joined in fervent prayer. Tears still streaked her pale cheeks.
'Countess,' he said slowly, 'might I remind you… the Cauldron of Regeneration, for all that it calls on great and unknown forces, does not signify the conquest of death.'
'No, Gwyddon, it doesn't.' She was breathing slowly, heavily. Her brow was damp with perspiration, her eyes red with weeping. 'It signifies the conquest of life, and all that is fine and sweet and good in this world.'
'Countess, we can live our fine, sweet lives when the enemy is destroyed. But to do that we need soldiers. And I have provided you with an inexhaustible supply.'
'Leave me, Gwyddon.' She went back to her prayers, but the druid did not leave. He rubbed at his beard.
'Tell me, ma-am, did your Jesus Christ not rise from the dead to show your people the way?'
'How dare you!' She whirled around. 'How dare you mention our Saviour's name in this place! You are a necromancer, sir. This thing you have made is a pact with Satan, for which I fear I will pay with my immortal soul.'
'Even if that were true, isn't it a price worth paying when so many others will be saved?'
She struggled to reply. It was difficult to counter this point even if she'd wanted to.
Ever since the Normans had captured England, progressively more Welsh land had fallen under their sway — either as punitive official policy or through the ruthless intrusion of the marcher lords. When they hadn't been seizing titles and territory, the Anglo-Norman barons had hatched schemes and offered bribes, stirring dissent, playing the Welsh princes against each other. Always, they'd sought new ways to encroach. Until at last, Edward Longshanks — the mightiest of all England's mighty warrior-kings — had proclaimed suzerainty over the entire realm, crushing the Welsh in all-out battle, then invoking English law and English custom. Castles like Grogen had been built to strangle the nation, not protect it. So the time for talking had passed — the most recent atrocities had surely proved this. The only solution was to fight. But fight with what? England was an empire and Wales had nothing.
'The destruction of Earl Corotocus and his murderous henchmen is the only response you can give,' Gwyddon said. 'It will signal that the sons and daughters of Wales are no longer English chattels, and that to make war on the Cymry is to invite annihilation.'
'Annihilation, Gwyddon, is what I see all around me. I beg your pardon if it turns my stomach.' She switched her attention back to her crucifix, rejoining her hands in prayer.
Before leaving, Gwyddon said: 'I think you need to rest now, my lady. Your distress is quite understandable. War is indeed hell, and this one is no exception. But there is one thing about this war that will mark it out from all the others — it will be short.'
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The assault on the castle was now two-pronged.
A tide of the dead again forged across the southwest bridge and attempted to circle the stronghold via the berm path. At the same time, with the defenders having abandoned the Barbican, the attackers were able to catapult more and more of their soldiers over that blood-soaked northwest rampart. For every ten of these launched, five or six would be crushed by the impact of landing — often to the point where they were unable to stand — so even after several volleys of corpses had been discharged, only a relative handful, maybe twenty in total, were capable of continuing the assault. But this handful proved to be much more than just a thorn in the defending garrison's side.
With the roof hatches to the Gatehouse sealed, the Welsh corpses stumped through the postern and down the Barbican stair into the bailey. Here they met a few wounded stragglers who'd retreated without orders from the south curtain-wall, and tore them to pieces. Advancing past the Constable's Tower, they were deluged by more missiles, but bore through it without loss, as their comrades had done outside, and entered the southwest tower by its ground floor door. The ballista crews were too preoccupied trying to rain destruction onto the hordes of cadavers crossing the southwest bridge to notice. Only when blades or clubs fell on their backs or heads, or fleshless claws wrapped around their necks from behind did they realise the danger. Their gasps and grunts of effort became screams of fear and rage. They fought back with their spanners and mallets and knives, but the snarling dead fell on them with bestial fury.
The ballista rooms turned to abattoirs as their occupants were mauled and clubbed and hacked to death. The interlopers then climbed to those higher levels manned by the royal crossbowmen. Bryon Musard shrieked orders with froth-flecked lips as the dead clambered into view. They were assailed with every type of implement, but, already raddled beyond recognition as human beings, it made no difference to them. Hatchets clove their skulls, crossbows were discharged into their faces from point-blank range — and didn't so much as hamper them. Bryon Musard died as the bolt he'd just let loose was yanked from the throat of his target, and plunged to its feathers into his right eye. Others were strangled with their own bowstrings, or beaten with their own helmets until their heads and faces were black and purple jelly.
On the topmost turret of the tower, the bowmen, having recovered jugs and pots left by the drunken Bretons, had made naptha grenades. They lit these and flung them down through the hatches as the dead tried to ascend. Smoke and flame exploded upward, but still the dead came. Blazing from head to foot, they continued the fight, slashing the screaming crossbowmen with burning claws, embracing them in their flaming arms, falling over the battlements with them.
With the southwest tower and the ballistae lost to the English, the dead now thronged over the southwest bridge unimpeded. The berm was cluttered with rubble and charred bones, but they proceeded along it at speed. The English on the curtain-wall attacked them with whatever they could, but still had no shelter from the mangonels across the river, and now faced a new danger: on top of the southwest tower, the dead took possession of discarded crossbows and began discharging them. At the same time, those dead who had infiltrated the bailey began to scale the scaffolding or file onto the curtain-wall from the door on the southwest tower.
The troops on the south wall, mainly comprising men-at-arms and the earl's indebted knights, were made of doughtier stuff than the crossbowmen, but were unused to a foe like this. When Ulbert and Ranulf arrived there, having circled around the north and east-facing curtain-walls, they found a scene of total disorder. Wounded men staggered towards them along the parapet, stumbling through a wreckage of broken bodies and smashed timber hoardings. Even as Ranulf and Ulbert watched, three more projectiles came hurtling across the river. These were the so-called devil's sachets, each linen sack bursting in mid-air, raining colossal slaughter on the fleeing defenders.
'Move onto the east wall and the north walls,' Ranulf shouted as men pushed past him. 'Take up new positions. The mangonels can't reach you there.
'It isn't just the mangonels, FitzOsbern!' Walter Margas shouted, pointing behind him. 'Look!'
The dead from the southwest tower were now half way along the south wall, shepherding the panicked defenders ahead of them. They were led by a particularly huge and horrible specimen. It was clad only in a ragged, muddy shift, which came down to its knees. Its bearded face was a sickly yellow. Black rings circled its sunken eyes. An odious red-grey gruel flowed from its flattened nose.
One after another, it grabbed any defender it could and flung him howling over the rampart. A longbow shaft slanted down from the southeast tower. It struck the monster squarely in the chest, but had no effect. Gurt Louvain moved to meet it. Ranulf shouted a warning and shoved his way forward, his father following him.
At first things went well for Gurt. He engaged the gigantic brute fearlessly and, with deft strokes of his longsword, cut off one of its hands and clove through its left knee. The monster struggled to retain its balance. Gurt slammed his shield into its head, but it wrestled the shield from his grasp and struck him with its stump. Gurt staggered backward, tripping over a piece of masonry. The thing lurched after him, intent on slamming the shield edge-down onto his body — only to fall victim to its own side's artillery. Two more barrages of rocks came whistling over the crenels. The one-handed brute, and several corpses behind it, were struck full on and thrown down through the scaffolding. A second later, a sack of quicklime followed, exploding in a choking, blinding cloud, which engulfed much of the central wall and many defenders, including Gurt.
'Gurt!' Ranulf shouted, still blundering forward.
