“What did you say?!”

“She’s coming with us,” Wenzel repeated.

Jan shook his head. “No she isn’t! Who do you think you are, ordering me about like that? Why should we bother about a peasant wench?”

Wenzel repeated Harun’s argument about Sir Christian needing to hear the news of the raiders, while its intellectual father kept himself in the background, knowing full well that any proposal from him would immediately be rejected by the driver due to heathenness.

“Hm,” Jan grumbled, when Wenzel had finished. “Very well. One of us will have to sit on the loading space, there isn’t room enough for all of us in front.”

His eyes strayed to Harun.

“I’ll do that,” commented the bondsman, who had wisely kept out of the whole evening’s proceedings up to then. “We’ll drive faster again, now that we know there are raiders on this side of the river too, won’t we? I’ll best make sure that nothing falls off.”

“Very well,” repeated the driver, this time with a definite sour edge to his voice. “Now can we leave? We shouldn't wait for morning, but put as much distance between us and these raiders as quickly as we can.”

Not even Harun protested about having to spend the night on an uncomfortable wooden board. Everyone knew that they had lingered too long, that their wagon and its load was exactly the kind of prey, the hunters out there in the dark were looking for. They clambered up onto the cart and made themselves as comfortable as possible. While the stars around them began to penetrate the silken darkness of the sky, they hurried along, wishing that they had 3 or better yet 5 additional horses. With heavily armored knights on them, if possible.

Against the last faint traces of the red sun’s glow on the horizon, Harun saw a black shape emerging, looming ever larger.

“What’s that?” He asked, pointing towards the menacing form, and shivering at the sight.

“It must be Joringard Castle”, muttered Wenzel, who seemed to feel no easier than the scribe. “Creepy, ain’t it? Makes you almost believe in the stories.”

“What stories?” Harun wanted to know.

“Do you mean to say you’ve never heard them? But every Christian soul hereabouts has heard the tale of… oh.”

“Yes,” said Harun. “Quite.”

“Well, I ain’t got the time to tell it to you now.” He shot a meaningful look at the distraught peasant girl, still half-covered by his cloak and mumbling incoherent syllables.

“Ah.” Harun nodded. So it was that kind of story. Sinister tales of betrayal, death and butchery to keep the family entertained on long winter evenings assembled around the stove. Imaginary nonsense which no serious educated man should pay the least heed to.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something much more noteworthy. A red spark in the distance, lighting, up, disappearing… no, there were two, three… he stopped counting as the number went past 5.

“Look! There!” His voice was low, his outstretched hand suddenly sweaty. “Stop the wagon! Do as I tell you to!”

His voice was so urgent even Jan the driver did not think of disobeying. He brought the cart to a halt and followed Harun’s outstretched finger with his eyes. His lips let out an entirely unchristian curse.

“It’s them!” The words that escaped the peasant girl were a shriek of sheer terror, and far too loud for Harun’s liking. He made a sign to Wenzel, who quickly pressed the girl’s head against his shoulder, where she quietly shivered and gave no more sound.

“Do you think they have caught sight of us?” inquired the scribe, urgently.

“I can’t see how they could have.” Wenzel shook his head. “No. They’re doing what we did on our way back last time. Nearing the castle to camp in the old barns for the night. What shall we do?”

“We can’t get away. They’re moving quicker than we are, with this full wagon.”

“Hide?”

“No way,” growled Jan. “How do you think we’d be able to hide the cart? Once they spot it, they know we're here and we're done for.”

“Couldn’t we get it off the road, behind some trees and…”

“No. Too heavily loaded. Besides, there are ditches on both sides of the road. We can't get the wagon or the horse over those.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Despairingly, Wenzel looked around. “There’s no way, no way we can…”

“There is the road to the castle,” suggested Harun.

Silence. All three men turned their heads to look at him. Even the girl interrupted her sobbing to turn around and stare at him in horrified amazement.

“To the castle?” Asked the bondsman. “Joringard Castle?”

“Why yes. If we can get the gate open, we can hide in there and…”

Their wide, open eyes, full of terror, let his sentence fade into silence.

“What is the matter?” he asked. “I thought it was quite a good idea.”

“Nonsense such as only a heathen can dream up,” spat the driver. “Go to Joringard Castle indeed!”

“M- my mother always warns us about that place,” stammered the girl. “And we live miles off, we hardly ever see it. But my mother says… that is, she… she used to say…” She stopped and broke into tears again, whether from fear or from being reminded of her mother’s death Harun did not know and honestly did not care very much at the moment.

“There are stories going round,” volunteered the bondsman. “Everyone has heard the rumors since the knight was disgraced and the castle fell in ruins. The people say…”

“Look here, we haven’t exactly got time for a night of cosy storytelling,” implored the scribe. “They are coming closer!” He took a deep breath. This superstitious peasant folk! But at least he was not alone, together with his friend he must surely be able to convince these fools. “Wenzel, tell them it is our only chance.”

Wenzel’s gaze flickered from the castle to Harun. Then it flickered back from Harun to the castle, the latter obviously occupying a larger portion of his mind.

“Weelll…” he said.

“No. Not you, too.”

“I told you what people are saying about the castle!”

“No you did in fact not. You only told me that those people who never say anything to me had said to you what other people say about the castle. But you never actually told me what you're talking about!”

“Whatever, it ain’t important. Joringard is a cursed place, has been, for years. No Christian soul dare set a foot in there.”

“Well that’s fine, then,” said Harun, starting to lose his temper. “I’ll wait for you inside while you get slaughtered, shall I?”

The girl let out a squeal of anguish. Wenzel pressed here face gently against his shoulder again, and threw Harun an accusing look.

As if he had done anything wrong!

The bondsman threw Harun a look too, but this was a thoughtful one. Harun saw it, and saw the possible source of support. And why not? Anyone who would give up part of his freedom to get his next day’s bread on the table was bound to be pragmatic. Someone like that would know that practical thinking sometimes was the last resort.

“Do you think the raiders are Christian?”

“Surely not!” declared Jan.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” said the bondsman, turning to Wenzel. “Do you think they’re Christians? People from round about here? People afraid of the castle?”

“I can’t rightly see how it could be otherwise,” Wenzel admitted. “Two arms of a strong river to cross and, guards to overpower and castles to be evaded – that’s a bit much for a heathen raiding party from Prussia. No, they must be bad folk from hereabouts, taking the chance of a little looting, that’ll be be blamed on foreign plunderers and never traced to them.”

“Then we will drive to the castle,” the bondsman said firmly.

“Since when are you giving the orders round here, serf?” growled the driver.

The bondsman, with admirable tranquility, taking the word as a state of fact rather than an insult, answered: “Since when? Since my lord’s property is in danger. The load of your wagon belongs not to you, friend, but to Sir Christian of Sevenport, and I am responsible for it. The scribe has already told us what's the most sensible thing to do. Now I don’t care what any of the others do, but you, as my lord's driver, are going to have to come with me and the scribe into the castle, because only you can handle the wagon. If you refuse, that’s breaking your oath of fealty, and you will be hunted as an oath-breaker.”

They both looked at the castle again for some reason.

“You do know what happens to oath-breakers, don’t you?” The bondsman asked, with weight on each word.

Jan mumbled something.

“I didn’t hear you,” said the bondsman.

“All right! I said it’s all right! We’ll go!”

“Then turn the cart around.”

“What in Saint Joseph’s name do you think I’m doing? Shut your face!”

Wenzel still looked doubtful. As the car was turned to face the old road up to the castle, Harun whispered in his ear: “Think of the girl. She’ll only survive in there.”

Immediately the doubts vanished from Wenzel’s face. Just in case, Harun added: “Nevertheless, she is going to find it very discomforting in there, especially after the terrible ordeal she has had to experience. Someone will have to watch over her and remain close to her.”

The guard's face brightened. “What are you waiting for?” He urged the driver. “Get this thing moving!”

*~*~*~*~*

Harun had not much time to celebrate the triumph of his personal reason over common madness, or the nice fact he was going to live through another day and not be gutted by some bandit. As the wagon rumbled up the gravel driveway to the castle, and the shadowy outline of the gates appeared before them, his feelings of elation abruptly disappeared.

This, Harun thought, as he stared up at the gate, was a very different sort of castle from that of Sir Christian, which had never been altered in any way since it had been built some time around the year of other people’s lord 1050. This castle, although fallen into bad disrepair, was a fortress worthy of king, the high walls not simply crenelated, but built over with hard protective covering, topped with turrets which fiercely displaying their embrasures, and holes in the floor of their projecting tops that Harun, for all his ignorance in the art of poliorcetics, felt reasonably sure were not there for the same reason as the hole in the projecting room serving as the castle lavatory in Sevenport.

The most impressive aspect of this ghostly fortress was the gate – especially since it was closed.

“What now?” hissed Wenzel. He shot an anguished look over his shoulder. “They’re coming closer. They’re bound to catch sight of us any minute!”

“Thank you for the enlightening commentary,” said Harun, slid down from the wagon and hurried towards the gates. They were closed, yes, but they would hardly be locked. Harun still had not gotten to the bottom of whatever was so terrifying about this place. He had, however, grasped the fact that it was totally unoccupied, had been so for years in fact. It was hardly likely that the last person to have left it had shut the gates behind him and then contrived to put the inside bolt across from outside.

In other words: there had to be some way to get that gate open.

The scribe beckoned to the bondsman, since Jan was sitting on his cart, clearly not intending to touch any part of the accursed castle, and Wenzel was still more than busy with offering his comforting shoulder to the girl. The bondsman reacted to the summons without delay.

Together they thrust themselves against the old wood of the gate with their full weight and strength. They made an excellent team, Harun having more to offer of the former and the peasant of the latter, and thus managed to thrust the valves open a few feet.

The rust on the hinges splintered and worked against their efforts horribly, screeching an ear-splitting song into the night which they thought must surely alert the raiders to their presence, even over the howl of the ever increasing wind which brought with it the first light drops of a promising autumnal storm.

“It’s not working!” Yelled the bondsman. The wind had strengthened now, and no, the raiders would not hear them now. The four in front of the castle could hardly hear themselves. But the raiders would see, soon enough. “It won’t move any farther! It’s stuck!”

“Maybe, but try again anyway, will you?”

“Aye!”

“And Wenzel, will you get down? You can practice your succourial abilities another time.”

“What does he mean?” Asked the girl. “Succc… what was it?”

“I think I know what he’s on about,” murmured Wenzel, glad, that everybody’s face by now was red, bitten by the cold wind and pitiless rain. He jumped from the wagon, and came to add his strength to theirs. Together the three men achieved what two had not: the gates creaked open far enough for the wagon to pass through.

“Go!” the bondsman shouted. Jan did not need any more prompting. By now, the red dots of the raider’s torches were even visible through the curtains of rain. The wagon passed under the heavily fortified archway, passed the deserted towers, passed the rusted remains of the once shimmering steel portcullis, formerly a death-trap to any enemy who had dared venture beyond the walls, now rotting away in a secluded corner.

And then they were in the yard. The night sky, a second ago so dreadfully dark, was now the only surface omitting a morsel of light in a world of high walls of darkness. Wenzel and the bondsman stood rooted to the spot, gazing up at the immeasurably imprisoning shadows around them. Only Harun darted back to the gates, throwing himself against the wet, rotted wood, in a desperate attempt to close it.

“Come on,” he hissed. Even through the wailing of the wind could he now hear the gruff, guttural voices of the raiders, approaching the sheds before the castle to find shelter, happy and content after a good night’s looting. There was no time to lose, the night was not over yet.

Wenzel and the bondsman tore themselves away from the sight of a lifelong nightmare in the real world's starlight and rushed to Harun’s help. With a final, phenomenal effort the door closed. The deep, reverberating sound of wood on wood was not drowned out by the storm. Listening with baited breath the five refugees in the forsaken castle heard calls from outside.

“What’s that…sound…eerie.”

“The castle…it’s the knight… cursed…”

“Get away…”

“….morning…shed….”

There was a second thud, and then only the hammering of rain on stone.

*~*~*~*~*

“Is there any sense in us standing about getting wet?” Harun broke the silence after a few minutes. “Because, if not, I’d much prefer to stand around getting dry and warm, preferably inside.”

Wenzel through an apprehensive glance towards main castle. “But… the curse…” he began.

“…is not very likely to be more affective in the main hall than in the yard, is it? The main hall, however, no matter how cursed it may be, has two very redeeming features: a roof and a fireplace.”

The peasant girl, with admirable though probably unplanned genius of the moment, sneezed. Her baby was woken by the sound, and the conditions thus: wet, dark, cold, and painful in the shoulder. He did the only sensible thing from a baby’s point of view and started to scream his head off.

Wenzel and Harun exchanged looks. That settled the matter. While Harun strode across the yard to try and find an unlocked door somewhere in the black, grey and green of the moss-covered castle walls, the bondsman cajoled the cursing coachman into seeing his wagon safe to the stables, and Wenzel helped the girl to follow Harun. She could hardly stand upright by herself now, let alone carry her child. The night’s exertions were at last claiming their full price.

“Over here,” shouted Harun. He was not sure whether they could see him in this wet, ferocious chaos. “I think I’ve found the steps up to the keep.”

They battled their way through the rain and up the steps, built high and narrow, excellent for the purpose of fending of foes, but not quite the thing for weary refugees. The door was not locked, it was not even closed. It creaked menacingly in the playful hands of the wind.

The scribe flung open the door.

“Inside,” Harun yelled, to Wenzel and the girl, as well as the two others who had, it seemed, found a safe place for the wagon: Both of them were now advancing rapidly up the stairs, no word about the cursed nature of the castle on their lips anymore. Harun held open the door, and waited till everybody was safely in, then he stepped into the interior of Joringard Castle himself and closed the half-rotten oak door behind him.

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Is this nicely spooky?? I hope so. We're getting to an important part of the story :)

Via the external link on the right you can reach my new tumblr blog, where I'll be posting all the news about my stories from now on!

Cheers!

Robert