Warlord(130)

‘Up, up!’ I was shouting and climbing at the same time, my palms slippery on the rough wooden rungs of the ladder, my shield slung on my back, Fidelity gripped clumsily in my right hand. A head popped over the parapet in front of me and I lunged forward with my sword. I was too far away to badly injure the man but, as I had hoped, he pulled back and gave me a few precious moments to scramble up the remaining rungs. My enemy re-appeared: a screaming red mouth, a conical steel helmet, and a short swinging axe. I ducked, and felt a blow skittering across the top of my own helmet, and lunged again, slicing the spear-tip of Fidelity into his face. And I was over the wall. A quick glance to my left told me that the Marshal’s diversionary tactic had worked well, for the defenders had massed above the main gate and only now were they realizing the danger from our assault on the western wall. The man at my feet, a bloody flap of skin from his cheek swinging free, grabbed at my legs and I stamped hard on his throat with my mailed feet, crushing the larynx and leaving him choking. Beside me, left and right, the ladders were thumping against the stone walls, but enemies were coming at me along the walkway from both sides too. I went right, fumbling my shield from its straps across my back; the nearest man-at-arms swung his sword, I blocked and aimed a counter-thrust, spitting him in the belly. The enemy man-at-arms behind me shouted something and struck at me with a mace, but I managed to catch the heavy blow on my shield and, turning, I swept his legs from under him with my sword. The blood was singing in my veins, I felt the ancient glow of battle from my fingertips to my toes. Another man loosed a crossbow bolt at me, and I received it safely in the centre of my shield, took two steps towards him and sank the edge of my blade into the corner between his neck and his shoulder. And turned to look for my comrades, who should have been spilling over the walls behind me.

I was alone.

There were two dead men, in red Westbury surcoats, on the walkway behind the wall, and I could see the head of Alfred, Thomas’s mentor, poking cautiously above the twin rungs of a ladder. He was being assailed by two Milly men-at-arms at the same time – and as I watched the left-hand man split his head with a massive sword cut and he dropped away. I risked a quick glance over the wall. Two ladders remained propped against the walls, one was packed with men seemingly struggling upwards, the other only half-filled. I saw that one man was frozen halfway up. His face terrified, unable to climb the last few feet to his certain death, and behind him men were blocked from ascending by his fear. I saw a scattering of our dead and wounded in the ditch, and among them the body of Thomas, his steel helmet broken and bloodied.



A shout of pain and grief erupted from my lungs, but I had no time to mourn: my enemies were coming for me, dozens of them. And I was alone. I knew I would be united with Thomas very, very soon. The first man reached me and I dispatched him with a fast, hacking blow that opened his waist, I held off another with my shield and turned to smash the hilt of my sword into his face. I felled another with a slice to the back of the neck. There were bodies, wounded and dead, all about me. But more were coming on. The walkway held room for only two men on each side, else I would have been dead in moments; as it was, I struck and struggled against the men who rushed forward on both sides with shining blades swinging. An axe blow sliced the top corner off my shield, something clanged off my helmet and my legs wavered, but I straightened and killed the next man on pure instinct – a hard lunge through the belly. I could feel the crenellations of the wall in the small of my back, I blocked another blow, swung and cut at thin air. Something battered against my lower leg. And then I heard a voice below me shouting: ‘Out the way, out the way, you cowardly villains,’ and a volley of shouts and curses. And from the corner of my eye I saw the top of a ladder bouncing wildly. I blocked another sword strike, and hacked at a man’s head, but I caught a blow that came out of nowhere on my right arm near the shoulder – thank God for good mail. I swung feebly at a tall man in a black surcoat, missing him by a foot or more and feeling the strength draining from my sword arm, but the blow was enough to cause him to take a cautious step back.

And then William the Marshal himself tumbled breathlessly over the wall and barged his way into the fight.

That grizzled old warhorse, armed with sword and mace, dropped two men in as many moments, engaged the tall knight in black in a brief duel and smashed him unconscious with a backhand mace blow to the side of his helmet. I had recovered somewhat and managed to force back two men-at-arms to my right with a couple of wild swinging cuts. And between us, the Marshal and I managed to create enough space for another two knights to come bundling over the wall – one of them being Sir Nicholas de Scras. And from that moment onwards the castle of Milly was ours. Sir Nicholas mowed into his opponents on the left of the walkway, chopping and shoving, grunting, slicing and snarling his way inexorably forward. More of our men joined him. Once the Marshal’s knights had broken the initial resistance on the western wall, the Locksley men swarmed up the ladders at last and poured into the castle. I took no further part in the battle, collapsing exhausted on the walkway, my ears ringing and my leg and sword arm throbbing from the blows I had taken. I was also quite breathless; while I had assumed I was fit, young as I was, I had in fact taken my fitness for granted – I was not nearly in good enough wind for prolonged sword combat. Some of the Locksley men, I noticed, could not meet my eye as they passed me and charged down into the courtyard of the castle seeking out defenders to slaughter; others seemed indifferent to their shame. They were not my men, I reminded myself, but Robin’s, and they had a lesser duty to me than they would have had to their own lord. To ask a man or a group of men to risk their lives is no small thing. But I could not help feeling a sense of sadness that, as I had been away from them for so long, the bonds between us had been so loosened. Three years ago there’d have been no fearful hesitation during an escalade, no matter how dangerous, none at all.