A Triple Thriller Fest (123 page)

Men worked on the castle walls. They hammered nails over hastily-constructed hoardings. Fires burned along the walls. The light turned orange and diffuse as it passed through the falling snow.

On his own side, the piles of stones had grown next to the trebuchet during the night. Men worked on the siege sheds. There was another hive of activity near the blacksmith tent, and a third one back in the gradually retreating woods, where trees continued to fall. The smell of wood smoke filled the air. Other men emerged from their tents, and campfires sputtered to life, followed by the smell and sound of sizzling bacon and brewing coffee.

“Up! Up! Pull!” a man shouted.

Several men pulled on a rope and pulley to raise the arm of a second trebuchet. It looked like a toy next to Niels’s larger war machine, but it would be quicker to action. He had a special surprise in store for the enemy.

Yekatarina emerged from the tent. She buckled her belt and then pulled on a pair of wool-lined gloves and drew the hood of her cloak. “Looks too small to do much damage.”

“Sure,” Kirkov said. “If we were just shooting stones. I have something else in mind. Time for a little more cheating on Peter’s rules.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Fire.”

Chapter Thirty-three:

“Kirkov calls himself Black Horse,” Niels said.

He’d found Tess in the bailey, where she watched the progress on the gates. Men worked above her as well, and she’d been to the battlements twice, both to inspect progress and to keep an eye on the enemy’s encampment. The enemy, too, had been busy all night.

“I saw that,” she said. “But Black Horse? What is that, some sort of literary reference?”

It was just before what would prove to be a delayed dawn, with the sun struggling to penetrate the clouds and the falling snow. The snow made her happy. Bad weather always favored a defensive posture.

“It’s from the Book of Revelation. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

“The Bible is where my knowledge base starts to break down. What is the black horse. War?”

“War is the red horse,” Niels said. “Black horse is famine and pestilence, because they’re the real killers, aren’t they?”

“What about nuclear war? That could massacre tens, hundreds of millions of people.”

“Even then, what’s going to happen? The survivors die from radiation sickness, or later, cancer. The nuclear winter alone could push humanity to the edge of extinction. Anyway, I don’t think we’re talking nuclear holocaust. That doesn’t seem to be their plan.”

“What exactly is their plan?” she asked.

“Damned if I know,” Niels said. “They have some scheme, something big, but what does that have to do with this castle? I’ve been thinking, thinking, and I can’t see any way that killing us does anything for them.”

Tess felt equally baffled. “It’s not much, but spread it around. Maybe someone knows something.”

“Is that safe? There could still be spies in the castle. The enemy will be interested in how much we know.”

“Maybe, but the bigger risk is to keep jerking people around. They were mad as hell and they deserve whatever answers you can give them. We’ll have to take the risk.”

“You get anything more out of Peter?” Niels asked.

“About half of what you just told me. I don’t think he’s holding out, he really has no idea why they’re targeting us.”

“Hmm. I was hoping he’d know. He hand-picked half the people in the enemy camp, so he must know some of the people in on this.”

They made their way to the battlements to have a look down at the enemy encampment. Kirkov had raised a second, smaller trebuchet during the night. The larger weapon would be immobile, while the smaller could move from target to target.

There was movement at the enemy trebuchets. Men tightened ropes on the smaller machine. Half a dozen others turned at a wheel on the larger machine. The counterweight lifted inch-by-inch as the sling arm lowered to the ground.

“From the size of those stones, I’d say they’re planning to hit the walls, not fire into the castle,” Tess said. “Hard to say until their first shot.”

“Never thought I’d be looking at my machines from this vantage,” Niels said.

“I think I prefer my old friend at Château des Baux. Somehow, it didn’t look so deadly.”

“Nothing like staring down the business end of a machine strong enough to fling a man four hundred meters,” he said.

Tess thought about Borisenko, crushed like an egg dropped from an airplane, and the horrific encores. Kirkov had first hurled a man against the castle walls, then dropped his third victim into the bailey. The last man landed on his legs and that kept him alive to suffer for most of the night. She could still hear the screams and held in her mind the picture of bones like tree branches, snapped in two and then broken again.

“How is the weaponry coming?” she asked.

“By tonight every man and woman in the castle will have a sharpened sword,” Niels said. “I’ve scraped up every bit of pitch and lead in the castle. How about the defenses?”

“Well, you can see the hoardings. The murder holes are in better shape, too. And we found the hole Dmitri opened for Yekatarina. That’s a hell of a weakness.”

“But not so much now that we know it’s there.”

“Exactly. The key is to manage their attack. Force them where we want to go.” Tess hesitated. “There’s something that’s been bothering me since yesterday. Nobody saw Kirkov or those other men until they came into your camp. They must have come from off island.”

“Right. By boat, I would assume, we’d have heard a helicopter. And they’d have had to register a flight plan, since there’s an air force base near Burlington. Maybe they thought that attention was too risky.”

“Sure, I’ve thought about that. And with the winds that night, it might have been tough for a helicopter. That’s not my question, anyway.”

“Okay, what is it, then?” Niels asked.

“So they came in a boat. They’re illegal participants from the moment they arrived. And now they’re trying to kill us.”

“I think we’ve established those as facts, yes.”

“So what would you do if you wanted to break into the castle and you weren’t constrained by rules? Remember, you’re in the 21
st
 Century.”

Niels blinked. “Oh, my god. Explosives. I’d throw some plastique or dynamite against the wall and blow the hell out of it. I got so caught up with all this medieval war stuff that it never occurred to me.”

“Yeah, well it’s the first thing I thought of. But we don’t have to worry about explosives. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered with armor and swords yesterday, they’d have come at us with AK-47s and sawed-off shotguns. Cut down everyone outside the castle and then blown a hole in the gates after Peter and I were dead.”

“So why didn’t they?”

“We’re only a mile or two offshore,” Tess said. “And there are boats on the lake. It’s the same reason they didn’t swoop in on a helicopter and land it right in the bailey. That sort of thing is going to bring the Coast Guard and the police. They might have guns, but only for a shot or two that might be mistaken for target practice, or hunting. No way they can risk an extended gun battle, or shoot at us every time we poke our heads up above the castle wall. But until we’re sure, let’s assume they do have some modern weapons down there, they just haven’t brought them out yet. I want everyone else thinking that way, too.”

“Damn near killed us anyway,” Niels said.

“Right. It wasn’t a problem of weapons. They thought they could turn you and they failed.”

“And Kirkov thought he could kill you on the tournament pitch.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea about that. I’m lucky to be alive.”

“He underestimated your skill with a sword,” Niels said. “I’d never make that mistake.”

“And I’m glad you’re on my side and not down there giving advice to the enemy.”

He smiled.

Tess felt suddenly embarrassed. “So we each think the other person is great. Let’s interrupt the mutual admiration society to get back to my question.”

“Right. It’s the twenty-first century, I need to break into a castle and I can’t use explosives.”

“Do you think the trebuchet, bore, ram, etc., would be good enough?” she asked. “Or would you get some machine?”

“A bore, but powered by a machine. The right tools would turn that wall to Swiss cheese.”

“Sure,” Tess said, “but how do you get your bore to the island? It would be the size of a bulldozer. And you’ve still got to get right next to the walls. If it’s got an internal combustion motor, we could set it on fire.”

“Then I don’t know,” Niels said. “Let me think about it.”

“They’re going to pull out every dirty trick they can think of. I want to think of them first so we can prepare our own surprises.”

“There it goes,” Niels said in a sharp voice.

The arm of the larger trebuchet touched the ground at the tip. The men strained at a stone that had to weigh three hundred pounds. It took a few minutes to wrestle it into the pouch and then get the men out of the way.

“Heads down!” Tess shouted.

She and Niels ducked behind the battlement. Men crouched with their hands about their heads. Niels and Tess peeked through the merlons.

The soldiers moved back from the trebuchet and Kirkov came forward.

“God, I hope that thing misfires,” she said. “Drop the stone right on his head.”

“It won’t,” Niels said. “I built it, remember? Then again, you can put the finest tool in the world in the hands of a toddler and he still might drill a hole in his foot.”

She started to laugh, but then Kirkov pulled the rope and the rest of her breath came out in a rush. The counterweight fell. The arm swung forward and the sling released its stone. The counterweight rocked back and forth as it moved to a resting state.

Tess lost the stone in the gray for a moment, then flinched as it came down. It slammed into the outer curtain with a tremendous crash. The wall shuddered. A cheer went up from the enemy encampment.

She collected herself. “Shit.”

“Wow,” Niels said. “I mean, wow.”

“You sound almost proud of yourself,” she said. “Couple of days of that and we’ll be in serious trouble.”

“Look on the plus side,” Niels said. “That was loud. That keeps going off every five minutes for the next couple of days, maybe someone will get curious.”

“That’s a very small plus.”

The second trebuchet launched its projectile. It was a burning ball that soared up and over the wall. It landed harmlessly in the middle of the bailey. Two men came running with a bucket of water.

“Wait!” she cried down to them. “Let’s see how it burns.”

The stood back while the ball sizzled and burned. It kept burning for several minutes until she finally told them to douse it. She turned back to Niels.

“And what’s the plus side of
that?”
she asked.

Chapter Thirty-four:

The next time Tess descended into the dungeon she brought the other two women in the castle with her. Time to give Dmitri a working over. Tess fought her own exhaustion after multiple nights with sleep stolen in chunks of one, two hours; Dmitri must be dead on his feet.

He looked up when the three women arrived. He was chained in a slightly different position than last time she’d seen him, but still standing. Water dripped from his hair. Lars sat in a chair with a bucket and a dipper. The haggard look on his face matched that of his prisoner.

Daria LeFevre stood in front of Dmitri. “So this is the bastard.”

Daria was a slight Quebecois who’d lived the last twenty years in Manhattan. Tess had seen the Bohemian apartment she shared with her partner in Greenwich Village, where they ran a pottery studio. It was the stereotypical gay lifestyle, except for the multi-billion dollar family trust that Daria managed on the side.

“Yes, I’m the bastard. You must be the queer bitch.”

“Go to hell,” Susan Hartford said.

Susan was twice the size of Daria and ironically, somewhat butch in appearance to Daria’s beauty, although Tess knew that she was divorced with two teenage sons. She was an American currently living in Japan. Peter said she spoke five languages and had completed an apprenticeship with master sword maker in Kyoto, the only foreigner who could make that claim.

“Sounds like you’ve softened up a bit,” Tess said.

“That’s soft?” He started to laugh, but it quickly turned to a cough. “Should have saved it for you. You’re the hard-edged bitch in the room, aren’t you?”

“When I have to be. It sucks, but there you have it.”

“So, what’s with your friends? You back to the dancing girl plan? No offense to big-nose here, but I’ll take the lesbian. Bet she’s got nice tits.”

Tess turned to Daria and Susan to warn them if they were going to make another reaction. She needn’t have worried. They glared, but said nothing.

“You doing okay?” Tess asked Lars.

“Not really, no. I swear, I’m weakening faster than he is.”

“So long as you’ve kept him awake.”

“Yes, we’ve kept him awake. I gave him some water, like you told me. No food.”

“Perfect. Go take a break for a few hours. Find Miller or Talo. Tell them to give me about twenty minutes, then come take a turn with the prisoner.”

When he was gone, Tess turned back to Dmitri. “So, you’re in the hands of three women. What should we do with you?”

“Is that supposed to scare me?”

“Think if I was in your position. Only there were three men here, trying to humiliate me, get me to talk. What do you think they’d do first? Drop their pants and rape me up a bit, don’t you think?”

“Torture isn’t pretty. I’ve got an up-close and personal view at the moment. I’m not sure that rape is any worse than hanging by your arms for a couple of days.”

“Probably not.” She picked up the cat’s claw from the table. “And I’d take rape before I took this thing.” She set it down and picked up a set of pincers. “Or this thing. Aren’t you lucky that I said I wasn’t going to use any of this stuff?”