Grail Knight: Number 5 in series (Outlaw Chronicles) (44 page)

Our forward passage cleared, both Robin and I charged down the stone steps, smashing a couple of men-at-arms aside with our shields, and surging down to join up with Little John in the centre of the courtyard. Thomas was on my heels and behind him were a dozen mercenaries. Suddenly our men were all over the castle: the iron-studded door of the keep, at the northern end, was wide open, and I saw a wolfish mercenary jump down from the walkway on the north-eastern wall and cut down a half-dressed man who emerged bemused from its darkness; I saw a pair of knights in blue and white, cowards for sure, slipping over the western wall to make their escape. Another poltroon, a balding man-at-arms, hurled away his sword and began scrabbling in terror at the barred main gate, trying to claw it open so that he could flee to safety.

For a moment I stood still, panting with exhaustion, dripping sword in hand, my weight on my left leg, trying to master the waves of white agony flowing from my wounded calf.

Olivier, the skinny mercenary, had also battled his way down to the courtyard nearer the keep. I saw him, twenty yards away, take on two leather-jacketed enemy men-at-arms armed with pole axes, and drop one. But the second dodged Olivier’s strike, slashed with his own weapon, and gashed Olivier’s sword arm, rendering it useless, and finished him with an axe blow to the stomach that folded him in half. Two mercenaries nearby pounced on the axeman and took a swift revenge. But, as I watched, the skinny ruffian who would have happily burned out Roland’s eyes died like a soldier on the castle’s sanded floor, his bloody white and blue entrails bulging through his fingers.

I looked over towards a small chapel by the main gate and saw the Master for the first time that day. His expression was one of deep and terrifying fury. He had a naked sword in his hand – incongruous with his gaunt, ascetic features, his tonsure and the immaculate black robe that he wore. He glared at me briefly, his mouth a white line, then fixed his eyes on Robin in the south of the courtyard.

And he stalked directly towards him.

A howling mercenary, tossed on the winds of madness, and wielding a bloody sword, hurled himself at the Master – but the former monk barely glanced at the battle-crazed man as he dispatched him with two swift, precise strikes of his own blade, leaving him bleeding and crying in the sand. The Master’s eyes seemed to bore into Robin and he glided across towards him oblivious to the scramble of battle all about him, occasionally swatting men out of his path as if they were no more troublesome than late-summer flies. As he came on, surviving Knights of Our Lady seemed to coalesce around him, flocking to him as if he represented the only light in a world of darkness. Three, five, ten knights – and a gaggle of their men-at-arms gathered behind the Master’s dark robe. Robin stepped in to meet his enemy, and at the same time both their swords licked out like bolts of lightning and cracked together with what seemed to my battle-heightened mind to be a shower of brilliant sparks.

The Master was fast, almost faster than any man I have ever seen – his sword was a flicker of light, a gleaming blur that probed and struck and sliced the air around Robin, and I remembered that he had been a Templar himself in his youth and had fought against the Moors of Spain and won much honour on those battlefields.

But my lord of Locksley was no stranger to the roar of battle either – as a youth he had been trained by the best sword-masters in England and had been fighting with a long blade ever since. So Robin blocked and parried, and counter-attacked with skill, smothering the Master’s initial attack, and managing to keep his enemy’s quick-silver blade from his flesh.

A bareheaded knight in blue and white charged at me and I could no longer observe the crash and wheel of the fight between the two lords of men. The knight’s sword hacked down towards my head, but I got my shield up, just in time, taking the heavy blow on its already much battered frame and sweeping low with my own sword to thump the long blade into his mail-covered thigh just above the knee. He went down, but I found to my surprise that I was too weary to finish him – I watched Gavin leap forward and lance his sword-point into the man’s white face. And, with that action – killing my opponent for me – the young bowman sealed his fate.

As Gavin bent to put his shoulder into the lunge, a Knight of Our Lady behind the fallen man jumped in and hacked his sword down into the back of the youngster’s curly head, splitting his skull and burying the blade deep into his brains.

A great, deep animal-like cry of rage and despair came from behind us, and I was hurled off my feet as a force like a mighty whirlwind, an unstoppable, elemental impetus, barrelled past me, with a noise like the bellowing of a herd of fear-maddened bulls. I crashed painfully to the floor on my right shoulder, the helmet strap snapped and my steel cap fell forward to partially cover my eyes. And my impressions of the next few moments were of a huge shining axe blade swinging in a fine cloud of blood and a howling storm of terrifying noise as Little John, crazed with grief, barged straight into the crowd of enemy fighting men behind the Master – his last remaining knights – and began to hew and hack in a mindless, whirling, blood-spattering rage. At one point, I swear on my soul, I saw a severed arm fly through the air followed immediately by the upper half of a human head, still partially helmeted. And by the time I had painfully regained my feet, there was not a living enemy to be seen in the courtyard, save for a few gore-spattered men-at-arms, scrambling like cats over the walls to try and save their miserable skins.

And the Master.

The elemental fury of John’s lone, whirlwind assault stopped the battle dead in its tracks. His rage seemed to have ended the carnage like a snuffed candle. The Master and Robin, both with their mouths agape in awe, were frozen a couple of yards apart with their swords raised, transfixed. They gawped as the big man laid down his axe and knelt among a ring of piled, mangled, knightly corpses, scooping up the limp body of his young friend in his arms, his blond, gore-speckled head pressed to Gavin’s dark, broken poll, the giant’s vast frame heaving with wild, lung-tearing sobs.

Robin recovered first. He reached out his sword and tapped the Master’s blade, almost as if seeking to attract his opponent’s attention, and purely by instinct, the Master delivered a lightning riposte, a low lunge that Robin had to scramble to avoid.

Robin took a long step backwards. ‘Do you surrender?’ he said to the Master. The monk was friendless in that courtyard, a circle of Robin’s men was forming around him, yet he replied, ‘And let you hang me? Or crop my fingers at your leisure? Oh, yes, that barbarous tale reached my ears. I think not!’ And he lunged again, quick as thought, at Robin’s chest, forcing my lord to parry and step away.

And again the Master attacked. A dancing step forward and huge vertical downward chop that seemed to contain all the fury and hatred in the world. The blade arced down – and was met by Robin’s shield. But such was the power of the blow that the steel sliced halfway through the wood and leather of Robin’s protector. My lord took a step backwards, his sword extended before him, warding the Master off, while he shook his left arm free of the flapping tatters of the shattered shield. The Master launched another manic offensive. Scything, double-handed diagonal cross-strikes from left and right, left and right. If any of these had landed, my lord, now shieldless, would be breathing his last. But Robin somehow, miraculously, each time got his sword between the Master’s malice and his own skin. Their blades rang like bells, again and again, and Robin with every blow was being forced relentlessly backwards towards the wall.

The main battle was over. The only combatants in that yard were Robin and the Master. Every other man in the castle – unless dead, unconscious or grievously wounded – was watching the duel. Two men, two swords, in a circle of expectant blood-spattered faces. It was a fight to the death.

And Robin was losing.

The Master swung; Robin caught the powerful blow on his cross-guard, their blades locked, their bodies only inches apart…

I limped forward and hefted my sword. This was pointless – I would not allow my lord to die at the hands of this creature. I shoved a watching mercenary out of my way and stepped in…

‘Stand back, Alan. Stand back, I tell you – that is an order!’ My lord was nose to nose with the Master, his sword locked against his enemy’s blade; they were panting spittal-breath into each other’s faces, and yet he was speaking to me across ten yards of courtyard. ‘This is my fight – I claim it. I will allow no man to come between us. Get back, Alan. That is a direct order!’

And Robin gave a mighty heave and hurled the Master away, forcing the monk to stagger back across the open space.

Then the Earl of Locksley showed his true quality.

He came on like a wild cat, a whirl of steel and speed, his sword lancing everywhere, probing at the Master’s defences, and forcing his enemy to parry and block for his life. The Master seemed quite shocked by this sudden counterattack from Robin, but he rallied, he kept my lord at bay, and when Robin seemed to lose his footing and slip down on to his left knee, he rushed forward and pounded his blade savagely down at Robin’s unguarded head.

It was a blow that my lord had clearly anticipated, for his sword swept up and across to his left, clanging against the Master’s blade and forcing it out to thud harmlessly into the sand. Robin’s body followed the direction of the parry that pushed the Master’s sword aside. His weight transferred to his left knee; his right leg kicked out at the same time and swept across in front of him, parallel with the earth. His mailed right foot crashed into the Master’s back foot an inch or so above the sand, followed through, and swept his enemy completely off his feet. The Master’s legs flew up in the air, exposing bare, skinny shanks, and he crashed onto his back, just as Robin pulled in his leg and leaped to his feet. My lord stepped in and paced his sword tip, with exquisite delicacy, beneath the Master’s chin, the point resting on his Adam’s apple.

Both men were still for a dozen heartbeats – the only sound in the courtyard was their ragged breathing.

Then Robin spoke: ‘If you surrender, you will not be harmed – but I will deliver you up to the Count of Foix for his judgment. Surrender now or you will die. I give you my word on that.’

The Master, sprawled on the sandy floor, glanced anxiously left and right. A dozen of Robin’s armed men were within striking distance, blood-stained mercenaries, grim Companions, all with the hard glow of victory in their eyes. The Knights of Our Lady and their men-at-arms were nowhere to be seen – all dead, badly wounded or fled. The Master still held his sword in his hand, but wide of his body. It was clear that Robin could lunge forward and skewer his throat before he had time to strike. Yet still the Master hesitated.

‘Surrender, right now, or die,’ said Robin.

‘Very well,’ the Master mumbled. ‘I shall take your word. I yield.’ And he let the sword slip to the floor, and flopped down on his back, like a dead man.

The Castle of Montségur was ours but the fight for it had taken a heavy toll. Gavin had perished and Little John was inconsolable, his battered face streaming with tears as he wrapped his friend’s corpse up tightly in a cloak and laid him with our other dead outside the main castle gate. Before he covered his dead friend’s face with the cloak – I saw that iron-tough warrior bend down and swiftly, lightly, kiss the lips of the corpse. I shed a tear, too, at the sight.

Olivier was dead, as were another half dozen of his fellow mercenaries. Sir Nicholas had been wounded in the side, an axe blow had smashed several of his ribs early in the fight on the parapet, and although the knight’s mail had kept the blade from his body, the iron links had been broken and twisted and had cut through the gambeson he wore under them and into his skin. The former Hospitaller was stoic under the pain, although the lines on his face seemed more deeply cut. ‘It’s a scratch, Alan, no more,’ he said. ‘I have taken worse and lived to laugh about it. We took the castle – that is what is important.’

My own wounded leg was on fire. As soon as the castle was secured, I asked Thomas to clean and rebandage it. It had stopped bleeding by then, but I feared that my exertions – I had scaled two stone walls and killed half a dozen men in the past half hour – had permanently damaged the muscle. Thomas washed it with water and wine, packed a cobwebby mess of Nur’s into the wound and bound it very tightly with fresh linen. And I found that I could, with only a modicum of agony, walk about the courtyard. I took a moment to pray and give thanks St Michael, the warrior archangel, that I was not among the scores of dead and mortally wounded.

For me, though, the hardest blow I received that day was the discovery that Tuck’s soul had left his body. Hobbling very slowly, I had led a party of mercenaries down to the cave to retrieve our belongings, and when I got there I found the empty shell of my friend on the altar at the back, his once-ruddy face white as milk against his dark robe. The young mercenary Anthony, who had been tending to him, told me that he had died a little before dawn. Tuck had just quietly stopped breathing and then the man had stripped and washed the body as well as he could and covered it with a blanket. I could not bear to move my old friend from the stone altar and so I left him there, with a final kiss on his broad, lined forehead, as we gathered up our belongings, spare weapons and food – and the mercenaries bore it all on their backs up the hill to the castle. The tears rolled down my cheeks as I limped up that hellish slope once again.

By the time I made it back to the courtyard, something like good order had been restored after the chaos of battle. The dead had been placed outside by the main gate. They would be carried down to the saddle of land west of Montségur the next day, where we planned to bury them after a service conducted by Sir Nicholas. The wounded were being tended to by Thomas and Nur in the ground floor of the keep. The Master had been bound at the wrists and shut in an empty grain store room on the eastern side of the courtyard, with a stout oak bar across the door and a veteran mercenary on guard outside, a steady man, to make sure that the Master did not try to slip his bonds and use his tricks to escape.