Shadowmoor (de Lohr Dynasty #6) (3 page)

Therefore, he was without support. He would not fight this big blond knight who handled a heavy sword as if it were a feather’s weight, because he was a coward at heart who liked to stand behind his paid swordsmen. Therefore, he sheathed his sword and shook a meaty fist at Daniel.

“You will regret this, de Lohr!” he shouted. “I will track you and take the lad back by force!”

Daniel didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. His battle-ready position said it all. He kept his sword unsheathed, just in case Fitzroy decided to charge him, but the man evidently decided that it would be foolish to try because he abruptly turned tail and charged back off the way he had come. The wind whipped about his cloak and hair, giving him a rather wild look as he crested the hill and disappeared from sight. When he was gone, Daniel pulled the boy up from his lap by the collar.

“Now,” he said, looking the lad in the eye. “You have made a good deal of trouble for me. What am I to do with you?”

The boy pointed off to the north. “My home is not far,” he said. “Take me home and my papa will reward you.”

Daniel gave him a wry look. “With what?”

“What food we have,” he said. “I am sure Papa will feed you.”

It was a rather pathetic offering;
what food we have
. From the way the boy was dressed, it was obvious that his family had no money. But, truth be told, Daniel wasn’t even sure the boy was telling the truth or that any of this story was real. Maybe he really
had
just stolen Roland Fitzroy’s kitchen servant, but something told him that was not the case. Something told him the boy’s predicament was real.

He supposed there was only one way to find out. As the weather worsened, the need to seek shelter was urgent. The rain was coming down now, fairly steadily, and Daniel lowered the boy to the ground.

“Go home,” he said. “I will follow.”

The lad took off, running with only one shoe across the wet and muddy ground, heading north. Daniel spurred Ares after the child and the horse seemed discontented that he would not be returning to his stable boy and honeyed grains. His big black tail switched angrily, catching Daniel in the legs as if to whip him. It was as close to a tantrum as the horse could come but Daniel remained stoic in the face of his spoiled horse, following the boy across the flat moor with the gradual rise to the east, crescendoing to a mountain with rocky boulders strewn across the crest.

Daniel glanced up at the great rocks on the top of the mountain, now partially shrouded by the clouds as the nasty weather settled in. The rain was growing worse and his little guide was slowing down. The little boy was becoming exhausted so after about a mile, Daniel pulled up alongside the lad and lifted him onto the saddle again. Breathing heavily, the lad pointed off to the north and Daniel spurred the horse forward, galloping across the muddy moor in the direction indicated.

The rain grew steadily and Daniel could feel the boy tucked up behind him, no-doubt soaked to the skin. He would have liked to have pulled forth his oiled cloak but the child was sitting on it. Therefore, there wasn’t much he could do except bear the elements until they reached their intended destination, which he hoped would be soon given the fact that lightning was starting to fill the sky. He had never liked lightning, especially when he was out in the open, so he spurred the horse faster, traveling the road that was quickly becoming muddied.

They traveled for quite some time as the road paralleled the great crag to the east. The lightning was sporadic, fortunately, but Daniel still felt a great sense of urgency to reach shelter. The little boy behind him was wet and shivering; he could feel it. Up the road, over a hill, across a section of moor that had the road turning to the west before looping around and heading north again, they pounded through the rain. Ares was running at a good pace, snorting and throwing foam, and Daniel knew he’d have to ease the horse back shortly. He didn’t want the steed to become overworked. Just as they neared another rise in the road with wet, cloudy moors to the north as far as the eye could see, the lad tugged on Daniel’s sleeve and pointed to the east.

“That a-way,” he said. “My home is that a-way.”

Daniel noticed there was a fork in the road ahead, with a rather large road running east, up into the hills. Wiping the rain from his eyes, he directed Ares up that stretch of road where the rain was beginning to carve channels into the bare earth of the roadbed. Ares was wet, and very unhappy that he was wet, because the horse didn’t like water very much. He kept switching that big black tail around and, more than once, Daniel heard the boy yelp because he’d been struck by wet hair. It could sting like a bee. Up the road they went, plunging deeper into the remote wilderness of the moors, when the road took an upturn, at a fairly steep angle, and Daniel glanced up to see something at the top of the crest.

It was shrouded in mist but he was quite sure he could see a structure of some kind. As he drew closer, he realized that he was looking at a fortress built from the same gray limestone rocks that littered the top of the crag. In fact, the castle itself seemed to be built upon the massive boulders that lined the top of the mountain, blending into the rock and into the hill as if the fortress and rock and hill were all of one body.

It was quite fascinating, actually, and the closer they drew to the mighty fortress, the more impressed with the sheer size Daniel became. Indeed, it was a vast bastion that crouched impressively upon the crest of the mountain. Daniel was rather surprised at the sheer size of it, considering he never even knew there was a castle in this location and he thought he knew most of the areas of England to that regard. But this one was tucked away, sitting like the gods atop Mount Olympus.

But there was more to the structure than just the fortress. As Daniel moved up the road, he could see that there was a village built up all around it, homes built from the same craggy rock with sod roofs and sod sides. There were fenced-off sections he assumed were gardens and corralled areas for farm animals, and even the animals were well-sheltered in their rock homes against the storm.

The road ended at the gates to the giant fortress. The gates were made from iron, with no wood at all and, considering how barren the moors were of trees, it wasn’t surprising. But the gates were an enormous web of layered iron, forged and secured with great iron rivets. There were also men on the other side of the gate, peering back at Daniel as he reined Ares to a halt. The lad, seeing that they had arrived, flew off the back of the horse, slipped in the mud, and then ran for the gate.

“I have come back!” he shouted. “Where is Papa?”

The men at the gate, seeing the child, scrambled to open the panels and soon, men were heaving at a giant iron chain that slowed cranked open the gates. But the gates had a safety feature: another chain was strung across them so they could only open so far, admitting only one man at a time and certainly not a man on horseback, so the boy bolted in through the open gates and shouted at the men to open it further so that Daniel could enter. Men, dressed in little more than rags themselves and furs collected from the hunt, unstrung the rusted iron chain across the gates so that Daniel and Ares could enter.

The lightning resumed in chorus and lit up the sky overhead as Daniel entered the gates, which were quickly shut behind him. The little boy ran off as Daniel paused a moment, drinking in the sight before him; the enormous perimeter walls concealed something of a mixed settlement inside. There was a stone keep, literally a block-shaped tower at least three stories tall, which was situated near the center of the fortress with its own moat surrounding it, and then there were several other buildings made from stone with steeply angled roofs covered in either sod or some kind of thatching.

It was a curious sight. The settlement didn’t look like a Norman castle, or even some of the ancient Celt ruins that Daniel had seen, but rather an odd mixture of the two. There were people inside the walls, men as well as women, and smaller hovels that looked to be homes constructed in the same style as the homes he had seen outside of the walls, except these structures didn’t depend on sod so much for the walls. Everything was simply made of stone with the exception of the roofs.

But there was one thing that everyone, and everything, in the bailey had in common – everything was wet and muddy, and the people milling about in the rain seemed to be going about chores or duties, those things that needed to be done in spite of the weather. It was actually quite busy but Daniel was coming to notice, it also seemed to be a rather bare place – the people were poorly dressed against the elements and even their homes seemed rather pathetic. A couple of the structures had smoke coming from their roofs from cooking fires inside, but that was all he saw as far as comfort. It all seemed rather gloomy and barren. As he began looking around for someplace to stable his horse, the young boy suddenly returned with an older man running after him.

“Him, Papa!” the lad was shouting above the rain, pointing at Daniel. “It was him! He saved me!”

The man following the young boy was heavy-set, dressed in little more than rags himself, but he went straight to Daniel and extended his hands to him.

“Sir!” he cried. “Is it true? Did you bring my son back to me?”

Daniel could see the abundance of gratitude on the man’s wet face and he dismounted Ares, wiping water from his eyes. “I found the lad running from someone named Fitzroy,” he said.

The heavy-set man threw his arms around the boy, holding him tightly. “I thank God for sending you in our hour of need,” he said, quite emotional. “There is no knowing what that vile lord would have done to him. You have my undying gratitude, my lord. How can I thank you?”

Daniel glanced up with lightning streaking across the sky again. “You may thank me by showing me a dry place for my horse and someone to tend him. He requires food and rest.”

The man let go of the boy long enough to indicate for Daniel to follow him across the muddy yard and to a long, slender stone building that was nestled against the outer wall. The man waved him on, eagerly, and Daniel followed the man inside, into a low-ceilinged stable that was surprisingly warm and dry. Abruptly out of the elements in the long building that smelled heavily of urine and animals, Daniel immediately began removing the tack on the sopping horse.

“I need something to dry him with,” he instructed, setting the saddle aside and separating his saddlebags from the saddle. “A coverlet or towel of some kind. Anything will do.”

The man and the young boy scurried away in an attempt to fulfill Daniel’s request, the young lad returning shortly with an iron scraper used to scrape sweat or moisture off of a horse’s coat. Daniel pulled off the heavy saddle and set it aside, using the scraper to remove the obvious moisture on Ares, who was sniffing around the young lad perhaps looking for something to eat. The last young lad he had been around had fed him that wonderful honeyed mixture. One young lad was as good as another as far as the horse was concerned, but when the boy didn’t produce anything right away, Ares began nibbling at his clothing.

“Oy!” the boy yanked away from the horse, fearful. “He is trying to eat me!”

Daniel was still scraping water off of his horse. “He is not trying to eat you,” he said. “But he might find interest in your skinny arm if you do not bring him something to eat.”

Worried, the boy rushed off, returning with an armful of dried grasses and brush, which he deposited in front of Ares. The horse sniffed at it curiously and, deeming it sufficient for his needs, began crunching on it. Daniel eyed what his horse was eating because it didn’t look like hay.

“What is that?” he asked the boy.

“It is dried scrub grass from the moor,” the man answered, coming up behind Daniel with a dirty blanket in his arms. “It is what we feed our animals in the winter – that, and whatever else that is left over from the harvest. Now, here is a blanket for your horse, my lord – this is all I could find. It should warm him at least.”

Daniel took the blanket and shook it out before tossing it over Ares’ back and rubbing the horse with it. After a few moments of rubbing and drying, he realized the young boy and man were still standing behind him, perhaps somewhat hesitantly. They were all strangers to one another, after all, even if Daniel was something of a savior. They were naturally curious about him, perhaps even fearful of him. Daniel looked at the pair as he continued to dry his horse.

“Now,” he said, mostly looking at the boy. “Let us start with formalities since I risked my neck to save you. What is your name, lad?”

The child looked at him with those big blue eyes and cold-pinched nose. “Gunnar,” he said. “Gunnar l’Audacieux. This is my papa.”

Daniel looked at the big man beside him. “Does Papa have a name?”

“I am Etzel, my lord,” the man replied, putting an arm around the child’s shoulders. “You have returned my heart to me. I do not know how I can ever repay you for your kindness.”

Daniel looked between the two of them quite seriously. “There is no need to repay me, at least not beyond what you are already doing,” he said. “But who is Roland Fitzroy and why did he abduct the boy? Your son tells me that the man did it because he wants his sister. Is this true?”

Etzel nodded hesitantly, still holding tight to his son as if afraid to let him go. He looked at the boy. “It is true,” Etzel said. “But the situation is more difficult than even that. I knew that Fitzroy had my Gunnar but I do not have the men needed to get my son back. I do not even have the money. Fitzroy wanted Leese, and Shadowmoor, in exchange for my son. He would take nothing else.”

Daniel cocked his head. “Leese and Shadowmoor?” he repeated. “What are those?”

Etzel smiled weakly, revealing stained teeth. “Liselotte is my daughter,” he said. “We call her Leese. Shadowmoor is the fortress you see around you. This castle, as it is, has been the home of my family for two hundred years.”

Shadowmoor.
It was a desolate-sounding name. In fact, it was a desolate-looking place and the name was therefore very fitting. Daniel stopped rubbing his horse, finding himself more interested in the conversation.