He stepped over the body, and the door thunked flat against the wall as Marek swung at another attacker, and a third soldier staggered away with the impact and fell to the floor at Chris’s feet. The soldier’s torso was drenched in blood; blood gurgled out of his chest like a flowing spring. Chris bent down to take the sword still in the man’s hand. As he pulled at the sword, the man gripped it tightly, grimacing at Chris. Abruptly, the soldier weakened and released the sword, so that Chris staggered back against the wall.
The man continued to stare at him from the floor. His face contorted in a grimace of fury — and then it froze.
Jesus, he thought, he’s dead.
Suddenly, to his right, another soldier stepped into the room, his back to Chris as he fought Marek. Their swords clanged; they fought fiercely; but the man had not noticed Chris, and Chris raised his sword, which felt very heavy and unwieldy. He wondered if he could swing it, if he could actually kill the man whose back was turned to him. He lifted the sword, cocked his arm as if he were batting — batting! — and prepared to swing, when Marek cut the man’s arm off at the shoulder.
The dismembered arm shot across the floor and thumped to rest against the wall, beneath the window. The man looked astonished for the instant before Marek cut his head off in a single swing, and the head tumbled through the air, banged against the door next to Chris, and fell onto his toes, face downward.
Hastily, he jerked his feet away. The head rolled, so the face was turned upward, and Chris saw the eyes blink and the mouth move, as if forming words. He backed away.
Chris looked away to the torso on the floor, still pumping blood from the stump of the neck. The blood flowed freely over the stone floor — gallons of blood, it seemed like. He looked at Marek, now sitting on the bed, gasping for breath, his face and doublet splattered with blood.
Marek looked up at him. “You all right?” he said.
Chris couldn’t answer.
He couldn’t say anything at all.
And then the bell in the village church began to ring.
:
Through the window, Chris saw flames licking up from two farmhouses at the far edge of the town, near the circling town wall. Men were running in the streets toward it.
“There’s a fire,” Chris said.
“I doubt it,” Marek said, still sitting by the bed.
“No, there is,” Chris said. “Look.”
In the town, horsemen were galloping through the streets; they were dressed as merchants or traders, but they rode like fighters.
“This is a typical diversion,” Marek said, “to start an attack.”
“An attack?”
“The Archpriest is attacking Castelgard.”
“So soon?”
“This is just an advance party, perhaps a hundred soldiers or so. They’ll try to create confusion, disruption. The main body is probably still on the other side of the river. But the attack has begun.”
Apparently others thought so, too. In the courtyard below, courtiers were streaming out of the great hall and hurrying toward the drawbridge, leaving the castle, the party abruptly ended. A company of armored knights galloped out, scattering the courtiers, thundered across the drawbridge, and raced down through the streets of the town.
Kate stuck her head in the door, panting. “Guys? Let’s go. We have to find the Professor before it’s too late.”
* * *
28:57:32
There was pandemonium in the great hall. The musicians fled, the guests rushed out the doors, dogs barked and plates of food clattered to the floor. Knights were running to join the battle, shouting orders to their squires. From the high table, Lord Oliver came quickly down, grabbed the Professor by the arm, and said to Sir Guy, “We go to La Roque. See to the Lady Claire. And bring the assistants!”
Robert de Kere burst breathlessly into the room. “My Lord, the assistants are dead! Killed while trying to escape!”
“Escape? They tried to escape? Even if that risked their master’s life? Come with me, Magister,” Lord Oliver said darkly. Oliver led him to a side door that opened directly to the courtyard.
:
Kate scrambled down the circular staircase, with Marek and Chris close behind. At the second floor, they had to slow for a group descending ahead of them. Around the curve, Kate glimpsed ladies in waiting, and the red robes of an elderly, shuffling man. Behind her, Chris yelled, “What’s the problem?” and Kate held up a warning hand. It was another minute before they burst through into the courtyard.
It was a chaotic scene. Knights on horseback whipped the throng of panicked revelers to force them aside. She heard the cries of the crowd, the whinny of horses, the shouts of soldiers on the battlements above. “This way,” Kate said, and she led Marek and Chris forward, staying close to the castle wall, going around the chapel, then laterally into the outer courtyard, which they could see was equally crowded.
They saw Oliver on horseback, the Professor at his side and a company of armored knights. Oliver shouted something, and all moved forward toward the drawbridge.
Kate left Marek and Chris to chase them alone, and she just managed to catch sight of them at the end of the drawbridge. Oliver turned to the left, riding away from the town. Guards opened a door in the east wall, and he and his company rode through into the afternoon sunlight. The door was shut hastily behind them.
Marek caught up with her. “Where?” he said.
She pointed to the gate. Thirty knights guarded it. More stood on the wall above.
“We’ll never get out that way,” he said. Just behind them, a cluster of soldiers threw off brown tunics, revealing green-and-black surcoats; they began fighting their way into the castle. The drawbridge chains began to clank. “Come on.”
They ran down the drawbridge, hearing the wood creak, feeling it begin to rise under their feet. The drawbridge was three feet in the air when they reached the far end and jumped, landing on the ground of the open field.
“Now what?” Chris said, picking himself up. He still carried his bloody sword in his hand.
“This way,” Marek said, and he ran straight into the center of the town.
:
They headed toward the church, then away from the narrow main street, where intense fighting had already begun: Oliver’s soldiers in maroon and gray, and Arnaut’s in green and black. Marek led them to the left through the market, now deserted, the wares packed up and the merchants gone. They had to step quickly aside as a company of Arnaut’s knights on horseback galloped past, heading toward the castle. One of them swung at Marek with his broadsword and shouted something as he passed. Marek watched them go, then went on.
Chris was looking for signs of murdered women and eviscerated babies, and he did not know whether to be disappointed or relieved that he saw none. In fact, he saw no women or children at all. “They’ve all run away or gone into hiding,” Marek said. “There’s been war for a long time here. People know what to do.”
“Which way?” Kate said. She was in the front.
“Left, toward the main gate.”
They turned left, going down a narrower street, and suddenly heard a shout behind them. They looked back, to see running soldiers coming toward them. Chris couldn’t tell if the soldiers were chasing them or just running. But there was no point in waiting to find out.
Marek broke into a run; they all ran now, and after a while Chris glanced back to see the soldiers falling behind, and he felt a moment of odd pride; they were putting distance between them.
But Marek was taking no chances. Abruptly, he turned into a side street which had a strong and unpleasant odor. The shops here were all closed up, but narrow alleyways ran between them. Marek ran down one, which brought them to a fenced courtyard behind a shop. Within the courtyard stood huge wooden vats, and wooden racks beneath a shed. Here the stench was almost overpowering: a mixture of rotting flesh and feces.
It was a tannery.
“Quickly,” Marek said, and they climbed over the fence, crouched down behind the reeking vats.
“Oof!” Kate said, holding her nose. “What is that smell?”
“They soak the skins in chicken shit,” Chris whispered. “The nitrogen in the feces softens the leather.”
“Great,” she said.
“Dog shit, too.”
“Great.”
Chris looked back and saw more vats, and hides hanging on the racks. Here and there, stinking piles of cheesy yellow material lay heaped on the ground — fat scraped from the inside of the skins.
Kate said, “My eyes burn.”
Chris pointed to the white crust on the vats around them. These were lime vats, a harsh alkali solution that removed all the hair and remaining flesh after the skins were scraped. And it was the lime fumes that burned their eyes.