“Looks like it’s bogged.” Riddum chuckled. “This is comical.”
Rix resisted the urge to slug the man with his mailed fist.
“The fuse is sizzling,” said Nuddell. “They’d better get a move on.”
About twenty men had gathered around the sides and rear of the wagon. They swung it around and heaved it down the boggy slope towards the palisade.
“If it were me,” said Riddum, “I’d be slipping quietly away. This ain’t going to work.”
Rix was of the same mind but he had given his word. He could not abandon his allies, no matter what a mess they were making of things. “It’ll work — and whoever goes first gets a double share of plunder.”
A cry rang out from the wall. Rix saw a signal lantern being waved there, and heard the clang of a bell.
“They’ve been seen. Attack. Attack now!”
As he raced for the front gates, a flare burst over the hill slope. Yestin’s men were struggling with the wagon, which was bogged again, twenty feet from the wall. Yestin, a bear of a man, was heaving with the rest. I hope they’re counting the seconds on the fuse, Rix thought -
With a colossal boom, the wagon exploded, scattering men everywhere and lighting up the area so brightly that Rix could see the outlines of the enemy guards running along the top of the wall.
He reached the gate with a dozen others. “Up and over,” Rix said quietly. “First men in, slip the bar and open the gates. The rest of you, prepare the way.”
He boosted a man up to grab hold of the top of the gate, which was twelve feet high, then another. Riddum and three of the other tallest men were doing the same. In a minute and a half, fifteen men had gone over.
As the last one dropped, a skyrocket soared up from the direction of the munitions store, then another. Could the blast from the wagon have set the store off? No, the rockets burst into half a dozen brilliant flares that lit up the buildings and yard of the garrison, and the area outside the walls, almost as brightly as day.
Rix drew his sword and waited for the gates to open. He did not hear the bar sliding. He heard nothing at all.
“What the hell’s going on?” he muttered. “Riddum, get up on the gate and have a look.”
Riddum might have been the focus of discontent but he was no coward. One of the men heaved him up. He leaned over, then threw his arms out, toppled backwards and crashed to the ground with an arrow through his chest.
“Dead,” he said. “Throats cut. They were waiting for us…”
“Retreat!” roared Rix. “We’ve been betrayed. Retreat, retreat!”
He bent to pick Riddum up but he was dead. As Rix straightened, the gates were wrenched open and a squad of the enemy stormed out. Rix froze — he had only thirty-two men left, and if they ran the enemy archers would shoot them in the back.
But he also had Maloch. And here, the best defence was to attack.
“Stand firm!” he bellowed. “Attack!”
Without waiting to see if anyone was following, Rix hurled himself at the enemy, swinging the sword with his left hand and driving his steel-encased right fist into every vulnerable body part that presented itself. In one furious minute he drove three lines deep into the enemy, leaving a trail of fallen enemy behind him. He was surrounded on all sides. A sword he did not see clanged off his chest-plate. He struck the man down then whirled, slashing and striking, and around him several of his men were doing the same. Suddenly the enemy broke under the onslaught and began to retreat back through the gates.
For a mad moment Rix considered driving through them and on to the officers’ quarters, to make something from this fiasco, but the officers were already streaming through the doors. Besides, only a handful of his men had followed him. The rest were either dead or had fled.
The light of the flares was fading as they dropped lower, and now they went out, leaving the scene lit only by slanting lantern rays from inside. He yelled, “Retreat! Retreat, while the dark lasts.”
Suddenly Rix was alone. He was backing away, watching for archers, when he stepped on a body that moved under him.
“Ahh,” yelped Nuddell.
“Sorry,” said Rix, hefting him up.
“I’m done, Deadhand. Save yourself,” groaned Nuddell.
“I don’t leave my men behind.”
“Then you’re a bloody fool, if you don’t mind me saying.”
Three of the enemy attacked. Rix dropped Nuddell and cut down the first with a sword blow to the neck and the second with a steel-fisted punch that broke his jaw. The third was a huge man who, like Leatherhead, fought with a sword in each hand.
Rix matched him blow for blow, standing over Nuddell so the enemy could not strike him dead, then snapped the enemy’s right-hand sword with a sideways blow of his mailed fist and slid Maloch through the gap into the fellow’s lung. Air hissed out; the man slumped sideways and Rix ran him through.
He hefted Nuddell and ran with him towards the hidden horses, though before he was halfway the enemy had another flare up and the archers were firing. Ahead of him, several men fell. Arrows whizzed past on all sides, one sticking in the heel of Nuddell’s left boot, two more shattering on the hardened steel of Rix’s back-plate.
He heaved Nuddell over an empty saddle — there were plenty to choose from — bound him on, and checked on his men. Half the survivors had fled, not looking back to see if their fellows were all right, but there were twenty riderless horses. Horses Garramide could not do without.
“Get going, Deadhand,” said Nuddell. “They’re after us.”
Rix slashed the tie ropes, roared at the horses and they bolted. He dragged himself into the saddle, only now realising that he was wounded in half a dozen places, and followed them.
From the top of the hill he looked back. The remains of the black powder wagon were blazing fiercely, and part of the palisade wall nearby. At least a dozen bodies were scattered around, the men who had been pushing the wagon when it went off. The closer ones must have been blown to bits. Another dozen had been taken prisoner and, knowing how the enemy treated prisoners, were bound for a cruel death.
Rix spurred his horse and raced after Nuddell, reckoning up the toll as he rode. Twenty of his men dead, plus at least fifteen of Yestin’s, almost certainly including the lord himself. Another dozen taken prisoner and soon to be executed. An unknown number injured.
Bedderlees had not shown up, and clearly the knife men waiting at the gate had known the details of the attack. He must be a traitor.
And what had been gained? Neither the walls nor the gate had been breached, and the barracks and armoury were unharmed. They had killed at least ten of the enemy but the attack he had invested his credibility in had been a failure.
No, Yestin’s incompetence had turned it into a fiasco.
To make matters worse, the snow had stopped and now the moon came out. Rix rode wearily home, knowing they were leaving tracks that a child could have followed. They led directly to the escarpment track, and Garramide.
He should have listened to Swelt.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 34
When Holm finally reappeared in the middle of the night, carrying a string of cleaned fish, Tali reached out to him.
“You said I should trust more, and I’m going to. Will you help me?”
“Depends what you’re asking,” he said gruffly. “I’m good with my hands, and I can add two facts together and get a third, but I’m no warrior.”
She sat up on her covers. “I’m not asking you to fight.”
“Yet I’ve been fighting ever since you landed in my lap.”
“You came after me.”
“Are you complaining?”
It silenced her for a while. “Of course not… Holm, I need to get control of my magery and I don’t know how.”
“You’re asking the wrong man. Magery isn’t one of my gifts, thankfully.”