The right and center of the hundred knights ground down the foe, but on the left, Sir Hring's bold and heavy men struggled and had their match. Sir Hroar, Hring's son, slew Sir Jannik, but the shield of Sir Salo of Omron warded off three blows from Baron Delgado yet not the fourth that was the mightiest of them, and Omron never welcomed home its knight. So fared men and their pitiless arms in the battle, but the captain who caused it stood untroubled, laughing louder and louder, till he saw something that set his mood on another course.
“The hounds! Beware the hounds! They are fed on blood of the foulest of beasts that their size and savagery should surpass all others.”
A man who heard that may well have deemed the speaker a madman both for what he said and that his words sounded near to the screeches of owls or a gate suffering under the ram, but there was reason enough for his disquiet. From the castle Cuculna, high on its low hill, bounded dogs toward the battle, and they howled, their tongues rolled, and their eyes were fierce. Birds flew up as well, falcons of a dreadful sort, for the vile king liked to hunt not deer and fowl but men and women who threatened his rule. But he had trained all those helpers in the hunt worse than he ought, for the hounds leapt on his own men as well and tore them apart, and Baron Delgado lost his life in that cruel way.
The Cuculna armsmen died, every one of them, whether by spears and swords or talons and tearing fangs, and the attackers soon strove against the hounds and birds alone. They fared better than had their foes by their readiness for it, much as when a man flails upon being pushed into a river and comes near to sinking before he recovers himself and makes for the bank, though he takes the prize in swimming at other times. Sir Thurbert of Trilling raised his bow, bringing down many with it, and other knights who had them put a hand to their arrows while the rest trusted in their mail against the claws and teeth of dogs.
They fared well in that and pushed up the hill while cutting through the hounds. None fell to beasts as they had to men, though Sir Clovis was bit and others bruised. “Press these to the wound if you love your life a little,” the eerie captain told Sir Clovis, and he threw herbs to that knight for his good while Sir Donn warded off animals from him. The knights, once one hundred but fewer by then, climbed the hill toward Cuculna, and not enough hounds and hawks were there in all the world to refuse such doughty knights as those. They reached the very walls and could touch them, which were in no good state so that their rams and engines were idle had they brought any, for already the walls were marred by gaps wide enough for mailed men. Within, every building lacked some side or the roof, whole or in part, and weeds claimed all the ground.
The sorcerer who had command over the knights not by their will but by his own spoke. “Your task is done with this. My enemy is inside, alone, and alone I bring battle to him. Should I topple him, you may go where you will or slay me if you wish, which will be no surprise if you do. Otherwise my rede is to flee forthwith, unless you hope to serve under him in place of those who died today or who failed to muster when called. For the clash of sorceries is no surer than that of arms.”
The knights allowed him to enter the keep without such plaint as they made in other battles had their lords or commanders said their desire was to sally alone to a doubtful contest. Neither did any depart the place for all that that to do so seemed the wiser course, much as when the trial of some criminal is watched by many from the start of it to the very judgment who were gladder had the crime never been done and will gain nothing by the result, whatever it may be. Instead they overcame the beasts that were left, for no more issued from Cuculna, and kept their ready weapons to hand.
What struggle took place within the neglected walls of that castle better ruined in full than in half they neither saw nor heard, and to some that was a hardship greater than the battle they had. “I am now minded to seize those engines, turn them, and batter the keep with both in it,” Sir Kasya of Denes said, and the ardor he had for it won to his cause other knights not used to idleness when the war was still in doubt.
“And yet, those engines failed to sink a single ship, a wooden one. I doubt whether a keep full of sorcery is more frail than that. Beside, the engines were not manned, but had perhaps spirits to use them,” Sir Poemen said. At that Sir Lanfranc looked over a rock-throwing instrument but was baffled at its lack of ropes, winches, or pulleys, nor were men able to load and aim it for all the eagerness they had. The knights nevertheless busied themselves in efforts to work the engines, a matter more engrossing to them than a combat unseen and unheard.
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All that could be learned of how it fared was its smell, for they soon covered their noses against an odor of rot worse than any they knew, even within cities confined in close siege by pitiless enemies. Beyond that, some scent of burning reached them such as when lightning humbles a tree lordly in its branches or batters the helpless earth with all its grasses and shrubs. No other presage than that was there of Cuculna's doom. The uneven stones of the keep tumbled down and fell apart one from another till no keep was left, and those of the walls, and every part of every building crumbled so that any who had not seen Cuculna would never think a castle once watched over the harbor.
Of its ruler, nothing was seen. His guards, hounds, and hunting falcons had all lost their lives on the hill and the shore, and no other household had he kept than that. One man alone was left in the garden of rocks, and he someone they knew and had no cause to like.
“There is that mad sorcerer, but what of him? The battle has ended, and we must learn where we are and how we might leave.” Sir Reiner of Boncot said that, and the knights yet alive agreed, save that there was one duty else yet to be done.
Sir Micah of Luros raised the point. “All know without being told that best is to be buried at home, worse than that is to be buried far away, and worst is to be denied burial altogether. Peace-scorning men who wield their swords in aid of others give up the first more often than not, but I hope still for the second and will not refuse it to anyone. Therefore I urge this, that we bury our shipmates, and our foes as well, and if there is some priest nearby, we should find him.”
That talk suited those knights, and so they formed three groups out of all of them that had not succumbed to their wounds, two and twenty knights in each. The first was to journey north to find some port city that far-sailing ships entered and left, the second southward alike in its purpose, and the third inland to bury the dead in some better place than that, full of sorcery and strangeness as it was. They set above them the commanders of the wings in the battle, since they had won it, just as herdsmen shear well-raised sheep time after time and not once only. Even so did the knights each swear to follow Sir Reiner north, Sir Arsam south, or Sir Hring where it seemed best to him.
Sir Poemen joined last, and there was this cause behind it. He was a man whom even victory did not content except that he knew the why of the contest, and many in the city that was his home are such. Curious, he alone walked whither the keep had been to learn whether their jailer lived or not. Nor was he sure of it when he looked, for the man was warm and had no wounds he could see, but many scars. Yet he moved not, or groaned, or seemed to breathe, or did anything at all like a living man. Sir Poemen knew something of surgery and cures as all knights from much-skilled Argetych do, but nothing of sorcery. He hoisted the unmoving man on his back.
“I am minded to take this our unasked captain to a city where more may be done for him, but if there are words to say against it, I will heed them. I know already he is likely beyond rescuing from the reward he deserves for his acts,” Sir Poemen said.
“I have much to say against it, so much that days might pass if I started,” answered Sir Donn of Caerffos to that. “But you may do as you wish, and I hope it is to your good.”
Sir Reiner agreed. “Though never did I help him, had I been asked, not now do I care to do him hurt either, for we will win fame for this which will be honor to our lords, and that sorcerer of Cuculna is dead because of it, which is doubtless a boon to this land. Beside that, by no right may we claim him as prisoner, or if we did, we must kill him forthwith or treat him well. To leave him or bring him. One is the land and the other the sea, so travel the road that you wish.”
He said that and asked that Sir Poemen join with his group, and so it was done, and many were glad. For they had not yet bethought what to do so far as that strange man and his welfare and so looked on Sir Poemen as do the people of a lordless city when a speaker rises to treat on a bounty come to them from some discovery or plundered foe and what should be done with it, whether to strengthen the walls, or have ships built, or see to the repair of churches and courtrooms that have need of it. He tells them the good and the bad of each course, both the obvious and what no other man had yet thought, so busy were their wits with wealth and how to spend it, and at last says what plan he judges the best. They vote whatever he said as their will, grateful to him not for his advice, but because he spared them this shame, that they prove themselves heedless of weighty matters but only scrounging and greedy lovers of ease and pleasure.
Thus was the body of a hundred knights broken up into four parts. Some made for the south, others for the north, still others away from the fish-filled coast, and some, grievous to say, for that land which is beyond all others, and not to be reached on foot or by ship. And if some country is able to have knights of that number and boldness pass without deeds worth writing being done, it was not that one far to west.