Chapter 15

Clearly visible even in the thick morning haze, the drab stone spires of Hermitage Castle high on the bluffs north of the Hogshead ferry cast a pall over the peaceful river valley that lay before Kruzurk and Mediah. All roads converged on the landing with its small, well-defended motte and bailey keep on the south side of the river. Fires from the gatewatch camp glowed in the half light, sending aloft a dozen lazy curls of smoke. A few villagers milled around outside the camp, having delivered their morning quotas of supplies to the Duke’s men. A single ferry barge bucked against its guide rope that stretched across the wide and impetuous flow of the Liddle River.

“M’lord, they will likely have warrants for you in this place,” Mediah warned as he reined in his steed. “Surely we must look for a less defended way across the border.”

Kruzurk urged his horse off the road into a sapling thicket and dismounted. “We must not waste time looking for another crossing. According to the maps at Lanercost, this is the only good road for twenty leagues in either direction. Once we’re across the river, we should be able to make excellent time.” He tossed the half full waterbags to his companion and added, “Fetch these full from that stream we crossed whilst I cut some saplings. Then we shall put your artistic skills to work.”

An hour later, just as the sun peeked over the ridge, the first stirrings of the guard changing at the camp down below brought Kruzurk to his feet. “Take horse, Mediah, it’s time. You know what to do. Make it look good. We’ve only one chance to fool this lot.”

Mediah mounted, turned in his saddle and said, “M’lord, if you really are a magician, methinks this would be the time to parlay that magic.”

Kruzurk stepped up next to the horse and took Mediah’s forearm in his. “We have leverage, my friend. The leverage of mathematical certainty and the powerful contents of these ‘wineskins’ are the best magic I can conjure. The rest is timing. Just remember, make for the ferry as soon as they break and run. Now go!” A hard slap on the horse’s rump sent the animal charging down the slope with Mediah careening all over the saddle like a drunken hooligan.

The Duke’s men saw the crazed rider heading for their camp and quickly spread the alarm, bringing even the Captain of the watch to see what was up. Mediah’s animal had been reined in by the time the officer got to the road. The dark skinned “drunk” was dragged off his horse and thrown down into the mud.

Mediah kicked and flailed at his captors, screeching wildly at the top of his voice, shouting Greek obscenities one second and, “Don’t let him catch me! Get thee gone, demon!” the next. He managed to get to his feet and struggled to turn in the direction of the road. Pointing and gesturing, he pleaded, “He’s coming, I tell you! Allah help be merciful!”

“What the bloody hell is this idiot screaming about?” the Captain demanded.

“‘E’s drunk as a miller’s maid, m’lord,” one of the soldiers crowed. “‘Ad two pouches o’ brew on ‘is ‘orse, ‘e did, and mighty fine brew it is, too.”

The Captain grabbed one of the bags, sniffed it and gave it a mighty tilt. “This is good,” he barked. “Where’d you get this, knave? Tell me, now, or I’ll slit you from yer ass end to yer eyeballs!”

Mediah fell to his knees in front of the Captain and blurted out the second act. “Mercy, please yer lordship. Kill me now, before the phantom comes for my head. Please, kill me and have done with it!”

By now, most of the guards had passed around the first bag so that all could have a taste of the addicting drink. The second skin was already being consumed as Mediah’s crazed cackling continued.

The Captain, quite amused by the morning’s entertainment and filled with more than his share of the mushroom swill, quickly turned from taskmaster to turnip head from the effects of the brew. Minutes later the rest of the gatewatch found themselves in a similar state, all of them having drunk enough of the liquid to bring on a nightmare they would not soon forget.

From the top of the bluff, Kruzurk could see his plan unfolding. The entire garrison seemed stoned on the potion, but not so looped that they were no longer a threat. His part in the great deception would have to be flawless to avoid an arrow in the back, or worse. He donned the makeshift breastplate Mediah had crafted out of sapling bark. From it, five very real looking arrow shafts protruded. Next, the hideous neck mask went on over his head, aligned so he could see forward through a slit, but covering his face entirely. The red ocher bloodstains Mediah had applied to the mask and breastplate provided the last element of authenticity.

To complete the ruse, Kruzurk rubbed a dozen of his special glow-in-the-dark pellets in the palms of his hands, creating an eerie green glow that he applied to the horse’s mane and to his own front side. He would now appear to be a headless glowing corpse, riddled with arrows, charging through the midst of those just tipsy enough not to believe their own disbelief.

Kruze took a deep breath, drew his short blade and gave his horse a sharp kick in the flank. The animal screamed, lurched forward, bolting toward the enemy camp. Down the hill they came, pell-mell, the horse’s eyes wide in stark terror at its own headlong flight. Kruze’s flowing red magician’s robe filled with the wind, making him appear twice his size and to those tanked on the Teller’s wine, no doubt he would almost seem to be flying.

The two gatewatch sentries standing astride the main road got the first glimpse of the onrushing red specter. For a few seconds, they just stood there, unable to move as the phantom closed on them. When the horrible vision got close enough for them to see the enraged animal and its giant headless rider, the guards’ terror erupted into wild cries of confusion. Throwing their weapons and shields aside, both men ran for the keep, screaming at the tops of their voices.

“Get thee gone, Cerberus!” one man shouted, ripping off his own helmet to aid his escape.

The other blabbered, “Demons! Demons are upon us!”

Every eye in the camp turned to the road in unison. The Captain of the watch was well past the point of any rational thinking. His head swiveled around in time to see the phantom bearing down on him and he simply passed out stone cold in the ditch. Seeing their officer go down as if by magic, panic spread through the ranks.

Five men turned tail to run, but were hit from behind by Kruze’s charger and knocked helter-skelter in the mud. Two more fumbled to load their crossbows, allowing the ghost to fly between them. Another man frantically waved a torch in front of him to ward off the evil host, to no avail. He too was knocked heels over head by flying hooves.

A dozen men were either down or running for their lives by the time Kruze reached the ferry landing. He reined in his animal and turned to retrieve Mediah, who was desperately trying to remount his horse. An arrow fired from the walls of the keep flew well wide of its mark, striking the wooden railing beside Kruze’s horse. Another sailed harmlessly over his head. “Drat, they’re not all drunk,” he swore.

Once mounted, Mediah struggled with a drunken fool who tried all he could to hold onto his horse. He kicked the man in the face, regained the reins and rode down two crossbowmen that were still trying in vain to load their weapons. “Get aboard,” the Greek shouted. “Don’t wait for me!”

Kruze knew Mediah would make it now, provided the bowmen in the keep were typical conscripts who couldn’t hit an ox at fifty paces. He ripped off his disguise and dropped to the ground. Taking the horse’s halter, he guided him across the rough-hewn landing to where the ferry barge was moored. Another flight of arrows spattered the water to his right. He turned to see the keep’s gate swinging open. That meant more soldiers and this batch would be sober.

“Come on, Mediah,” he yelled. Kruze leaped onto the heaving barge, urging his horse to jump aboard. Mediah had just reached the landing when the first troop of soldiers crossed the motte, heading straight for them. More arrows scattered piecemeal in the water and on the landing. One struck Mediah’s horse, bouncing harmlessly off the saddle.

Quickly gaining the barge, Mediah tossed his reins to Kruze and set to work hauling on the heavy rope that drew the ferry across the river. “This will never work!” he shouted. “They will haul us right back over before we get across.”

The magician had a quick reply. “Tie off that brake rope, Mediah. We’ll cut the barge adrift and let the current take us across.”

“Surely you jest, my lord!” Mediah roared. “The flow will tear the barge to pieces and us with it.”

At that instant, an arrow struck the barge rail and shattered. A whole flight of arrows sailed over the ferry from a different direction. More soldiers had come up from the village. There was no time to worry about the current. Kruzurk’s blade flashed, and the rope groaned under the strain. Another slash cut almost halfway through, but still the rope held.

“Get back!” was all Mediah had time to shout before the rope came untwined like a hundred snake’s heads all uncoiling in unison. A loud ‘crack’ followed a high pitched whining noise. The rope separated, sending the barge crashing into the landing. The log landing dissolved into a thousand pieces of flotsam as it swept downstream pushed by the much heavier barge.

Within seconds the ungainly ferry and its top-heavy cargo swung in a wide arc out into the main channel of the river. The buffeting of the current threatened to toss the horses into the water, but Mediah held onto them with a conviction bordering on the mystical. Kruzurk lay at the feet of the animals, doing what he could to soothe their panic, all the while trying his best not to get trampled.

The ferry’s guide rope, stretched almost to its breaking point all the way back to the north bank of the Liddle, acted as an enormous pendulum for the barge. As the current pushed the hapless boat further downstream, the rope held its ground on the far side, pulling the barge inexorably closer to the north bank and freedom. Kruze’s mathematical leverage was doing the job.

“If—the—rope—holds—we’ll make it,” Kruzurk yelled over each successive swell of the roiling black waters.

Mediah could only nod his head in exaggerated agreement, his skill with the horses the single element keeping the barge from tipping upside down in the surging current. He wasn’t about to change his focus to marvel at the Euclidian certainty by which Kruzurk’s plan had been aided. To him, it seemed sufficient that the plan worked at all—at least as long as the ferry rope held.

* Hafdeway, Anglia *

The main track out of Hafdeway dropped briefly into a winding trough of a sunken road, abruptly reappearing at the southern entrance to the mill bridge. Ean’s watchful eyes caught the flutter of the Duke’s standard to his right, just as it disappeared into that trough. He quickly realized the troop of armored cavalry would soon have them cut off from the road to Ravensport. Unless he acted swiftly to slow them down, he and Simon would be sharing a cell or a tree limb by nightfall.

McKinnon galloped ahead to buy some time, still unaware that Troon had been pinned to his saddle by a crossbow shaft—a shaft that probably came from Troon’s own hand, long ago created for the Duke’s armory. A stone’s throw from the northern bridge exit, Ean jumped from his horse and raced to a spot where the south entrance lay just within the cast of his longbow.

In his prime, Ean could loose an arrow every twelfth heartbeat and still be accurate at two hundred paces. He knew he would have to be faster than that today, if the enemy were to be stopped. Behind him, Sparkle trotted past, huffing under her load and barely keeping a running pace. Ean only had time for a quick look and that’s when he saw the blood streaming down Simon’s leg.

“Get on with ye, Troon!” he shouted. “I’ll hold this bridge to give you time to beat it out of here.” Troon responded with a halfhearted wave, unable to do much else but run for his life.

Turning his attention back to the bridge, McKinnon drew one of Troon’s specially designed, long-range quarrels from his bundle of arrows and mounted it on the longbow. The heavy, square-headed crossbow bolt could knock a charger down, even at that distance, if he could hit it anywhere in the forelock. Ean drew the bow with all his might, released a long but steady breath and waited for the first target to appear at the far end of the bridge.

“Thwack!” The longbow loosed the quarrel on its deadly errand. The arrow struck the lead horse just above the eye, sending it into an enraged spin and throwing its rider against the stone rampart at the side of the bridge. The horse reared up, falling back in a confused heap on top of the man, half dazed from the fall. The animal screamed more like a gutted pig than a charger, exactly the effect Ean had hoped for, knowing that would throw the other horses into a panic as well.

In rapid succession, he let fly three more arrows. One struck its mark dead on and another, by happenstance, ripped the Duke’s standard from the hands of its holder. More than confusion spread through the ten riders bunched up at the bridge entrance, especially after seeing their liege’s colors go down. Two men at the back of the column broke for the village. Another jumped from his horse to aid his fallen commander. Still another let fly from his crossbow, falling well short of the target.

The thrashing animal Ean had brought down with the first quarrel did everything it could to right itself, but to no avail. In the process, it completely blocked the south end of the bridge and made mounted ducks of the rest of the Duke’s men. Ean fired another quarrel. The horse he struck this time collapsed like a drunken milkmaid, spilling its rider into another soldier and further spreading the panic.

“Best be savin’ yer own scrawny arse, now, McKinnon,” the wily old man professed as he turned and ran for his life.