The Robber Knight's Love (The Robber Knight Saga #2)(118)
In her mind, Ayla heard once more Reuben's chilling and fiery words, as he had stood on this very wall only a few hours ago, telling them of bloody secrets.
“The name is…the Killing Fields,” he said.
A shudder went down Ayla's back at the name. “Killing…Fields? Why is it called that?” She could have slapped herself at the question. Obviously not because daisies and roses were planted there.
Reuben waved the torch once. The silent sign for “nock.” As one, the archers put the arrows to the strings. Inside, Ayla heard his voice again.
“It's called that,” Reuben said, “because, when a castle is stormed, that is where the attacking soldiers died. Caught in the middle.”
“I…don't understand.”
Reuben moved his torch again. The sign for “mark.” The archers took aim. Ayla threw a quick glimpse down into the courtyard. The enemy was still busy removing the splintered bits and pieces of the door, ravenous to get at their prey up on the wall and to get out of the way of the streams of boiling oil. Still, they hadn't noticed anything of what was going on behind them.
“When an army attacks, a castle has multiple layers of defense,” Reuben explained, looking glowingly at the killing fields, as if he could see the action before him. “The second layer, the second wall, is the most dangerous to take. At the first layer, the attacking army has a safe rear, it has room to maneuver, safe routes for fresh soldiers to be brought in and wounded to be brought away. It can use heavy war machinery, such as catapults, siege towers, ballisti, and the devil knows what else.”
“God. God knows what else.”
Reuben gave a grunt. “All right, I suppose he knows, too. The point is that, at the outer wall, the attacking army has many advantages that make up for its inferior positioning. At the inner wall, on the other hand…”
Reuben waved the torch a third time. The men knew what that meant and drew their arrows back. Ayla, just as everybody else on the wall, held her breath. Now was the time to put Reuben's plan to the test.
In her memory, she saw Reuben smile, and it was a gruesome smile.
“…at the inner wall, the situation is quite different.”
Reuben looked at Ayla. Even though he wore his visor, she knew their eyes met for a moment. She nodded. Like the sword of justice, his burning torch came down.
“Loose!”
Ayla had seen arrows fly before: on the meadow beyond the bridge, and at the riverbanks of the Lunt River. In the latter case, she had even commanded the archers. Yet never before had she seen arrows fly and hit home with such deadly devastation as now, under the flickering lights of the thunderstorm. Every arrow of the fifty found its mark. With unearthly howls of pain, one sixth of the enemy army went down in one go. As they turned, the second volley was already flying, and another forty soldiers went down with arrows in their legs, chests, and stomachs.
Sir Luca's eyes went wild with fury, wild with insanity, as he finally understood the full extent of the trap that had been laid for him. Ayla swallowed, remembering the last words she had exchanged with Reuben before the battle.
“But why haven't you told us this before?” Ayla asked. “Why haven't we made use of this tactic before?”
“It would have been of no use to us, Ayla. The enemy was sitting in front of our gates like the fox in front of a rabbit warren, waiting for us to come out, and we could not. On the open plain, we would have no chance against them, and we had no chance of setting a trap for them, of luring them in on our terms.” Slowly, Reuben raised an armor-clad hand and balled it into a fist. “Not until now, that is!”
Not until now. With fear, hope, and horror twisting in her heart into a bloody, knotted cord, Ayla watched the margrave's army being skewered and cut down by the dozens. Sir Luca turned his head from right to left, watching paralyzed as soldier after soldier fell around him, dead, wounded, bleeding, wishing for death.
“è tre volte sabbiate diavolo!” The Italian’s face reddened, from anger as much as from the blood of his own men that sprayed all around him. Mad with rage, he raised his fist and shook it at Reuben. “Strappero di lim lim e rifatti interni, demone da inferi regioni…!”
An arrow grazed his face and made him howl in pain. Stumbling back, he caught himself against the wall, shaking his head. When he focused his eyes on Reuben again, Ayla could see it in his eyes: the lust to kill.
“Attack! Attack, you bastardi! Kill them!” he shouted, pointing to the archers on the inner wall and Reuben in their midst. “Charge! Kill them all!”
“What?” one of his captains, who was right beside him, yelled back. “We can't…”
Sir Luca decapitated the man with a single swipe of his sword. He snatched the grappling hook from the belt of the toppling corpse and started towards the inner wall, howling terrible battle cries. The rest of the army hesitated for only a moment—then battle cries went up from all over the courtyard, and the entire armed might of the Margrave von Falkenstein bore down on the castle of Luntberg.
And what a might it was! Ayla could see, as the soldiers approached at full run, that still there were over two hundred, still there were over four times as many attackers as there were defenders. And although showers of arrows went down on the enemy from the front and behind, although the ground was wet with blood and slippery, the enemy army moved like an unstoppable force.