In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1)

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  “Everyone is gathering on the gate towers,” his aide said, setting the sheath aside.

  Lyram climbed the tower steps two at a time, the bare-bladed claymore held before him. He shook his head, still trying to clear the last of the cobwebs of sleep. At the top, he found Galdron and Ellaeva standing at the battlements, the priestess pointing out into the distance. She turned suddenly, probably alerted by their echoing footsteps on the stairs. Seeing him, Ellaeva plucked the spyglass from Lyram’s belt.

  Galdron’s expression curdled, but Lyram let it go. Ahura’s representative in life wasn’t subject to his command. He leaned on the cool stones of the battlements, peering out at the enemy forces gathering in the grey twilight.

  “They’re carrying something.” Ellaeva scanned the enemy forces. “A ram, perhaps. Yes. And a bridge. Three cats.”

  “Three?’ Lyram snatched the glass back and fumbled it to his eye. “They must have brought them with them, disassembled.”

  It took a moment to find the right part of the enemy column. Did they really plan to attack the gate? So far they’d pressed their attacks hard, and their eagerness, or desperation, left him uneasy. Sieges weren’t prosecuted so aggressively without reason....

  “They can’t be thinking to attack the gate, surely,” Galdron said, echoing his thought.

  A castle’s gate was its weakest point, but weakest didn’t mean weak. Caisteal Aingeal’s barbican had a fearsome reputation, with multiple locking gates in addition to the portcullis, murder holes above, and flanking guardhouses. Any such attack would be suicidal.

  “They certainly appear to intend as much,” Lyram said, scanning the siege equipment.

  The ram and wheeled cats sheltered beneath a peaked roofs laden with wet hides that concealed who knew how many men. An assault on the gate would likely keep his soldiers too busy to think about the mercenaries under the cats who would be trying to fill the moat.

  “They’ve fixed wet hides to the engines,” Ellaeva said. “Firing them will be hard.”

  Lyram nodded. “The bridge will have less protection otherwise it won’t be functional. If they get that bridge in place, I want pitch and naphtha on it immediately.”

  “Commander.” A soldier stuck his head out of the gatehouse that controlled the portcullis. “There’s a problem in the barbican guardhouse. They’re asking to speak with you about the gates.”

  Lyram glanced out at the line of enemy soldiers advancing across the field. Not long now until they came within a comfortable bowshot, and not long after that until they reached the moat. “Can it wait?”

  “They say it’s urgent, sir.”

  A problem at the gates... and at the same time the enemy was pushing an assault, apparently wasting men and resources to take the castle fast. Lyram spun, dropping his claymore.

  “Your holiness,” he shouted, the clanging echo of the falling blade almost drowning him out, “you’re in command until I get back!”

  “What? Wait!” Galdron tried to grab at Lyram’s arm as he dashed by, and missed. “Sir, I don’t think you should—I really don’t think leaving her in charge is appropriate—”

  Lyram waved him off and entered the stairwell. Ellaeva began shouting orders before his feet even hit the first riser. The slap of bowstrings followed him down the stairs.

  As he emerged into the courtyard, a castle soldier in mismatched cuir bouilli rushed under the open portcullis and through the courtyard gate, a panicked look on his face.

  “My lord! Hurry, please! The gates are unlocked and the mechanism jammed!”

  “What?”

  The soldier turned and Lyram raced after him into the barbican. They ducked into the torch-lit eastern guardroom, which housed the mechanism controlling the bolts for all but the innermost gate.

  “Who unlocked them?”

  “We don’t know, my lord.” The man wrung his hands and stepped towards the mechanism. Sweat drenched his face, and the gate guards who clustered there didn’t look much better. “We went to check the locks, my lord, when the captain ordered the castle closed up tighter ‘an a virgin’s—” He coughed. “They wasn’t that way last check, my lord.”

  Lyram brushed past him and waved a soldier to bring a torch closer for light. His eyes watered in the acrid smoke, and he wiped the tears away with one hand. The gears that drove the steel bolts into the rock of the castle had been released and jammed with a sword, which had been thrust in and snapped off. Some of the gears appeared mangled beyond repair and would need to be replaced. Whoever did this had been alone and had time up his sleeve. “Who—? Rahmyr!”

  Lyram clamped his lips shut the instant the word rolled off his tongue, and the guards paled at this vilest of epithets. Bloody good thing they don’t realise that was an accusation, not an oath.

  “Find the man who knows the working of these gears, and get him in here now.” Sweat dampened Lyram’s brow. If the enemy got that bridge in place long enough, they were coming through the gates. “Bar and block the gates with whatever you can. Shut the gate to the courtyard too. Send men with oil up to the murder holes.”

  He hurried to the hole in the wall that echoed commands through the rock to the gatehouse atop the battlements. “This is the commander. After a slow count of one hundred, lower the portcullis and bolt the courtyard gates. No commands are to be accepted from the guardrooms until you see and speak to me personally. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir!” The voice of one of his men echoed back through the rock.

  Lyram leaned his head against the wall and started counting. The stone pressed cool and welcoming against his hot flesh. He trusted his guards with his life.

  “Looks like I got here just in time.”

  Turning on the count of seventy, he found Ellaeva in the guardroom doorway, her sword in hand. Anger warred with relief. Am I pleased she’ll have my back, or angry she’s locked in here with me? “You’re supposed to be on the walls!”

  She shrugged. “They’ve got the bridge in place. We tried to fire it, to no avail. Any moment now they’ll start up with the ram.”

  The soldiers gathered at the other end of the guardroom unlimbered their weapons, watching her with wary eyes and muttering amongst themselves.

  Lyram pushed away from the wall and moved over to her to speak softly. “This could be endgame.”

  “If it is,” she whispered back, “then I daresay my goddess will have no further use for my service. So I would rather be here trying to fulfil that service than outside wondering if the wrath of my lady will strike me down.”

  She delivered the speech with such equanimity it was impossible to believe she spoke of her own death.

  A wiry man squeezed past her into the room, clutching a box full of tools. He bobbed an uncoordinated bow at Lyram before hurrying to the gate mechanism. At his gesture, a couple of burly guards approached and began trying to remove the sword blade, to the smith’s agitated gestures and exclamations.

  The boom of the courtyard gate closing echoed in the small space, followed by the sharp report of the bolts slamming home. The rattle of the portcullis closing was muffled by the thick wood that now stood between them and the rest of the castle.

  Lyram waved Ellaeva back into the barbican, and jerked his head for the rest of the guards to follow. He positioned himself with his back to the courtyard gate, with the narrow gate tunnel stretching before him. The torches in the guardhouse doorways cast little light into the barbican itself, leaving it wreathed in shadow. The thick iron-strapped wood of the nearest gate stood a mere three feet away, braced by a motley collection of timber. Three more unlocked and useless gates stood unseen between that one and the moat.

  Ellaeva assumed a position by his side. The barbican was only wide enough for four men abreast, with no room left to swing weapons, so the rest of the castle guards stood ready in the guardrooms, mostly men with two or three hard-looking women.

  Through the thick wood and stone, came the faint roar of voices. The pungent smell
of burning pitch followed hard on its heels. They’d fired the moat. The voices of men screaming in pain penetrated the stone, distant and thin like that of ghosts. In the still darkness of the barbican, the armoured men and women shifted with restlessness.

  And then the sound he’d been waiting for and dreading.

  Thud.

  The layers of wood and stone between them muffled the sound of the ram, but it was distinctive nonetheless. The soldiers held their breaths. Lyram drew his clan sword. At his shoulder, Ellaeva, as grim as a spectre of death, lifted hers. They awaited the moment the ram broke through the gate. It would be too easy, with the massive steel crossbar bolts unlocked and the gates blockaded only by quickly scrounged debris.

  Thud.

  Ellaeva’s face settled into that grim expectancy he was beginning to think of as her ‘work look’. It was the face of a woman who’d earned the name ‘the Left Hand of Death’.

  “Ciotach an Bhais,” he said, with a touch of reverence, and lifted his blade to kiss the cold steel in her honour.

  The soldiers behind him shuffled their feet. In ragged disarray, they one by one lifted their own weapons to follow suit.

  Her gaze flickered to him, and though her expression didn’t shift, she gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. “That may be the first time those words were spoken in anything other than in fear.”

  Thud.

  All eyes locked on the gate.

  Thud.

  The crunch of shattering wood echoed sharp in the close stone confines. Lyram tightened his grip on his sword. With any luck, that had been the improvised bracing beams, rather than the gate itself.

  The soldiers shuffled and shifted, a mass of creaking leather, and jingling hauberks. Ellaeva stood still as if she’d frozen in place.

  Thud.

  The crash of the gate bursting open echoed ominously in the barbican. Shouting and the thunder of boots on wood drifted in the following silence. More crashing reverberated in the confines—most likely the timber bracing tossed aside to allow the ram in.

  Lyram glanced over his men. Sweat shone on most faces, and the air in the barbican was stiflingly close. He sucked in a gulp of air so humid it made breathing hard.

  A series of thuds thundered in the barbican, followed by a loud crash. Agonised screams echoed up through the unlocked gates standing between them and the defenders. The soldiers shifted uneasily.

  “Steady,” Lyram said. “They’ve poured the boiling oil through the first of the murder holes.”

  Some of the soldiers glanced up at the holes above their heads.

  The screams died off into a deep silence, broken only intermittently by soft moans of pain and sobbing. With luck, the gates were repairable. Assuming they threw back this assault, he needed to be able to re-fortify. The silence stretched a little longer, and then the sounds of more men arriving drifted through the wood. Someone on the other side of the gate vomited.

  “Ready yourselves.”

  The gate before them shook with a sudden impact, and the bracing beams slid an inch.

  Thud.

  The sound echoed frighteningly loud in the close quarters. The timber shivered, and gave another inch. Through the growing crack between gate and wall, sweaty faces encased in helms became visible.

  Lyram lifted his clan sword. “Any moment now....”

  The next blow shoved the door back a foot. Lyram lunged, stabbing at the exposed face of the closest man. The enemy fell back with a scream, clutching his hands to his head, blood streaming between his fingers. The next nearest man shuffled around a little, away from Lyram.

  The ram struck the door again, and the braces snapped with a splintering crack that echoed around the close confines of the barbican. The gate slid open, pushing the debris ahead of it, and Ellaeva sprang into the gap.

  Black robes flying, silver sword flashing, she looked like an angel of death herself. When the sword came back up, blood dripped its silver length, and a short scream turned into a gargle for breath. Lyram leapt to her side. She shot him an angry look and sank her blade into an attacking soldier’s throat, below the protection of his helm. The man fell back, blood gushing in a shocking red river from his wound.

  More scrambled to take his place. Lyram blocked a blade and lunged forward. The ring of steel on steel echoed painfully in the barbican. Rushing blood thundered in his ears.

  The barbican was only wide enough for two to fight side by side, and the soldiers waited behind to take a place when one of them fell.

  “Get back!” Ellaeva’s shout echoed off the stones between one gasped breath and the next. Another man died on her blade, his scream almost drowning out her shout.

  Lyram ignored her. A blade ricocheted off the spaulder protecting his shoulder. He winced at the impact, eyes watering, and brought his own sword down on the attacker’s wrist, below the man’s mail. Blood fountained from the half-severed wrist, and when the man jerked back, raising his arm in disbelief, Lyram drove his sword into the man’s unprotected armpit to his heart.

  He kicked the body off his sword. Corpses choked the barbican, forcing the soldiers to attack over their own dead. Blood slicked his armour, but its metallic stink didn’t cover the stench of burned flesh.

  Ellaeva clambered over a corpse to attack a soldier just out of reach. Her feet slipped on uneven footing, and Lyram grabbed her arm, steadying her. The soldier reared up, his sword drawn back. Ellaeva floundered to get her blade up. The soldier struck. Without conscious thought, Lyram yanked her backwards and threw himself forward. Something struck his head, hard enough to make his ears ring, and he found himself almost nose to nose with another man, the other’s eyes glazed in death. Someone nearby shrieked like a banshee. A vision in black vaulted over him, and a cacophony of yells filled the confined space, reverberating off the walls until his already throbbing head felt fit to burst inside his helm.

  One yell cut short, and something warm and wet splashed across his face.

  Groggy, he tried to lift his head, and the narrow tunnel spun, leaving only a confusing impression of milling boots.

  A huge wave of heat roared down the tunnel. Shrieks of pain filled the air—from outside, as the sounds didn’t echo. Hellish flame light danced on the walls of the barbican, illuminating the gore. His cheeks smarted from the passing heat.

  A dead man. I am face to face with a dead man.

  Lyram struggled to sit up, and an armoured woman knelt and assisted him.

  “All right, sir? You took a mighty crack to the head.”

  “Fine, Daneel, fine.” Lyram pulled his helm off, wincing, and surveyed the barbican. Fire raged at the far end, great gouts of flame burning on the remains of the bridge and even the surface of the water.

  Ellaeva and a few soldiers stalked down the tunnel, checking the throats and wrists of the fallen. Every now and then, one of them would cut a throat or angle a knife into a ribcage, ending the suffering of those burnt by boiling oil.

  Should we take prisoners?

  Before he issued an order, Ellaeva killed the last attacker.

  We don’t need more mouths to feed anyway.

  “They managed to fire the bridge?” He looked at Daneel.

  “Looks like, sir. Went up like a holiday bonfire, sir.”

  “Get the wreckage off the supports. We might need to run our own bridge out.”

  Daneel saluted and called over some of the nearest soldiers. Together they ran to the tunnel mouth. With axes taken from several of the fallen Gallowglaighs, they levered the flaming structure into the moat.

  Just past the nearest of the bodies lay the ram. Lyram stretched out one leg to poke it with a toe. Should order it burned too. Or perhaps the armoury might be able to salvage something. Iron sheathed the ram, to ward off fire once it was detached from its protective housing. “Take that to the armoury.”

  “Right-o, sir, but we’re still locked in,” Daneel said

  Oh yes. That. With a groan, Lyram signalled Daneel to help him up, and she
obligingly reached down and hauled him to his feet.

  For an alarming moment, two barbicans and two Daneels overlapped before his eyes, and then the two images slammed back into one.

  With extreme care, he picked his way down to the mouth of the tunnel towards the moat.

  “What were you thinking?” Ellaeva blocked his passage, shouting in a voice loud enough to start avalanches.

  He winced and squinted in the face of the noise, wishing he had some way to stopper his ears. A relentless pounding began in his temples. “That you were going to be killed.”

  “Better me than you!” She slammed her blade back into the scabbard, apparently forgetting the blood covering it.

  Perhaps he should mention it.... No, probably better not to.

  “It’s my job to make sure you stay alive.” Her voice echoed loudly in the barbican.

  “Sorry,” he said, not making the effort to sound in the least bit contrite. “Old habits die hard.”

  “That axe could have split your head open!”

  “It might still have done, so best you let me get back in the castle so Leinahre can take a look. If you’ll excuse me.”

  He left her standing amongst the corpses, her mouth hanging open and apparently bereft of words. By the time he reached the front gate, she’d turned to search the corpses, but the line of her back still screamed fury.

  A small smile tugged at his lips as he watched her. It was important to remember that Ahura’s Battle Priestess was still a woman—albeit, a woman who well knew how to use a sword.

  I just saw Ciotach an Bhais fighting. It had even been an intimate performance at one point, with him on the ground bleeding and only her swordwork keeping him safe.

  And she was beautiful.

  He stepped out of the tunnel into the light, and grimaced. The fire had consumed all of the bridge, and still burned in fitful patches atop the water. Spreading wisps of choking smoke revealed the remnants of the army slinking back through the old gate.

  “Hello the walls!” His own shout made his head ring even more.

  After a moment’s wait, someone appeared over the parapet. “Is that you, sir?”

  “Galdron, excellent. Send one of the gatehouse guards out here so I might order the inner gate opened? Good man.”