LII

 

 

ALDRIC FITZ ROLF looked out from the rain-slicked battlements of Castel Mercheval and saw the Devil.

A moment before, the dark opening at the edge of the trees – the one shaped like a ragged, screaming mouth – had been empty shadow. Just the same familiar, blank space that it had been all day, and – but for the passing of a bird, or rabbit, or the long, lean figure of a fox – for countless days before that. Thrusting out in front of the yawning hole, and largely the reason for it, was the great grey-brown slab that some called Arthur’s Table – a flat outcrop of rock punctuating the higher ground some fifty yards left of where the winding dirt road emerged from the woods.

To Aldric it had always resembled a listing raft rather than a table. In summer, the hectic foliage of the forest even seemed to be breaking upon it like a great green wave.

Now, its surface shimmered in the slanting rain. Aldric had been glancing at it in the grey daylight, thinking abstractly about the gripes in his stomach, and was turning away to make some comment upon it to Bertrans, his fellow watchman, when the fleeting vision had appeared; tall, hooded, with no visible face, but – he realised only after it had gone a second later – a pair of tiny horns upon its head.

“What the Hell was that?” he said. Frowning, he nodded towards the place. “There...”

Bertrans scanned the forest’s edge and laughed. “You’re jumpy today,” he said. “Nothing living that I can see, except us up here in this piss-poor weather.”

Aldric squinted at the dark spaces again, his eyes stinging, rain running from his helm in cold rivulets that crept down his neck. “There was something...” he said. “Beyond the rock. No question.”

Bertrans studied him with narrowed eyes. “What did it look like?” All dismissiveness was now gone from his tone. Bertrans knew Aldric was no fool.

“A man, or...” Aldric’s voice trailed away. The wind gusted, making the whole facade of trees sigh and shudder – and even Aldric doubted his own judgement. He gave a snort of agitation and turned from the forest.

Bertrans coughed and spat. “Might’ve been a deer. They don’t normally come so close, but sometimes when the weather’s bad they’re forced down...” He stopped abruptly.

Aldric had turned away to look out across the castle courtyard, seeming to have heard a strange sound from that direction – oddly familiar, but one he couldn’t quite place. “Forced down...?” he said, urging his comrade to finish.

But when Aldric looked back at him, the man seemed paralysed in some kind of agony. As he watched, Bertrans’s eyes seemed to bulge out of his head, his face growing purple, his throat rasping as if constricted. At first, he thought it must be one of Bertrans’s jokes. “Are you all right?” he asked with a laugh.

Only as Bertrans fell did Aldric see the arrow. It had hit where his neck joined his shoulders, entering the muscle just above the right shoulder blade and emerging above the left side of his collarbone.

Stiff as a board, Bertrans tottered forward with a strange, shuffling gait and, before Aldric could act, pitched head-first off the walkway.

He dropped behind the parapet, his back to the stone near where Bertrans’s crossbow still leaned, hearing its owner’s body hit the ground with a sickening thud.

“Alarm!” he cried. “Alarm!” The effect was instantaneous; the ordered chaos of the castle’s bustling interior instantly transformed. As one, the castle’s knights, soldiers and servants going about their daily tasks changed direction like a flock of birds in flight. Some broke into a run, others dropped what they were doing and returned the way they had come. Many scaled ladders and steps to their positions on the ramparts and towers. Inner doors were secured. Horses prepared. Siege weapons were brought to readiness. It was a drill they had performed a thousand times under their master’s iron regime – on a daily basis, sometimes at night, and in all weathers. Tancred believed in total battle readiness, and strict discipline. The penalties for those who failed in their duties – who failed God – were harsh. In Tancred’s world, there were no half measures. No mercy to which one could appeal. No ambiguities. There were those who respected him, many more who hated him, but none who did not fear him.

Then, from the great square keep, came Tancred himself – his armour on, his sword buckled, his surcoat gleaming white; Aldric had not once seen him otherwise attired – followed closely behind by Fulke and Ulrich. The expressions of the two men – one flushed, the other pale – were something between trepidation and outrage; that of Tancred, as cold and implacable as the stone of his castle. That they had been questioning the squire and the woman was beyond doubt, but whether the pair had given up any information was another matter. Above the urgent clamour, as he cocked and loaded his crossbow, Aldric heard Tancred’s voice, like metal against rock. “Who called it?” A serjeant pointed up to where Aldric was crouched.

Then, from Aldric’s left, along the rampart some dozen yards, came a harsh cry and the heavy clatter of a crossbow falling onto flagstones. It was Engenulf. Aldric had heard the same hiss he’d heard before Bertrans’s death, and now made the connection. An arrow. He turned to see Engenulf motionless, a look of near comical astonishment on his face, the arrow pinning his bleeding right hand to his breastbone. Before he could blink – and in stark contrast to Bertrans – Engenulf crumpled like a rag as if his bones had been sucked out, then slithered over the edge of the walkway to the courtyard below.

Tancred had reached the wooden steps to the rampart now, but something Ulrich said stopped him. Aldric did not hear what it was – just the low rasp of his voice – but the man’s hand was extended in a gesture of caution. Tancred did not even look at him. “God will protect me,” he said, and advanced up the steps like a wraith.

It occurred to Aldric then to attempt to locate the position of their attackers before Tancred arrived and questioned him on the subject. He raised his head with slow caution into the space of the nearest crenel until the edge of the trees was revealed to him. The attackers – whoever they might be – were clearly keen shots with a bow, and their number as yet unknown. Aldric had no wish to be next. But it was something more than self-preservation that drove him. His chief desire, at that precise moment, was to live long enough to plant the head of Bertrans’s killer on a stake.

What he saw, as Tancred’s footsteps approached, raised as many baffling questions as it answered. He had primed himself to be sensitive to the subtlest signs – unusual movements, things out of place, glints of metal or muffled sounds of command from amongst the trees. In the event, no such sensitivity was required. In full view, on the flat slab of the great stone, stood a single figure – tall, hooded, as dark as Tancred was pale, a bag across one shoulder, a bow held flat across his thigh, arrow nocked upon it, ready to be drawn. Aldric cursed his stupidity – his doubt. Had he trusted his first instinct, Bertrans and Engenulf might now be alive.

“Tancred!” boomed out a voice from the rock.

Tancred stepped forward to the parapet no more than a yard from Aldric. His lip curled, and Aldric heard him utter a single word: “Gisburne...” Without hesitation and in one swift movement, the stranger raised and drew the bow and loosed the arrow.

It whistled past Tancred’s ear. The master of Castel Mercheval did not flinch, nor did he make any attempt to conceal himself. If the bowman wished to kill him with a second shot, there was little anyone could now do to prevent it. But Tancred showed no hint of fear. There were those who said that if he were face to face with the Devil himself, he would walk straight up to him, sword drawn and ready to fight. Now Aldric knew that was true.

Tancred’s fearlessness, irrational though it may have been, shamed him. He rose to his feet, crossbow raised, and saw that several yards along the battlements Gaston – a serjeant, similarly armed – had done the same. Their adversary was well within range – close enough that mail would not save him – and the second arrow that Aldric had expected to see already upon his bow was not there. The bow itself was lowered, his other fist now raised as if it contained something of great import. Some time in the past few moments, Aldric now noticed, the stranger’s shoulder bag had also begun to drip blood.

“He was supposed to be dead,” hissed Tancred.

Fulke, still a yard behind him, flushed red. “I thought...” His voice died away.

Tancred’s mouth twisted into a snarl of cold contempt. “You thought...”

Aldric caught Gaston’s eye, and without a word both levelled their weapons at the stranger. If he attempted to reload – even if he tried to run – they could pin him. Yet this man, whose gaze was now locked with Tancred’s, seemed equally oblivious to the possibility of death. If man he was.

For a time they stood in charged silence, face to face across that expanse of stone, moat and mud, one seeming the demonic twin of the other – black angel versus White Devil. Aldric swore he could see Tancred’s already stony eyes harden as he regarded this shadowy reflection. But what had passed between these two, and what type of being this dark shade – this Gisburne – really was, he could not guess.

A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind in those moments. He had believed the miss with the arrow an accident. Now, considering the bowman’s precision in taking out Bertrans and Engenulf, he was convinced it had been deliberate. But if he was Tancred’s enemy – and knew he would receive no mercy in return – why spare him? What did he now hope to achieve against Tancred’s knights, and these impregnable walls? And if he had come to the rescue of their recent prisoners, why announce himself in broad daylight, rather than sneaking in at night?

“You wait for your enginer in vain,” the voice from the rock rang out again. He took a step forward. Aldric and Gaston tensed. Reaching into the bag, he threw before him what appeared to be part of a mutilated limb. It bounced on the rock, leaving behind a splatter of red that slowly dissipated with the rain. The stranger then extended his arm. Hanging from it, Aldric could see a string or fine chain, and at its end, spinning and glinting in the dim grey light, what appeared to be a key. “Only this will open the box,” came the grim cry. “If you want it, come and take it.”

Tancred stared down at the dark figure, eyes narrowing, jaw clenching. Aldric did not want to know what was going through that head. The master of Castel Mercheval looked up at the grey, empty sky as if seeking something in it, then back to Gisburne.

“Kill him,” he said flatly.

Aldric squeezed the trigger. The heavy crossbow leapt in his hands. At the edge of his vision, he was aware of Gaston doing the same. The two bolts – fired almost simultaneously – drove into Gisburne’s chest, knocking him off his feet. He slammed onto the wet rock and lay motionless, the patter of the rain the only sound, the stain of red running off the angled surface.

“Get the key,” Tancred said, and turned and walked away.