Something hard smashed into Ayla from the side and hurled her to the ground, landing heavily on top of her. Her head thudded onto the walkway, and multi-colored lights sprang up in front of her eyes.
“Ow!”
“When I dreamed of getting on top of you,” a voice growled into her ear, “this isn't how I imagined it!”
“Reuben?”
“Who else, you silly goose? What, by Satan's hairy ass, are you still doing up here? We agreed that you’d go down as soon as the attack began.”
“No. You agreed with yourself and didn't listen to me.”
“Where's the difference?”
Rolling off her, he sprang up and drew his sword. Smoothly, he took a defensive stance and placed himself in front of the grappling hook that had wedged itself between the crenels.
“Stay back!” With mad energy, he began to hack at the reinforced rope that hung taut from the hook. From below, Ayla could hear the grunts and curses of the men climbing getting louder.
“What does 'puny codpiece' mean?” Ayla demanded.
Startled, Reuben looked around but didn't stop slashing at the rope, which had already been hacked through about a third of the way.
“What? What did you say?”
“Is it really an endearment among soldiers?”
“Ayla, do you really want to discuss this now?”
“Because it sounded rather insulting to me.”
“Ayla! I'm trying to work here!”
“Why are you here, anyway?”
“I'm protecting you!”
“You should be with the archers!”
“They're managing fine without my help!”
“So am I.”
“Oh, really?”
An enemy soldier stuck his head over the crenels. That was the last time he would be doing anything with his head. Reuben separated it from his body with a swipe of his blade, and it tumbled down into the courtyard, spraying blood in all directions, followed shortly by the rest of the corpse. There was a strangled yelp from further down the rope.
The next soldier was somewhat more careful. He slashed with his sword above his head to clear the way before grasping the crenels with his hand.
But the way had not been cleared. Reuben sprang forward, bringing his sword down on the hand clutching the crenel. It dropped away into the darkness.
“Aaaarr! No!”
Desperately, the mercenary tried to hold on to the slippery rope with one hand while blood gushed from the stump of his left arm. To no avail—he lost his grip and fell backwards into the darkness.
Clank! Clank!
Ayla's head whipped to the left. She had been so transfixed by the fight unfolding before her that she hadn't noticed two more grappling hooks which had lodged themselves firmly between the crenels a bit farther down the walkway. Burchard had noticed them, though. He had picked up the sword of the dead mercenary, the bloody, severed hand still clutching the hilt in an unbreakable death-grip, and was hacking away at the rope with all his considerable strength.
Clank!
Each time the sword hit the stone beside the rope, it made a dull, metallic sound. The rope was about to give way when, from beneath the crenels, a guisarme shot up.
Burchard didn't move with Reuben's speed. He jumped back, but too late. The blade of the guisarme hit him in the shoulder, and he was thrown against the wall, limp and unconscious.
“Burchard!” Ayla screamed and wanted to dash forward, but a rough hand grabbed her from behind and held her.
“I told you,” Reuben snarled between gritted teeth, “to stay back!”
One last time, he turned towards the first grappling hook.
“Yaaaa!”
With a bestial cry, he brought down his sword on its rope, and it split with a ripping sound. Ayla just glimpsed the terrified face of a mercenary stretching his hand, too late, out towards the wall—then he and the rope were gone. Again, thunder rumbled across the dark sky.
With a gigantic leap, Reuben crossed the distance and was suddenly beside the limp figure of Burchard.
“Reuben, is he…is he…”
The knight eyed the prone steward for a moment. Then he drew back his hand and gave him a resounding slap across the face. Burchard twitched and groaned a curse.
“He's not dead. He’s going to be fine,” Reuben gave his expert medical opinion.
Ayla opened her mouth and closed it again. She really didn't know what to say to that.
“You should probably get his shoulder fixed up, though,” Reuben conceded. “Aren't you a healer?”
“Yes.”
“Then get to it!”
“Yes, of course. I…Reuben! Look out!”
Without turning to look, Reuben kicked backwards, caught the mercenary who had been about to jump over the wall in the chest, and catapulted him to his death. Then, gripping Burchard by the uninjured arm, he hauled the steward to his feet and more or less thrust him into Ayla's arms.
“Here! Catch!”
Ayla almost collapsed under the weight, but somehow she managed to steer the bleeding steward a few steps away. Then she half-fell, half-sank onto the walkway.
“Leave me,” Burchard grunted. “Go save yourself!”
“Shut that thing you hide under your mustache and lie still!” Ayla hissed at him. “I've got to get your bleeding stopped!”
Behind her, she heard Reuben shout at his enemies. All of those things were so infamous and sacrilegious they made her ears burn. Ordinarily, she would have tried to dunk his head in a bucket of water for uttering things like that in her presence. But, at the moment, she couldn't care less.
“Milady, I…”
“Be silent and hold still, I said!”
Pulling back her cloak, she ripped a piece of linen off the neckline of her dress and started winding it around Burchard's shoulder. Soon enough, it was soaked with blood, and she fumbled for her neckline again.
Despite the blood loss, Burchard still managed to make his ears turn red.
“Milady! If you must find bandages for me, couldn't you rip them off from somewhere else?”
“No!” Ayla snapped. “My hem and sleeves are soaked from the rain, and the bandages need to be dry!”
“But Milady, your…your…”
“Close your eyes if it makes you feel better!”
The steward promptly followed her suggestion.
“What's happening?” he asked after a few seconds.
“Would you like me to get your wound bandaged, or would you like battle commentary?”
“Both would be ideal.”
“Well, we're not dead yet!”
“Thank you, Milady.”
“You're welcome.”
Ayla wound the piece of linen around the steward's shoulder for a final time, tied a knot, and tugged.
“Ouch!”
“Don't be such a wimp.” Quickly, Ayla rose, and pointed her finger at the man on the floor imperiously, as you would at an old bulldog. “Stay!”
“I have no intention of going anywhere,” he growled.
“Good.”
Ayla sent a quick prayer to the heavens, and then turned towards the fight again. Her stomach plummeted.
Apparently, her prayer had not been heard. Enemy soldiers were crawling up the wall like ants up an anthill. They swung bloody blades of all forms and sizes, and from their throats rose terrible battlecries. Most of her archers had stopped shooting now; they had to defend themselves with their own axes, spears, and guisarmes. But they were only few, and the enemy were many. Three grappling hooks were firmly lodged between the crenels twenty yards down the wall, and it was all the defenders could do to hold the attacking army at bay. Get near enough to the ropes to cut them, or defeat their foe? Impossible!
Nearer to Ayla, however, where another two grappling hooks had sunk their teeth into the stonework, the situation looked quite different. Not that the enemy didn't have superiority in numbers there, too, no. In fact, there were about a dozen of them fighting against a single opponent. It just so happened that this opponent was wearing a red armor.
Reuben tore through his enemies like a rabid lion. A whirlwind of gore surrounded him, and men fell before him like so many leaves in an autumn storm. Very much so, in fact, for their color was that of late autumn leaves: a deep, dark crimson.
“Die! Die, you fawning, dread-bolted death-tokens! You puny, lily-livered wagtails!”
Nobody dared step in Reuben's path to strike a direct blow at him. And whenever one of his enemies did venture to strike at him from the side, he found the blow returned with double force. Reuben didn't seem to care whether he used his sword, his fists or his head to ram his opponents from the wall and into death and darkness. He wasn't just carrying a weapon, he was a weapon. A weapon that killed everything in sight.
“Die! Die, you horde of tottering, shard-borne hedgepigs! By Satan, you will die! By Belzebub, Astaroth, and Belphegor, die! Die, and may your souls die with you, and burn! Burn! Ha! ”
And his voice…if Ayla had thought before the soldiers had been yelling terrible battlecries, she thought again, now. Nothing came close to Reuben's bestial roar, his curses on the head of every demon and pagan idol under the sun, and most of all…
Most of all, his laughter.
It could hardly be thought possible, but his laughter seemed to frighten the enemy almost more than his blade did. He laughed as he cut them to pieces. He laughed as he threw them to their deaths. He laughed when he was hit by a blade and blood ran from his arm. The man who had dared to wound him did not live more than three seconds.
In front of her inner eye, Ayla saw once more a hand clutching the burning end of a torch, steadily, tightly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Apparently, several of the enemy soldiers were plagued by similar recollections. When they came over the wall and saw the piles of their dead comrades lying there and Reuben standing on top of them, laughing his head off with the mad joy of battle, they paled and balked. Some tried to flee down the rope again and were pierced by the arrows of Linhart's men, and some tried to veer off into the direction of the other Luntberg soldiers, to join what seemed to be a saner fight.
Only a few charged Reuben. Those were the ones who died first.
Suddenly, a loud cry went up from where the archers were fighting. Quickly, Ayla looked over there, and fear gripped her heart like the emperor's tax collector would a sack of gold coins: very, very, very tightly.
Sir Luca and a vast contingent of his soldiers had come over the wall to the right of Luntberg’s archers, via a new grappling hook that had gone unnoticed. The men were plowing into her vassals with merciless ferocity, and Ayla could see that her liegemen had little chance of withstanding the assault. She was just about to cry out, to beg for them to stop, to plead for help from merciful angels, anything…when Reuben bent and picked up something from the walkway. With lightning speed, he rose again and threw what he was holding.
With a wet smack, the bloody head of one of his soldiers hit Sir Luca de Lombardi in the neck and catapulted him right into his soldiers. They tumbled to the ground, a bloody and confused heap, desperately trying not to cut each other to pieces or stand on the nose of their commander.
“Luca!” he called, easily drowning out the thunder that rolled over the castle. “Luca! Come here! Are you not man enough to fight me on your own? Do you hide behind your men's pants because you wear a skirt?”
Muttering some unintelligible curses in Italian, Sir Luca came to his feet. His black beetle eyes were focused on Reuben as if nothing else existed in the world. And it seemed nothing did, for the moment, at least. Amazed, Ayla realized that the fighting around them had ceased. Her men were looking at Reuben. Sir Luca’s men were staring at the Italian, as if they waited for something.
“You sheep-biting bladder! You pox-marked puttock!” Reuben laughed. “You're so ugly that beer goes sour when you're around and so scared of battle that you forget how to hold your sword the right way up!”
The Red Knight raised his sword. The men around him—enemy men, not her own—to Ayla's amazement stepped back, as if they were suddenly under his command, and made free the way to Sir Luca de Lombardi.
“Do you have to hide behind an army of paid cutthroats, or are you man enough to fight me yourself? Well? Answer me!”
None of the mercenaries made a move towards Reuben. They suddenly didn't seem very keen on attacking him, which Ayla could fully understand. They seemed to be much more interested in watching the reaction of their commander.
Slowly, Sir Luca shook himself. Blood and brain-matter dripped from his bevor. He took a deep breath. And then, very slowly, he raised his sword until it was on a level with Reuben's, ready for the attack.