Stronghold

'Sing one for the Welsh first,' Corotocus advised him. 'I'll soon be sending a hundred-score of them to God's hall of judgement.

But if the Welsh were daunted by the sight of the rearmed stronghold, there was no sign. In fact, Ranulf didn't think he'd ever seen as quiet or composed an enemy. Only as the noise of the English activity — the clanking of mail-clad feet on steps and walkways, the clinking of hammers, the rattling of chains, the shouting and the banging and bolting of iron doors — faded, did he realise that no sound at all issued from the vast army outside, except perhaps for a distant low moaning, which more likely was the wind hissing on the wild Welsh moors. There was no beating of drums, no blasting of horns, no guttural roars as the various companies psyched themselves up for combat. Yet neither did he think he'd ever seen so drab a band. He didn't expect glorious heraldry, but few banners or standards flew. The predominant colours were greys and browns; many of the enemy sported nothing more than filthy rags. And, of course, there was that foul fetor, which had got steadily thicker until it now seemed to have settled over the castle in a malodorous shroud.

'How many of them, would you say?' Gurt wondered. 'Ten thousand?'

'Even ten thousand wouldn't normally be enough to assail a fortress like this,' Ranulf replied. 'But…'

'But?'

Ranulf couldn't explain.

'Don't worry, I know,' Gurt said. 'Sometimes emotion alone will win the day. You can only tyrannise a population so much before it turns on you like a tiger.'

'Are you a student of treason as well, Master Louvain?' Walter Margas wondered, walking past them towards the nearest ladder. Despite his age and world-weariness, he was still an efficient eavesdropper. 'You two are made for each other. You should get a room in a tavern sometime where you can whimper your sedition together.'

'Are you leaving us, Walter?' Ranulf asked. 'Surely not? Not when the battle's just about to start?'

Margas's wizened cheeks coloured. 'Perhaps you'd rather I defecated up here on the parapet?'

'I'd rather you got back to your post. You can drop your guts with everyone else, when the fighting's over.'

'Are you calling my courage into question, sirrah?'

'You were very active on the River Ogryn, as I recall. Riding against unarmed footmen. These odds are less to your fancy, I take it?'

Margas's lips tightened with rage. 'When this is over, FitzOsbern, I'll report you both to the earl. You'll find he takes a dim view of those who spread defeatism.'

'If you're hiding in the privy, how will you know when it's over?' Gurt asked.

Margas was visibly furious. Spittle leaked into his unkempt beard — but there was nothing else he could do. Aware that others were listening and watching, he trudged back along the wall to his post.

'Useless sack of puke,' Gurt said under his breath.

'He likes his cowardly butchers, does Earl Corotocus,' Ranulf added.

'If you gentlemen would concentrate on the day,' Ulbert interrupted them, 'I'd be obliged. There's movement afoot.'

To the west, large numbers of the Welsh host were suddenly shambling — shambling was the only word Ranulf could think of — down the bluff towards the southwest bridge. There was nothing military about it. They descended in a mob, stumbling, jostling each other. In appearance they were lambs to the slaughter, for they marched neither behind shields nor beneath a protective barrage of missiles.

On the Constable's Tower, Navarre laughed.

'This is going to be too easy, my lord.'

Corotocus said nothing, but watched carefully.

The southwest bridge was extremely narrow, and had neither barriers nor fences on either side of it. It had been constructed this way deliberately so that visitors to the castle — whether welcome or unwelcome — could only file across it two at a time, and all the way would be in danger of falling off. The southwest tower, which directly overlooked it, didn't just contain the ballistae, but had been allocated to the crossbowmen, and these were the first to strike. Their bolts began slanting down. The rest of the defenders watched expectantly for the Welsh to start dropping, and for a resulting pile-up of bodies as those behind tripped over them. But this didn't happen. The Welsh crammed onto the bridge regardless of the deadly rain.

'They call themselves 'royal archers'?' Gurt said. 'They haven't hit a damn thing!'

Ranulf was equally confused. The king's crossbowmen were supposedly elite troops, highly disciplined and skilled.

'Village bumpkins couldn't miss from that range,' Ulbert said.

The downward slope of the bluff was log-jammed with figures, all pushing mindlessly forward. They were hardly difficult to hit. The crossbows in the southwest tower were now joined by longbows stationed further along the curtain-wall, these too in the hands of expert marksmen from the royal house. Sleek shafts glittered through the noon sunlight as they sped from on high, though no obvious carnage resulted. However, it was soon clear that they actually were striking their targets, as indeed were the crossbow bolts — but the targets kept on coming. The first few had reached the other side of the bridge and were on the berm, at the very foot of the southwest tower. Those defenders at that part of the castle marvelled that there seemed to be women among them. Not only that, but a lot of the Welsh were already bloodied, in some cases heavily as though from severe wounds. Bewilderment and fear spread among the English. Several of the Welsh visibly bore the broken shafts of arrows. One half-naked fellow appeared to have been transfixed through the chest, yet still he hobbled over the bridge.

On the Constable's Tower they could do little more than shout encouragement to their bowmen, but they too were baffled by what they were seeing.

'They must be better armoured than they appeared to be,' Navarre said.

Corotocus didn't respond. His heavier weapons now spoke for him, the polybolas projecting their terrible four-foot missiles, the archery machines unleashing showers of arrows, the shafts of which rattled onto the stonework of the bridge, riddling those figures caught in their path.

The effects were satisfyingly ghastly. With their bodkin points and wide, fin-like blades, the ballista bolts drove clean across the bridge into the massed throng on the other side, ploughing bloody alleyways. There were roars of delight from the castle walls. For a brief second the bridge was no longer crowded — ten or twenty figures had pitched over the side into the moat, falling thirty feet onto the rocks below. Some remained on the bridge, but had been felled where they stood. Yet it wasn't long before this latter group got back to their feet, despite their horrendous wounds. One's head had hinged backward, hanging by threads of sinew. Another had been sheared through the left thigh — incredibly, almost comically, he recommenced his advance by hopping. The laughter slowly died on the castle walls. Even the archery seemed to falter in intensity. Ranulf's hair prickled as he sighted one fellow coming off the bridge who looked to have been pierced by an arrow clean through his skull.

Inside the southwest tower, it was a chaos of dust, sweat and flaring candle-light as the ballista serjeants bawled at their crews to work harder. Frantic efforts were made as magazines were spent and new ones fitted onto the sliders, as winches were worked to ratchet the catgut bowstrings back into position. With repeated, ear-dulling bangs, each new missile was unleashed as soon as it could be placed. There was no attempt to aim. Because of the angle of vent in the tower wall, the projectiles were always shot cleanly onto the bridge. And again they wrought horrible carnage, slicing figures in half, gutting them where they stood. One bolt hurtled across in a black blur, pinioning a Welshman through the midriff, carrying him with it, pinioning another, carrying him, and even pinioning a third — three men like fish flopping on a spear — before it plunged into the midst of their countrymen on the far side. The archery machines sewed the ground on both sides of the bridge with arrows. Countless more Welsh were caught in this relentless fusillade, many of them hit multiple times — through the arms, through the body, through the legs — and yet still, though reduced to limping, seesawing wrecks, they proceeded across.

'This is not possible,' Gurt shouted. 'There should be a carpet of corpses by now. I don't see a single bloody one!'

On the Constable's Tower, Earl Corotocus summoned a nervous squire.

'Take a message to Captain Musard in the southwest tower, boy. Tell him that, Familiaris Regis or not, if he and his men don't start killing these brainless oafs, I'll send them outside with sticks and stones to see if they can do a better job that way.'

When the message was delivered, the bombardment on the bridge intensified. The air whistled with goose-