Stronghold

knifed him in the heart.

Beyond the stockade, there was no immediate response from the dead, who still lay motionless in the undergrowth. But several dozen yards to his right, behind a wall of black and twisting trees, flames were blazing into the night. A great mechanical outline, with a huge throwing-arm, was engulfed in fire. There were more wild shouts. Some were gruff, some sounded panicked. A half-naked figure came weaving between the trunks, stumbling over corpses. It was Tallebois, the squire.

Ranulf dashed to intercept him, grabbing his arm and bringing him to a halt. The squire squawked with fright.

'What happened?' Ranulf demanded.

'We found the scoop-thrower. We brought coals from the campfire and piled straw beneath it. Now the whole thing's burning. We cut its torsion springs as well, broke its winch and pulley-bar. They'll never use it again.' Tallebois laughed hysterically.

'FitzOsbern, where the devil have you been?' came an angry voice.

Garbofasse lumbered into view, with the others at his heels. He was slick with sweat, his pale flesh shining between streaks of soot and grease.

'I tried to find the countess,' Ranulf said. 'How ineffective would the Welsh snake be with its head removed as well as its sting?'

'And?'

'She's around here somewhere, but now there's no time.'

As he said this, a terrible voice sounded through the trees to their rear. Ranulf recognised it as Gwyddon's. The druid was chanting discordantly, intoning some hideous spell. As one, the corpses strewed between the trees began to stir, to shudder, to twitch.

'Dear God!' Tallebois screamed.

'Back to the castle!' Garbofasse shouted.

'We'll never make it across the moor,' Ranulf said, ushering them downhill rather than back along the bluff. 'Head for the river.'

'The river?'

'Do as I say!'

But on all sides, grotesque figures were rising quickly to their feet. Paston, standing further away from the others, squealed like a calf as an axe clove his skull from behind.

'This way!' Ranulf bellowed, racing downhill.

The others followed, pell-mell. But it was a chaotic flight. They tripped over roots or were clawed at by spectral shapes emerging from the mist on either side. Garbofasse fell heavily, injuring his knee. Ranulf stopped and turned as the others ran ahead.

'Go!' Garbofasse cried, hobbling back to his feet. 'Get away!' He was already hemmed in by mewling figures, so he picked up a longsword and swept it at them with both hands. Two went down, sundered at the waist, but a third, fourth and fifth were soon on top of him. 'Go!' he shrieked again, wrestling with them as they snapped at him with their foul teeth.

He managed to invert one and drop it on the top of its head. Another, he ran through with the sword, though it still lunged at him. More joined the fray, bearing him to the muddy ground.

'Go!' was the last thing Ranulf heard the mercenary captain say, though it became high-pitched and incoherent as his larynx was bitten through.

Ranulf ran on down the hill, striking on all sides with sword and dagger. The others were already much further ahead. Even Red Guthric, personally bonded to Garbofasse, scrambled down the slope without looking back — until he too fell. A corpse had dropped on him from a tree. It was a naked stick figure, its skin hanging in empty folds, but it had sufficient strength to knock him to his knees, whereupon it clamped its teeth on the nape of his neck. Ranulf galloped alongside and drove his dagger so deeply between its ribs that its blade was wedged there. The spindly monster dropped Red Guthric and rounded on Ranulf. He slammed his curved sword through the middle of its chest, entirely transfixing it, but still it tried to grapple with him. Leaving both his weapons behind, Ranulf stepped away, stumbling on downhill. Red Guthric was back on his feet and came as well, but on wobbling legs. When another form blundered into his path — this one a bloated mass of swollen, purple flesh — and wrapped him in a bear-hug, he was unable to resist. Helpless, barely able to scream, Guthric was raised and broken across the monster's knee like a plank.

Ranulf ran on. FitzUrz and Tallebois were just ahead but, as the moon slipped behind clouds, they found themselves fleeing through complete darkness. When FitzUrz turned his ankle, it snapped like a stick. He howled as he fell. Ranulf swerved towards him, but before he could reach him another dead thing, gargling black filth but armed with a massive club, ghosted around the trunk of the nearest tree. Ranulf veered away as it commenced to land blow after blow on FitzUrz's unprotected skull.

Ranulf and Tallebois were now the only two left. Both were fleeing neck-and-neck when they skidded out from the trees onto the open bluff to the west of the castle. Vast numbers of the dead were already gathered there and now — as one — turned slowly to face them.

Tallebois slid to a halt, his mouth locking open, his eyes bulging. Ranulf grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him southwards rather than straight down the slope.

'There are too many!' the squire gibbered.

'Towards the river! Fast as you can!'

Ranulf buffeted more corpses out of their way as they ran. Claws slashed at them; he had to duck a mighty stroke from a long-handled Dane-axe. But the slope was at last dropping towards the Tefeidiad, the moonlit surface of which glittered just below them.

The last fifty yards were perhaps the worst.

'Use your strength, your weight… anything you've got!' Ranulf panted, as the dead closed in again.

Tallebois still had his dagger. When a woman, whose severed head hung down her back on a few sinews, reached out and caught him, he smote her hand off at the wrist.

'That's the way!' Ranulf shouted. He himself had managed to pick up a war-hammer. A corpse stumbled towards him and he swung the mighty cudgel, crushing its cranium. Another came towards him and he smashed its forehead — with such force that a soup of liquid brain matter spurted from its eye sockets.

The river was now tantalisingly close. Though a great mob of the dead were descending from behind, only a relative handful — three at the most — were in front.

'We can make it!' Ranulf shouted.

Tallebois was so racked with terror and fatigue that his voice squeaked. 'We'll drown!'

'If you can't swim, just stay afloat. The current will carry us past the castle. We might be able to get ashore on its east side!'

' Might be able to?'

'Now you see why we aren't wearing mail!'

The final few feet of slope were steep, muddy and strewn with loose stones. They skidded and tripped their way to the bottom, blundering headlong into the final clutch of corpses. Ranulf hit the first one head-on, barrelling into its chest, catapulting it backward into the river. Tallebois wasn't so lucky. The other two caught hold of him, one wrapping its arms around his waist and burying its teeth into his naked left thigh, the other looping a skeletal arm around his neck, trying to throttle him. With gurgling bleats, Tallebois hacked with his dagger, but it had no effect. The would-be throttler bought its leering visage close to his tear-stained face. He slashed it back and forth, mangling it, chopping it away in chunks, exposing the grinning skull beneath, but not slowing its attack in the least. Its pendulous green tongue quivered as it hung from the chasm where its lower jaw had once been. It raked its bony claws across his chest and belly, drawing five crimson trails through the sooty grease.

And then Ranulf took its legs from under it.

He swept in with a two-handed blow so fierce that both the creature's knee joints were shattered, and the lower portions of its limbs sent spinning into the darkness. It fell thrashing to the ground. The other monster ceased its gnawing on Tallebois's thigh and swung around to face Ranulf. Its nose was missing, along with its upper lip, but its ivory teeth were fully intact and coated with blood. Taking possession of the sobbing squire's dagger, it came hard at Ranulf, aiming a blow that would have skewered him through the heart. He dodged it, spun around and brought the hammer full circle, catching the creature at the base of its backbone, breaking it clean through.