Lucan panted and sweated as he twisted and turned, seeking a route up to the light and yet constantly having to battle his way through the imitations of friends. Bors struck his face with a spiked club, knocking him dizzy. Benedict attempted to snatch Alaric from him. Both went down beneath Lucan’s frenzied blows, yet always it seemed the mutilated husks he reduced them to rose back to their feet, reshaping before his eyes into nightmarish parodies of what they once had been.
“Whoresons!” Lucan roared. “Hell spawn!”
The face of Sir Gareth swam into his vision. He smote it. Bedivere stepped into its place again. “They took my hand, Lucan!” he howled, holding up his gory stump.
But in the other hand he held a dagger, and he thrust it at Lucan’s eyes. Lucan shoulder-charged the figure, toppling it down a stairwell.
Now at last there was a doorway through which daylight vented. Lucan stumbled towards it, only for another figure to step into his path. This one wore a white surcoat bearing a red dragon, and a golden crown on his helm. He had a neat beard and moustache, and a sunny-brown, square-cut mane.
It was Arthur himself.
He held a shield in one hand, and in the other a battle-axe, but Lucan could not bring himself to run steel through his lord and King. Perhaps he was too exhausted to think straight. Sweat stung his eyes. Saliva and blood drooled from his mouth. He turned away as their hands reached for him, as their swords struck at him — and he spied another door, only a short distance away. He hobbled drunkenly towards it, Alaric a dead weight. But beyond the second door was a stair, which spiralled upward.
Lucan halted and looked back.
There were so many of them that they stumbled and tripped over the mass of slippery, fleshy tentacles lying back and forth across the floor. The closest was Sir Griflet; Lucan parried his blow and sundered his breastbone. The next was Wulfstan, still missing his lower jaw, what remained of his human features collapsing inward like melting wax, though he now lashed at Lucan with a morningstar. Lucan caught the chain around his forearm, and cut his friend down again, tearing him open from gullet to crotch. But always more of them stepped into the gaps, hedging the room thick with moaning, gibbering, blood- and ichor-spattered abominations. There was only one option. He commenced the arduous ascent, his back bowing beneath the burden of his unconscious friend.
Streaks of lightning split the sky. Thunder bellowed through the mountains. The rain lashed incessantly, rivers gushing from every roof and gutter. It was no weather to be travelling, but Duchess Zalmyra had made up her mind.
“Be warned,” she said. “Stay close to me as we descend to the undercroft.”
She had produced a wand made from rowan wood, a jade orb fixed at one end, from which an emerald light burned; she held it aloft as they hurried down the switchback stair. Zalmyra walked at the front, and Urgol brought up the rear, a huge, iron-headed club at his shoulder. In between, Trelawna and Rufio struggled with Gerta, who they had managed to rouse, but only with difficulty. They reached ground level, where a narrow door opened into the courtyard. Trelawna glanced through as the sky again flashed with celestial fire. Cacophonous thunder rolled. The deluge intensified.
“Not that way,” Rufio said. He indicated an internal door, and a stair descending beyond it; Zalmyra’s green light was already receding into the regions below.
Trelawna adjusted Gerta at her shoulder and was about to follow, when movement caught her eye on the far side of the castle. She looked once, and then again.
It was Lucan. He’d emerged on an upper gantry, maybe thirty feet above the courtyard. He had a body draped over one shoulder — to Trelawna’s horror, it looked like Alaric — and was now backing along the battlement, using one hand to fend off a horde of slowly pursuing figures. Though he wielded Heaven’s Messenger with his usual might, cutting them down like chaff, they always rose to their feet again and continued. He had perhaps another five yards in which he could retreat and then, aside from a single flagpole flying the Boar’s Head pennon, he’d be at a dead-end.
Rufio reappeared at her shoulder. “What are you doing? Mother’s patience is…”
“Your mother can rot in Hell!” Trelawna snapped. “Look!”
Rufio gazed across the courtyard — in time to see a fleshy tentacle grope from a cellar window and slide serpent-like up the wall towards Lucan, a humanoid figure riding on its tip.
“That looks like Arthur,” Trelawna said with disbelief.
The King alighted on the battlements.
Lucan had now retreated as far as he could, and laid Alaric down next to the flagpole. Once again, he was confronted by his lord and sovereign. Arthur’s visor was raised, but the face below it was solemn. “You are a great warrior, Lucan,” he said softly, “but evil is rooted in your soul. It’s a burden you were born with, but even so, everyone at Camelot hates and fears you in equal measure.”
“You’re lying!” Lucan shouted, his throat sore with gasping.
“I tolerate you, Lucan, because you direct your wrath at my foes. But one day my foes will be dead, and your usefulness will be done. Hell will be grateful to receive you!”
“You’re not my King!” Lucan roared, but still, when he struck at the figure, it was with the pommel of his sword rather than its point.
The first blow dented the King’s shield. The King retaliated with a stroke of his axe. Lucan parried, severing the axe-haft. More by instinct than design, he followed this through with a lethal backstroke, which ripped through the King’s aventail and sliced his throat. The figure staggered back, arterial black gore spurting outward.
“You are not my King!” Lucan wept. He kicked the wounded figure in the chest, toppling it through the embrasure.
With renewed howls, the others launched themselves forward. Lucan hewed an alleyway through them. Benedict went down with face cloven, Bors with neck sheared, Griflet with lungs and heart exposed.
Gagging for breath, Lucan fell back again. He had bought himself but a fleeting respite. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Alaric’s lifeless form. If he could just get the lad away from this place… but there was no time. Lancelot ghosted towards him with a maul in one hand and a mattock in the other. Lucan blocked both blows, and chopped Lancelot’s legs from under him, and the horde of horrors was held in brief abeyance as the corpses in front melded themselves back together. Lucan swung around and cut the flagpole rope.
From the other side of the castle yard, it seemed a futile, almost pathetic gesture — the Malconi pennon collapsing in the rain. But then Trelawna saw Lucan pull down the rope and vanish below the battlements — she wondered if he was attempting to escape, before realising the truth. The lifeless figure he’d been carrying — Alaric, definitely Alaric — was now propped upright in an embrasure, the rope looped around his body. As quickly as he could, Lucan lowered him down towards the courtyard. But there was no movement from the lad; he would land heavily and awkwardly. Trelawna laid Gerta against the door-jamb, and rushed outside.
“Trelawna!” Rufio shouted. “Don’t be a fool…”
“She’s chosen which side she’s on,” Zalmyra said, returning to his side.
“But she’s… she’s…”
“There’s nothing to be done about it. Come. Urgol is preparing the carriage.”
Rufio shook his head. “You go…”
“She has chosen death before you, Felix! I’d have thought even a moon-calf of your sort would find that sufficient reason to move on. But as always…” Zalmyra backed away. “The decision is yours.”
She descended the lower stair again. Rufio delayed, torn with indecision. Gerta watched him through weak, watering eyes.
“My mistress is a woman of judgment after all,” she said hoarsely.
Rufio glared down at her. “You old crone! We could have had a good life together!”