Stronghold by Finch Paul

Author:Finch, Paul [Finch, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: zombies
ISBN: 9781849972048
Publisher: Abaddon Books
Published: 2012-01-17T12:40:06+00:00

The morning wore on and no immediate attack came.

The English watched in silence from the roof of the Constable's Tower. Ninety yards away, at the far end of the causeway, the dead stared back from the roof of the Gatehouse. They also stared from the curtain-wall which, now that it had been abandoned, had been inundated by them. They crowded along the top of it, all around the castle perimeter, and yet were eerily still. If the English had felt they were encircled before, they knew it for a fact now. The dead on the curtain-wall were actually within bowshot from the west side of the Constable's Tower, but as the archers had seen how futile their efforts had been before, none sought to waste an arrow now.

"What are they waiting for?" Navarre snapped. "A bloody invitation?"

"I'd guess munitions for the scoop-thrower," Garbofasse replied. "They threw so much rubble at us before, they probably emptied their stocks. They'll have to scour for miles in every direction to find a similar quantity again."

"At which point our problems really begin," Gurt said.

There were mumbles of agreement. Men glanced nervously towards the western bluff. It was clear to all that the Constable's Tower could also be struck by the scoop-thrower. If this happened, the men on its roof would be distracted trying to shield themselves, while the dead would advance along the causeway unimpeded.

This was Ranulf's suspicion, and it appeared to be confirmed shortly before noon, when about fifty of the dead emerged from the Gatehouse in lumbering work-gangs, and commenced laying out planks, beams and bundles of rope. The English watched, their sweat-filled hair prickling. Soon there was a prolonged banging of hammers and a droning of handsaws. Under the guidance of a twisted, diminutive figure, streaked with blood and dirt, yet with a distinctive gleaming pate, the corpses had commenced the construction of a tall framework.

"Is that William d'Abbetot?" someone asked, incredulous.

Earl Corotocus remained tight-lipped, but was clearly seething. Others were less angry and more bewildered, more horrified.

"I don't know which is worse," du Guesculin said. "That they know how to do that, or that one of our own is showing them the way."

They'd all come to dread this moment, when their own dead might be raised to face them, though so much horror had befallen them since Ranulf had first voiced concern about this that to many it was just another routine body-blow. More important to Ranulf was the object the dead were constructing. It was almost certainly a siege-tower.

"After the Gatehouse, they appear to have reasoned that forcing entry through the gate itself is too costly. This time they intend to come over the top," he said.

"You credit them with too much intellect," Navarre jeered. "Most of their brains are running out of their ears. How can they reason anything?"

But as the day wore on, Ranulf's thesis appeared to be correct. Whatever power controlled the Welsh dead, it also thought for them, motivating them like great swarms of ants, as though they were all of a single, collective mind.

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