind them. But the distraction and delay had gained the defenders the moment they needed. Most of them were already within the castle gate, and in the greying dimness he could see the rearguard streaming on to the bridge now, under the eye of the few archers to whom any arrows yet remained. Even as Kunrad glanced back over his shoulder, though, he saw the protective knot part and Merthian come charging forward, arms in hand once more, no sign of blood or marring about him. Kunrad had made his armour all too well. After him galloped the corsair horsemen, with footmen clinging to their stirrup-leathers, and Kunrad realised they could be overtaken in minutes.
Arrows sailed over their heads as Kermorvan’s archers shot their last, but though another rider fell it did not break the pursuit.
‘We can’t let them reach the bridge!’ gasped Kunrad.
‘So!’ wheezed the old man, and waved wildly. ‘Pull back the bridge! We’ll swim for it!’
‘Speak for yourself!’ groaned Kunrad, but he knew the old man was right. So did Ferlias in the castle, evidently; the bridge was already hauling away from the shore. Even as it did so, two men sprang back off it, and ran to meet them. More bolts sang by, a horse screamed and the others baulked and collided in confusion. Alais slid from her saddle, Kunrad half fell from his, and they landed among the others, already tearing off their mail-shirts and springing into the water.
‘Mastersmith!’ shouted Gille, as he and Olvar came puffing up. ‘Come on! We’ll help you!’
‘I can manage!’ he growled, as he hauled Alais’s mail over her head, and disproved it instantly by struggling with his own. The prentices yanked it off him, and as his ears came clear he heard the approaching hoofbeats. Without an instant’s delay he scooped up Alais in her shirt and britches, and jumped.
The lake was an icy slap, a flooding, bewildering fog about the eyes, a panicky straining for breath. Alais was no longer in his arms, and he could not even tell which way was up. He kicked out, and burst up coughing and sneezing among a mass of other streaming heads. Through bubbling ears he heard Alais, next to him, calling out, ‘Father? Father?’ He tried to speak, sank again and was scooped up by Ol
var’s huge paw on his arm.
‘Don’t fight it, boss! I’ll tow you!’
‘Kermorvan?’ spluttered Kunrad, and then, as he swung about to face the shore, he saw the old man stagger to his feet on the bank, from beside the tangled bodies of two horses.
‘Father!’ shouted Alais, but Kermorvan only waved irritably. Shaking his head as if to clear some noise in his ear, he tugged at his sword, freed it. Then with the limping walk of a man grown too old, too fat to run any more, he stepped out into the path of the onrushing corsairs, and his former lord.
It was at Merthian that he struck, and his slashing blow drove past the shield and rocked the Marchwarden in his saddle. But the blade skipped free, and Merthian’s shield spun the old man around in the narrow way. Another horse struck him, and he was ridden down, tumbled over and flung aside in a flurry of cloak. Alais shrieked, but the corsairs pouring past hid him from sight. They reached the bridgehead and swirled out along the shore in complete disorder, every man jostling to the fore. Merthian reined up at the water’s edge, pointing furiously to the swimmers, the first of whom had already reached the bridge.
‘Sink me those swine!’ they heard him scream. It was nothing like his normal voice. ‘Every last one!’
Already crossbows were being drawn, and bolts were hissing into the water among them. A swimmer clambering aboard the bridge shook and went down with an agonised gasp. Other bolts struck the water at a low angle, and went skipping off across it as boys skim stones. Another found a mark in a swimmer’s shoulder. Kunrad snatched at Alais, Gille came to their side, and they struck out clumsily for the bridge. They were behind the others, for Kunrad had no buoyancy of his own, and Alais was dead weight at first. But as the bolts struck closer she began to swim for herself, a fierce stroke, breathing in great rasping gasps. If there had been more crossbowmen, or better light, they would have been dead at once, but they flailed on, while the men on the bridge shouted and cheered, and shook their fists at the shore. Some of the castle’s bowmen were running down to lend cover, but such was the crush on the bridge that they could not get near enough.
The Castle of the Winds Page 38
