Paul Finch - Stronghold

The mercenary captain was larger in bulk than Ranulf, and was having a torrid time. He only made it to the end of the pipe with difficulty. Ranulf had to reach in, take him by wrists, and pull him the rest of the way. Garbofasse had to suppress cries of agony as he was finally released. Even through his covering of soot and grease, the skin on his ribs and hips was scored by the brickwork and bled freely in many places.

"Name of a name," he panted, crouching. "Name of a God damned name, this had better be worth it."

The other four followed over the next few minutes, all emerging in a similarly filthy and dishevelled state. One by one, they crouched, shivering with the cold and now with the wet as well, for in the last few moments a drizzling rain had commenced.

"Where to next?" someone asked.

"We're on the east side of the castle," Ranulf replied. "If we follow this moat around to the west, we'll likely meet those dead who were cast into it from the bridge and weren't able to climb out again. So we need to get out on this side. After that, we circle around to western bluff via the moors to the north."

There were grunts of assent. If anyone disliked the idea of having to circumnavigate the castle out in the open, he didn't voice it. The thought of having to face the dead down here, in the confined space of the moat, was equally, if not even more, horrifying.

Ranulf swung the rope with the grapple, and hurled it. He had to do this several times before it caught on something that could bear their weight. One by one, they scrambled out, finding themselves on open, grassy ground, where each man lay flat to wait for his comrades. By the time they were all together, their eyes had attuned. Ranulf saw a line of trees to the east of them, but to the north a sloping expanse of star-lit moorland. Nothing moved over there, though it was difficult to see clearly beyond fifty yards or so.

"It's a long way to the western bluff," Red Guthric said quietly. "How long until dawn?"

"We have a few hours," Garbofasse replied. "So we'd better not waste them."

They proceeded north in single file, moving stealthily through thorns and knee-deep sedge. All the way, the mammoth outline of the castle stood to their left, but it provided no comfort, for if they should be attacked now there was no easy way back into it. Despite the darkness, they felt badly exposed. Their nerves were taut. The slightest sound — the cry of an owl or nightjar — brought them to a breathless halt.

Only when far to the north of the castle did they turn west, having to thread their way through swathes of sodden bracken, the stubble of which prickled their feet through their felt shoes. Here, on this higher ground, they encountered the first of the dead. A large, heavily-built woman, naked, with flesh mottled by bruising and a chewed-off noose tight around her throat, lay still in the vegetation. Slightly further on, a youth with an arrow through his neck — it passed cleanly from one side to the other — also lay still. The raiders crouched again, waiting and watching for some time, before Ranulf found the courage to approach.

He crept forward quietly and stood surveying the two bodies, neither of which stirred. At length, he summoned the others, and they hastened past.

From this point on, the hillside was strewn with similarly inert forms. Soon, corpses lay so thick that it was like a benighted battlefield. All of them had done this before, of course: walked dolefully among the slain after some catastrophic engagement. All were familiar with the sight of tangled limbs, hewn torsos, faces frozen in death and spattered with gore. On this occasion, though, it was different. For these beings, though visibly rotting in the mist and rain, had been walking around as though alive not two or three hours earlier. Why they were now 'dead again', if it was possible to describe them in such a way, was anybody's guess.

"Maybe it's over?" Tallebois whispered hopefully.

"Quiet!" Garbofasse hissed.

They continued, keeping low, moving as stealthily as they could. But as the great slope of the western bluff hove in from the left, this became increasingly difficult. There was now scarcely any uncluttered ground to walk on. Ranulf found himself edging uphill towards the higher ground, where a cover of trees had appeared. All the way, he fancied the eyes of the dead were upon him. Were they watching his progress? Could they see anything? Did any functions occur in the addled pulp of their brains? Though he didn't say it, he too felt a vague hope that somehow the spell had been broken, and that these dead were indeed dead again. But he doubted it.

Among the trees, the raiders felt they'd be less visible, though to reach that higher point they had to venture even further from the east moat and their so-called place of safety. The west side of the castle made a dark outline in the night. They could just distinguish the rounded section that was the Barbican, and beyond that the upper tier of the Gatehouse. Further south, at the end of the causeway, was the tall, angular shape of the Constable's Tower. A handful of lit torches were visible on its roof. They looked to be an immense distance away, which was not comforting.

Equally discomforting, in its own way, was the wood they'd now entered — not just because there were further corpses scattered between its roots, but because of its dense thickets and skeletal branches, all hung with cauls of mist. If nothing else, however, the party were soon on a level with the top of the bluff, which meant that they couldn't be too far from the artillery machines. Ranulf halted and again dropped to a crouch. The others did the same. They breathed slowly and deeply, listening for any sound that might indicate they'd alerted sentries, but hearing only rain pattering on twigs and the chattering of their own teeth; every man there was now shivering with the cold and damp.

"We don't know exactly where the scoop-thrower is located," Ranulf whispered. "It must be up here on the treed ground, because it was concealed from the battlements. Judging from its angle of shot, it can't be more than a hundred yards or more to the south of us, but the exact position is uncertain."

"We should spread out," Garbofasse said. "Form a skirmish line. Twenty yards between each man. That way we cover more ground."

Ranulf nodded; this would suit his plan as well.

"There's still no movement from these… these things," FitzUrz said. Of the horrible shapes lying around them, some were more decomposed than others, several little more than bones wrapped in parchment. But again, in many cases, their heads were turned towards the raiding party, as though watching them carefully.

"The puppets don't sleep, but maybe the puppet masters do," Ranulf said. "It probably only needs one command to be issued and they'll come raging back to life." He mopped his brow. He was sweating so hard that the grease and soot was running off him in streams. "Form the line. We're moving south… slowly. Keep your eyes and your ears open."

With some hardship in the darkness and undergrowth, they spread out into a skirmish line, Ranulf anchoring it at the north end and Garbofasse at the south, and proceeded again along the top of the bluff. The ground became even harder to negotiate; it wasn't just bulging with roots, but it had been churned to quagmires by thousands of trampling feet. In some cases, the bodies of the dead lay in actual piles, as if they'd been heaped together by gravediggers. Subsequently, the skirmish line extended and warped as the men struggled to keep up with each other. But on flatter ground, they came across the first of the heavy weapons. Many were still in their wagons, unpacked. Several onagers and ballistae had been taken out and were partly assembled, though further corpses were strewn around these. More work-gangs, Ranulf realised with a shudder. This army of reanimated clay could be turned just as easily to tireless labour as it could to war, and of course it never asked for pay. The full extent of the power this gifted its controller was quite chilling.