English… whoever will offer you the power you crave.'
'So you're a student of politics after all, madam?' She couldn't see Gwyddon's expression in the darkness, but there was an irreverent sneer in his voice. 'A pity you lack the vision to make it your advantage.'
'And how long will that advantage last, Gwyddon? When my life finally ends, which will be soon enough in the eyes of Heaven, what advantage will I have when I stand before my maker? Surely you can't imagine that even if your gods control the universe, they would stand for this aberration you've created?'
He sighed. 'Still you fail to understand. Whichever god rules this universe, madam — and I applaud your new open-mindedness, even if I'm not surprised by it — the Cauldron of Regeneration was his, or her, gift to us.'
Gwyddon brought his horse forward a few paces, so that his face came into the moonlight. His eyes looked up as he pulled thoughtfully at his beard. When he spoke again, it was in a tone of veneration.
'I told you once before that the Cauldron was not forged by ogres at the foot of a bottomless lake. That was just a fable. In truth, its origin came when it fell to Earth from the stars, a glowing lump of unknown metal. Fashioned into its present form for functional purposes, its latent powers were only discovered by accident. Does that amount to sorcery, when it came to us from Nature?'
Countess Madalyn gazed at him, confused.
He smiled as he continued.
'Is the authority with which I control my minions the result of devilish magic, or merely a side effect of the wondrous object's proximity to my person? Like so many heads of my order before me — going all the way back to Myrlyn himself — I have grown up alongside the Cauldron. I have studied it, possessed it, absorbed its essence, made myself one with it… until now my mere thoughts will manipulate my monsters. Ahhh, I see you are shocked. Yes countess, it's true. Those pagan words, the very mention of which has good Christians like yourself cringing in fear… they are mere stage-dressing.'
'You have deceived my people!' she hissed.
'When the English are finished, Countess Madalyn, your people will barely exist.'
'Then you have deceived yourself.'
He shrugged. 'By denying to myself a truth that none of us can be certain of? Hardly. In any case, in the same way that you lack the belly for battle, I lack the knowledge for alchemy. It's a fact of life, but it doesn't concern me overly. The outcome will still be the same.'
'And what will that be, Gwyddon — Armageddon?'
'Possibly, though obviously that wouldn't be ideal.' He signalled to his priests, two of whom dismounted and approached her. 'I still seek moderating influences in my life, if you're interested.'
'I would rather die,' she said.
'My dear countess… haven't you noticed? Nobody dies any more.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Liquid flame flooded over the parapets of the Constable's Tower. Flights of arrows continued to rattle across its battlements. The dead came too, droves of them pouring up the scaling ladders.
It was a hell-storm, the like of which Earl Corotocus's most hardened warriors had never experienced.
They engaged their enemy on two sides of the tower, slashing with sword and axe as one torn and mutilated form after another came up between the crenels, struck constantly on visor, shield or buckler, occasionally pierced through the hauberk by feathered shafts, and all the time dancing between pools of fire. English numbers had now been thinned disastrously, so that huge, undefended gaps were created. The dead would find these and then they'd be onto the roof properly, causing wild melees that would spill to every corner.
'Ranulf!' Gurt Louvain shouted. The face beneath his helmet was red and streaming in the searing heat; five arrows were embedded in his shield, a fifth looked as though it had transfixed his left arm, though in truth it had only punctured his mail sleeve. 'Ranulf, this is madness! We can't hold them!'
Ranulf had just felled another corpse with such force that it had plummeted to the foot of its ladder, taking a dozen more with it. He peered down the sheer, flame-blackened bricks. In normal times, he'd expect to see a mountain of broken, mangled bodies at the bottom. Now all he saw was a compressed mass of shrieking, moaning heads and fists clamped on weapons. It was a similar tale at the far end of the causeway, though he could see that alleys were being cleared as more siege machines were brought forward: an even larger battering ram, equipped with wheels and a head of spiked steel, and two heavy onagers.
'Mind your heads!' someone shrieked.
Another fire-pot exploded in the middle of the roof. Sheets of flame erupted on all sides. Men were enveloped head to foot and ran blazing and screaming between their comrades, buffeting some aside, igniting others, in many cases falling clean through the battlements to a quicker, easier death.
'Gurt, there's nowhere to run to,' Ranulf replied, his voice hoarse from shouting, his throat sore with smoke and thirst.
Another scaling ladder appeared in front of him. A corpse was already at the top of it. It was naked, but an iron collar was fixed around its neck and iron manacles around its wrists, revealing that the first time it had died it had been hanged in chains. It carried one such chain now, with which it lashed madly at the two English knights. Ranulf caught the chain and, with a downward stroke, clove the chain-arm at the shoulder. The monster now had only one hand with which to grip the ladder, and Ranulf's second stroke severed that too. When the corpse fell, it again took those beneath it.
Ranulf grabbed the top of the ladder and pushed it. As he did, another wave of arrows scythed across the battlements. One skimmed over his shoulder. Five yards to his left, a mercenary tottered away, spitting blood and phlegm from where a shaft had punched through his cheek. Ten yards beyond him, a tenant knight died wordlessly, struck in the throat.
'There aren't enough of us left to cover this perimeter!' Gurt bellowed. 'And even if Earl Corotocus hasn't realised that, the dead will — they'll flow over us like the sea.'
Below, more sets of hastily constructed scaling ladders were being passed hand-over-hand along the causeway. In a matter of minutes, the onagers would be within range. Close to Ranulf's right, more of the dead had gained a foothold. They climbed in through the embrasures and fought like dogs with the two or three defenders who opposed them; axes beat on shields, maces hammered helmets, crushing them out of shape.
Sensing that Ranulf was no longer listening, Gurt grabbed him by the collar and yanked him to attention.
'Ranulf, for the love of God listen! You must speak to the earl. Tell him we have to retreat to the Keep!'
Ranulf nodded and turned, only to be confronted by another pack of snarling dead, working their way along the battlements from the west, hacking down all in their path. Tomas d'Altard scrambled away from them, unable to stand because an arrow was buried in the back of his thigh.
'Ranulf, Gurt… save me!' he wept, only for the curved spike of a pollaxe to be swung down and driven through the nape of his neck with such force that its point appeared in his gagging mouth.
'We retreat when we can!' Ranulf said, mopping the filth from his blade and advancing. 'Until that time…'
From thirty yards away, Earl Corotocus watched wearily as Ranulf FitzOsbern and Gurt Louvain engaged the latest band of corpses to have mounted the battlements, their blades twirling. Similar fights were raging all over the rooftop, knights and corpses hacking at each other dementedly as they staggered through a wreckage of smashed shields and burning bodies. To make things worse, catapults on the causeway now joined the fray. Heavy hunks of stone and lead were lobbed over the north-facing wall, slamming onto and through the shields of those few exhausted men who still had the strength to raise them.
'My lord!' du Guesculin shrilled, staggering forward, his face stained black with soot, his shield bristling with snapped-off arrows. 'It's only a matter of time before the mangonel crews resort to heavier payloads! The Constable's Tower is lost!'
The earl himself bled from innumerable cuts. His once resplendent tabard was scorched and smouldering at its edges.
'And if we retreat to the Keep, what then?' he roared. 'It's our last redoubt.'
