Lord of War: Black Angel (18 page)

Brandt was still standing on the top step of Erith’s keep.  He was looking at his men, now separated from de Nerra soldiers, and he was assessing the situation, the strengths and weaknesses, and their probable loss ratio.  By the time Dylan appeared, Brandt was prepared.

“Does the man really think I am simply going to pack up and leave?” he asked, somewhat rhetorically.

Dylan, in full battle armor, shrugged as his gaze moved up the side of Erith’s towering keep.  “Perhaps he is hoping,” he said, focusing on Brandt. “Your orders, my lord?”

Brandt, too, was in full battle regalia. He was well prepared for any sort of military undertaking. He sighed faintly as he latched the chin strap of his helmet.

“De Nerra?” he called in his booming baritone.  “I will ask you one last time; will you turn Ellowyn over to me peacefully?”

From behind the enormous oak and iron door, he could hear the muted response. “Nay!”

Brandt looked at Dylan. “Is the vault in the gatehouse?”

Dylan nodded. “Aye, my lord.”

“How many people would you say it will hold?”

Dylan cocked his head thoughtfully. “There are four cells plus a sublevel. It would hold fifty men at most. “

Brandt came off the steps. “Then jam as many of de Nerra’s soldiers as you can into it and lock it up,” he said decisively. “Then I want you to strip the rest, of their weapons and clothing and everything else, and pin them in the outer bailey with fifty of my best archers trained on them.  If anyone moves, kill them.  The rest of us will lay siege to this big beast of a keep and breach it.”

The corner of Dylan’s mouth twitched. “
Strip
de Nerra’s men, my lord?”

Brandt nodded shortly. “A man cannot fight and protect his privates at the same time,” he said. “I guarantee you that if given the choice between having his head or his manhood cut off, a man will choose his head every time.  Being stripped of everything should give de Nerra’s men cause to think twice before trying to resist us.  They will be too busy protecting what is most precious to them.”

Dylan’s smile broke through as he turned away from Brandt, barking orders, which the other senior knights took up in chorus.  Two hours after sunrise, a full-scale siege was taking place in the inner bailey of Erith.

Brandt knew he would have to be very careful in opening the keep, mostly because he didn’t want to use his usual tactics. Those normally resulted in fatalities and since Ellowyn was inside, he wanted to make sure she stayed safe and whole.   Therefore, he was cautious with his plans.

Erith had two openings at ground level; the entry door and the kitchen door.  Since it made sense to breach the keep at its most vulnerable point, he set dozens of men to ramming down the keep entry and dozens more to chopping down the kitchen door, which was smaller and thicker.  Those who weren’t involved in breaching the doors, since only so many men could work on it at a time, were sent to watch over the naked de Nerra soldiers who were quite upset that they had been stripped of their dignity.  But, as Brandt had predicted, nakedness prevented them from rioting. One could not riot and protect his privates at the same time.

Brandt didn’t do much other than watch his men work the doors. It was methodical and calculated. He knew they would eventually open the keep and he was under no illusion that de Nerra wasn’t going to fight him once he entered, so they had a master plan – they would wait until both doors were open and create a bigger, louder diversion at the keep entry while Brandt entered through the kitchens and went in search of Ellowyn. He would be armed, of course, but he would try not to kill anyone.  All he wanted was Ellowyn. So far, they’d managed to not to lose a single life and he wanted to keep it that way.

It was a simple notion, or so he thought.  The entry was breached before the kitchen door was, and that proved a mess to bring down. Ultimately, they brought out a couple of axes and Brandt lent his considerably strength to chopping down the rest of the kitchen door. 

When the gap was big enough for a man to slip through, he handed the axe off to le Bec as Dylan went to the door to see what was waited for them on the other side.   Unfortunately for him, he got too close to the breach and the panicked cook hit him on the head with an iron pot in a blow that sent him to his knees. 

With Dylan dazed, Brandt tried to charge through but found himself fended off by several kitchen women using spits and pokers to keep him at bay.  When one came too close to his eye, he furiously reached out and tossed the spit outside into the yard.  That prompted the other women to start whacking him with their pitiful weapons.  Brandt grabbed at them, yanked them free, and tossed. 

Soon the kitchen yard was full of iron kitchen implements because Brandt was genuinely trying not to hurt anyone.  He simply didn’t want to be hurt in the process, either.  Those pokers were coming awfully close to his eyes and face to the point where he had to lower his visor. Then he looked terrifying and the servants were panicked even more.

Eventually, he had enough of the foolery.  He pushed his way into the kitchen, batting away the crude weapons the servants were using against him. St. Hèver  pushed in after him and actually pushed a woman onto her backside, which brought a chorus of screams.  Brandt glanced back at him to see what he done, to which the young knight only shrugged.  It was the oddest battled they had ever fought – weaponless and against women.  But all of Brandt’s knights understood what he was trying to accomplish; they wanted Ellowyn and didn’t want to have to kill everyone to get to her.

Brandt pushed his way through the close quarters of the kitchen, heading to the alcove that eventually led into the great hall, when he ran head-long into another woman. It was a rather violent collision in the dark. He reached out to prevent her from falling over only to realize it was Lady Gray.  And trailing after Lady Gray, holding on to the woman’s skirts, was Ellowyn.

“Brandt!” she shrieked.

Gray shushed her granddaughter harshly, thrusting at Brandt when she realized who it was.

“Take her,” she hissed. “Deston is at the entry. Take her now or you will have real blood on your hands.”

Brandt didn’t need to be told twice; flipping up his visor and with a loud kiss to Lady Gray’s cheek, he whisked Ellowyn back towards the kitchens with St. Hèver covering their retreat.  In the dim, smokiness of the close-quarters kitchen, Brandt and his men backed their way out of the keep and out into the sunlight. When Dylan de Lara saw them emerge, he began bellowing the retreat orders, eventually taken up by de Reyne, le Bec, and his brother who were at the keep entry creating all sorts of havoc. 

The duke’s men deteriorated into organized chaos as they scrambled for their mounts.  The provisions wagons, having been positioned in the outer bailey by the gates, rallied and fled out into the countryside, followed by the retreat of the wagons.  The senior knights managed to mount with Brandt and Ellowyn leaping aboard his muscular charger.  Ellowyn nearly fell off as Brandt spurred the beast out of the front gates of Erith, leaving de Nerra’s naked army behind, wondering why the duke’s army had cleared out so quickly.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was that dream again.

As Ellowyn moved towards a grove of stripped trees, the mud became shallower and less binding, and she struggled to get up onto firmer ground. But she slipped and fell to her knees, bracing herself with one arm to keep from falling completely while the other arm went around her belly.  A big, swollen belly.

She put a hand to her gut, feeling the life kicking within. It brought a rush of joy and euphoria, feeling the tender life she carried.  But it did not take away from her sense of urgency as she scratched and clawed her way up on to firmer ground, out of the mud that was sucking her down.  Finally free of the cold, gray mud, she stood for a moment, gaining her bearings.

The dream was oddly fluid. Everything rippled, like movement upon a lake.  She turned to look at the castle again, seeing the fingers of smoke spiraling upwards even in the rain, and as she gaze steadily at the broken walls and gray-stoned keep, she could see that every window in the keep was glowing red.  They looked like eyes, pulsating a red and liquid reflection of the evil that surrounded it.  As she watched, the red turned to blood and began dripping down the side of the keep.  All of those windows, now dripping blood.

Horrified, frightened, Ellowyn tore her gaze away from the hellish castle, arms around her swollen belly as she began to walk.  Tears filled her eyes, spilling over onto her cheeks, as she began to call for her love, her life, the man she was looking for.  In dreams past, she had only come this far before the dream ended.  So many times it had ended and so many times she had awoken upset and frustrated.  But this time, the dream didn’t end; she was able to keep going, searching with panic that swelled her heart so that she thought it might burst. Bodies were at her feet but she didn’t recognize any of them. She kept going, feeling the cold rain against her face, feeling the cold howling winds that grabbed at her.

And then she saw someone she knew; her grandfather was standing by the edge of a grove of trees.  His armor was clean, untouched, and dry.  Rain was pouring down upon her, but her grandfather was completely dry.  He looked at her with some sorrow.  Ellowyn ran to him.

“Papa!” she cried. “Help me! I cannot find him!”

Deston simply stood there, looking at her. When she tried to touch him, her hands went right through him.  Then, he pointed.

Ellowyn’s gaze moved in the direction he was indicating.  She had no idea what he meant or what he was pointing at; all she could see was a sea of corpses that were beginning to turn into liquid, being absorbed into the ground.  But as they drained away, into the mud and earth, she saw a figure propped up against a tree in the distance. 

As she focused on the distant figure, Deston began to howl in her ear.  It was a mournful and terrifying sound, enough to make her scream as everything else faded to black.

***

“They have not followed us yet but our scouts report that de Nerra is amassing his army,” Dylan told Brandt. “He knows we have her and it is evident he intends to pursue.”

Brandt gazed up at the man, his expression without emotion.  It was towards midnight as he sat at a heavy, damaged table before a smoking fire in a public house in the village of Garstang.  Twenty six miles south of Erith, it had been the logical place to stop for the night so Ellowyn could gain a few hours of sleep. 

Garstange was a larger berg, with several public houses, that were well traveled and littered with all kinds of people.  Brandt had his army park themselves south of the town in an open field that had a clear field of vision in all directions, while he took his senior knights to the inn on the edge of town called the Punchbowl.  It was unusual comfort for the usually hard-core men, but in Brandt’s opinion, they deserved it. Besides, it was his wedding night and he was feeling particularly generous.

“Of course he knows I have her,” Brandt grunted as he rubbed his weary eyes. “Deston can pursue me to the ends of the earth but it does not change the fact that I married his daughter earlier today and that she is now my wife. He cannot destroy the bonds of matrimony.  Whether or not he likes it, Ellowyn belongs to me.”

Dylan shrugged as he claimed a seat next to St. Hèver . “I am sure he will be happy to discuss that with you when he catches up to us, my lord,” he said, rather sarcastically and wearily. “Our scouts did not seem to think his army would be departing this night which leads me to believe he will be departing at dawn and, just as we have scouts, I am sure he has his own who are reporting back to us that we are holed up in Garstang.”

Brandt took a long drink of his wine, watching Dylan rip into a warm and succulent piece of beef. In fact, all of his senior knights were seated around the table in various stages of a food-and-drink stupor.  Le Bec and de Reyne, overstuffed and bordering on drunk, were arm wrestling at the end of the table while St. Hèver , the ever-proper and pious young knight, was trying not to look at a young and rather pretty serving wench who was trying very hard to catch his eye.  Alex de Lara was aware of this and kept calling the girl over to the table to refill their cups while Dylan, newly returned from settling the men and debriefing the scouts, ignored everything else and tucked into his food.  

Brandt watched it all with some amusement and, surprisingly, a great deal of relaxation.  He was more at ease than he had been in quite a while knowing that Ellowyn was safely asleep over his head. He really didn’t care about de Nerra in the least. Alcohol and a rush of emotions had seen to that. At the moment, he simply wanted to enjoy the situation and his new marriage. He’d never felt such contentment.

“We will not be here long enough for them to catch up to us,” he finally said. “We leave this berg before dawn.  If all goes well and the weather holds, we should be home in less than two weeks.  If de Nerra wants to attack Guildford after a battle march across the whole of England, then I invite him to try.”

Dylan wriggled his eyebrows, his mouth full. He was starving and had spent a good deal of time securing the men while the other knights ate their supper. He didn’t want to talk anymore but he couldn’t help stating the obvious.

“We are traveling with weary men and a woman, my lord,” he pointed out. “If we make it back to Guildford in two weeks, we will be fortunate. Much can happen in two weeks, now with an angry father on our tail.”

Brandt cocked an eyebrow at him. “Much can happen indeed,” he agreed, not particularly pleased with Dylan’s attitude. “In fact, I would suggest we send your brother to solicit support from your father and St. Hèver to the Marches to solicit support from his father. I have enough to deal with now with de Nerra nipping at my heels and preparations to return to France.  I will not be able to attend the Duke of Carlisle and the Earl of Wrexham personally.”