The Sword and The Swan (33 page)

No, Rannulf decided, they would not wait. From this and other remarks it was plain that the men's spirits were as high as his own. Better to chance an odd blow going astray here or there, a man falling into the river, than to permit the enthusiasm to falter. If it were as thick on the other side as here and they made no sound . . . ah, if they made no sound.

Rannulf told Andre to pass back along the ranks and warn the men to be silent. If the fog held as dense as it was here and they were quiet, he pointed out, they could walk right up to the gates and knock on them before they were seen.

Knock on them! Another notion.

"John," Rannulf said.

"My lord?"

"Ride back to your father—try not to fall into the river while you are about it—and tell him to send me a small battering ram if one is prepared."

"Yes, my lord."

Andre was back and Rannulf could hear the voices behind him die away as the order for silence was passed from man to man. He beckoned the young knight closer so he could speak softly.

"We will not need the shield wall if the fog holds, but go and tell the men who are to set the spikes that they are not to begin driving them in until they hear the first stroke of the ram. Belike that sound will drown all others and they should be able to come right around the towers without being seen or heard. It will be safe enough to use the ram—"

Rannulf stopped speaking and then went on thoughtfully, "It will not hurt the gate, but the noise makes for fear and they will not be able to see to shoot so it cannot hurt us either. Mayhap they will open the gate to drive us off." He laughed and added abruptly, "Let some footmen wait in readiness with grappling hooks. Mayhap it will not be so easy to close as to open."

A horseman approached gropingly. "I thought I would never find my way back," John muttered. "The wain is ready, but where is it to go? Do you know where the bridge is, my lord?"

Rannulf's tension vented itself in a guttural laugh which was nearly a giggle. "Nay, no more than you, but forward we all go. If you hear a loud splash, you will know I have fallen into the river. Do not fail to pull me out—then we can work our way along the bank until we find the bridge."

He caught at John's arm before the squire fell back and added, "Go back to the camp, John, and bid the grooms and kitchen hands to form along our path to direct the other knights and men-at-arms—and the wain also."

John disappeared from view for a little while, reappeared with surprising swiftness, and shortly vague shadows formed to Rannulf's right. He laughed again, touched his horse with his spurs, and moved forward noting with satisfaction that the hooves were almost silent on the wet grass. They might just as well find the bridge before they left the horses, which they would not need until the gates were opened.

They did not actually fall into the river, although it was a near thing. Straining ears at last caught the sound of a shoe grinding on a stone and the creak of leather harness. Rannulf stopped and touched Andre to stop him. John slid from his horse, dropped his shield, and drew his knife.

They waited tensely, the men silent behind them, and Rannulf found himself fighting the desire to follow John, resenting the fact that any man should taste blood before himself. The silence was only minutely disturbed by a soft, choking cry. Rannulf drew his sword. If John had failed and that cry was his, the warning to the defenders of the bridge would come now.

"Sorry, my lord," a peculiarly muffled voice murmured, "my hand slipped from his mouth in the last moment. You are too far north. The bridge is below us."

"John?" Rannulf questioned. "Are you hurt?"

"No, my lord." The voice was still muffled and husky and was now at a little distance. "Dismount and follow, my lord. I know where we are."

Could it be the enemy man-at-arms? No, he would be wearing the ordinary armor of metal plates sewn to leather and Rannulf knew that he had heard the harsh whisper of mail when the owner of the voice moved. Beyond that, there was a distinctly familiar quality about the voice under its peculiar muffling. Merely, it did not sound like John. Rannulf dismounted and heard Andre coming down from his horse beside him. Another shadow led the horses away.

God, the mist was driving him mad. Rannulf trod cautiously in the wake of the shadow that had waited for him, his feet aware of the soft earth and rank grass of a riverbank he could not see. Now, however, he could hear the water, and almost at once, the change in the river's voice as its free flow was impeded by the supports of the bridge. If a man loses his eyes, his ears become clever, Rannulf thought, and immediately stopped thinking at all. Where a dim, leading figure had been, now there were two locked together, struggling.

Suppressing his usual hoarse war cry, Rannulf leapt, his dagger already clear of its sheath. He had to loosen the handhold of his shield to grab the leather-clad form, but he knew the shield would cling by its arm strap. It was the work of a moment to drag off the helm, slit the leather throat-guard.

Rannulf heard the scrape of his knife as it slid across his squire's mailed glove and saw the blood pulse out, dark but strangely colorless in the enveloping grayness. There was not much noise, the thud of their feet and the sound of the man's body as it fell, the rasp of their slightly quickened breathing. It was enough, however, to warn nervous listeners. From ahead came the cry, "Ware! Arms!" and Rannulf was free of the restraint he had imposed upon himself.

"Je combattrais!"
 

The mist muffled both the warning and Rannulf's fighting motto, so that defenders and attackers alike were surprised to come upon each other seconds later. Rannulf had nothing but his knife in hand when he was suddenly faced by a half-dozen shadowy figures. He hurriedly sheathed one weapon and drew the other as his young squire leapt before him, sword drawn, to engage the men-at-arms until his master should be ready.

Before the blades had clashed twice, Rannulf was ready by his squire's side and behind them the battle cry was echoed from a hundred other throats. One man went down before Rannulf's first swing; the others broke and, ran when they realized that it was a full-scale attack and no small scouting party that they had to face.

"Do not lose them," Rannulf called to the squire who was a good deal fleeter of foot than he was. "And do not go on to the bridge alone."

His caution was unnecessary. A few steps more brought Rannulf himself to the hard earth of the road while his squire's form was still visible. He turned right, calling his motto to guide his men. The ring of steel on steel drew him forward, but by the time he came to his squire's shoulder, the defenders of the bridge had disengaged again and were running, their feet pounding on the bare planks.

"A moi!"
Rannulf called desperately.

If they opened the gates to save the guards, perhaps he and his men could force an entrance. For him to do so alone with only John beside him was suicide, but ten or twenty men might be able to hold off the defenders long enough to reopen the portals and let still more men in. It was a desperate chance and would necessitate a complete change in plans without opportunity to tell his men of the change, but it was worth trying.

"Go back," he said, his eyes straining ahead. "Bid the men be silent and come quickly."

The form beside him vanished, and Rannulf moved forward slowly, trying to step on planks that would not groan and betray his presence. The running stopped; Rannulf could hear the men pounding on the gates, calling for admittance. Knowing he was mad but unable to resist, he ran too, biting at the leather strap of his shield. Perhaps he could cast it under the gate and delay the closing. The pounding and voices were closer now. Perhaps they would not open the gates and would sacrifice the few men to caution.

Like a threefold sign from heaven, the strap on Rannulf's shield gave way, the grating of bars being lifted came to his ears, and below him the sound of fighting drifted from the bank, men calling that boats were coming ashore. Trembling with eagerness, Rannulf slowed his stride. He must not come upon them before the gates were opened. He tried not to breathe, fearing that he would miss the sound of the hinges. They would open barely enough for a man to slip through. Rannulf knew that his one chance would be to kill or stun the last man to enter, hoping the body would block the gate, add his shield to the body, leap through himself, and attack those who tried to move the corpse.

He loosened the shield still more and it sagged, the handgrip pressing painfully into his palm. Praise God! That blackness in the gray must be the gates, and there were the clustered shadows of the waiting men. A step; they had not turned, had not heard him. Rannulf raised his sword, moved to the left because they were opening the right gate. Now!

The forward leap gave impetus to his downward stroke. The blade bit true. Rannulf thrust his victim forward, cast his shield down atop the man, and leapt onto the body. The defenders would need to kill him as well as drag the corpse away before the gates would shut.

Time had no meaning; sound had no meaning; numbers had no meaning. Half-shielded, half-hampered by the oak walls on either side of him, Rannulf cried out for help and fought.

Beneath his feet the body moved and the gate, drawn by many willing hands pulling on the great iron rings, thrust against his right shoulder. Irresistibly, Rannulf tipped forward, knew he was falling, knew he would die if he fell.

An anguished grunt was torn from Rannulf's lungs, then another, and another. He tried to call out, but his voice was choked with laughter. His vassals, leaping through the breach to keep the gates open and to protect him, were treading on him. No doubt they were treading on him as lightly as possible, but treading on him they were, and they were no featherweights. Five, perhaps six, had passed and formed a shield wall behind which the others could press forward after the bodies blocking the path had been removed.

"Let me up," Rannulf gasped, for one man stood astride him so that no enemy could suddenly seize his body if the shield wall broke.

The young voice, no longer disguised and therefore instantly recognizable, tremulous with relief, cried out, "He is alive!" And then, "Papa, are you hurt?"

Rannulf leapt to his feet, more invigorated by rage than he could have been by a clear victory. "What do you here?" he roared, but the desperate battle taking place in front of him brought the realization that if he stopped for explanations they might well all be dead before he received them. He had never lost his grip on his sword, for his sword hand would never open while he lived once it clutched the hilt of his weapon, but his shield was gone and there was no moment in which to seek it.

Men pressed in behind him as grappling hooks gradually pulled the gate wider in spite of the efforts of the defenders to draw it shut.

"A shield," he called, and a small, round footman's shield was thrust into his hands. "Just wait," he growled at Geoffrey as he pushed to the front of the battling men, "if we come alive from this melee, I will make you sorry you did not die in it."

Time flowed again, brief and interminable, endless and too short. Rannulf lost count of the strokes, of the men who fell and those who replaced them. He had one fixed determination, that the gates must remain open until they could be destroyed or the defenders of them subdued.

Now the care with which he had laid his plans the previous night was working against him. Fearing that Stephen would recall his men or alter his dispositions in one of his moods of vacillation, Rannulf had ordered the leaders of his forces to accept orders from none but John or himself. Where John was, he could not imagine, so his only hope was to break free of the fighting group himself.

In that way alone could he arrange that horses be brought forward to mount the knights now fighting afoot and hampered by their heavy gear and order the foot soldiers held in reserve to do the work the knights were now doing. Northampton's vassals could be called into action also, and with that weight of men, perhaps they could fight their way from between the towers, which would become a death trap as soon as the mist lifted sufficiently for the archers to regain some accuracy.

Rannulf's duty was clear, but it was not easy to force himself to do it. The lust of battle was upon him, and to drag himself, unwearied and unsated, from the field was bitterly hard. He was not mentally adjusted to such a thing; there had always been John to send before. Moreover, the men who held that narrow space were his own vassals and his own household guard. They were accustomed to following him and if he broke away they might do so also, not through fear but through the habit of doing blindly as he did. Sir John de Vere, chief of his vassals, was far to his left defending the other gate. The only other man whom the vassals would follow was Geoffrey, who held John of Northampton's place and was fighting well. Could he leave Geoffrey alone to face the swelling forces that opposed them?

The fog was a curse and a salvation at once. Had it not obscured all, Rannulf's forces would have done as he desired automatically, seeing that the gates had been forced.

Still, without the fog, they could never have been forced so easily and the few men who passed them would have been readily picked off by the archers above. Furiously, Rannulf used the point of metal which protruded from the center of the footman's shield to thrust away one attacker as he slashed at another. Any moment now the sound of battle and the horn blasts from the towers would call forth the horsemen of Wallingford. If his own men were not mounted, they would be ridden down. As if to add point to that fear, a vassal to Rannulf's right uttered a choking cry and fell back with a feathered shaft protruding from his shoulder.

There was no longer time to yield to impulses of fear or desire. Geoffrey had thrust himself where he did not belong and now must bear the consequences. A quick glance showed that far more of the towers were visible, clearly visible. The mist was lifting. Rannulf jerked himself back and thrust Geoffrey forward.