The Knight: A Tale from the High Kingdom (41 page)

Enzio helped Lorn drink some cool water.

‘Thank you,’ said Lorn. ‘I’m feeling better now.’

It was true.

The pain and the trembling were swiftly subsiding.

‘But what’s wrong with him?’ asked Dorsian.

‘Nothing,’ snapped Enzio.

‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘Lorn’s exhausted, that’s all.’

‘I know a fit brought on by the Dark when I see one, Enzio.’

‘Then why are you asking the question?’ the Sarmian gentleman rounded on him irritably.

Alan came in.

‘I think I have the right to know, don’t I?’ insisted Dorsian. ‘As do all those who might decide to follow Lorn in this adventure.’

Alan immediately saw what was going on.

‘If you say a single word about any of this to the troops,’ he threatened, ‘I will gut you. Understood?’

Dorsian gave no reply.

‘Stop it!’ ordered Lorn, who was now rapidly recovering.

He sat up.

‘It’s not a fit,’ he added. ‘Just a … warning …’

‘All right, then?’ enquired Enzio.

‘Much better, thanks. Soon there will be no trace of it.’

And addressing Dorsian:

‘You see, there’s no cause for alarm.’

‘Was it Dalroth …?

Dorsian did not complete his question.

‘Yes,’ replied Lorn. ‘But I’m fine, I assure you.’

He rose to his feet without wobbling too much.

Liam then opened the door slightly and, putting his head inside, announced:

‘Night has fallen, knight.’

‘We’re coming, Liam.’

Lorn removed his spectacles. He no longer needed them.

With his cape covering the rump of his mount, Laedras presented himself on horseback before the fortified gate defending the road which ran from the port to the fortress. Wearing black steel armour decorated with blood-red patterns, he was escorted by four torch bearers and two dracs mounted on war lizards.

Taking care to remain a respectable distance from the embrasures behind which silhouettes could be made out, he halted, waiting long enough to make sure he’d been noticed, and then called out in a loud, calm voice:

‘Have you come to your senses? Saarsgard will fall; you know it as well as I do. So save your lives. Don’t sacrifice them for the folly of a reclusive, dying king who has already abandoned you!’ The dragon-prince steadied his mount, which was champing at the bit. ‘In the name of Yrgaard, I command you to open these doors and deliver the fortress. Leave now, and I guarantee your lives and your liberty!’

A moment went by in silence, after which the doors shuddered and opened slightly before Laedras. A man emerged with a bowed head, then another, a third and others after them, who had all decided to live.

‘Twenty,’ counted Enzio.

‘I was expecting worse than that,’ Lorn confessed.

‘But we’re only fifty now,’ said Alan.

They stood at the top of one of the crenellated towers flanking the fortified gate. In the torchlight, they watched as the column of those who refused to stay, fight and probably die so that the High King’s banner would continue to fly over Saarsgard moved off. For the most part, it consisted of soldiers belonging to the garrison, as well as some of Dorsian’s partisans.

‘It’s difficult to blame them,’ said Alan.

‘And who can say: we might regret not joining them,’ said Enzio.

‘
CLOSE THE GATE!
’ ordered Lorn.

Slowly, the heavy oak panels sheathed in steel closed again, and the portcullis dropped.

‘
YOU HAVE CHOSEN!
’ cried the dragon-prince before turning his horse round and riding away. ‘
NOTHING WILL SAVE YOU NOW!
’

The three friends remained silent for a moment.

‘They won’t attack before sunrise,’ said Enzio. ‘That leaves us the night to prepare and get some rest.’

Just as he uttered these words, a Yrgaardian vessel fired a cannon salvo. Most of the cannonballs passed over the gate with a humming sound but some struck home. One of them even destroyed a merlon at the top of the tower where Lorn, Alan and Enzio were standing. They were not wounded and the impact surprised them more than anything else.

‘I don’t think we’ll get any rest,’ said Lorn before taking cover as a second volley of cannonballs arrived.

The barrage lasted the entire night.

19

Laedras’s troops attacked at dawn, after having bombarded Saarsgard without respite. In the darkness the cannonballs often fell at random but their purpose was less to inflict damage upon the defences than to harass the fortress’s defenders. As the sun rose, the cannons ceased firing and a strange silence, as fragile and tense as a thread of spider silk between two branches in the wind, settled over the scene.

Exposed to direct fire, the fortified gate guarding the road towards Saarsgard had suffered greatly. Its merlons had all been blown away or were crumbling. The top of one of its towers had collapsed and the heavy oak panels that closed the archway had been smashed in. But the portcullis had resisted. Although holed and twisted, with three cannonballs lodged between its iron bars, it remained planted in the ground and prohibited passage.

‘No more cannon fire?’ asked Yeras in surprise, keeping his ears open.

‘So it seems …’ said Lorn.

With his Onyx Guards and fifteen soldiers, Lorn had spent the night in the fortified gatehouse, sheltered from the cannonballs but not from the incessant detonations and the dull impacts which had shaken the solid building each time a cannonball reached its target. They had stood watch and relieved one another on the wall walk, maintaining a vigilant guard despite the incoming shots, in case the Yrgaardians attempted a night attack. Under the command of Alan and Enzio, the thirty other defenders occupied the fortress, ready to intervene in order to cover Lorn’s retreat.

For Lorn knew he could not hold this gate. It was a matter of resisting for as long as they could, and inflicting as many enemy casualties as possible, then withdrawing. And then fighting some more before falling back again.

Until they finally found themselves at bay.

Or dead.

Lorn knew the last stand would take place within the Castel …

He and his Onyx Guards joined the sentries at the embrasures in the remaining tower. The silence that reigned worried them and, because they all had experience of combat, they understood that the assault was imminent.

‘
TO ARMS!
’ ordered Lorn, drawing his Skandish blade.
‘THEY’RE COMING!’

The Yrgaardian soldiers approached in good order, men and dracs mixed together, armed with axes, spears and swords, clad in leather and chain mail which clanked in time with their steady footsteps. Drums marked the beat of their advance.

‘I don’t see Laedras,’ Liam remarked.

‘I don’t either,’ said Lorn, squinting behind his dark glasses. ‘Yeras?’

Although one-eyed, the former Vestfaldian scout still had the keenest sight among them. No details escaped him.

‘No,’ he said.

‘He knows this assault is only the first,’ Lorn surmised. ‘No doubt he’s holding himself in reserve for the final combat.’

For the killing blow
, he thought to himself.

A horn sounded and the Yrgaardians came to a halt, just beyond crossbow range. They waited, immobile, their black-and-red banners fluttering in the wind. Silence fell once again.

Upon an order from Lorn, the crossbowmen placed themselves at the embrasures.

‘Don’t shoot until you hear my command,’ he said.

A few long minutes went by.

Then a ship fired one of its guns, projecting a cannonball which, at the end of a flattened arc, whistled by just above the heads of the defenders.

Lorn was perplexed.

Was the dragon-prince going to bombard them as his troops were trying to take it by assault? Did he have so little regard for the lives of his own soldiers?

But Lorn did not have time to ponder the matter.

A horn sounded three long notes and the Yrgaardians charged, screaming.

‘
CROSSBOWMEN, WAIT
!’ shouted Lorn above the growing clamour. ‘
THE REST OF YOU, STAND READY!
’

The crossbowmen shouldered their weapons. There were ten of them and if they shot at the right moment, they would have no trouble mowing down the front rank of the assailants. Out of the corner of his eye, Lorn watched Yeras who had also shouldered his crossbow. They had agreed that Lorn would give the order to shoot as soon as Yeras signalled to him …

But Lorn never gave that order.

For just when the assailants came into range and Yeras was about to alert Lorn, the ship which had previously fired started up again, this time with all its cannons.

Lorn realised that the first shot was only to determine the aim of those that followed.

He yelled:

‘Take cover!’

But it was too late.

A volley of cannonballs struck the parapet with full force. Some of them came whizzing between the merlons and killed three men, projecting them into thin air, dismembered and bloody. The others smashed into stones and rubble. The impact was dreadful, deafening. A cloud of dust and loose mortar rose and then rained down upon the stunned and disorganised defenders. During this time, having reached the foot of the fortified gate, the Yrgaardians raised ladders and swarmed upwards to attack.

Grey with dust, a trickle of crusted blood running from a wound to his forehead caused by a stone shard, Lorn had just regained his wits when he saw a big black drac setting foot upon the parapet. A furious melee was under way. Yrgaardians and High Kingdomers fought hand to hand in total chaos. Brandishing his Skandish sword with both hands, Lorn rushed towards his adversaries. He struck to the right, to the left, to the right again, killing or maiming three men before reaching the drac. The latter turned to face him. He gripped in his scaly fist the hilt of a great scimitar which a man would have difficulty lifting. The blade was chipped, and already covered in blood. Lorn delivered two blows which the drac parried before riposting. It was a stroke powerful enough to break a blade or a wrist, but Lorn evaded it rather than try to block it. He stepped back and counterattacked, wounding the drac in the side. The drac screamed and slashed at shoulder level. Lorn ducked, stood up after the broad blade had passed over him, and drove his heavy Skandish weapon beneath the drac’s arm, where the armour had a weak point. Lorn had trouble freeing his blade, which had sunk in as far as the guard. He finally managed to draw it clear, sticky with cold black blood, before toppling his opponent out into empty space with his foot. As he fell, the drac struck and carried off two men who were ascending a ladder. Picking up a halberd, Lorn tried to use the weapon to push the whole thing away. But more Yrgaardians were already climbing up and he strained against it in vain.

‘
TO ME!
’ he called.

Almost immediately, Dwain, Logan and a soldier from Saarsgard’s garrison came to lend him a hand. Together, they forced the ladder to a vertical position just as an Yrgaardian reached the top, and then tipped it backwards along with those clinging to its rungs.

A small victory, and one which Lorn was unable to savour.

He heard an awful grinding of twisting metal, added to the grating and cracking of splitting stones.

‘What was that?’ asked Logan.

The same sounds were repeated.

Leaning out from an embrasure, Lorn saw that the assailants had attached chains to the portcullis and four of Laedras’s war lizards had been harnessed to those chains. They were slowly, inexorably, pulling together, joining their strength to rip away the fortified gate’s last defence.

Lorn did not hesitate.

‘Retreat!’ he yelled, although it galled him. ‘Retreat!’

They had repelled the Yrgaardians’ assault and were once again masters of the parapet. And at least that would permit them to withdraw in good order and take their wounded with them.

As a second wave of attackers scrambled up the ladders, the Onyx Guards covered the flight of the remaining soldiers, fighting and retreating one step at a time towards the trapdoor which, opening onto a spiral staircase, constituted the only exit.

‘Your turn, knight!’ said Liam, just before he split open a skull with his big sword.

Lorn did not argue. Taking a lit torch from the wall as he passed, he dashed down the staircase which ended beneath the great archway. The defenders had erected a barricade there during the night. But this final obstacle seemed quite ludicrous against the giant lizards, which, before Lorn’s eyes, were tearing away the portcullis in a deafening din which echoed in the covered space.

The soldiers had been given time to leave the gate and were now running along the road towards the fortress. Worried about his own men, Lorn turned back to the staircase. He saw Yeras, Logan, Dwain and Liam all come hurtling down. Liam, wounded in the shoulder, said:

‘The trapdoor’s shut, but they’re already attacking it with axes.’

‘To the fortress, quickly,’ said Lorn. ‘Go on ahead.’

‘Knight …’ Liam started to object.

‘I said: go on ahead!’

The guards knew what Lorn intended to do.

But they reluctantly left him, with a torch in one hand and his Skandish sword in the other, facing the lizards, which, ridden by lancers, were opening the way for the soldiers massed behind them, crushing the barricade and passing through the thick dust cloud raised by the removal of the portcullis.

Lorn waited until the last moment.

And threw his flaming torch to the ground, on top of a bundle of braided fuses. The fuses were set alight and Lorn was already running for the exit when the small, lively, crackling flames took their separate paths, each of them climbing the cord which they devoured and travelling up the archway’s walls.

The lancers were too late in spotting the barrels of powder attached to the vaulted ceiling. They voiced their alarm, giving the infantry troops following them a chance to run away, but their mounts, too ponderous and already enmeshed in the barricade, could not flee as quickly. One lizard tried to climb over another in order to turn round. The beasts snapped at one another and a scaly tail, as wide and as heavy as a tree trunk, struck when …

Lorn had only run about twenty yards before the whole scene exploded. The blast threw him to the ground as the deflagration destroyed the fortified gate, lifting enormous pieces of rubble into the air at the same time as three immense balls of flame blossomed, one upwards and the other two from the extremities of the blackened archway.

Time seemed to stand still. Strange seconds stretched out in a false silence. Then a rain of debris came down, a mixture of stones and burning coals, which crackled on the ground amidst a hail of pebbles.

Lorn staggered to his feet and saw that the door and its towers were now mere ruins. He contemplated them in almost drunken astonishment, as if unable to comprehend what his eyes beheld. Then he felt helping hands holding him upright. The Onyx Guards had come back for him. He recognised them, or at least he thought they looked vaguely familiar.

‘Are you all right?’ asked a red-headed colossus.

‘Are you wounded?’ enquired a short one-eyed man.

‘Let’s not hang about!’ said a guard who had a veteran’s face and air of confidence.

Lorn let them move him along at a trot towards the fortress.