Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (43 page)

Robin addressed us in a low whisper: ‘There is a wall fifty paces over there’ – he held out an arm in a direction that I guessed was westwards – ‘that guards the castle from attack along this spur. It is twelve feet high with a little postern gate set into it. This is the first defence, manned by no more than a handful of men, but it needs to be taken speedily and in silence, or as quietly and quickly as we can possibly manage. Eight men will attack initially, scaling the wall using four of these. Little John is calling them his “war hooks” for want of a better name.’

My lord reached into a rough fustian sack at his feet and pulled out a large, curious-looking metal object. It had been roughly fashioned by welding together three sword blades that had each been bent into a hook. The blades were bonded together at one end with strips of iron and attached to a length of knotted rope. At the top, the three sharp hooks branched out in three different directions. The device was heavy, and only crudely put together, but it seemed solid enough to take the weight of an armoured man – and I finally knew what Little John and Gavin had been constructing at the forge in the hellishly hot cave while the mercenaries and I had been gathering wood on the mountain.

‘You hurl these war hooks over the top of the wall,’ said Robin in his quietest voice, ‘whereupon they will, with any luck, catch hold, and then you use the rope to ascend. Once at the top, leave the rope dangling for the next man. Behind the eight initial attackers will be the bowmen – myself, John and Gavin with war bows, and Jehan there with his crossbow’ – a burly mercenary ducked his head and grinned at us all – ‘and our task is to kill any enemy who puts his head above the parapet. This part should go easily enough – we think there are only five or six men manning this wall – the next bit is the tricky part. The first attackers must silence the defenders, open the gate for the rest of us, then immediately go on to assault the main wall of the castle. If God – or the spirits’ – a smile here for Nur – ‘are with us, we should be attacking an enemy that believes us to be long gone and, in any case, will not be prepared for an attack from this direction. I know that we can do this – but if you will forgive me for repeating myself, speed and silence are the essence. Now who will volunteer to be one of the attackers?’

Robin looked at me, and I reluctantly nodded. I knew that this was the most dangerous role in the coming battle but, well, how could I say no to Robin? How could I refuse my lord? Thomas immediately volunteered to be second man on my war hook, and Roland stepped forward promptly too. In the end, the eight men were myself and Thomas, Vim and Olivier, and Roland and Sir Nicholas with two mercenaries whose names I did not know.

‘Remember,’ whispered Robin as a parting shot, ‘speed and silence, and the rest of us will be right there on your heels.’

Maury took us the last few paces through the fog and, the heavy war hook in my hands, I found myself crouching behind a rock and looking out at the blank grey wall a mere ten paces away. I could not see anyone atop the battlements, and for one wild, craven moment, I dared to hope that the Knights of Our Lady had abandoned the castle and fled and that there would be no fight today. I pulled myself together, looked over to my right and left at Roland, Sir Nicholas and Vim, took a deep breath and began to run, as quietly as I could, towards the wall.

I swung the heavy war hook once, twice and then hurled it with all my might up the face of the wall. It hit the top with a deafening clatter and thumped back down to earth – but I gathered it in by its rope and swung harder, hurled it once more and this time, God be praised, two of the bent sword-hooks fixed themselves over the top and I pulled the knotted rope taut. Thomas was by my side, crouching down with his shield up, ready to secure the rope’s end as I climbed. To my left, I could see that Roland had his war hook attached and was beginning to climb, but to my right, neither Sir Nicholas nor Vim had managed to affix their hooks to the top, and were swinging the ungainly metal shapes again and again. Just then, a helmeted head peered over the wall, the man looked down at us and opened his mouth. Thunk! An arrow smashed into his open mouth, jolting his head back, and away from the parapet – but I feared that the element of surprise was lost. I put my boots on the wall and began to walk upwards as speedily as I could, my shield on its carrying strap banging painfully against my spine, my wounded calf protesting madly. Another head appeared, and a crossbow bolt clanged off his helmet, but the man stayed in position, shouted a curse and I narrowly ducked a sword swipe that would had stunned me had it landed. By God’s mercy, he was swept away in the next instant by an arrow that socked into his eye. Then I was at the lip of the wall. My left hand twisted itself securely into the rope, my right snaked over my shoulder and seized the T-shaped handle of the lance-dagger, and as a third man-at-arms loomed above me, looking down over the wall, I plunged the blade up, hard, into his neck. He shrieked and jerked back, blood jetting from between the fingers of his left hand which was clapped over the gaping rip in his throat. But I was over the wall by then, and I silenced his noise with a thrust of the lance-dagger into his open mouth and out the back of his neck. I could see Roland too was on the walkway on the other side, and I could hear the grunting breath of Thomas behind me. The mist was still thick around us – you could see nothing beyond ten yards away. I sheathed the bloody lance-dagger, shoved the dying man out of my way, and leaped down seven feet to the soft earth behind the wall, landing heavily, and immediately hauling out Fidelity. A man came out of a crude lean-to shelter beside the postern gate holding nothing more threatening than a wooden bowl of pottage and a horn spoon – but I killed him nonetheless, snapping my sword down two-handed into his bare head. Another man ran out of the fog on the far side of the wall – an untrained man, I believe, certainly un-armoured, perhaps a servant. He shouted something and jabbed at me clumsily with a spear, but I parried with Fidelity and dropped him with a counter stroke that ripped across his belly like a razor. Eviscerated, gasping, shocked beyond words, he goggled at me, gushing blood, and sank to his knees.

Miraculously, it seemed that the alarm had not yet been raised. I killed the servant before me with a merciful sword thrust under the chin, and he died with a quiet sigh. I watched Roland drop a man on the walkway with a single sword thrust to the chest, and the man gave a gargled cry before he fell, muffled by the fog. Thomas was visible by now on the wall, looking grim with a sword in his fist, but no foeman before him. Sir Nicholas and Vim had also emerged from over the top. No more enemies came, so I jumped towards the postern gate, hauling back the locking bar and admitting Robin, who tumbled through the entrance as if he had been leaning on the outside of the door with all his weight. Little John was with him, axe in hand, and Gavin, and beyond them a score of madly grinning mercenaries emerging like joyful demons from the mist and running full pelt towards the open postern.

‘On, on to the ramparts,’ Robin said, trying to keep his voice pitched low, but failing in the excitement of battle. I saw that Thomas had collected the war hook from the top of the wall on his way down and was already pelting towards the castle a mere forty paces away. I sprinted after him, part of a swarm of thirty mercenaries and Companions, and as I reached the foot of the sheer stone wall I heard the cry above us: ‘Alarm – they’re coming, the Devils are coming. To arms, brothers. To the eastern wall!’

We no longer had surprise. But Vim was there swinging his war hook, and another man too beyond him, and Thomas had already secured his to the top of the wall and was climbing the rope like a monkey, a dagger clenched between his teeth. Twenty yards to my right, Sir Nicholas, too, had fixed his hook to the ramparts and was hauling himself upwards. Thomas had disappeared over the top of the wall and I heard him shout ‘Westbury!’ and another voice screaming in pain. I sheathed Fidelity, grasped the rope and pulled myself up, hand over hand, arm-muscles creaking with the strain, heart banging, the fire of combat coursing through my body like scalding spiced wine. I plunged up, unchallenged, got a hand on the stone crenellation, and a boot, and leaped over the rampart.

I was inside the impossible Castle of Montségur.

Next I knew, I was dodging a mace blow aimed at my head from a blue and white knight. I grabbed his swinging arm, pulled him towards me, off balance, and smashed my helmeted forehead into his face. He flew backwards, yelling, and plunged down into the courtyard. I did not stop to watch him fall – there were men running at me from both sides. I ripped Fidelity from the scabbard and took its edge to the enemy on my left. A flurry of blows and he was clutching the stump of his arm, bleeding, screaming. I fended off the man on my right, drove him back with a series of fast lunges and, as he retreated along the walkway, he met Little John rolling over the wall, who straightened, swung and hacked off his head with one blow from his axe. A crossbow bolt clattered on the stone of the walls by my shoulder. I got my shield off its carrying strap on my back and on to my free arm, just in time to stop a strike from a man-at-arms who ran in from the left – and felled him with my riposte, Fidelity ripping an extra, bloody mouth under his chin. There were enemies all around, now, and more coming my way. But more of my friends were on the walkway, too.

We boiled over that wall – all of us – in a less than a hundred heartbeats. I saw Vim stepping over the ramparts and immediately begin slaying men with great sweeps of his sword, snarling like a bear. There was André the scout cutting down a cowering crossbowman who had spent his bolt.

I saw Thomas ten paces further along the walkway, facing down a mob of charging enemy knights. I raced to his side, stopped a sword strike at his head, and threw off his attacker with a shield-punch – and we held them, and blocked them and forced them back. Thomas killed the foremost man and I took the next. Then we fought our way forward, heading towards the keep, holding off a swarm of enemies with sword and shield, cutting, killing and maiming. Keeping their vicious blades out of our bodies. And behind us, in a space cleared of enemies, good man after good man came tumbling over that wall behind and screamed into the fight. Then Robin was behind me. He shouted in my ear just as Thomas was finishing off a big fellow with a twisted lip. My lord clapped me on the shoulder and pulled me away from my squire.

‘I need you now, Alan,’ he bellowed – for the din was terrific: the clash and scrape of steel on steel, the screams of pain, the yells of fury, a trumpet calling over and over for the Knights of Our Lady to come to arms. And they did – score upon score of them, erupting out of the barracks in the courtyard like ants from a kicked nest, and charging up onto the walkway via the stone stairs at the southern end. A crossbow quarrel slashed past my face, but I paid it no heed. Robin and I drove south, sprinting along the walkway, chopping down anything in our path, with Thomas following in our wake. Robin’s blade was like a deadly serpent’s tongue flicking to take the life of any man who foolishly stood before him. We slipped in gory puddles but somehow managed to keep our footing; we stumbled over corpses and the writhing bodies of the wounded, and Thomas, who was a pace behind me, killed any that he found alive beneath his feet. A group of four knights tried to form a loose shield wall in front of us, but Robin and I charged straight into it, shields up, swords pounding down, battering relentlessly. Thomas pressed in close behind, I could feel his breath on my neck, his sword arching over the top of my shoulder to stab at enemy faces – and we soon swept them backwards with our momentum, tumbling two of them off the walkway to thump down on the sandy floor twenty feet below. I remember thinking that these Knights of Our Lady would never have made the ranks of the Templars – they were soft, and slow, and unused to fighting in close concert with their brother knights.

We killed them.

I heard a great roar behind me, and stole a half-glance, as Little John, war hook in his right hand, double-headed axe in his left, jumped straight down on to the red-tiled roof of a stables below the parapet, smashing terracotta, and then kicking free of the broken shards to jump down a further ten feet to the courtyard. Gavin followed in his wake, sword and shield in his hands, a reckless grin on his handsome face.

At a set of stone stairs in the south-eastern corner, a fresh surge of enemies, led by two Knights of Our Lady and with half a dozen men-at-arms behind them, rushed up to confront us, and Robin and I met our first serious resistance. I took a pace forward and my right leg failed me – I felt the wound tear open and a lightning bolt of pain in my calf and, at the same time, the knight on the right, on my side, sliced forward with a long sword, driving for my face. I took the blow on the cross-guard of Fidelity, shook it aside, and, trying to keep the weight on my left leg, cut at his neck with my counter stroke, which he blocked easily with his shield. Robin was duelling with the knight on my left, a flurry of clashing steel and the dull cracks of metal on leather-covered wood. A crossbow bolt, loosed from the courtyard smashed into my shield, rocking me back. My opponent lunged again, this time for my belly, and I twisted out of the blade’s path at the last instant, my calf screaming, and chopped down on his extended right arm with my shield, and dislocated the elbow.

Then he was mine.

I dispatched him with a feinted lunge to unbalance him, and a powerful strike at his throat. My blade smashed into the mail of his coif that protected his neck. The blade did not pierce the iron links but he stumbled and fell to his knees, and I cracked Fidelity down on his helmeted head, stunning him. His place on the stair was immediately taken by a wildly yelling man-at-arms, who stepped over the prone knight and began hacking at me with a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. I hobbled back out of range and something big and glinting blurred through the air between our bodies, and I saw with shock, and not a little horror, that it was a war hook, hurled up by Little John from the courtyard floor. The sword blades snatched deep into the man-at-arms’ chest and, like a fisherman hooking a salmon, John yanked the rope taut and hauled the soldier and two comrades standing behind him backwards to crash down the steps on to the courtyard floor.