Several men caught in the cloud completely lost their bearings. Shrieking as they thumbed at their blistered eyes, they toppled between the crenels or fell through the scaffolding. Others tripped over each other, falling and blocking the walk. Cursing them one by one, Ranulf hauled them upright and pushed them on towards the southeast tower. When the way was clear, he tore a strip from his tabard and bound it over his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he entered the burning fog, working hand over hand along the shattered teeth of the battlements. When he found Gurt, who was lying prone and shuddering, he hauled him backward.
Gurt had been wounded by flying splinters; blood oozed from his cheeks and even through the links of his mail, but he'd reacted swiftly enough to the quicklime to put a hand over his eyes.
'D-dear Lord,' he stammered, swaying to his feet. 'What do… what do we face here?'
'Go through the southeast tower,' Ranulf said, stripping the bandage from his own eyes, but blinking hot, peppery tears. 'Find a new post on the east wall.'
Gurt nodded dumbly, hobbling away.
'You go too,' Ulbert said, appearing from nowhere. 'I'll form this rearguard alone.'
Ranulf was startled. 'Alone?'
'One man on a narrow parapet is as good as ten.'
'Let me do it. I'm younger.'
'You have much to live for.'
'And you haven't?'
'Don't dispute with me, Ranulf.'
'So this is finally it, father? This is the honourable fight you've been waiting for? The fight that will kill you?'
Ulbert smiled and shook his head. 'This fight will kill us all in due course. Haven't you realised that? Go. The more of us gather here, the easier targets we are for the mangonels.'
Ranulf retreated towards the southeast tower. 'I'll wait for you on the east wall,' he shouted.
'Forget the east wall,' Ulbert said over his shoulder. 'Forget the north wall as well. With the bailey penetrated, the whole outer curtain's defunct. Get what's left of the men and cross the gantry bridge to the Gatehouse. That may still be defensible.'
'Very well, but don't delay. You only need to buy us five minutes.'
'I can manage a little longer than that,' Ulbert said.
Ranulf peered at his father's back. The rear of Ulbert's handsome red and blue quartered mantel was cleaner than its front — a sure and perhaps disconcerting sign that this was one seigneur who rarely ran from the enemy. As if in confirmation, Ulbert unbuckled his sword-belt and unsheathed his blade.
'Five minutes is all we need,' Ranulf called to him. 'Your word you won't tarry any longer?'
Ulbert looked back and smiled — and it was a warm smile, the first one Ranulf had seen from his father for a considerable time.
'My word and my pledge, boy.'
Ranulf moved on, herding the remaining defenders ahead of him.
'Which, as they were given under duress,' Ulbert added to himself, 'mean nothing. Ranulf! '
Ranulf, about to enter the southeast tower, glanced back one more time.
'Be true to your heart, lad,' Ulbert said, staring at him intently. 'In the end, when all has come to pass, it'll be the only thing you can trust.'
Ranulf swallowed, before nodding and moving on.
Ulbert slammed his visor down, hefted his sword and shield, and advanced alone. The quicklime was settling and, just ahead of him now, the dead emerged through it, their forms shrouded with white. The first one had smashed hips and walked at a crazy tilt. Only its gaping red maw revealed that it was made from flesh and blood. Formerly a rood-worker, it wielded a hand-scythe.
Ulbert charged at it.
' Notre dame!' he roared.
He parried its first blow, and swept its head from its trunk with a single crosscut. It flailed at him with the scythe, but he drove it backward with his shield until it lost its footing and fell through the scaffolding. The next one lunged with a spear. He hewed the shaft, and rammed his blade through its groin — so deeply that he couldn't retrieve it. It went for his throat, but he knocked its hands loose, drew his falchion and stove its skull. It remained standing, so he kicked at it hard, breaking its right knee with his mailed foot; it tottered sideways and again fell through the scaffolding. The third came barehanded, arms spread wide as though to clasp him in a bear-hug. Again he advanced behind his shield, driving it towards the crenels, finally tipping it through the first embrasure. The fourth one, an eyeless, jawless hulk, was equipped with an axe. It smote him on the right shoulder. His mail turned the blade, but the impact was agonising — Ulbert knew immediately that his shoulder was broken. He staggered out of its way, having to drop his shield.
There was a brazier filled with glowing coals to his left. He hurled it at them to delay their advance. The eyeless horror wore a tattered habit, possibly it had once been a monk or friar. It raised the axe over its head, but now the hem of its habit caught flame. Fire licked up its legs and torso, diverting its attention. Ulbert darted forward, plunging the falchion into its chest, grappling with it, lifting it bodily despite the flames, which enveloped him as well and scorched him through his mail, and dropping it over the parapet.
Exhausted and unarmed, he retreated. A quick glance took in the entrance to the southeast tower, thirty yards behind him. It was cramped and chaotic in there — all the south wall defenders had passed through it, but now the archers from the tower's upper levels and roof were flowing down the spiral stair to join the retreat. More time was needed.
Ulbert swung back around, his right arm hanging limp and useless. Lime-slathered corpses loomed towards him. The first, which wore mail but no helmet, had been split from its cranium to the tip of its chin. Both hemispheres of its riven head hung outwards, the eyes several inches apart, the nose entirely divided, only strands of pinkish mucus linking the two halves together. It brandished a spiked club.
Ulbert grabbed an abandoned shield. It was kite-shaped and cumbersome. With his injury it was difficult to manage, and all he could do was raise it as high as possible and try to fend off a series of frenzied blows. Sickening pain spread from his shoulder, filling his aged, tired body, each jolt making it worse. Alongside the club-wielder, a naked woman had appeared with a heavy stone, though she was recognisable as female only by her shrivelled sex organs. In truth she was a thing of sticks, a withered framework to which scarcely a vestige of flesh was attached. With demonic shrieks, she also struck at the shield.
For a brief time her very ghastliness gave Ulbert new heart. These were genuine devils, he realised — denizens of the pit. All his years in the service of self-interested noblemen might now be assuaged. The villages he'd burned, the crops he'd trampled, the livestock he'd stolen, and the many enemies he'd viciously slain who of course were only enemies to Ulbert and Ranulf because the likes of Earl Corotocus had proclaimed them so. And then the Welsh — who they'd hanged and butchered and driven from a land to which their bloodline entitled them more than any number of charters or benefices ever could.
'Nothing I have done in my life is worthy of the title 'knight',' Ulbert grunted as he retreated, the club and stone smashing repeatedly on his shield. 'I have failed my wife, my son, my family name and, above all, myself.'
His shield flew to splinters. He grabbed up a javelin and hurled it. It buried itself in the chest of the club- wielder, who staggered backward. The fleshless woman came on regardless. Ulbert took her next blow on his forearm, before slamming his mailed fist into her face, crushing her features as if they were carved in turnip flesh. As she swung another blow, he ducked, caught her in the midriff with his injured shoulder and raised her up — though the pain this induced was indescribable. He dropped her through a gap between the crenels, dizzied, almost falling after her. For a second he hung there, gasping. Lifting his visor, he gazed down the burned, blood-streaked wall to the berm, now a forest of arms and heads and raised blades. The howls and shrieks of the damned rose in a hellish dirge.
'I have reneged on my duties to the weak,' he cried, 'to the poor, to women, to my fellow countrymen, my fellow Christians, and undoubtedly… to God! But all this will be well…'
An arm hooked around his neck, and tried to yank him backward. He jerked himself forward, flipping his assailant over his shoulder. As it fell from sight, he stumbled around. Claws clamped on his throat and attempted to throttle him. They belonged to a gangling thing that was black with rot and clad only in a leather apron soaked with
