“Can you hold the doors?” asked Ronsard, throwing open his visor.
“I think so,” replied his second-in-command. Just then there came a fearful crash at the door they had just sealed as the giant’s axe thundered on the planks. “For now,” he added.
“Hold out as long as you can,” said Ronsard, “and then join us below. I am going to try to fight through to the gates. Perhaps we can force them open.” So saying, Ronsard led the other knights down the spiraling wooden steps to the tower keep below, which was as yet unguarded.
With swords singing they forced their way across the outer ward to the gatehouse, encountering little resistance since most of the castle’s defenders lined the wall walks above. Once inside, they overpowered the frightened foe easily.
“In the King’s name, open the gates!” demanded Ronsard, his sword at the throat of the quaking gatekeeper.
The man wailed and rolled his eyes in terror. “Though you sever head from shoulders, I cannot!” cried the man. “Open them, or I will drop you where you stand!”
“I cannot!” screamed the gatekeeper. “Brave sir, believe me! The doors are fortified and cannot now be opened by anyone-leastways, without removing the timbers and chains.”
“My lord,” shouted one of Ronsard’s knights, “he speaks true. The gates are bound in chains and reinforced with timbers. To remove them would take us half a day!”
Ronsard was about to make a reply when behind them on the staircase leading to the parapet they heard a shout and the sound of many feet pounding down the wooden stairs. “We are discovered!” cried one of the knights.
In the space of three heartbeats the loyal besiegers were swarmed by knights as the gatehouse filled with troops from the ramparts above. And though Ronsard and his men stood toe to toe against the defenders, they were sorely outnumbered and were forced to retreat back across the ward yard to the northern tower. There they rejoined their comrades who still held the doors leading out onto the wall walks.
“Seal the doors below!” ordered Ronsard. “We will go above and win the turret!”
They clattered up the stairs to the turret, which was defended by archers. One look at the armored knights boiling up out of the tower, however, and the archers, assuming that the King’s forces had breached the walls, threw down their weapons and begged for mercy. “Take their weapons,” said Ronsard, and the archers were herded together at the further rim of the turret and made to sit down while a knight stood over them with a sword.
Ronsard then strode to the embrasure and stood up in the crenel, waving his sword over his head. Men on the ground below recognized him and cheered, swarming at once to the tower with their ladders and hooks.
This minor victory proved short-lived, however, for Ameronis too saw Ronsard’s signal and sent a force of his best knights to the northern tower. In moments the knights had rushed to the tower and were hacking at the doors. At the same instant, the giant on the wall walk succeeded in battering the door to splinters with his huge axe; he came charging through, followed by others, and they all came thundering up the stairs to the turret.
“We’re trapped!” hollered one of the besiegers. “We are cut off!”
“Here!” said Ronsard, motioning to the archers who had given themselves up. “Sit on the hatchway-all of you!”
The prisoners scrambled together and sat down on the planks, holding the door closed with their combined weight. “That should keep them out for a while at least,” said Ronsard. “We can only wait now. The fight is taken from us for the moment.”
In the secret passage deep beneath the castle, the clash and clamor of the combat could be heard, muted through the heavy gate beyond the portcullis. “Listen!” said Theido, and the hammering halted. Into the silence drifted the eerie sound of heated battle-as if the echoes of an ancient war still lingered in the rocks of the cave and now came drifting out from the stones that had held them.
“By the One!” cried Theido. “It has started! Hurry, men, or we come too late!”
At once the hammers rang out on the cold iron, filling the cave and tunnel with a horrendous din as chisels bit deep in an effort to free the last section of the grate, for now they did not have to worry about the noise; any racket they made would be drowned in the battle roar above.
With shouts and curses the soldiers threw themselves at the unrelenting iron until, exhausted, they fell back panting into the tunnel. When one man faltered, another took his place as the assault on the portcullis continued.
FORTY-NINE
ALL AROUND him on the ground lay the bodies of the wounded, broken, and dying, some crushed beneath timbers and stones, many more pierced through with arrows. Still the King strove to rally his flagging forces to remount the assault. But, disheartened by their lack of success in gaining the walls, and dismayed at the loss of their numbers, the Dragon King’s army shrank from the walls, and Quentin was forced to withdraw to regroup his forces.
At the first sign of the King’s retreat, a cheer went up from Ameronis’s men on the wall. The lord himself joined in the exultation, and called after the receding troops, “Have you had enough, and so soon? Come back; let us finish it for once and all!” This brought more cheers from his men. So Ameronis leaned out over the wall and called still louder to the delight of his army, “The Dragon King slinks away like a scalded hound-with his ears bobbed and his tail between his legs! Come back and fight like a man of honor!”
Up in the gatehouse turret Lords Kelkin, Gorloic, and Denellon watched as the King’s forces retreated from the field. “It is going badly for them,” remarked Relkin. “Would that I had my knights with me now; I know which side I would join.”
“I, too, would add my aid to the King,” said Denellon. “I have seen enough of Ameronis’s ways. His true face is revealed in war, and it is not a face I would care to see under the crown.”
“Nor I,” put in Lord Gorloic. “But though my knights guard my own fortress and are far from here, I still have a sword, and an arm to use it! And while I live, both belong to the Dragon King!”
“Aye!” agreed the others. “So be it!”
“But,” said Kelkin, “we are only three. Ameronis and Lupollen have the advantage over us. We would be cut to pieces before we put hand to hilt.”
“Then we will have to find another way to better them. We cannot do that here. Come, my friends,” said Gorloic, “time is fleeting and we have work to do!”
“Are ye fair certain this be the wisest course, young master?” asked Pym as the two rode along through the forest. “What will yer mother say when she learns we’uns ‘as let ye follow the King to battle-and we’uns without so much as a stick to shake at the foemen.”
“Be quiet,” replied Renny. “I’m thinking.”
“Yer lost! We’uns’ve been riding these woods fer near a day and no sign of the King. We’uns’d best go back.”
“ ‘Ee go back if ‘ee want to,” said Renny stubbornly. “I mean to fight for the King.”
Pym sighed-as he had sighed a hundred times in the last twelve hours-and scratched his grizzled head. “Well, if ye have yer heart set on it, there’ll be no persuading ye-not as I haven’t tried, neither. But ye must admit it: we’uns is lost.”
“Not lost,” replied Renny. “We just lack direction.”
They had left Askelon the day before when the King rode out, following him as he himself had followed his army. But the two of them on Tarky were no match for the spirited Blazer and were soon outdistanced and left behind. Pym had been for turning back, but his young companion pursued his course with single-minded determination, bent on serving the Dragon King beside those noble knights he had met when they tried to return the horse.