Du Guesculin sobbed his way up it. At the top, he found himself on the roof, huge sections of which had imploded from the impact of the mangonel missiles. Beyond the first of these crevasses, Countess Madalyn's druids were ranged in a row: pitiless men — bearded and stern beneath their hoods, their onyx eyes fixed on him intently. On his side, stood the countess herself.
Blubbering spittle, gibbering for mercy, du Guesculin tottered towards her.
"Countess, I beg you, I beg you…"
He dropped to his knees despite the agony this caused him, clasped his hands together and gazed up at her, though his vision was blurred with tears.
"I am Hugh du Guesculin, banneret of Clun, Lord of Oswestry and Whitchurch. I am not without influence. And unlike Earl Corotocus, I can be trusted. Ma-am, listen, please, I beg you. I know King Edward. I can parley for you. I can end this war so that Wales remains with the Welsh, with you as their queen. I can do all this. I beg you, ma-am, listen to me please."
She reached down with both hands and cupped his face, almost gently. He blinked, not understanding what this meant. Slowly, her features swam into focus. They were as handsome and noble as he remembered. But they were also pale and rigid as wax. Beneath her aristocratic chin, a crimson line ran from one ear to the other. When she exerted the necessary strength to drag him to his feet and hoist him into the air, that line yawned open, exposing her sliced windpipe. With eyes of lustreless glass, she strode to the battlements. Du Guesculin's scream was a prolonged, keening whistle as, with one hand at his throat and the other at his crotch, she raised him high over her head.
He continued to scream even when she'd flung him over the parapet, the scream lingering as he plummeted — down, down, down, head first, legs kicking manically, until landing with horrific force on the courtyard floor, where he smashed apart like a beetle under a boot.
From the roof of the Keep, Ranulf watched aghast as these events unfolded. But if it shocked him to the core to see what remained of the earl's household torn to pieces in the courtyard, it was an even greater shock to see what happened to Hugh du Guesculin.
Ranulf turned stiffly to face Gwendolyn. She regarded him boldly, her smudged but beautiful face written with triumph.
"No doubt you're enraged?" she said. "Well, now perhaps you understand how I feel. Justice had to be done."
He stalked towards her.
She didn't flinch. "Now that the guilty ones have been punished, this is where it can end."
"Indeed?"
"Indeed," she said. "You'll thank me for it in due course."
Ranulf didn't say anything else, just hit her — not hard enough to kill her, though he was sorely tempted, but sufficiently to knock her unconscious. She toppled through the embrasure, but he caught her by the tabard and pulled her back to him. In the process, he glanced again into the courtyard, where all the earl's men were now dead, their mangled remains being flung back and forth between the howling cadavers. Other corpses, of course, in fact cohorts of them, were already flowing across the Keep drawbridge.
Ranulf didn't wait to see more. Throwing Gwendolyn over his shoulder, he hurried to the top of the stair.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Earl Corotocus did not witness the death of Hugh du Guesculin. He never looked back once as he galloped hard along the causeway.
More of the dead were crossing it towards him. But he veered around them. He was no longer armed, but that was of no concern. All that mattered was flight. As the Gatehouse loomed towards him, he was struck by the alarming thought that they might now have closed the portcullis at its front entrance. This goaded him to spur his animal until its flanks bled.
Nobody else obstructed him as he charged in through the arched entrance and up the Gatehouse's central passage. To his relief the portcullis was still raised, though a fresh phalanx of corpses was coming in beneath it. Leaning low, cloak billowing, the earl snapped his reins with fury. Incitatus struck the dead like a streak of black lightning, scattering them on all sides. Corotocus hurtled out of the Gatehouse and into the entry passage. More of the dead streamed along it. He crashed through them one after another, though the main danger here was the charred human fat that seemed to smear every surface. His horse skidded dangerously on it, before righting itself at the end of the passage and bolting eastward along the berm path.
Corotocus might now have been outside the castle, but he was still far from safety. Hemmed against its ramparts by the moat, he knew he had to circumnavigate two thirds of the entire stronghold before he would reach the river, at which point perhaps the most desperate gamble of all awaited him — crossing to the other side in full mail.
The decayed horde was gathered en masse beyond the moat. Their demonic lament rose to a crescendo when they beheld him, but aside from throwing spears, rocks and other improvised missiles, they could not reach him. Small groups were still drifting along the berm in his direction, still seeking to enter the castle. But as long as they remained in these restricted numbers, he knew he was a match for them.
"Incitatus, the field!" Corotocus bellowed.
The mount was now galloping at full speed. Blood streamed from its flanks, not just where the earl had spurred it, but where the dead had clawed at it. Foam flew from its bit; its eyes burned like rubies, as if it somehow knew that these clusters of stick-figures cavorting towards it were responsible for its pain. It clearly relished the collision as, one by one, it bounced them out of its way.
Corotocus yelled with laughter. Occasional missiles hit him, but his mail or helmet deflected them. He rounded the castle's northeast corner, to find more of the dead approaching from the southeast. If such a thing were possible, they seemed surprised to be confronted by the fugitive. Again, he crashed through them, delighted as they were chopped apart beneath his hooves or smashed against the castle's skirted wall. At one point he encountered a dead woman carrying a dead child. Though pale of skin, they were barely marked by the grave. The clothes they wore — the woman's dress, her linen veil and wimple, the wooden clogs on her feet, the baby in its swaddling — they were all spotlessly clean. Fleetingly, they might have been alive, but, even if they had been, the earl would have ridden them down just the same. The woman was catapulted into the moat, losing the child as she fell. They both landed skulls first on the rocks below, their arms and legs spread-eagled. The earl rode on. Directly ahead lay his salvation, but also his deadliest obstacle. The Tefeidiad.
In normal times, to leave Grogen Castle, one would turn at its southeast corner, and follow the berm all the way to the southwest bridge. But beyond that lay the western bluff, from which the vast majority of Countess Madalyn's army were still pouring across. So only the Tefeidiad provided a possible escape.
As they reached the southeast corner, Corotocus reined his beast to a halt, its hooves ploughing furrows in the dirt. He loosened the strap beneath his chin, and threw his helmet off, shaking out his sweat-soaked hair. Then he unlaced his cloak.
The river glided past ten feet below. It was about sixty yards across to the far side. Only small numbers of the dead were visible over there, compared to the titanic horde on the other sides of the castle. But Cotorocus knew the river was too deep at this point for Incitatus to simply wade across. He had no doubt that his horse could swim such a short distance, but could it swim it with an armoured rider on its back? It was a chance Corotocus was prepared to take, because there was no time to remove his mail carapace as well.
He urged his animal to the edge. Breathing hard, lathered with sweat, the spirited beast might have been game for almost anything at that moment — but jumping into a broad, fast moving river? Snorting with alarm, it held back.