Paul Finch - Stronghold

Corotocus glanced around one last time as he galloped along the causeway. Behind the iron grille, he caught a final glimpse of his lieutenant's despairing face.

"My gift to you!" Corotocus said under his breath. "Go and feed on him! He'll make a meal for all of you!"

Du Guesculin chopped wildly at the sea of decay that ebbed around him. The portcullis was so warped at its base that he might have been able to slide his body beneath it. But that would have meant having to dismount.

A claw now took hold of his cloak. He cut the tie, shrugging the garment loose, and, with no other choice, drove his animal back into the bowels of the building, still hacking them down, stomping over those that fell, breaking their limbs and torsos, grinding them into the stones, but having to stand in the stirrups to avoid taking blows himself, and now — suddenly — stopping and gaping with horror. For a veritable flood of black and twisted forms was pouring down the passage towards him, their howls a dirge from the lowest level of damnation.

All-consuming terror had now cost du Guesculin his sense of place and direction, so, when he veered his animal to the right through a very narrow doorway, he had no idea that this was the foot of a spiral stair leading to the roof. Of course, when he discovered the truth, there was no turning back.

It was a perilous ascent for a four-footed beast, rising steeply, turning, turning, turning. Around each corner there was another shambling horror to block his path. He knocked each one aside, or smote it down, their blood and brains splattering up the granite walls as his blade bit through them. But always they were back on their feet quickly, and he heard their echoing ululation as they hastened in pursuit. And then, when du Guesculin thought that things could not get worse, he entered that upper region of the Constable's Tower where destruction had been wrought by the mangonels.

Suddenly he was in open rooms crammed with piles of rubble and burned, blistered body parts. Dust clouds still hung here, obscuring almost everything. Crushed, crab-like shapes clambered or slithered towards him over the mounds of masonry. One of these was still able to stand on two feet and grabbed his bridle. Du Guesculin peered down at Gilbert, his own squire, though he only realised this when he saw the grimy red hose and tunic. The boy's face had melted like cheese and hung from his naked skull in loops and tendrils.

The now deranged horse tried to retreat, but its footing slipped, and suddenly it was sliding backward as the scorched floorboards gave way beneath it. Du Guesculin just had time to leap from the saddle as his mount disappeared, screaming, into the dusty spaces below. Twenty feet down, with a shattering crack, its spine struck a stone buttress, which sent it spinning, lifeless, into a void of darkness that was filled with the shrieks of the dead.

Du Guesculin, himself teetering on the edge of the hole, turned on his heel just in time to see the apparition that had once been Gilbert lurching at him, hands outstretched. He drove his sword into its breast, but this did not hold the thing back. Gasping, he spun around and stumbled away, tripping and landing on his knees with such force that one kneecap was split to the cartilage. Choking at the pain, he lumbered on. Another stairway appeared through the gloom, this one leading to the open sky.

Du Guesculin sobbed his way up it. At the top, he found himself on the roof, huge sections of which had imploded from the impact of the mangonel missiles. Beyond the first of these crevasses, Countess Madalyn's druids were ranged in a row: pitiless men — bearded and stern beneath their hoods, their onyx eyes fixed on him intently. On his side, stood the countess herself.

Blubbering spittle, gibbering for mercy, du Guesculin tottered towards her.

"Countess, I beg you, I beg you…"

He dropped to his knees despite the agony this caused him, clasped his hands together and gazed up at her, though his vision was blurred with tears.

"I am Hugh du Guesculin, banneret of Clun, Lord of Oswestry and Whitchurch. I am not without influence. And unlike Earl Corotocus, I can be trusted. Ma-am, listen, please, I beg you. I know King Edward. I can parley for you. I can end this war so that Wales remains with the Welsh, with you as their queen. I can do all this. I beg you, ma-am, listen to me please."

She reached down with both hands and cupped his face, almost gently. He blinked, not understanding what this meant. Slowly, her features swam into focus. They were as handsome and noble as he remembered. But they were also pale and rigid as wax. Beneath her aristocratic chin, a crimson line ran from one ear to the other. When she exerted the necessary strength to drag him to his feet and hoist him into the air, that line yawned open, exposing her sliced windpipe. With eyes of lustreless glass, she strode to the battlements. Du Guesculin's scream was a prolonged, keening whistle as, with one hand at his throat and the other at his crotch, she raised him high over her head.

He continued to scream even when she'd flung him over the parapet, the scream lingering as he plummeted — down, down, down, head first, legs kicking manically, until landing with horrific force on the courtyard floor, where he smashed apart like a beetle under a boot.

From the roof of the Keep, Ranulf watched aghast as these events unfolded. But if it shocked him to the core to see what remained of the earl's household torn to pieces in the courtyard, it was an even greater shock to see what happened to Hugh du Guesculin.

Ranulf turned stiffly to face Gwendolyn. She regarded him boldly, her smudged but beautiful face written with triumph.

"No doubt you're enraged?" she said. "Well, now perhaps you understand how I feel. Justice had to be done."

He stalked towards her.

She didn't flinch. "Now that the guilty ones have been punished, this is where it can end."

"Indeed?"

"Indeed," she said. "You'll thank me for it in due course."

Ranulf didn't say anything else, just hit her — not hard enough to kill her, though he was sorely tempted, but sufficiently to knock her unconscious. She toppled through the embrasure, but he caught her by the tabard and pulled her back to him. In the process, he glanced again into the courtyard, where all the earl's men were now dead, their mangled remains being flung back and forth between the howling cadavers. Other corpses, of course, in fact cohorts of them, were already flowing across the Keep drawbridge.

Ranulf didn't wait to see more. Throwing Gwendolyn over his shoulder, he hurried to the top of the stair.

Earl Corotocus did not witness the death of Hugh du Guesculin. He never looked back once as he galloped hard along the causeway.

More of the dead were crossing it towards him. But he veered around them. He was no longer armed, but that was of no concern. All that mattered was flight. As the Gatehouse loomed towards him, he was struck by the alarming thought that they might now have closed the portcullis at its front entrance. This goaded him to spur his animal until its flanks bled.

Nobody else obstructed him as he charged in through the arched entrance and up the Gatehouse's central passage. To his relief the portcullis was still raised, though a fresh phalanx of corpses was coming in beneath it. Leaning low, cloak billowing, the earl snapped his reins with fury. Incitatus struck the dead like a streak of black lightning, scattering them on all sides. Corotocus hurtled out of the Gatehouse and into the entry passage. More of the dead streamed along it. He crashed through them one after another, though the main danger here was the charred human fat that seemed to smear every surface. His horse skidded dangerously on it, before righting itself at the end of the passage and bolting eastward along the berm path.