Paul Finch - Stronghold

"You have deceived my people!" she hissed.

"When the English are finished, Countess Madalyn, your people will barely exist."

"Then you have deceived yourself."

He shrugged. "By denying to myself a truth that none of us can be certain of? Hardly. In any case, in the same way that you lack the belly for battle, I lack the knowledge for alchemy. It's a fact of life, but it doesn't concern me overly. The outcome will still be the same."

"And what will that be, Gwyddon — Armageddon?"

"Possibly, though obviously that wouldn't be ideal." He signalled to his priests, two of whom dismounted and approached her. "I still seek moderating influences in my life, if you're interested."

"I would rather die," she said.

"My dear countess… haven't you noticed? Nobody dies any more."

Liquid flame flooded over the parapets of the Constable's Tower. Flights of arrows continued to rattle across its battlements. The dead came too, droves of them pouring up the scaling ladders.

It was a hell-storm, the like of which Earl Corotocus's most hardened warriors had never experienced.

They engaged their enemy on two sides of the tower, slashing with sword and axe as one torn and mutilated form after another came up between the crenels, struck constantly on visor, shield or buckler, occasionally pierced through the hauberk by feathered shafts, and all the time dancing between pools of fire. English numbers had now been thinned disastrously, so that huge, undefended gaps were created. The dead would find these and then they'd be onto the roof properly, causing wild melees that would spill to every corner.

"Ranulf!" Gurt Louvain shouted. The face beneath his helmet was red and streaming in the searing heat; five arrows were embedded in his shield, a fifth looked as though it had transfixed his left arm, though in truth it had only punctured his mail sleeve. "Ranulf, this is madness! We can't hold them!"

Ranulf had just felled another corpse with such force that it had plummeted to the foot of its ladder, taking a dozen more with it. He peered down the sheer, flame-blackened bricks. In normal times, he'd expect to see a mountain of broken, mangled bodies at the bottom. Now all he saw was a compressed mass of shrieking, moaning heads and fists clamped on weapons. It was a similar tale at the far end of the causeway, though he could see that alleys were being cleared as more siege machines were brought forward: an even larger battering ram, equipped with wheels and a head of spiked steel, and two heavy onagers.

"Mind your heads!" someone shrieked.

Another fire-pot exploded in the middle of the roof. Sheets of flame erupted on all sides. Men were enveloped head to foot and ran blazing and screaming between their comrades, buffeting some aside, igniting others, in many cases falling clean through the battlements to a quicker, easier death.

"Gurt, there's nowhere to run to," Ranulf replied, his voice hoarse from shouting, his throat sore with smoke and thirst.

Another scaling ladder appeared in front of him. A corpse was already at the top of it. It was naked, but an iron collar was fixed around its neck and iron manacles around its wrists, revealing that the first time it had died it had been hanged in chains. It carried one such chain now, with which it lashed madly at the two English knights. Ranulf caught the chain and, with a downward stroke, clove the chain-arm at the shoulder. The monster now had only one hand with which to grip the ladder, and Ranulf's second stroke severed that too. When the corpse fell, it again took those beneath it.

Ranulf grabbed the top of the ladder and pushed it. As he did, another wave of arrows scythed across the battlements. One skimmed over his shoulder. Five yards to his left, a mercenary tottered away, spitting blood and phlegm from where a shaft had punched through his cheek. Ten yards beyond him, a tenant knight died wordlessly, struck in the throat.

"There aren't enough of us left to cover this perimeter!" Gurt bellowed. "And even if Earl Corotocus hasn't realised that, the dead will — they'll flow over us like the sea."

Below, more sets of hastily constructed scaling ladders were being passed hand-over-hand along the causeway. In a matter of minutes, the onagers would be within range. Close to Ranulf's right, more of the dead had gained a foothold. They climbed in through the embrasures and fought like dogs with the two or three defenders who opposed them; axes beat on shields, maces hammered helmets, crushing them out of shape.

Sensing that Ranulf was no longer listening, Gurt grabbed him by the collar and yanked him to attention.

"Ranulf, for the love of God listen! You must speak to the earl. Tell him we have to retreat to the Keep!"

Ranulf nodded and turned, only to be confronted by another pack of snarling dead, working their way along the battlements from the west, hacking down all in their path. Tomas d'Altard scrambled away from them, unable to stand because an arrow was buried in the back of his thigh.

"Ranulf, Gurt… save me!" he wept, only for the curved spike of a pollaxe to be swung down and driven through the nape of his neck with such force that its point appeared in his gagging mouth.

"We retreat when we can!" Ranulf said, mopping the filth from his blade and advancing. "Until that time…"

From thirty yards away, Earl Corotocus watched wearily as Ranulf FitzOsbern and Gurt Louvain engaged the latest band of corpses to have mounted the battlements, their blades twirling. Similar fights were raging all over the rooftop, knights and corpses hacking at each other dementedly as they staggered through a wreckage of smashed shields and burning bodies. To make things worse, catapults on the causeway now joined the fray. Heavy hunks of stone and lead were lobbed over the north-facing wall, slamming onto and through the shields of those few exhausted men who still had the strength to raise them.

"My lord!" du Guesculin shrilled, staggering forward, his face stained black with soot, his shield bristling with snapped-off arrows. "It's only a matter of time before the mangonel crews resort to heavier payloads! The Constable's Tower is lost!"

The earl himself bled from innumerable cuts. His once resplendent tabard was scorched and smouldering at its edges.

"And if we retreat to the Keep, what then?" he roared. "It's our last redoubt."

"My lord, they will never be able to capture the Keep. Its walls are one hundred and fifty feet high. No ladders, ropes or throwing machines can assail those battlements."

"He's right, my lord," Navarre said, approaching. Instead of a sword, he now wielded a mattock, its knobbly head caked with brains and human hair. "All the dead in the world couldn't build a pyramid with their own flesh that would reach such a precipice."

"And how long can we hold out in there?" the earl asked. "Are there supplies enough for us all?"

Navarre and du Guesculin glanced at each other. Only half way through the previous day had the earl given orders that sacks of meal and salt-pork and kegs of well water should be taken from the storehouses in the courtyard and placed in the Keep cellars. Neither could answer this question, because the implication was simply too terrible, so Earl Corotocus answered for them.

"The garrison could not last a week on what we've so far managed to store in there, am I correct?"

Navarre wiped blood and spittle from his disfigured mouth. "You are correct my lord. Either way, the majority of the garrison is doomed."

Corotocus looked to du Guesculin. "How many of us remain in total?"

The banneret could only shake his head, sweat dripping from his disarrayed hair. "I can't perform a proper count here, my lord. Of the Welsh who served you — one or two, at most. Of Garbofasse's scum — thirty or so."