mud, where he was unable to use his sword. He unsheathed his dagger again, but it was wrested from his grasp. He hammered at them with his gloved fists, but it made no difference. Fleetingly, a face peered into his that was little more than raddled parchment; its nose was a fleshless cavity, its eyes shrunken orbs rolling in bone sockets.
On the wagon meanwhile, both Hugo d'Avranches and Brother Ignatius were rooted to their bench. They pivoted around, helpless to move or say anything.
'They can't die!' a man-at-arms screamed as he went haring past. He made it several yards into the trees before he was bludgeoned with a knobbly branch. He sank to his knees, only to be overwhelmed by more dark, stumbling figures.
Ignatius shook his head dumbly. He didn't know what he was going to do. He didn't know what he could do. But then a weight fell on him from behind. A ragged shape had scaled onto the back of the wagon and scrambled over its canvas-covered cargo. The sheer weight of it bore him from the bench and into the mire.
As a rule, Ignatius didn't like to fight. He felt it incompatible with his vocation. But as scribe and accountant to a professional soldier, it was impossible to avoid the occasional confrontation. He'd prefer not to be wearing mail over his black burel; he'd prefer not to be carrying the cudgel, the round-headed iron club by which clergymen were permitted to wage war. But he was glad of both now. The thing that had him down was cloaked by darkness, though a sickening reek poured off it. It ripped at his throat with bare hands that were slimy and flabby. He kicked at it, making good contact, though of course this was with a sandaled foot rather than a boot or sabaton, and the assailant would not be deterred. Ignatius grabbed the cudgel from his belt and smashed it across his foe's skull, which flew sideways at an angle that surely betokened a broken neck. The thing's grasp was weakened and Ignatius was able to push it off and scramble up.
It was still too dark to see what was happening. Strangely, there was no clangour of blade on blade or blade on shield, but the woods were filled with gruff shouts and agonised shrieks, and always that eerie dirge of moans and mewls.
Stammering the Act of Contrition, Ignatius tried to climb back onto the cart, only for a hand to catch his mail collar and yank him backward. He fell again into the mire. He couldn't see his attackers properly, though they were ragged and wet and stank to high Heaven. The skirts of his robe had flown up and, though he always wore under- garb in winter, this was made of thin linen and was easily torn aside. The next thing he knew, a hand that was hard like wood but as strong as an eagle's talon had gripped his genitals. Ignatius screamed in outrage, but another of them fell on top of him, smothering him with a torso that was like sticks under rotted leather.
Teeth snapped closed on his manhood like the jaws of a steel trap.
Ignatius's shrill squeal, as his maleness was torn from its root, pierced the night. Such pain and horror briefly gave him new strength, and he was able to throw off the figure smothering him, only to see that yet another was standing astride him, silhouetted by the moon. With skeletal arms it raised a heavy stone above its wizened head, and slammed it down onto his face. Blow after mighty blow crushed the monk's youthful features, flattening his tonsured skull until a hideous porridge of blood and brains oozed from his eyes, ears and nostrils.
On the other side of the wagon, Guiscard, caked in mud and filth, was being rent slowly apart. His mail had protected him to some extent, but now they lay on him in a heap, gnawing at his scalp, numerous pairs of claws trying to throttle him. Only with Herculean efforts, did he throw a couple of them off, and kick himself around in a circle to try and scramble back to his feet — but that was when the wagon began to move. On the driving bench, d'Avranches, white-faced with shock, was snapping the reins like a madman. Unnerved by the pandemonium, the horses ploughed forward, the wagon's heavy wheel passing over Guiscard's right leg. Bones exploded as the limb was crushed. Guiscard's ululation was deafening, but d'Avranches didn't hear it. He kept on snapping the reins.
All Guiscard's other cuts and sprains sank to insignificance as he rolled in the treacle of blood, mud and brains. He barely responded as his assailants swarmed back over him, fleshless fingers pinching his tongue, trying to rend it from his mouth, a stinking maw clamping on the side of his face and, with a vicious jerk, gouging out his left eye.
D'Avranches himself didn't get far. The wagon rolled perhaps ten yards before running into deep ruts. For all his whipping and cursing the animals, and for all their strenuous efforts, they made no further progress. Drawing his sword, the aged knight jumped down, but immediately turned an ankle and fell on his blade, snapping it in two. He clambered back to his feet, managing to draw his mattock and bury it in the skull of a figure lurching towards him. It tottered away, taking the mattock with it. D'Avranches's ankle-joint was on fire, but the urge to survive numbed it just enough for him to stumble off along the road. The pole-lantern was still planted a few yards ahead. The point- soldier who'd been felled lay next to it, his crimson innards scattered around him. Those responsible had moved on to attack the wagon train, but of course there were others — many others. D'Avranches hadn't reached the light before he sensed their contorted shadows skulking from the undergrowth to either side, tottering onto the road ahead.
Sweat-soaked and gasping for breath, he halted beside the light. He stared around, but from every direction they were pressing towards him.
He puffed out his chest and thrust back his shoulders. He might have run a few paces when panic overtook him, he might have left his comrades to die, but now he was about to die himself, and he would meet the challenge resolutely — as he'd always been determined to. He drew his final weapon, a small crossbow. Cranking the string back and fitting a dart onto the stock, he took aim. Though aged and corpulent, with legs bandied beneath his immense gut, Hugo d'Avranches was still a knight in the service of Earl Corotocus of Clun and King Edward of England, and he would make sure these rapscallions knew that.
But when they came into the light, it was a different story.
When he saw their cloven skulls, their smashed jaws and eyeless sockets, the clotted brains that caked their blue-green faces, the ribs showing through their worm-eaten rags — his courage failed him.
They were inches away from falling upon him when d'Avranches placed the crossbow at his left temple, and shot its lethal dart deep into his own head.
CHAPTER NINE
Ranulf was in the castle kitchen, with a hunk of bread under one arm and a bowl in his hands, when Hugh du Guesculin caught up with him. After the events of the last few days, Ranulf wasn't particularly hungry, but he now had a full night's watch duty ahead and knew that he had to get something into his belly. In addition, the game broth, which Otto, the earl's corpulent Brabancon cook, now ladled into his bowl from a huge, steaming pot, smelled delicious.
'I've been looking for you,' du Guesculin said.
Ranulf didn't at first respond, even though, with nobody else in the kitchen, du Guesculin could hardly have been addressing anyone else.
'FitzOsbern, I said…'
'I hear you,' Ranulf said, picking up a spoon.
Du Guesculin smiled in that usual self-satisfied way of his. Stripped of his mail, he now wore comfortable clothes: green hose and a hooded green tunic, with long, unbuttoned sleeves. He had donned a dagger at his belt in place of his sword. He'd even brushed his bobbed black hair and clipped his short moustache; all the more remarkable given that he was sharing the earl's spartan accommodation in the Constable's Tower.
'I hear you've formed quite an attachment to our prisoner?' he said.
Ranulf shrugged. 'Then you hear wrongly.'
'Ahhh… so you object to being replaced as her personal jailer because you deemed that an easier tour of duty than standing sentry on these walls?'
'At least I'd be out of the weather.' Ranulf made to move through the archway into the refectory, but du Guesculin stepped into his path.
'Except that I don't believe a word of it, FitzOsbern.'
Ranulf feigned shock. 'You don't?'
'I believe that you feel sorry for the girl, or guilty about the way she's been treated, and are now concerned
