SEVENTEEN
They approached the Castillo del Ferral in the late afternoon, when the heat of the day was still heavy about the walls, and the shadows among the trees were getting long. They numbered six—Brother Crespin remained with the horses in a narrow vale a half mile away—and they carefully appraised the citadel’s walls and towers. It was Ramiro and Ruy’s assessment that not more than two dozen Moors resided inside—maybe half of them would not be combatants. The pair, having had several hours to discuss strategy during the ride from Ramiro’s villa to the citadel, were well past the awkwardness of the initial meeting.
The other three knights were professional soldiers. They knew what to do, and Lazare did his best not to distract them while he prepared himself for battle.
He had not been entirely honest with Ruy and the others. While he had spent years pretending to be a Cistercian monk, he had grown up in the green woods outside Yorkshire, where there was no shortage of opportunities for young orphans to learn martial skills. Unlike the other youth, though, he had little interest in becoming a longbowman. He had been drawn to the mysterious associate of Marion, the noblewoman who had been a source of constant consternation for Locksley. He and the other boys had called him Old Ox, a childish perversion of the name by which the others knew him—Audax. He had once heard Marion call him by a different name, and he had kept that secret to himself—for it meant that Marion and Old Ox had known each other before coming to Sherwood.
Perhaps that was why Old Ox had suggested he spend more time with the Cistercians. Why he had suggested that young Lazare learn not only how to wield a sword, but how to make one as well. And later, when the opportunity arose to travel to France and the center of the Cistercian world, both Old Ox and Marion thought he should go.
He had not had a chance to find a proper hilt for his new sword. The blade was finished, sharp and polished, but the handle was nothing more than two pieces of shaped wood wrapped tightly around the bare tang of his sword and covered with a layer of taut leather cord. The sword squirmed in his grip, untested and unready. Much like he was.
He wore Miguel’s hauberk. Miguel was going to cover their assault with the crossbows, and while a padded tunic would not stop a Moorish arrow, they all hoped Miguel would remain far enough away that a hastily fired arrow would be his only concern.
“We can’t scale the wall,” Ruy was saying. “We don’t have the proper equipment. Unless there is another way in, we have to get them to open the gate.”
Ramiro nodded in agreement. When Lazare had first seen the man, standing beside the old oak, he couldn’t decide which was more gnarled and twisted—the bark of the tree or the man’s face. Ramiro’s beard—spotty as it was over the scar tissue—alleviated some of his ugliness, but up close, there was no disguising the tortured knot that was the end of his nose or the twisted curl of his lips. Lazare could imagine how much more horrific that face would be if it were seen by torchlight or partially obscured by shadows. No wonder the Moors had been so frightened…
“You should announce yourself,” Lazare said suddenly. “Just walk up to the gate and tell them who you are.”
“What?” Ruy said.
“You’re the Beast of Calatrava,” Lazare said. “Famous for killing Moors in their sleep. For strangling children and frightening cattle to death.”
“I never strangled children,” Ramiro said.
“You’re a monster that hides in the shadows,” Lazare said, a little disturbed that Ramiro had not denied frightening animals to death. “You don’t fight in broad daylight. You skulk in the night. If you simply walked up to the gate and said, ‘I am the Beast of Calatrava, and when the sun goes down, I am going to kill all of you,’ don’t you think they might send out a war party to kill you now, instead of waiting for you to catch them all sleeping?”
“They’d have to open the gate,” Ruy noted. “If we were all waiting, it might be our best chance of getting inside.”
“What if they put archers on the wall?” Ramiro said.
“Don’t stand that close,” Lazare pointed out.
Ruy laughed and looked at Ramiro, who shrugged. “I’ve attacked a castle with less of a plan,” he admitted.
The Moors responded even more readily than they had hoped. A few minutes after Ramiro had caught the attention of the single guard atop the wall, shouting out a long list of atrocities he was going to perform on all those who resided within the walls, the castle gate shuddered as the heavy bar behind it was removed. Ramiro stood his ground and as soon as the gate was halfway open, a horseman charged out.
The horse barely cleared the shadow of the wall before it was brought down by one of Miguel’s crossbow bolts. The archer at the top of the wall fell next. By that time, Lazare and the others were sprinting across the open ground between the forest and the citadel.
The second rider was thrown from his saddle as his horse abruptly changed direction in an attempt to not collide with the first horse that was still thrashing on the ground. Lope killed the fallen Moor with a single stroke of his sword as he ran past, and Hernando paused by the dying horse to thrust his spear into the face of the Moor still trapped beneath it.
The third horseman was caught, framed in the open gate, and with an unholy howl, Ramiro leaped over the downed horse and rider, hurling one of the three Moorish swords he had brought with him. Lazare gaped, unable to believe what he was seeing, and even though the thrown sword hit the Moor like nothing more than a stick bouncing off a wall, the effect of such an unexpected attack was immediately felt.
The Beast had come to Castillo del Ferral.
Ramiro pulled the stunned Moor out of the saddle, hurling him to ground where he beat the man so savagely with the pommel of his sword that blood spurted high enough to mark Ramiro’s hair and beard. A Moor charged, and Ramiro threw himself to the side, slashing with his sword. The sword severed the Moor’s right leg just below the knee, and the Moor collapsed, screaming and clutching at his blood-spewing stump. Ramiro walked away from the howling man, and it fell to Lazare—his eyes burning, his chest heaving—to put the man out of his misery.
He did the same for the man whose face had been battered in by Ramiro’s pommel. As he took stock of the pitched battle inside the gate, he realized that the Moors were ignoring him. Horrified at what he saw happening around him, Lazare understood that his role was to bring mercy to those who had been touched by the Beast of Calatrava.
He threw up after he killed the third mortally wounded man. Wiping his mouth and fighting to keep from vomiting a second time, he desperately tried not to think what this abattoir would be like if none of the Moors were given mercy. How long would all these men scream and wail before they died?
Such was the legacy of the Beast—the horrible truth that none of the stories captured. What really happened when the Beast came was so much worse than any troubadour could dare imagine.
“Was it awful?” Crespin’s worried face hovered in the moonlight. “I heard so many screams.”
Lazare took the offered wineskin and drank heavily from it, washing the bilious taste of the sick from his mouth. “It was,” he said after swallowing several mouthfuls of warm wine.
Crespin looked past him, his head bobbing as he counted the returning members of their company. “Who?” he asked when he came up one short.
“Lope,” Ruy said tiredly, taking the wineskin from Lazare. “Bastard got lucky.” He touched the side of his throat. “Caught him here as Lope killed him.”
Crespin gasped as the moonlight revealed the last member of the group, and he closed his eyes until the blood-spattered monstrosity had walked past him. Lazare watched Ramiro stagger past the horses and continue on down the ravine. A mindless revenant, returning to its grave. None of them made any effort to stop him.
“There’s a route through these mountains,” Ruy said as he handed back the wineskin. “I had forgotten about it until we were at the Castillo del Ferral. We can take the entire army through this pass and be on Miramamolin’s forces before they know we are coming.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t just to protect his family,” he said.
“A tactical advantage,” Lazare said.
“Aye,” Ruy said. “And with him leading the assault, we might have a chance.”
Lazare shuddered at the idea of facing a charge of enraged Christian soldiers, the Beast of Calatrava at their front. “More than a chance,” he said. He looked for the shadow-shrouded figure of the bloody Beast. “We can’t let him fall on the field,” he said. “We have to get him home again.”
“More than any of us,” Ruy agreed. “He has to live.”