The Wild Hunt

CHAPTER 29

Guyon stirred in response to a dazzle of light across his eyelids and squinted them open. The chamber was dim; sunlight lanced across the bed from a gap in the warped shutter. He moved his head and idly watched the motes of dust glitter in its bright rainbow bars. It took him a moment to remember where he was and why. Then came the familiar feeling as of a cold stone in the pit of his stomach, immediately dissolved by the awareness of Judith's body curled at his side, sleeping with the innocent abandon of the kitten that was her nickname. Hard to believe in the scheming seductress of the night.

He stretched and relaxed, smiling at the incongruity. Flowers and thorns. Sharp claws sheathed in soft padding. He turned towards her and nuzzled his chin on the crown of her head.

She murmured and nestled closer. Her lips moved in a sleepy kiss at the base of his throat.

He glanced beyond the luxurious comfort of his bed and wife to the shifting strands of light and the smile still on his lips became rueful as he realised that it was the first time in three days that he had woken at dawn instead of noon. As usual she had been right, he acknowledged. He had not known the depth of his exhaustion until he had succumbed to it, and succumb he had with a vengeance. The last three days had passed him by like distant scenes from an illuminated psalter and he an ill iterate turning the pages. He vaguely recalled rising to eat in the hall and speaking to people, although what he had eaten and what he had said were now a complete mystery. He also remembered going out to inspect the repair work on the curtain wall , but Judith had apprehended him with some specious excuse that had drawn him back within ... and inevitably to bed where, by unfair means, she had enticed him to stay.

Restlessly he shifted his position, aware of a need to be up and doing that was born of renewed energy, not dull -edged desperation. The grief, anger and guilt were still with him, but no longer intruding upon his every waking thought.

Raw, but bearable and probably a burden for life.

Lady Mabell had died on that first night. God rest her soul, since it had not had much rest on this earth. Judith had been tearful about that, although he suspected the tears were more a relieving of tension than any deeper grief for the dead woman. The child still lived. His fever was gone and he had stopped passing blood, or so Judith told him. She kept the babe from his sight and he had no desire to go and see for himself -not yet; perhaps never.

He thought of the incident with the spiked wine.

He had always known she was mettlesome, but sometimes she was almost too quick for him to handle. Get me with child, she had said. He was not sure that he could imagine Judith soft and doting. It was not in her nature, or at least not yet.

Perhaps children would gentle her, but he doubted it. Kittens did nothing to make a cat less feral. In fact the reverse.

The sound of a horn interrupted his ruminations: a hunting horn, but the notes were not in the sequence that summoned the dogs or blew the mort and they cut through his sense of well -being.

He bolted upright in the bed and reached instinctively for his sword. In that same instant, Michell de Bec clashed aside the curtain without courtesy or preamble and strode into the room.

'My lord, it's de Lacey,' he said curtly. 'He's got lightweight siege equipment and an army of Welsh behind him and he's about to storm the wall s.'

'De Lacey?' Guyon repeated. Beside him, Judith sat up, the sheet clutched to her breasts, her eyes filled with sleepy bewilderment.

De Bec wiped his hand across his beard and looked sick. 'We did not see them before. There was a thick mist at first light and they concealed themselves among a flock of sheep being driven up to the keep.'

'Sheep?' Guyon slanted his constable a look.

'Sheep?' he said again and gave a bark of bitter laughter at the irony. 'Do you think it is the same flock, perchance? Thirty pieces of silver?'

'My lord?' De Bec looked at him sidelong.

'Hell 's death, Michel!' Guyon shouted. 'He gets out over the wall without being seen and returns in the same wise. God in heaven. I ought to blind every last man on duty. It's quite obvious the bastards have no use for their eyes!' He flung back the bedclothes, tossed his sword on top of them and began swiftly to dress.

'Cadwgan's men, I suppose?'

'I do not know, my lord.'

'God's teeth, what do you know?'

De Bec swallowed. 'They came on us from the west, from across the border, my lord. I do not think they are part of the Shrewsbury force.'

Guyon pulled on his chausses. 'That doesn't make them any less likely to murder us all ,' he said in a voice that was husky with curbed temper. 'How far are we outnumbered?'

'About three to one, my lord, but half of them at least are little more than bare-legged Welsh rabble.'

'Don't underestimate them,' Guyon said sharply.

'They might look like peasants, but they fight like wolves, and a weakened keep, like a new lamb, is game for their sport.' He gave his constable a calculating look. 'They won't sit beyond a couple of days for a siege - it's all got to come on the first or second assault. If we can beat them back so that they lose heart, then we have a chance.'

'The women ...'

Guyon followed de Bec's gaze. Clothed by now in a clinging white wool en undertunic, her hair spilling to her thighs, Judith was a sight to rouse the lust of any man in battle heat and rank offered no protection when Walter de Lacey was leading the assault.

Judith unsheathed Guyon's long knife from his sword-belt. 'I can look after myself,' she said quietly, holding the knife in an accustomed, confident grip.

Guyon opened his mouth to tell her not to be so ridiculous, but snapped it shut again. There was no point in warning her that most Welshmen were adept dagger-fighters and that she might strike once and succeed by dint of surprise, but not again. Probably she knew it already, but the die was cast and it was too late, whatever happened.

'The women will have to take their chance with the rest of us,' he said to de Bec as he struggled into his hauberk, feeling that it was a prison and punishment rather than security. He looked round at Judith again and held out his hand for his swordbelt. She fetched it and he stroked her cheek lightly with his knuckles.

'Organise the servants as best you can, love.

The women can care for the wounded and boil up whatever we have - pitch, oil, water. Let the men douse whatever is burnable and carry supplies to the battlements. I'll send you word in more detail when I've seen for myself how the situation stands. At all costs, Judith, keep them from panicking.'

She nodded more staunchly than she felt. Panic was like fire when it spread - difficult to contain and very destructive. She would have to make sure that everyone was kept far too busy to give in to its ravages, including herself. Her chin came up. She looked Guyon proudly in the eyes and he drew her against him, arm hard around her waist.

Her fingers tightened on his back, on the iron rings of war when not fifteen minutes before they had been resting contentedly on his warm, naked skin.

'Guy, have a care to yourself,' she whispered, suddenly feeling very frightened as it began to hit her. 'Don't go after de Lacey at the cost of all else.'

He released her to buckle on his belt. 'I'll take that as foolishness, not insult, Cath fach,' he said.

'I know what is at stake.' He latched the ornate buckle, hitched the scabbard, then kissed her again, this time lightly and tugged a strand of her hair.

She watched him leave, fear squeezing her heart. With icy fingers she braided her hair and pinned it out of the way. The fear intensified and with it came a rallying anger. She yanked on her overtunic, belted it and thrust the knife down against her left side. It was an act of bravado, but at least it gave her the confidence to stalk from the chamber like an Amazon and begin organising the half-hysterical servants into something less reminiscent of a chicken run with a fox amok within.

Guyon peered down from the wall walk battlements on a scene of utter chaos below and, tight-lipped, rapped out several commands. 'Get the sling stones to the wall and stop their pick before that section of shored-up wall comes down... the same for the ram. And there aren't enough grappling hooks up here. De Martin, get one of the boys to fetch some up from the stores, and arrows too if we have them. Soak them in pitch and set them alight and see if we can get that mangonel.'

'Christ's bloody bones,' Eric cursed beside him.

'It looks as though half of Wales is howling out there.'

Guyon smiled grimly. 'Not quite,' he said, 'but enough to send us out of this world if they break through; de Lacey will make sure of that.' He donned his helm and his expression vanished behind a broad nasal bar and patterned bronze brow ridges. He stabbed a finger. 'The trebuchet wants moving over there. It's not a bit of good where it is now. Michel, see to it and you take that section of wall as your command. Choose the ten men that you think will best serve your needs.

Eric, come with me.'

'Do we have a chance, my lord?' Eric looked doubtfully at the ant's nest of Welsh below. They were preparing an assault by scaling ladder with remarkable rapidity and making no attempt to conceal their intentions. Walter de Lacey was present, out of arrow range, talking with several of his captains and vassals.

'A fighting one, literally,' Guyon said, as he watched the small knot of men break up and take their positions. His eyes followed de Lacey with narrowed concentration before he turned and, hand on hilt, stalked to inspect the rest of the perimeter.

The attack came with the searing fury of a summer storm - fast and wild, and as difficult to contain. Stones and molten pitch were dropped upon the ram and boiling water was spouted down on the men scaling the ladders. An exchange of arrows swarmed the air. An arrow tipped off Guyon's helm as he strove with Eric and another knight to grapple loose a ladder.

Thirty feet long and set at an angle of about sixty degrees to the wall , they were extremely difficult to dislodge, particularly when loaded with fifteen determined, rapidly scrambling men.

'It's going!' panted Eric, face crimson with effort as he struggled for all he was worth. The foremost Welshman had reached the top and had begun straddling the wall , his round shield held before him, sword already swinging for Eric's throat. Eric was forced to duck and relinquish his hold on the grappling hook. Guyon swept beneath the Welshman's guard, slashing open his leather jerkin as if it were made of parchment, and kicked him back over the wall . He slammed his sword pommel beneath the second man's jaw, snapping him backwards and then kicked him off too.

The ladder scraped and grated on the stone as it started to slip. Another of the enemy reached the top and met his death on Guyon's blade. His cry mingled with the shrieks of his companions on the rungs as the ladder toppled sideways and crashed into the ditch below. There was no time to congratulate each other, or even to lean weakly against the stone to regain breath and stop their hearts from bursting, for ladders were up either side of the one just dislodged and from one of these the Welsh had gained the parapet and were dispersing along the wall walk.

For a time the fighting was so desperate that Guyon could scarcely hold his own without time to think of the defences elsewhere; when there was a lull in his section, it was only because the wall had broken on the other side and de Lacey was drawing men away to force the breach.

Guyon sprinted in full mail towards the new danger and was tripped by a wounded

Welshman. A knife glittered. Guyon blocked the thrust on his shield and then slammed it into the man's face, rolled and regained his feet. Eric bellowed a warning. Guyon ducked and a hand axe connected with the side of his helm instead of splitting his face, and sent him to his knees. The second blow he caught on his shield, which splintered beneath the impact. The third never landed, for he backswiped the blade across his opponent's shins and brought him screaming down. But there was another to take his place, and then another, and he could not break through.