call to surrender? I see no need, and good reason against it.”
So did Hugh. Why give away the weapon of surprise, if indeed they had managed to spread their archers and men-at-arms round the meager crescent of cover without being observed. If they could get even halfway to the walls before the archers sprang into concerted action along the guard-walk, they could save lives.
“No. These men have done pillage, violence, and murder without mercy, I need give them nothing. Let’s dispose our forces to the best advantage, and then have at them before they’re ‘ware.”
His bowmen had distributed all round the crescent. His men afoot in three groups were spaced along the rim, and his handful of mounted men in two groups between, to converge on the gate and break their way in, to make a way for the following footmen.
There was a stillness when all was ready, before Hugh, from his place as spear-head of one mounted party, spurred forward and raised his arm for the onset. He from the left and Dinan from the right burst out from cover and charged for the gate, the footmen pouring after them. The bowmen in the edge of the trees loosed one volley together, and then drew and shot at will, watching for any head that appeared above the stockade. Cadfael, left behind with the archers, marveled that the attack could begin almost in silence but for the thudding of hooves, and even that muffled by the snow. The next moment there was uproar within the walls, a frantic scrambling of men to the loopholes, and then an answering hail of arrows. But that first charge had almost succeeded, for the gate had been unbarred, and by the time the guards had clapped it to, Hugh and Dinan and five or six more were under the wall, hidden from the defenders within, and heaving with all their might to burst into the bailey.
Within, men swarmed to hold the gate closed and bar it securely, and the din of shouted orders and confused movements washed back and forth like storm-water in a foundering ship. The stout gate was ajar, quivering, and the running foot soldiers flung themselves into the human ram to hurl it wide and break into the bailey.
From high above their heads a great voice suddenly bellowed like thunder: “Hold, you below! King’s men or whatever you be, stand, and look up here! Look, I say! Put up and quit my gates, or take this infant carrion with you!”
All heads within and without the gate came up with a jerk to stare at the top of the tower, and on both sides archers froze with bows drawn, and lance and sword were lowered. Between two of the crude timber merlons of the parapet Yves stood balanced, held by a great hand gripping his clothes in the small of the back, and over the merlon beside him leaned a raging, bristling head, tawny gold, long hair and beard streaming in a capricious wind that could hardly be felt below. A mailed hand held a naked dagger at the boy’s throat.
“You see him?” roared the lion, glaring down with eyes fire-gold with fury. “You want him? Living? Then draw off! Haul off out of range, out of sight, or I cut his throat now and throw him down.”
Hugh stood holding the sword he had drawn to probe through the yielding chink of the gate, and stared up with a white, fixed face. Yves was stiff as a beam of wood, looking neither down nor up, but straight before him at empty sky. He never made a sound.
“I do not know you, sir,” said Hugh, carefully and low, “but I am the king’s man here, and I say to you, you have now no refuge, here or anywhere. Harm him, and I will be your death. Be advised. Come down, yield yourself and all these your men and trust to find some mercy that way, for otherwise there is none.”
“And I say to you, king’s man, take your rabble out of my sight, now, without argument, or you may have this piglet, bled ready for eating. Now, I say! Turn and go! Shall I show you?” The point of the dagger pricked, in the clear air they saw the little bubble of blood that grew, and burst, and slid down in a fine thread.
Hugh clapped his sword into the scabbard without another word, mounted and wheeled his horse, and waved all his men back from the stockade, back into the trees, back out of sight. Behind him he heard vast laughter that still resembled the hungry roar of a hunting lion.
Archers and all had shrunk far back to be invisible, watching that threat. They drew together in stunned silence, down among the trees. This was deadlock indeed. They knew they dared not advance, and that resplendent wild beast in the tower knew just as surely that they would not depart.
“But I know him, if you do not,” said Josce de Dinan. “A by-blow of the Lacy clan by a younger son of the house. His brother the right side the sheets, after the father married, is a tenant of mine. This one served in France some years, for Normandy against Anjou. They call him Alain le Gaucher, because he’s left-handed.”
Even those who had seen the man now for the first time needed no reminders. It was the left hand that had held the dagger against the boy’s throat, and turned the point quite coldly to pierce the skin.
Yves felt himself hoisted by the small of his back, in the fist that gripped the fullness of his clothes and bruised his spine with hard knuckles, and dumped hard upon his feet on the timbers of the roof. The jarring shock ran up from his heels to his head, and shook his eyes wide open. He had been so intent upon uttering no sound that he had bitten his tongue, the blood ran warm within his lower lip. He swallowed it, and braced his quaking feet into the planks under him. The thin thread of blood trickling down his neck from the prick of the dagger hardly troubled him, and was already drying.
He had never yet been so frightened, as he had never been so rough-handled, suddenly plucked erect by the neck, hauled up confusing staircases in the dark, windowless bulk of the tower, finally dragged up a last vertical ladder and through a heavy trap to the dazzle of daylight on the roof. The lion’s voice had roared in his ears, the lion’s own fist had hoisted him to the parapet, with a furious lunge that might well have hurled him over. By instinct he had held his tongue, and made no sound. Now, suddenly released, he felt his knees give way under him, and stiffened them indignantly. He still had not uttered word or cry. He held that thought to him like an accolade, and stood doggedly waiting for the pounding of his heart to ease. It was an achievement that he stood erect at all.
Alain le Gaucher stood with hands spread along the merlons, grimly watching the besiegers draw off into the gully. The three of his men who had followed him aloft here stood waiting for his orders. So did Yves, bracing himself not to quail when the thick, powerful body swung round on him, and the fiery eyes hung on him with calculating intensity.
“So the brat has his value still, if not in money! Good reason to hold him fast, we may have to make further use of him to the same end. Oh, they’ll not go far out of sight, I know?not yet, not until they’ve tried every roundabout way they can find, and been baulked at every attempt by a small knife at a small piglet’s throat. Now we know they’ll dance to our tune. Imp, you may yet be worth an army to us.”
Yves found no comfort in that. They would not even seek a ransom for him, his value as a hostage being far higher, now that their fortress was known. They could not hide it again, and enjoy the secrecy of their night exploits by wiping out every witness, as before. But for some while, at least, they could go on repeating the threat to kill their prisoner, perhaps even bargain with his life for freedom to march out unchallenged and resume their activities elsewhere. But no, Hugh Beringar would not so tamely give up, nor would he leave a hostage in such hands a moment longer than he must He would find some way, short of frontal assault, of breaking into this lair. Yves did his best to believe that, and kept his face expressionless and his mouth shut.
