The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic (146 page)

The man with the mace, one-eyed now, was trying to stand and Sir Guillaume kicked him in the face, kicked him again, and still he would not stay down so Sir Guillaume rammed his sword into the man’s breast, ripping through mail, but then a Frenchman thrust a sword at Sir Guillaume’s breast and the blow hurled him back onto the dungheap. ‘They’re dead men!’ Fulk shouted. ‘They’re dead men!’ And just then the first volley of arrows came from the keep’s battlements.

The arrows slashed into the backs of Fulk’s men-at-arms. Some wore plate and the arrows, coming at a steep angle, glanced off that armour, but the bodkin points drove through mail and leather and suddenly four of the attackers were dead and three were wounded, and then the archers turned their bows on the crossbowmen in the gate. Sir Guillaume, unwounded, managed to stand. His shield was split and he threw it away, then the man with the bull on his jupon raised himself onto his knees and grappled with him, arms about his waist, trying to pull him down. Sir Guillaume used both hands to hammer the heavy pommel of his sword onto the man’s helmet, yet he was still hauled down, falling with a crash, and he let go of his sword as the big man tried to throttle him. Sir Guillaume felt with his left hand to find the bottom of the man’s
breastplate,
drew his dagger with his right and stabbed up into the big man’s belly. He felt the knife go through leather, then puncture skin and muscle and he worked the blade, ripping at the man’s guts as the coarse, sweat-reddened, bloodied, one-eyed face snarled at him.

More arrows
flew,
thumping with a sickening thud into Fulk’s remaining men. ‘Here!’ Guy Vexille was in the doorway at the top of the steps.
‘Fulk!
Here! Leave them! Here!’

Fulk repeated the order in his roaring voice. So far as he could see only three of the defenders were alive in the corner of the courtyard, but if he stayed to finish them off then the archers on the tower would kill all his men. Fulk had an arrow in the thigh, but he felt no pain as he stumbled up the steps and into the big doorway where, at last, he was safe from the arrows. Guy now had fifteen men left. The others were dead or else still in the yard, wounded. One man, already struck by two arrows, tried to crawl to the steps and two more arrows thudded into his back, throwing him down. He twitched, and his mouth opened and closed in spasms until a last arrow broke his spine. An archer whom Guy had not noticed before, a man who had been
lying
on a bed of straw, struggled a few paces across the yard and used a knife to cut the throat of a wounded man-at-arms, but then a crossbow bolt flashed from the gate to strike the archer and throw him onto his victim’s body. The archer vomited, jerked for a few heartbeats and then was still.

Sir Guillaume was helpless. He had two men left, not nearly enough to attack the doorway, and Sir Guillaume himself was bruised, bleeding and feeling strangely and suddenly weak. His stomach gave a heave and he retched emptily,
then
staggered back onto the wall. John Faircloth was lying on the dungheap, bleeding from the belly, unable to talk as he died. Sir Guillaume wanted to say something comforting to the dying Englishman, but a wave of nausea swept over him. He retched again, and his armour felt curiously heavy. All he wanted to do was lie down and rest. ‘My face,’ he said to one of the two survivors, a Burgundian, ‘look at my face,’ and the man obeyed and flinched when he saw the red blotches. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘sweet goddamn Jesus,’ and he slumped down by the wall and reached for his sword as if the familiar weapon would give him solace.

‘Shields,’ Guy said to his men. ‘Two of you with shields, hold them high, go up the stairs, and we’ll come behind and cut their legs out.’ That was the best way to take a stairway, to chop the vulnerable ankles of the defenders, but when they tried it they discovered the two remaining men-at-arms were using shortened lances that Sir Guillaume had placed on the landing to defend the steps, and they hammered the lances on the shields, driving the men back, and an arrow and a crossbow bolt took one man in the helmet so that blood spilled down from beneath its rim to sheet his face. He fell back and Guy pulled him down the steps and put him beside the corpse of the axeman he had dragged off the stairway.

‘We need crossbows,’ Fulk said. His blunt face was bruised and there was blood in his beard. He went to the doorway and bellowed for the crossbowmen to run to the steps. ‘Come fast!’ he shouted,
then
spat out a bloody tooth. ‘It’s safe! The archers are dead,’ he lied, ‘so come now!’

The crossbowmen tried, but Sam and his archers on the battlements had been waiting for them and four of the six were hit by arrows. A loaded crossbow clattered across the stones, hit the barricade and tripped the pawl so that its bolt buried itself in a corpse. One crossbowman tried to run back through the arch and was hurled onto the rubble by an arrow, yet two of the bowmen managed to reach the steps unharmed.

‘There are few of them,’ Guy told his men, ‘and God is with us. We need one effort, just one, and the Grail is ours. Your reward will be glory or heaven.
Glory or heaven.’
He had the best armour so he decided he would lead the next attack with Fulk beside him. The two crossbowmen would be immediately behind, ready to shoot the bowmen waiting behind the curve of the stairway. Once the stairway was clear Guy would hold the base of the keep. With luck, he thought, the Grail would be in whatever room they reached, but if it was another floor up then they must do it all again, but he was certain they would reach the prize and, once it was gained, he would fire the castle. The wooden floors would burn readily enough and the flames and smoke would kill the archers on the battlements and Guy would be victorious. He could leave, the Grail would be his and the world would be changed.

Just one last effort.

Guy took a small shield from one of his men-at-arms. It was scarcely bigger than a serving platter, intended only to fend off sword blows in a melee, and he began the attack by pushing it round the corner, hoping to draw the arrows and then rush the steps while the bowmen upstairs had empty strings, but the archers were not drawn by the ruse and so Guy nodded to Fulk who had snapped off the head and feathered end of the arrow in his thigh, leaving the shortened shaft sticking clean through the muscle. ‘I’m ready,’ Fulk said.

‘Then we go,’ Guy said, and the two men crouched behind their shields and climbed the winding stair, treading on the blood of their comrades, and they turned the bend and Guy braced himself for an arrow’s strike. None came, and he peered over the shield and saw nothing but empty steps ahead and knew God had given him victory. ‘For the Grail,’ he told
Fulk,
and the two men hurried, just a dozen steps to go and the crossbowmen were behind them, and then Guy smelt the burning. He thought nothing of it. The stair turned and he could see the hallway opening up ahead and he shouted his war cry and then the fire came.

It had been Genevieve’s idea. She had given her crossbow to Philin and gone up to the hall where the sick lay and she had seized one of the breastplates captured from Joscelyn’s assault and raked into its shallow bowl a bucket full of glowing embers from the fire. One of the
coredor
women helped her, scooping smouldering cinders and ash into a great cooking pot, and they carried the fire downstairs, the breastplate burning Genevieve’s hands, and when the first two men came into view they hurled the red hot scraps down the stairs. The ash did the greatest damage. It drifted, hot dust, and some got into the eyes of the crossbowman behind Fulk and he flinched away, his weapon dropped as he pawed the burning scraps from his face, and the crossbow struck the step, fired itself and the bolt went through Fulk’s ankle. Fulk fell into a scatter of red-hot embers and scrambled backwards to free himself of the pain and Guy was alone on the stairs, ash half blinding him, and he lifted the shield as though that would protect his eyes and it was struck by an arrow with such force that it threw him back. The arrow was half through the shield. A crossbow bolt cracked against the wall. Guy staggered, trying to gain his balance, trying to see through the ash-induced tears and the thick smoke, and then Thomas led his few men in a charge. Thomas carried one of the shortened lances that he rammed at Guy, throwing him all the way down the stairs, while the man-at-arms with Thomas stabbed a sword two-handed into Fulk’s neck.

Vexille’s men at the foot of the stairs should have stopped the charge, but they were taken aback by the sight of Guy staggering down, by Fulk’s screaming and by the stench of fire and burning flesh and they backed out of the door as the enemy came howling out of the smoke. Thomas only led five men, but they were enough to panic Guy’s small band
who
seized their master and fled back into the courtyard’s fresh air. Thomas followed, thrusting the lance forward, and he caught Guy plumb on the breastplate so that he was thrown back down the outer steps to sprawl on the courtyard’s stones. Then the arrows came from the battlements, plunging through mail and plate. The attackers could not go back up the steps, because Thomas was there and the doorway was filled with armed men and smoke, and so they fled. They ran for the town and the arrows followed them through the archway and hurled two of them onto the rubble. Then Thomas shouted for the archers to stop shooting. ‘Rest strings!’ he yelled. ‘You hear me, Sam? Rest strings! Rest strings!’

He let the shortened lance fall and held out his hand. Genevieve gave him his bow and Thomas took a broad-head from his arrow bag and looked down the steps to where his cousin, abandoned by his men, struggled to stand in his heavy black armour.
‘You and me,’ Thomas said, ‘your weapon against mine.’

Guy looked left and right and saw no help. The courtyard was stinking of vomit, dung and blood. It was thick with bodies. He backed away, going to the gap at the edge of the barricade and Thomas followed, coming down the steps and staying within a dozen paces of his enemy. ‘Lost your appetite for battle?’ Thomas asked him.

Guy rushed him then, hoping to get within the range of his long sword’s blade, but the broad-head hit him smack on the breastplate and he was brutally checked by it, stopped dead by the sheer force of the big bow, and Thomas already had another arrow on the string. ‘Try again,’ Thomas said.

Guy backed away. Back through the barricade, past Sir Guillaume and his two men who did nothing to interfere with him. Thomas’s archers had come down from the battlements and were on the steps, watching. ‘Is your armour good?’ Thomas asked Guy. ‘It needs to be. Mind you, I’m shooting broad-heads. They won’t pierce your armour.’ He loosed again and the arrow hammered into the plates at Guy’s groin and bent him over and threw him back onto the rubble. Thomas had another arrow ready.

‘So what will you do now?’ Thomas asked. ‘I’m not defenceless like Planchard. Like Eleanor. Like my father. So come and kill me.’

Guy got to his feet and backed over the rubble. He knew he had men in the town and if he could just reach them then he would be safe, but he dared not turn his back. He knew he would fetch an arrow if he did and a man’s pride did not allow a wound in the back. You died facing the enemy. He was outside the castle now, backing slowly across the open space and he prayed one of his men would have the wit to fetch a crossbow and finish Thomas off, but Thomas was still coming towards him, smiling, and the smile was of a man come to his sweet revenge.

‘This one’s a bodkin,’ Thomas said, ‘and it’s going to hit you in the chest. You want to raise the shield?’

‘Thomas,’ Guy said, then raised the small shield before he could say anything more because he had seen Thomas draw the big bow, and the string was released and the arrow, headed with heavy oak behind the needle-sharp blade, slammed through the shield, through the breastplate, mail and leather to lodge against one of Guy’s ribs. The impact jarred him back three paces, but he managed to keep his feet, though the shield was now pinned to his chest and Thomas had another arrow nocked.

‘In the belly this time,’ Thomas said.

‘I’m your cousin,’ Guy said, and he wrenched the shield free, tearing the arrow head from his chest, but he was too late and the arrow punched his stomach, driving through plate steel and iron mail and greased leather, and this arrow sank deep. ‘The first was for my father,’ Thomas said, ‘that one was for my woman, and this one’s for Planchard.’ He shot again and the arrow pierced Guy’s gorget and hurled him back onto the cobbles. He still had the sword and he tried to lift it as Thomas came close. He also tried to speak, but his throat was filled with blood. He shook his head, wondering why his sight was going misty, and he felt Thomas kneel on his sword arm and he felt the punctured gorget being prised up and he tried to protest, but only spewed blood, then Thomas put the dagger under the gorget and rammed it deep into Guy’s gullet. ‘And that one’s for me,’ Thomas said.

Sam and
a half
-dozen archers joined him by the body. ‘Jake’s dead,’ Sam said.

‘I know.’

‘Half the bloody world’s dead,’ Sam said.

Maybe the world was ending, Thomas thought. Perhaps the terrible prophecies of the Book of Revelation were coming true. The four dread horsemen were riding. The rider on the white horse was God’s revenge on an evil world, the red horse carried war, the black horse was saddled by famine while the pale horse, the worst, brought plague and death. And perhaps the only thing that could turn the riders away was the Grail, but he did not have the Grail. So the horsemen would run free. Thomas stood, picked up his bow and started down the street.

Guy’s surviving men were not staying to fight the archers. They fled like Joscelyn’s men, going to find a place where no plague filled the streets, and Thomas stalked a town of the dying and the dead, a town of smoke and filth, a place of weeping. He carried an arrow on the string, but no one challenged him. A woman called for help, a child cried in a doorway, and then Thomas saw a man-at-arms, still in mail, and he half drew the bow, then saw the man had no weapons, only a pail of water. He was an older man, grey-haired. ‘You must be Thomas?’ the man said.