Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (56 page)

Well, it was that, and Chulderic's attitude changed quickly once I began to speak. My first mention of the King's Caverns and the secret entrance to the castle that lay concealed in them brought snorts of derision from my listeners. They had all spent their lifetimes on the shores of Lake Genava and in Ban's castle and none of them had ever heard as much as a hint of a secret entranceway to the castle. Such things were in the realm of sorcery and magic, or were a boy's fantasy. The muffled snorts grew louder as men began to vent their scorn for me and my idiot ideas, but I settled everything by simply raising my hand and stepping forward to face Chulderic, almost nose to nose with him in a fashion that few would dare employ towards the veteran commander, whose lack of patience and shortness of temper were both proverbial. People took note of my stance and paid attention, nudging each other and directing their eyes to the confrontation between us, but it took long moments before the noise began to abate to any degree and even so, it would not have died away completely had Chulderic not asked me what I had to add to what I had already said.

As soon as he spoke, silence fell over the assembly, which numbered eleven men besides myself: Chulderic, Samson, Brach, and eight other senior commanders, all of whom had been promoted to the posts they now held by King Ban himself. I took my eyes off Chulderic's and looked about me, making eye contact with every person there, including Brach, before looking back at the senior commander.

"I have not been in these caves for more than six years, Chulderic," I said. "But today when I arrived I asked you a question . . . a very particular question about someone else. Do you recall?"

Chulderic was frowning now as he glanced at Samson and then back to me. "You asked me about Clodio—about whether or not I'd seen him. And I told you he was here yesterday. What's the import of that?"

"The import is that Clodio is in Castle Genava, behind the walls. Brach, do I lie?"

"No, on my mother’s honour." He addressed the others. "Clothar told me when he joined us yesterday that Theuderic had left the castle in the care of Clodio when he rode out after Gunthar, and that Clodio had told Clothar of a secret entrance, through a chain of underground chambers stretching from here into the castle and known as the King's Caverns. Clodio claimed it had been shown to him more than a score of years ago by my father, King Ban."

Before anyone could react, I raised my voice again. "Now ask yourself this, Chulderic: if Clodio is in Gunthar's castle now, how came he here yesterday? You and Samson both saw him. He did not come with your party, because he's too crippled and infirm to ride anywhere, so where did he come from, and where did he vanish to thereafter? Because he's not here. He's not in your camp. I swear to you, he is back in Castle Genava with Gunthar, but he will return here tonight, after dark, to lead us back into the castle in the dead of night with a party of thirty men." Brach was grinning at me and at the effect I had produced, and then I folded my arms and sat on a block of stone, where I waited for the furor to die down.

That night, Clodio selected a score of men from the sixty best Samson and Brach could provide for his consideration, then blindfolded all of them and led them into the castle under the command of two of Samson's captains who had also been blindfolded until they were within the caverns' entrance. I am sure I was not the only person watching the selection process who noticed that Clodio picked only the smallest men from among those recommended. Even the two officers appeared to have been chosen by him precisely because of their small stature.

Before they set out, Clodio told the men that he would lead them through a secret doorway into the first of a chain of caverns that stretched for more than a mile to the King's castle. Once they were through the secret entranceway, their blindfolds would be removed. There were places in the caverns where the passage was both difficult and dangerous, he warned, and none of it was easy, since several of the caverns were enormous and as black as Hades. Clodio would lead them through all the perils, he said, to the deepest level of the castle, far below where they were standing now. It would be damp down there, so far beneath their feel, and dark. No one ever went down there, he said, but even if they did, they would find nothing, for the entrance there was as magically hidden as the one through which their party was about to enter.

The men chosen for the raid wore no armour and carried only the lightest of weaponry—daggers, swords and bows. Their strongest armour would be the surprise and fear they generated by their sudden appearance in the middle of the enemy stronghold. Their task was to move swiftly and silently to silence and dispose of the guards, most of whom would be looking outward, expecting no attack from behind.

I did not join the raiding party, although it had been my hope to go in with my two cousins using the secret approach. Yet Clodio brought us word that Gunthar had a ploy in motion. Even as he spoke, he told us, Gunthar was leading a force of three hundred men, horse and foot, out of the castle under cover of darkness to seek out and destroy Brach and his small party and capture the Lady Vivienne. Brach and I exchanged glances when we heard that. We knew the Queen was safe, and we knew, too, that Gunthar was not going to find and destroy Brach by riding away to search for him on this night of all nights, when Brach was encamped within a mile of Gunthar's gates, under his very nose.

I immediately wondered, nevertheless, if this might be some cunning trap set up to entice our forces out into the open, because Gunthar must suspect that Chulderic and Samson were close by. Perhaps he hoped that by leaving the safety of the walls with three hundred men he might encourage Chulderic to commit to some kind of move against him, at which point he could swing about and return to catch Chulderic's force between his own and the castle. Of course, thinking along such lines tends to resemble searching for the center of an onion . . . layer upon layer of possibility come to light and are then rejected, only to be replaced by another, identical layer.

In any event, I decided that it made more sense for me to use my cavalry training and skills that night than to go trudging through the blackness of the caverns carrying a flickering torch and hoping eventually to grapple hand to hand with some faceless mercenary in the darkness of the castle. Brach suggested to Chulderic that he and Samson and I should all ride with the force designated to storm the castle once the bridge had been lowered. Chulderic agreed, and the three of us transferred ourselves to ride as ordinary troopers with the veteran cavalry commander Sigobert, whose normal rank was second in command to Samson himself. Thus my entry to the castle that night would be, God willing, by way of the hurriedly lowered drawbridge, at the head of a fast-moving column of riders charged with the task of penetrating the curtain wall defenses as quickly and savagely as we could and then making sure that Gunthar's people— three hundred of them were expected to remain in the castle, as opposed to our assault party's thirty—could not rally strongly enough to take back command of the main gates.

It was hot and heavy work and we were outnumbered from the start, but the enemy had been demoralized on several counts, and so we were able to do greater damage than we might have expected to do otherwise. First and foremost, the garrison had been appalled by what must have seemed like the magical apparition of our warriors pouring out of the strongest building in their castle—the central tower with its massive defenses. Few of the defenders actually saw the arrival of our raiders, however. Our men were at their backs and moving stealthily and with determination. Familiar with the layout of the castle and the disposition of the guards, they attacked in silence, using their lethal daggers efficiently, and most of the guards died silently without ever knowing what had happened. Our raiding party slew them efficiently and without compunction because all of their targets were Outlanders—mercenaries whose deaths bore no personal significance for any of our men.

Despite all our caution and efficiency and speed, however, a few men did manage to cry out before they died, and after that the alarm spread quickly, swelling with the clash of steel on steel until the off- guard watch spilled from their beds to see what all the clamor was about. By then, the first wave of attackers had overcome the guards at the main gates behind the curtain wall and flung open the gates, leaving a few men to hold them safe while the rest swept out along the curtain wall passage and around to attack the towers flanking the drawbridge. There they paused while the bowmen among them shot down the soldiers guarding the bridge works—all the defenses had been constructed to guard against attack from the far side, not from inside—and as soon as all the guards were dead they went to work immediately to lower the bridge.

I was waiting with Sigobert and his attack group of horsemen, sixty strong, just behind the first fringe of trees across from the bridge, less than a hundred paces from the edge of the ditch. As the youngest there, I had better night vision than anyone else, and as soon as I saw the top of the bridge begin to move I warned Sigobert, who gave the signal to advance. Our whole group surged forward on a single broad front and was already reshaping itself into something resembling an arrowhead formation as we moved. By the time the bridge end came to rest on the ground we were less than thirty paces distant and advancing at full gallop in a column of horsemen three abreast. The thunder of our hooves on the timbers of the bridge would have awakened the entire garrison at that point, had they not already been fighting for their lives.

We charged across the bridge and wheeled hard to the right, into the passageway behind the curtain wall that led to the main gates, and we were not a moment loo soon in getting there. Gunthar had evidently hired some exceptionally skilled people with his levies of mercenaries, and under their leadership the garrison troops had rallied strongly and mounted a concerted attack on the few of our men who had been left holding the gates against our arrival. Our fighters were heavily outnumbered and faring poorly when we reached them, but the sudden arrival of a charge of heavy horsemen was more than our enemies were prepared to stomach and they turned and fled back into the castle, leaving the gates in our possession. Mere moments later, it seemed, we heard the roar as our own infantry followed us through the gateway, under the leadership of Chulderic, and shortly after that the enemy surrendered and the castle was ours. My hand, I discovered, was sore from gripping the hilt of my sword too tightly, but I had not swung a single blow at anyone from start to finish of the fight.

The total cost to us in storming the castle had been one man killed and twenty wounded, and none of the wounded men was expected to die. This would normally have been cause for celebration, but our situation was not one in which to rejoice. Samson, concerned about the Lady Vivienne and her companions, wanted to travel to her immediately to assure the Queen that all was well, that the castle was in our hands and that she and her company would be brought back in safety as soon as it was practicable. What that really meant was that the Queen and her ladies must resign themselves to remaining in the small valley behind its impassable mere for several more days until the tactical situation became less fluid and the dangers of their being abducted along the way had lessened to the point of being acceptable.

But Brach had objected, claiming that duty for himself, and their clash of wills might have escalated had not Clodio announced bluntly that neither one of them should go on that mission unless they were prepared to be stranded outside the walls for a long time, in the event that Gunthar's forces returned to the attack. There were places in the caverns, he told them, that were simply too narrow for anyone as big as Samson to get through, even without armour, and Brach was half again as large as Samson.

Their compromise was to send three of the smaller men to carry news to the Queen. Should Gunthar move against us in the meantime, the messengers were instructed to return to the red-wall caves to await Clodio, who would lead them back through the caverns.

That task attended to, the princely brothers sought a place to sleep, while I, in acknowledgment of my lowly status as both a junior and a newcomer, took over the post of commander of the guard for the remainder of that night.

Within the week that followed we had settled into a routine of boredom that was reinforced by the swift realization that our success in capturing the castle had effectively placed us under siege. Gunthar's forces had begun moving into position outside our wall by dawn on the morning following our attack, and a permanent detachment remained there afterwards, a large body of men whose primary purpose was to prevent us from lowering the drawbridge and leaving the castle. Most of them were bowmen, and by and large they remained out of our sight, safe behind the screen of trees that began about a hundred paces from the approach to the drawbridge . . . which raised the question of whether or not they were there, or whether they had merely convinced us that they were there, while in fact they were elsewhere and we had been tricked into imprisoning ourselves.

We put that notion to the test twice, sending out mounted parties to test the enemy's responses, and on each occasion, Gunthar's bowmen simply moved out of the trees into the open as soon as they heard the bridge being lowered and then stood there, picking their targets and launching arrows, as quickly as they could pull and aim, reveling in their own lethal accuracy and in the knowledge that no living soul could reach them.

The dilemma that next arose to perplex me was founded in the fact that I considered myself even then to be a horse-warrior ahead of everything else. The original attacking party had come in on foot through the caverns, arriving on the lowest levels of the central fortifications and making their way up by very dark and narrow stairways from floor to floor until they were able to emerge into the courtyard. That, in my mind, precluded any possibility of even considering the route as an exit for cavalry. An extraordinary horse may climb up stairs, blindfolded or blinkered and led by a trusted groom or rider, perhaps, if the conditions are right and the stairs are shallow enough, but no horse will descend a steep and narrow stairwell into darkness. I had to wonder, then, could we not enter the caverns with our horses from the other side, through the red-wall caves?