Another beast barrelled into him from behind, jumping onto his back, wrapping its black, crooked claws around his helmet and yanking it off. Lucan dipped his shoulder, flipping it over his head, and the monster dragged him down on top of it. Its gnashing, froth-slathered fangs were less than an inch from his throat; its fetid breath spilled over him, making him gag. This close, Heaven’s Messenger was useless, so Lucan dropped it, freed his dagger from his belt and plunged the blade to its hilt in the creature’s left eye-socket. Another baboon leapt at him, landing both feet in his chest, and Lucan hurtled backward. But when he rose to his feet he had a falchion in hand. The baboon charged at full speed, head down. Lucan side-stepped and caught it a slashing blow to the back of the skull, laying its brains bare.
“The building!” he bellowed, retrieving Heaven’s Messenger. “All of you, inside!”
Alaric and Wulfstan still lay nearby, showing signs of consciousness. Lucan grabbed them by their chain aventails and, one by one, hauled them to their feet. Blood was trickling across Alaric’s face and Wulfstan was still in a daze.
“Into the house!” Lucan shouted, pushing them stumbling in that direction.
A few yards away Turold was having less luck with Benedict. He attempted to haul his squire to his feet, but the lad’s helm was so crushed out of shape, red-grey sludge leaking though its many apertures, that Benedict must have been dead.
“Turold, leave him!” Lucan shouted.
“My lord, he’s not…”
“He’s gone, damn it! Now leave him!”
In ones and twos, the brutalised knights and men-at-arms tottered towards the open door. One of the archers had already got there, and now stood guard. Another had emerged in one of the upstairs windows. Both were stringing arrows and letting fly with speed and precision, feathered shafts thudding into any apes that came close. But this did not stop the assault. No sooner had the men still on their feet staggered inside the building, battening doors and hatches, than the tribe swarmed all over the exterior, hammering the shutters with claws and fists, even digging through the thatch of the roof. Inside it was chaos: packed, noisy, dark, rank with the stench of sweat and blood. When daylight suddenly shafted in, it was blinding; a shutter had splintered from its hinges and a squire standing in front of it was dragged bodily out. Before anyone could try to retrieve him, two feral forms came scrambling through the aperture. The first went down under a flurry of axe and mace blows, while the second was skewered to the wall by Lucan, with Maximion’s spear.
Outside, those who hadn’t made it into the refuge screamed as the apes beat their heads and ribs with stones, or flung them back and forth, ripping off what remained of their armour, chewing through their limbs, gouging their eyes, breaking their backs, rending their bellies open and hauling out ropes of guts and pulsing organs. The gigantic baboon upended one poor fellow, rent him asunder by yanking his legs apart, and hung him high to drink his innards as they gurgled out. Still not sated, the giant cast the corpse aside, wiping gore and faecal matter across its brutal mouth, and hurled itself at the house, the entire wood-and-daub structure shuddering from floor to roof. The archer above fell from the window with the impact. The apes caught him and carried him away, froth spurting from his mouth as he shrieked.
Inside, Maximion cornered Lucan. “There’s something you must see…”
Another crashing impact shook the building. Another shutter was punched inward as the giant struck it. More baboons attempted to force entry, only to die under storms of blades and mattocks. Lucan followed Maximion up a twisting timber stair to an upper floor, where the windows, out of reach of the crazed simians, had not yet been shuttered.
Maximion led him to a window at the rear. “Our only chance is to find a place to hold out. I suggest up there.” He pointed beyond the stockade, which lay some ten yards behind the house. Maybe a hundred feet above the valley floor on a rising hillside of stony rubble, a dark niche was visible. It looked like a cave entrance. “Even if it’s only a cubby-hole, we’ll be defended on three sides and only need face them from the front. You understand the strategy — you employed it at Sessoine.”
Lucan glanced down. “We’ll need to clear the stockade first.”
Maximion indicated a joist in the ceiling overhead, a squared-off pine log perhaps twenty feet in length. “Hack that loose and we can make a bridge down to the top of the stockade. The men can escape over it…” As Maximion spoke, there was another mighty jolt downstairs, timbers crunching as they broke.
“Axes!” Lucan hollered down to the ground floor. “Bring axes.”
Only three of the remaining men had axes. They brought them up and set to work on the overhead bream. Wood-chips flew as the gleaming blades swung and swung until, with a cracking and tearing, the oaken shaft collapsed under its own weight, dragging bundles of thatch with it, sunlight blazing through behind it. With grunts and shouts, the rest of the men now manhandled it to the window and thrust it out. It dropped to the top of the stockade, forming a fragile bridge.
“Down!” Lucan shouted. “All of you!”
One by one, his warriors clambered down. The narrow alley between the house and the stockade was still empty. At least two fell into it — both landing heavily and awkwardly, but they wasted no time staggering to their feet and scaling the stockade.
Lucan moved again to the top of the stair. “Anyone else left down there?”
Only the gibbering of the baboon tribe greeted him, their feet and claws pounding the treads as they came. He turned. Alaric was the last other man in the room; he had removed his dented helm, his face bright with sweat, his locks matted with blood.
“Go,” Lucan said. “I’ll hold them off. Climb to the cave.”
“My lord, I…”
“GO!” Lucan thundered.
Alaric clambered into the window-frame, just as a clutch of monstrosities entered from the stair. Lucan fell on them in a tumult, his longsword and falchion windmilling, parting flesh and bone as a flame melts butter. Blood and brains splattered as he slashed and clove. The apes fell before him like corn to the scythe, tumbling back down the stairs.
Alaric watched from the window, astounded, never having dreamed a man could show such ferocity. The falchion split one brute to the tip of its snout and lodged fast, but it mattered not to Earl Lucan. Heaven’s Messenger sang its song, and as it shore through them he grabbed up a battle-axe and laid it on skull, limb, neck.
“My lord!” Alaric screamed.
“Go, lad!” Lucan shouted back. “I’ll follow you.”
Alaric clambered frantically down the joist, while Lucan turned again on his tormentors, though now at last they were quailing before him. So many carcasses were piled around him, so many cluttered the stair, so much blood and hair streaked the walls of the stairwell that for a brief time even these demented horrors thought better of attacking. But ultimately, even through his fury, Lucan knew the collapse of the house would be the death of him. It shook and shuddered under the blows of the giant outside, until the roof came down in a torrent of twigs and dust, more apes leaping down and cavorting around him. Lucan butchered his way through them as he stumbled towards the window. The room was now tilting, the floor up-ending, there was a drawn-out whine of twisting timbers. One last baboon grappled with him. Lucan stove its cranium with the pommel of his sword, and as it slumped, drove the battle-axe blade deep into its spine. Then the window-frame, already warping out of shape before him, was suddenly clear — and he leapt through it and tumbled head over heels down the joist, just before it dislodged and fell to the ground.