Stronghold by Paul Finch Page B

you a student of treason as well, Master Louvain?" Walter Margas wondered, walking past them towards the nearest ladder. Despite his age and world-weariness, he was still an efficient eavesdropper. "You two are made for each other. You should get a room in a tavern sometime where you can whimper your sedition together."
    "Are you leaving us, Walter?" Ranulf asked. "Surely not? Not when the battle's just about to start?"
    Margas's wizened cheeks coloured. "Perhaps you'd rather I defecated up here on the parapet?"
    "I'd rather you got back to your post. You can drop your guts with everyone else, when the fighting's over."
    "Are you calling my courage into question, sirrah?"
    "You were very active on the River Ogryn, as I recall. Riding against unarmed footmen. These odds are less to your fancy, I take it?"
    Margas's lips tightened with rage. "When this is over, FitzOsbern, I'll report you both to the earl. You'll find he takes a dim view of those who spread defeatism."
    "If you're hiding in the privy, how will you know when it's over?" Gurt asked.
    Margas was visibly furious. Spittle leaked into his unkempt beard - but there was nothing else he could do. Aware that others were listening and watching, he trudged back along the wall to his post.
    "Useless sack of puke," Gurt said under his breath.
    "He likes his cowardly butchers, does Earl Corotocus," Ranulf added.
    "If you gentlemen would concentrate on the day," Ulbert interrupted them, "I'd be obliged. There's movement afoot."
    To the west, large numbers of the Welsh host were suddenly shambling - shambling was the only word Ranulf could think of - down the bluff towards the southwest bridge. There was nothing military about it. They descended in a mob, stumbling, jostling each other. In appearance they were lambs to the slaughter, for they marched neither behind shields nor beneath a protective barrage of missiles.
    On the Constable's Tower, Navarre laughed.
    "This is going to be too easy, my lord."
    Corotocus said nothing, but watched carefully.
    The southwest bridge was extremely narrow, and had neither barriers nor fences on either side of it. It had been constructed this way deliberately so that visitors to the castle - whether welcome or unwelcome - could only file across it two at a time, and all the way would be in danger of falling off. The southwest tower, which directly overlooked it, didn't just contain the ballistae, but had been allocated to the crossbowmen, and these were the first to strike. Their bolts began slanting down. The rest of the defenders watched expectantly for the Welsh to start dropping, and for a resulting pile-up of bodies as those behind tripped over them. But this didn't happen. The Welsh crammed onto the bridge regardless of the deadly rain.
    "They call themselves 'royal archers'?" Gurt said. "They haven't hit a damn thing!"
    Ranulf was equally confused. The king's crossbowmen were supposedly elite troops, highly disciplined and skilled.
    "Village bumpkins couldn't miss from that range," Ulbert said.
    The downward slope of the bluff was log-jammed with figures, all pushing mindlessly forward. They were hardly difficult to hit. The crossbows in the southwest tower were now joined by longbows stationed further along the curtain-wall, these too in the hands of expert marksmen from the royal house. Sleek shafts glittered through the noon sunlight as they sped from on high, though no obvious carnage resulted. However, it was soon clear that they actually were striking their targets, as indeed were the crossbow bolts - but the targets kept on coming. The first few had reached the other side of the bridge and were on the berm, at the very foot of the southwest tower. Those defenders at that part of the castle marvelled that there seemed to be women among them. Not only that, but a lot of the Welsh were already bloodied, in some cases heavily as though from severe wounds. Bewilderment and fear spread among the English. Several of the Welsh visibly