‘Do you think no one else noticed how you are when she’s around all these years, Martin?’ Ruther gripped the young man’s shoulder. ‘Maybe your father was too busy being Duke to pay attention to his sons as close as he could – heavens know I think of him as a good man and wise ruler, but fathers sometimes miss things about their sons. But no one who’s seen you around Bethany since you were fifteen could mistake how you felt about her, and it seems she feels the same way about you.’
‘Well, her father and mine may have different plans,’ said Martin.
‘That may well be, but you will have no chance to discuss the matter with your father if you’re lying face down on the stones of this keep in a pool of your own blood, now will you?’
Martin couldn’t think. ‘Very well, how will you proceed if I allow you to be last out?’
‘That flying squad you asked for, of brawlers and hooligans. Brilliant. We will hit hard any company that comes through this side of the barbican’s rear door: we’ll barricade the other side door so they will choose this one. We’ll fight as we retreat, and we’ll dump a few traps along the way so we can get to the basement. We’ll fire the hay along the way, and if we’re lucky the tunnel will collapse on a host of them when we’re out the other end.’
‘Sounds like a wonderful plan, Sergeant,’ said Martin. ‘That’s exactly what I plan on doing. Now go get those twenty brawlers to rest a bit, organize some traps for me, and when you have finished, I want you personally to see that Bethany, the other women, and half the garrison leave. It’s your charge to see them safely to my father or Yabon. Understood?’
‘You’re not going to let me talk you out of this are you?’
‘Understood?’ repeated Martin, his eyes narrowing.
‘Understood, sir.’
The sergeant led the way out of the sub-basement and Martin asked as they climbed the stairs, ‘How do you do it, Ruther?’
‘Do what, sir?’
‘Stay awake for four days.’
‘I don’t. You learn to grab sleep when you can, a few minutes here, a half-hour there, sitting in the corner, lying under a table, whenever you can.’
‘I have yet to learn the knack.’
‘Go to your room,’ said Ruther softly. ‘Take at least an hour. I’ll bid the Lady Bethany farewell for you; she’ll know better than anyone you need sleep more than a bittersweet goodbye. I’ll wake you before dawn. If you’re going to survive your delay, young prince, you’ll need your wits about you.’
Martin said nothing, then nodded once and turned towards his room when they reached the top of the stairs. He half-staggered to his quarters, pushed open the door, and fell face first across the bed.
He was deep in sleep when Bethany came in, saw him there, removed his boots for him without waking him, and covered him with a blanket. She bestowed a light kiss on his face, whispered goodbye, then closed the door behind her.
• CHAPTER NINETEEN (#ulink_866b879e-ec68-5242-8dc6-28e7a4ef76be) •
Retreat (#ulink_866b879e-ec68-5242-8dc6-28e7a4ef76be)
THE PORTCULLIS CRASHED LOUDLY TO THE STONE FLOOR
Martin was ready, his men arrayed outside the unblocked side door. He signalled for them to wait.
The Keshians had brought up the first of two rams at dawn, and it had been a very well-built one. An enormous log suspended from heavy ropes and chains, and a massive iron boot covered the front end of the log. A wooden ‘tent’ roof protected the men pushing it, a dozen crouched over long wooden poles that ran though the frame of the massive war engine.
Horses had been used to pull it up the hill from the town below, but when they came into the courtyard they released the ropes used to pull the device and their riders had peeled off to the right and left, leaving it for the two dozen men under the protective roof to keep it moving forward until it slammed into the outer iron portcullis.
Then the pounding began.
A portcullis’s first grace is that it is heavy. The thick iron bars require a hoist and winch inside the barbican, tantalizingly close but just out of reach. So the portcullis must be knocked down, literally pounded until it folds in on itself and shatters, releasing the attackers into the murder room.
Then the second portcullis must be destroyed, while the defenders above are free to fire arrows or pour boiling oil on the attackers.
The first ram had burned, and it had taken most of a day for the Keshians to clear it away and bring up their second. But the first had done enough damage to the inner portcullis that Martin knew it would not endure until night.
Some time late in the day, Kesh’s Dog Soldiers would be within Crydee Keep.
Martin had expended most of his arrows and a lot of energy convincing the Keshians that the defenders were still inside in numbers. Men had run from position to position firing off the roofs of the keep and barbican at enemy archers on the wall, shouting from various locations, trying to give the impression of being in two places at once. At one point Martin had shouted orders for a sally and a squad of Keshians had actually retreated behind their barricade and waited for nearly half an hour for a counter-attack that never came.
Once the outer portcullis had come down, he had ordered the men off the roof. Two had occasionally shot arrows down into the murder room, and then the fiery oil had been poured down on the first ram. Once that was ablaze, he had ordered them to stand down and rest. The first portcullis had endured until mid-day, but he knew the Keshians would breach the second before mid-afternoon.
Inside the keep Martin shouted random, meaningless orders while his men rested. Occasionally one of the men would shout a faux reply, trying to make it seem as if men inside the keep were waiting.
Martin made ready, knowing that the second iron portcullis was about to fail. Once it was down, the Keshians would tie ropes to it and drag away the impediment to their attack. Then they would be faced with a massive stone wall with two entrances into the building. The one on their right had been blocked with every piece of furniture, fallen stones, debris that had come to hand to stop that door from opening.
The left door, the one behind which Martin and his twenty men waited, had been blocked just enough for Martin to make it appear the garrison was putting up a last, desperate fight.
The crash of the last gate was accompanied by the shout of Keshian Dog Soldiers outside. They apparently felt as if the day was already theirs, perhaps were even thinking the remaining garrison was holed up inside behind makeshift barricades, waiting for the final slaughter.
Suddenly there was pounding on the door before them and Martin turned. ‘Get ready.’
His twenty men were arrayed in two lines, with their backs to the corridor leading to the kitchen and the sub-basement below. The first ten bore shields and the second bows and arrows, despite few of them being skilled archers.
A rhythmic pounding began on the doors. It would be only a matter of minutes before the one on the attackers’ left, behind which the defenders waited, would begin to buckle.
Martin’s mad plan was about to begin and he prayed for a brief moment to Ruthia, Goddess of Luck, to take pity on him and his men.
The timbers on the heavy wooden doors shook and splintered around the hinges and the large wooden bar cracked. Mortar fragments rained down from the stonework above the supports, filling the air before the door with a fine haze of dust.
‘Easy,’ said Martin. ‘Wait.’
Another thud and the bar cracked more, torquing itself apart. ‘Wait,’ he repeated.
With a loud thud and the protest of iron fittings being ripped out of masonry, the hinges were pulled loose. For a pregnant moment the door hung slightly ajar, the splintering bar holding it against the door on one side.
‘Now!
Crydee bowmen fired into the narrow opening and the Keshian attackers screamed in pain and anger. The bowmen ran to the second position, while the ten men with shields crashed against those Keshians trying to enter the keep.
Martin was behind them, his sword held high as he struck downward over his men’s shields, his only objective, to slow the Keshians down for one more minute.
It was mad chaos at the door, with men grunting, cursing, shouting and bleeding. The brawlers selected by Ruther were skilled at close fighting, and from behind their shields they were content to wait for any sign of exposed Keshian flesh and slice at it with daggers and dirks, not trying to kill, only to make the enemy bleed, and to slow them down.
The Keshian Dog Soldiers all wore iron cuirasses, leaving their arms and shoulders exposed, while the Crydee defenders wore mail coifs over mail shirts with sleeves down to their wrists. No fatal blows resulted from the first two minutes of fighting, but a lot of Keshians would be sporting scars on their arms, shoulders and faces if they survived the day.
There was a moment when the fight seemed to take a breath, as the Keshians collectively pulled back to adjust the crowding at the doorway.
‘Back!’ shouted Martin, and the ten men and he turned, then sped down the hallway toward the kitchen. Martin waited for a moment, allowing the others to pass him. Then the door finally fell to the stones, and the Keshians came boiling through the entrance.
‘Down!’ Martin yelled, and the men before him all knelt while a flight of ten arrows sped overhead, striking the first two Dog Soldiers. The others ducked back inside the shelter of the barbican or crouched low, but it gave Martin and his men another moment. ‘Now!’
