Stronghold (6 page)

He spoke fondly, and with his usual eloquence. But Countess Madalyn was fast becoming weary.

"I come to you with a genuine grievance, Gwyddon. I offer you a fabulous reward. And you mock me with this!"

"Mock you, countess?"

"Both you and I know that this is some harmless cooking pot."

"Indeed?"

He clapped his hands, and a young slave stepped forward. It was one of those who had served Countess Madalyn earlier. In full daylight, she identified him as a boy, though, by his cadaverous face, emaciated frame and the brand-mark on his forehead, which looked to have festered before it finally healed, servitude had been cruel to him. The mere sight of the wretched creature touched her motherly nature. Christendom forbade human slavery, and now she understood why.

Gwyddon, of course, had no such scruples. Reaching under his robe, he drew out a bright, curved blade and plunged it into the slave's breast, driving it to the hilt, and twisting it so that ribs cracked. Blood spurted from the slave's mouth. He sagged backward on his heels, but only when the blade was yanked free did he drop to the ground.

For a long moment Countess Madalyn was too aghast to speak.

"Have I... ?" she eventually asked, her voice thick with disgust. "Have I quit the company of one devil only to be wooed by another?"

"Everything I do has a purpose, countess."

"Everything Earl Corotocus does has purpose..."

"Wait and you will see."

Gwyddon signalled and one of the acolytes from the cauldron came forth with a ladle. Gwyddon took it, knelt, and carefully drizzled brown fluid over the slave's twisted features. When the ladle was empty, he handed it back, rose and retreated a few steps, all the time making some strange utterance under his breath.

Nothing happened.

"Master druid," the countess said. "As a Christian woman, I cannot..."

He hissed at her to be silent, pointing at the fresh-made corpse.

To her disbelief, she saw a flicker of movement.

Though the blood still pulsing from its chest wound darkened and thickened as the beat of its heart faltered and slowed, the body itself was beginning to stir. There was no rise and fall of breast as the lungs re-inflated; the eyes remained sightless orbs - unblinking, devoid of lustre. But there was no denying it; the slave was struggling back into a ghastly parody of life.

First it sat upright, very stiffly and awkwardly. Then it climbed to its feet with jolting, jerking motions, more like a marionette than a human being. The undernourished creature had been stick-thin and ash-pale before, but its complexion had now faded to an even ghostlier hue. Its mouth, still slathered with gore, hung slackly open.

Gwyddon's acolytes muttered together in awe. The chief druid himself seemed shaken. He licked his ruby lips. Sweat gleamed on his brow.

The corpse stood there unassisted, as if awaiting some diabolic command.

At length, Gwyddon came out of this daze and snapped his fingers. An acolyte rushed forward with a towel so that he could wipe his crimson spattered hands.

"This... this is not possible," Countess Madalyn stuttered, circling the grotesque figure. "How can he have survived such a wound?"

"He didn't," Gwyddon said. "He's as dead as the iron that slew him."

She waved a hand in front of the slave's eyes - they didn't so much as blink. Gingerly, she prodded him with a finger. Even through his blood-drenched tunic, she could tell that his flesh was cooling. She prodded again, harder - the slave rocked but remained upright, staring fixedly ahead.

"This is hellish madness," she breathed.

"This is the Cauldron of Regeneration," Gwyddon said. "As the Mabinogion states, it makes warriors of the slain."

"Warriors? This vegetable! This mindless thing!"

"Could he be more perfect for the task? He'll follow any order, no matter how fearful. He'll feel no pain, no matter how agonising. He'll commit any deed, no matter how atrocious."

"And he can't be killed?"

"Countess, what is already dead cannot die a second time."

"I don't believe you. This is druid trickery."

Gwyddon regarded her icily, and then re-drew his curved blade and spun back to face the slave. With a single overhand blow he hacked into the fellow's neck, not just once, but twice, thrice, in fact over and over, cleaving through the sinew. The countess stumbled backward, a hand to her gagging mouth. But Gwyddon hacked harder and harder, blood and meat sprinkling his robes, blow after butchering blow shearing through tissue and artery and, at last, with a crunch, through the spinal column itself.

With a thud, the head fell to the ground.

The slave remained standing. From his feet, his own face peered upwards, locked in the grimace of death, yet somehow with a semblance of life.

Even after everything she'd been exposed to, Countess Madalyn was nauseated, faint with horror. Only amazement at the seeming miracle and the importance of retaining her aristocratic bearing kept her from running shrieking. Again, she circled the mangled figure, though it took her some time to gather coherent thoughts. Enormous but terrible possibilities were presenting themselves to her.

"If he's a warrior, why didn't he try to resist you?" she asked.

Gwyddon found a clean corner of the towel, and dabbed it at the blood dotting his face. "I raised him, and therefore I am his master. He will not attack me. He cannot attack me."

"If this is true, why have you waited so long to bring this weapon to our notice?"

He shook his head at such a foolish question. "Whose side should I have rewarded with it? The Norman-English, who covet Welsh land and seek to make serfs of its people? Or the Welsh and Irish, whose Celtic Christianity is a harder, more barbarous brand than anything found east of Offa's Dyke."

She turned to face him. "So why give it to us now?"

"I don't give it to you."

"Why do you offer it?"

"As I say... now the Welsh have a figurehead. Someone who isn't driven merely by lust for plunder, like Gruffud. Or by personal ambition, like Madog."

"And, of course, someone who is sympathetic to the old ways?"

"Of course. After what you've witnessed today, how can you fail to be?"

Countess Madalyn looked again at the mutilated slave. She knew she was viewing something that couldn't be, yet her eyes did not deceive her. Even truncated, with his head at his feet, he stood rigid to attention. She prodded his chest, his back, his shoulder. He remained standing. She circled him again to ensure there wasn't a pole at his back.

"You've resurrected a murdered slave, Gwyddon," she finally said. "An impressive feat of magic. But can this thing on its own - this ruined, headless cadaver - prevail against Corotocus's knights? Can it resist his slings and catapults?"

"It won't be on its own."

"And how long will it take to raise an army of these horrors, with one cauldron, and one potion? This thing will have rotted to its bones before you're finished. In God's name, we'll all have rotted to our bones."

"Normally perhaps," Gwyddon said. "But I think we're all about to benefit from a change of season. There's a hint of spring in the air, wouldn't you say?"

Two more of Gwyddon's acolytes now approached the cauldron with sticks and stirred its contents vigorously. Thicker, even more noxious fumes swam into the air. Gwyddon tracked their upwards path. The sky was pregnant with grey cloud, much of it already tainted by the smoke that had risen steadily since the brew was first heated. The countess recalled her earlier thoughts that the wintry chill had lessened, that the frost was melting - and now the first drops of rain began to fall. Polluted rain, as was clear from the brown smears it left on the druids' white robes. Rain which, when she cupped it in the palm of her hand, looked and smelled like ditch water.

A bolt of lightning suddenly split the sky over Plynlimon; thunder throbbed like a thousand battle-drums. The rainfall intensified until it was teeming, a waterfall pouring from Heaven. Gwyddon's acolytes fled to find shelter, but not Gwyddon himself. He was lost in a reverie of prayer, his arms crossed over his breast, a clenched fist at either shoulder. His eyes were closed, his broad, bearded face written with ecstasy as the water streamed from it.

The rain didn't just fall over Powys; it fell all over north and central Wales, thrashing on mountain, forest and valley.

The narrows tracks linking the region's hamlets had already been churned to quagmires by the passing of Earl Corotocus's army, but now became rivers of slurry. The charred shells of the cottages and crofts shuddered and sank in the deluge. Those Welsh who'd survived the earl's passing hid, weeping and gibbering, under any cover they could find. And those who hadn't survived, those whose ragged forms adorned the gibbets and gallows on every road and ridge to the English border, started twisting and jerking in their bonds. To the north, on the tragic field of Maes Moydog, the mountain of Welsh corpses, cut and riven and steeped in blood and ordure, was also washed by the rain - and slowly and surely began to twitch and judder. In the chapel graveyards - even those graveyards that were long abandoned and overgrown - the topsoil broke and shifted as the rain seeped through it and the green, rotted forms crammed underneath slowly clawed their way out.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The skies over Grogen Castle were black with swollen clouds. Torrents of rain poured, drenching the mighty walls, flooding the walks and gutters. Even indoors there was no respite. Cold, wet wind gusted through the rooms and tunnels, groaning in the chimneys, extinguishing candles, whipping the flames in the guardroom hearths. Rainwater dripped from every fault and fissure.

In the Keep it was too dark almost to find one's way. Ranulf ascended from one level to the next, with a loaf, a bundle of blankets and a water-skin under his right arm. In his left hand he carried a flaring candelabra; an oil-lamp hung from his belt. He added a little fuel to each wall-sconce he passed and put a candle flame to it, creating a lighted passage, though all this really did was expose the cockroaches scurrying across the damp flagstones and the bats hanging from the arched ceilings like clusters of furry fruit.

When he unlocked the door to the cell it was so heavy that he had to heave it open. Gwendolyn was sitting in a far corner, knees clasped to her chest, her back rigid. The only window was a high slot, too narrow for a human to pass through, and deeply recessed - it must have been ten feet from the start of its embrasure to the finish. Even in bright sunshine, it admitted minimal light.

"I've brought you this," he said, placing the lantern at the foot of the steps, and lighting it with a candle. "I'll replenish the oil every so often."

Gwendolyn didn't reply. She looked pale, her pretty features smudged with dirt and tears. Her hair, once like spun copper, hung in grimy rat-tails.

"I've also bought you these." He laid the blankets down, walked over and offered her the loaf and the water-skin. She still said nothing, gazing directly ahead as if seeing neither him nor his gifts.

"You need to eat, my lady."

"My lady?" She seemed surprised, before giving a cackling laugh. "I see your bachelry still deceives itself with Arthurian pretension?"

"You need to eat."

Reluctantly, she took the bread and water. At first she only nibbled, but soon capitulated to her hunger, tearing the loaf apart with her teeth and fingers. Ranulf glanced around the cell. The filthy straw gave it the stench of a stable. Water ran down its black brickwork. Having seen the quarters allocated to the men in the barrack house, there were few facilities at Grogen that were much of an improvement on this. Though of course the men hadn't been violently abducted, stripped naked, beaten and sexually assaulted.

"I don't suppose..." he said. "I don't suppose it would do any good to apologise?"

She looked up at him, again surprised. "On behalf of whom - yourself, or the bloodstained madman you serve?"

Ranulf wasn't sure how to respond.

"Let me spare you the trauma of trying to answer," she said. "You're right, it won't do any good."

"I'm not happy about what's happened here."

Ranulf wasn't quite sure why he'd admitted that. Before coming up into the Keep, his father had reminded him that the girl was nothing more to them than a prisoner, the spoils of war, a pawn in a greater game. It was unfortunate for her, but there were always winners and losers in the politics of strife. Ulbert had concluded by strongly advising that whatever was going to happen to Lady Gwendolyn would happen, and that their first duty was to themselves and their family name. They mustn't allow "futile sentiment" to endanger their cause.

Yet, if the prisoner was aware that Ranulf had taken a risk expressing sympathy to her, she was unimpressed.

"I'm sure your unhappiness will be great consolation to those who've died," she said. "Or who've been maimed, or left destitute."

"I understand your anger. Earl Corotocus is a pitiless man."

"And those who willingly serve him? What are they?"

"We don't all serve him willingly."

She smiled, almost maliciously. "Spare me your conscience, sir knight. If it's torturing you, I'm glad. You'll find no absolution here."

"To make things easier, I can only suggest that you comply with the earl's wishes." He retreated towards the door. "No matter how distasteful you find them."

"Comply with the earl's wishes? I think you mistake me for someone else. I will do no such thing, not least because in a very short time the earl and you murderers he calls his retainers will all be dead." Ranulf waited by the door as she laughed at him. "You think this fortress will protect you, Englishman? Welsh vengeance is about to fall on you people with a force you can't imagine."

"Your spirit does you credit, my lady. But don't hang your hopes on how easily the previous garrison here was overwhelmed. To call them 'foolish sots' would be an insult to both fools and sots. Earl Corotocus is of a different mettle; a monster yes, but a soldier through and through. His mesnie has been hardened by battle over many years. In addition, they're nearly all English-born. From birth, they've been raised to view the Welsh as the foe over the mountain, as an enemy existing purely to be crushed."