Honor Among Thieves (13 page)
B
ehind the portcullis, soldiers shouted at one another and men ran back and forth as they tried desperately to get the gate open again. It was designed to be dropped in a hurry, to fall its full length in a split second, but as a result it took far too long to rise again. Men working at a pair of windlasses had to strain and strive to lift its massive weight inch by inch. Croy jumped down from his horse just as the iron bars began to lift—but slowly, so slowly it was like watching death come creeping. Croy yanked off his gauntlets, then grabbed the bars with his bare hands and heaved at them, trying to help the soldiers manning the windlass behind the gate.
“Your majesty!” Sir Hew shouted. Croy turned to look—and saw a flight of arrows, dark in the air.
He’d seen so few bows among the barbarians that he assumed they disdained their use. But now a hundred arrows or more were hurtling toward him.
Sir Hew grabbed the king off his horse just in time. He pulled the monarch down behind the destrier’s flanks just as the arrows struck home. A dozen points clattered against Croy’s armored back, bouncing off harmlessly, but the horses screamed and some of them bolted.
And still the berserkers were coming, howling, cutting themselves with their own weapons to add bright streamers of blood to their already red faces.
“Your king is in peril,” Croy shouted through the bars of the portcullis. The wicked spear points at the bottom of the gate were only a few inches off the ground.
Sir Rory drew Crowsbill and strode out toward the berserkers. The fat old knight struck left and right as the first of the manic barbarians came upon him. The blade looked like a normal sword until it struck, when its metal flowed and curved like quicksilver, reshaping itself even as Rory swung it about. Crowsbill twisted like a snake as it sought out their vital organs, guided by magic to always strike the most tender spot, just as a crow on a battlefield will pluck at the liver and lights of a dead man.
The berserkers showed no sign of fear or pain as the blade curled again and again toward their bellies, their hearts—but one by one they went down. Sir Orne rushed to help, drawing Bloodquaffer from its broad sheath. The blade looked fuzzy even close up, but nasty all the same. Its two edges were viciously serrated—and the teeth of the serrations were themselves serrated, and those serrations as well, and those, until the serrations were too small to see with the naked eye. When it struck even the lightest of slashing blows, it cut down to the bone and its wounds bled violently. Orne had learned to use his Blade to maximal advantage, whirling about, reaching only for the fastest, most shallow cuts. Light as they were, Bloodquaffer’s strokes always sheared flesh down to the bone. Blood hung in the air all around Orne like a red fog as veins burst open and arteries pumped blood out onto the grass.
The berserkers didn’t stop coming, though. They seemed wholly ignorant of the numbers of their dead that piled up before the gate under the constant attacks of Rory and Orne. The berserkers ran pell-mell right into the teeth of the fight and they struck with an inhuman savagery, driven by their trance to strength and speed no normal man could match. The heavy armor that Orne and Rory wore turned away most of their axe blows, but one cleaved right through Rory’s left pauldron and bit deep into the flesh below. His arm went limp and he dropped his shield—even as Orne stepped in to cover his friend’s left with his own shield, and took a barbarian’s head off with a backhanded slash from Bloodquaffer.
“Get the king through—get him inside,” Sir Hew shouted into Croy’s ear. Croy looked down and saw the portcullis had lifted a handbreadth from the ground. “Shove him in there, if you must.”
Croy grabbed Ulfram’s robes of state and pulled the king to him. Ulfram was unconscious. It looked like an arrow had struck him a glancing blow on the temple. His crown was gone, lost somewhere out on the field. Croy had no time to find it. As the portcullis lifted another jerking inch, he picked up the king and stuffed him through the opening. The points of the bars tore at Ulfram’s silks, but Croy could only hope they hadn’t snagged his royal skin as well.
Once the king was past the bars, soldiers on the other side grabbed him and pulled him through the rest of the way, then lifted him off the ground and carried him off.
“Now you,” Hew told Croy, and started to draw Chillbrand.
“No,” Croy told him, putting a hand on Hew’s wrist. “He’s in no state to give orders. You’re in command now—you go through next.”
Hew didn’t waste time arguing. He dropped to his belly and crawled through the gap, the points of the portcullis shrieking against the steel on his back.
Croy rushed to Rory’s side just as the old knight began to droop. He propped Rory up while Orne defended him from axe blows, and shouted into Rory’s great helm, “You go next, brother.”
Rory nodded gratefully and hurried to clamber under the bars.
Bloodquaffer came down in a wild slashing stroke that cut a berserker’s face in half. Another barbarian replaced the dead man, and it was all Croy could do to bring Ghostcutter up and parry a whistling axe blade. The berserker lunged forward, and Croy was suddenly face-to-face with his foe. He saw the wildness in the red eyes, the exultant rage in the red-painted face. Spinning around, Ghostcutter an extension of his arm as he whipped it up and in, he gutted the man, but even that wasn’t enough. The axe came up again like the berserker was chopping wood.
Before it could cut down into Croy’s neck, Bloodquaffer took off the berserker’s arm. Orne bashed out with his shield and broke another barbarian’s nose.
“Orne! Is this what the sorcerer foretold? Is this your time?” Croy demanded.
Orne twisted at the waist and Bloodquaffer slid across the rib cage of a berserker. Blood jetted from the wound and bathed both knights.
“Not yet,” Orne said.
“Then get inside—until we’re both through, they can’t lower the portcullis again,” Croy insisted. He brought his shield around and pushed Orne back, toward the gate. He did not look to see if Orne obeyed his command—a dozen berserkers were right there in front of him, and he had to duck and weave to avoid being cut to pieces.
One of the barbarians threw his shield at Croy. It bounced pointlessly off his legs. Croy kicked it upward with one foot so it tripped up two of the berserkers, then he lunged outward with Ghostcutter and stabbed a barbarian in the throat. Yanking his blade free, he swept it through the crowd, cutting ears and eyes and noses. Normal men, men who could feel pain, would have danced backward from such an attack, terrified of being maimed. The berserkers didn’t even flinch.
A man could be the ultimate warrior—he could be a consummate knight—and still that wave of unwashed barbarian flesh would crash down on him eventually. Croy knew he must retreat or be slaughtered where he stood.
An axe came down where he had been a moment before. He bashed out with his shield, not caring if he connected or not, then threw himself backward and rolled under the bars of the portcullis.
On the far side he jumped to his feet just as three berserkers came crawling after him, their heads and arms already through the gap.
“Now!” Croy shouted. “Drop it now!”
A block was knocked free from where it held a windlass, and a chain rattled as the portcullis came crashing down. Its points impaled all three berserkers, but still they tried to drag themselves forward, still they tried to fight.
Croy left them to die and went running to find Hew.
B
erserkers crashed up against the gate, straining and howling as they tried to bend the bars of the portcullis with their bare hands. Croy was afraid they just might do it, even though those bars were solid iron two inches thick.
High above his head he heard the ballistae twanging and jumping. They were too slow—barely able to get four shots off in a minute. “Archers!” he shouted. “Get longbowmen up there—drive the host back.” He glanced at the berserkers at the gate. “And men with pikestaffs. Clear the gate!”
Sir Hew was a dozen yards away, bellowing his own orders at a huddle of serjeants in leather jack. When Croy came running toward him, the knight dismissed the serjeants and shook his head. “Most of the men are still in their billets, and will be until someone comes to collect them. We weren’t ready—didn’t expect the attack until tomorrow’s dawning.”
“No time for cursing fate now,” Croy said. “We need to—”
An arrow came down from straight above and knocked Chillbrand out of Hew’s hand. Croy looked up—it was as if the arrow had been dropped from the clouds.
A hundred more of them appeared as he watched.
“They’re lobbing arrows over the wall, in the hopes of hitting anyone defending the gate,” Croy said as the shafts twisted down toward him. He ducked and threw his shield over his head. The arrows struck him like wooden raindrops, with about as much effect. He started to laugh, thinking the barbarians had wasted their ammunition. Then he looked up and saw a soldier in canvas jack standing before him. The man looked deeply confused by the three arrows that had transfixed his chest. The soldier took a step toward Croy and started screaming.
Croy grabbed the man and laid him down on the side of the road, out of the way of trampling feet. Not that it mattered. The soldier was dead before Croy set him down. All around, other soldiers were screaming or running willy-nilly, trying to get out of the barrage.
Up on the wall one of the ballistae slumped over on its side. Its master fell from the battlements, an arrow through one of his eyes. Balint watched him fall, then screamed for a replacement. “One that can fucking aim properly!” she added.
“Archers!” Croy shouted again. “Where are our archers?”
He heard a great crash and a noise like a bell falling from its tower. He looked up and saw that the barbarians had a battering ram in the shape of a giant iron skull and were slamming it again and again against the portcullis.
“Hew!” Croy shouted.
“I know it, brother. Back! Everyone get back—retreat to the inner bailey. We can’t hold the gate. Retreat! Sound the retreat!”
Sir Orne was suddenly at Croy’s elbow. “The king? What of him?”
Croy could only shake his head. He didn’t know where the king had been taken.
“He can’t be lost yet. I am certain he’ll outlive me, anyway,” Orne said. “Help Sir Rory—he looks like he can barely stand.”
The oldest of the Ancient Blades had slumped against a wall not ten feet away. Crowsbill dangled from his gauntleted hand as if he might drop it at any moment. Croy took it from him and put it in its sheath on Rory’s belt.
“Thank you, brother,” Rory said. He slurred the words as if he were drunk. Croy checked his wound and saw gore clotted and thick under the gap in his steel armor. What kind of man could cut through steel plate and chain mail with an iron axe? The berserkers must be stronger than giants when they entered their trance.
“How is it?” Rory asked. For a moment his face showed no courage at all, just the desperate fear of a man who knows he will die soon. Then his lips pressed together under his mustache. “It doesn’t feel too bad,” he blustered.
Croy nodded slowly. Even if Rory survived, even if the wound didn’t fester, he’d never use his arm again. “It’s just your left arm,” he said, knowing what Rory needed to hear. “You can still wield your Blade.”
“Hah!” Rory said, and tried to laugh. Mostly he just wheezed. “We’ll show ’em yet, won’t we, Croy, we’ll—”
He was interrupted by a sudden blare of noise. Trumpets sounding the retreat—but there was no need. A crowd of soldiers was already rushing up the high street toward the inner bailey, many of them throwing away their weapons as they ran.
“Cowards!” Sir Rory said, spitting up blood.
“Villeins, most of them,” Croy observed. Conscripts. Until ten days ago, for such men even holding a weapon was a crime. Now in less than a fortnight they’d been told they would have to take up arms in defense of their king. They hadn’t been given enough training. They had never fought before. “They’re scared.”
“We should hang every last one of the rotters,” Rory insisted.
Croy said nothing, but started to head up the high street himself, one shoulder under Rory’s good arm. He didn’t get more than twenty feet before Hew grabbed his sword hand.
“Croy, the king—”
Croy shook his head. “No one seems to know where he is.”
“We must find him. He could be under the feet of this mob. He could be wounded and dying even now.”
Croy grimaced at the thought. “I’ll find him. You take Rory and get to the keep. Orne! Orne, are you here?”
The doomed knight came running.
“Orne,” Croy said, “we need to find the king.”
Orne sighed. “Yes, we do.”
Hew grabbed the side of Croy’s helm and pulled it around so they were looking in each other’s eyes. “Get him to safety. At any cost. That’s my command.”
“And I shall obey,” Croy said. Then he broke away and started running.
Panicked men were everywhere. Only a handful still carried their weapons. Some had even torn off their canvas jack and their kettle hats, perhaps thinking they would not be slaughtered if they didn’t look like soldiers. Croy tried to grab a few of them and tell them to get to the keep, that the only safety available lay there, but none of them listened. They were crowding into cellars or the upper floors of houses, barricading themselves in as if a few pieces of furniture or a locked door could keep out the barbarians.
It was tough to move through the fortress-town against the flow of that crowd. Once, Orne had to draw Bloodquaffer and wave it over his head to force the fleeing men to make room.
Before they covered a half dozen streets, they heard a rumbling groan and a shriek of tearing metal, and knew the portcullis had fallen. The barbarians had entered Helstrow.
“How long do you think Hew can hold the keep?” Orne asked.
“I don’t know,” Croy said between clenched teeth. He stepped out of the way of a cart full of men still holding their bill hooks. They looked scared but hadn’t deserted yet, so maybe they were headed for the fighting. “There’s food in the keep for months, and barrels of arrows, and the smithies . . . but this isn’t a siege. It’s a direct assault. If Hew gets enough men inside and locks the gates before the barbarians get to him, maybe a few days.”
“What of the queen, and their children?”
Croy pushed his way through a knot of soldiers on their knees, begging the Bloodgod for help. “They were sent to Greenmarsh days ago. You,” he shouted, and grabbed one of the praying men. “Did the king come through here?”
The man wouldn’t stop praying until Croy shook him. “I’ll ask again. Have you seen the king?”
“He’s not with you, Sir Knight?” the man asked, and his face dissolved in blubbering terror.
Croy pushed the wretch away and started to storm off when a woman leaned out of a window above his head and shouted for his attention.
“They went down there,” she said, and pointed to a narrow lane between two houses.
“Milady,” Croy said, “you have my thanks.”
“I’m no lady! But if you’d repay me, tell me—what should we do? I have six children up here and they want to know what all the noise is.”
Croy looked back toward the eastern gate, where he knew the fighting would be hot and desperate. For the moment at least his view was blocked by the intervening houses, but any minute now the berserkers would come flooding through this street, destroying everything in their path, murdering every man, woman, and child they met. He looked up again at the woman in the window and thought of what advice he could possibly give her.
“Please, Sir Knight. For my children’s sake?”
He closed his eyes and looked down. “Get to the keep, if you can. Stick as close to the western wall as possible—if you see anyone bloodied or screaming, run away. I’ll pray for you, goodwife.”
She slammed the shutters of the window without another word.
Croy and Orne hurried down the lane she’d indicated and saw a serjeant with an arrow sticking out of his back. He was breathing heavily and looked as pale as a sheet, but he waved them over when he saw them.
The serjeant led them down into a root cellar where the king lay on a bed of sackcloth. His eyes were closed and there was a bad bruise on his left temple. “Hasn’t . . . woken since I . . . brought him here,” the serjeant gasped.
Sir Orne grabbed the arrow in the man’s back and twisted it free, then shoved a piece of cloth into the wound. The serjeant winced until tears came from his eyes, but he would not cry out.
“You’re a good man,” Croy said, and put a hand on the serjeant’s shoulder.
“Get him . . . to Sir Hew . . . he’ll . . .” The serjeant said no more. He sat down on the close-packed earth of the floor and just stared at the ceiling.
Croy ran back up to the street and sought about until he found what he wanted—a pair of bill hooks with long enough hafts. With these and a bedsheet from an abandoned house, he made a litter that he and Orne could carry between them. They put the king on it and started to carry him up the stairs. “Come with us,” Croy said to the wounded serjeant.
But the man was dead, his eyes rolled back up into their sockets. Croy closed his eyelids, then went back to his burden.
