Epic Knights of Legend and Steel

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

O ne hour and thirteen minutes later, the incoming army arrived.

Drake had been on the walls, watching their approach with a hand to his brow as he shielded his eyes from the sun overhead. The army came from the south road, through the village, looting it and creating havoc as they went. Fortunately, Cortez had managed to rouse the villagers and most of them were inside the walls of Spexhall, huddling near the keep for safety, so there was no real loss of life in the village but there was a massive loss of property.

Heavy smoke from the burning village drifted over the castle as the southern breezes blew. Drake and the others watched from the wall as the incoming army nearly obliterated the village but stopped short of the church, unwilling to provoke eternal damnation by burning that as well. They moved around the church, literally, around the walls, and in doing so, enveloped Spexhall Castle on all sides as they closed in around it. Drake positioned his men accordingly as the bulk of the army came right up to the great iron portcullis of the castle.

Drake calmly watched the mass of men, realizing they were making some very bold and very foolish tactical moves. Cortez, standing next to the man in silence as they watched the movements, was the first to speak on it.

“Fools,” he muttered. “They have come right up to the walls, well in range of the archers. Do they not realize that?”

Drake could only shake his head as he turned for the nearest soldier and told the man to spread the word to the archers to load their weapons. He returned his attention to Cortez, his gaze lingering on the army below.

“Look at those men,” he said, some disgust and awe in his tone. “Have you ever seen such poorly outfitted soldiers? No protection, only basic weapons… and where are the knights? I do not see any knights.”

Cortez was looking at the army rather strangely as well. “This does not look like any army I have ever seen,” he said. “They look like a gaggle of uncivilized savages. They wield clubs with studs protruding and the crudest of swords. God’s Bones, are these men even English?”

Drake was watching them carefully, how they seemed to stand around in groups. No one was trying to position them or move them into a strategic area. They were simply milling about, yelling and acting very angry. It was all quite puzzling because neither Drake nor Cortez had seen anything like it. Where was the commander?

“I cannot know who these men are,” Drake finally said. “Is it possible they are not the de Mandevilles and just some tribe of wildmen none of us have ever heard of before? Surely the de Mandevilles would not look or behave like this.”

Cortez was increasingly baffled. He had been Drake’s commanding officer, once, and much like Drake, had spent years in serious and important battles, so he was more seasoned than most. He and Drake were among the elite knights in England. But he was just as puzzled as Drake at this point, facing an army of men who were seemingly aimless and commander-less. That sort of organization did not exist in their world.

“There is one way to find out,” he said, looking to Drake. “Call down to them. See if they even speak our language.”

He had a point. Drake cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled to the men below. “State your name and intention,” he shouted. “What do you want here?”

Not strangely, that only seemed to bring more angry shouts and growls. Now the men below were simply yelling up at him, shaking their weapons, still milling about. There was a group several dozen yards away that Drake couldn’t really see too clearly, but men that seemed to be doing something most intently. They had something on the ground, beating at it, chopping at it, and as the men outside of the walls continued to bellow and slam their weapons against the portcullis, which was holding easily, the men in the distant group broke up and headed in the direction of the castle.

There were things in their hands, things that Drake thought to be wood at a distance. He couldn’t get a good look at it. They drew closer and whatever was in their hands appeared to be dripping some kind of liquid but from the distance and angle of the sun, they couldn’t really tell. There was a man leading the group, a big man with a wild halo of gray hair, and he bellowed to the group of men standing near one of their wagons. The men, and the wagon, began to move towards the portcullis as well, all of them lumbering through the thick, tall grass in the direction of Spexhall.

“Look, there,” Cortez said, his gaze on the approaching group. “Those men are coming near.”

Drake was looking at the group, too. “I see them,” he said steadily. “What are they carrying in their hands?”

Cortez shook his head. “I cannot tell,” he said. “Whatever it is, it seems heavy. They are carrying it oddly, as if it is a burden.”

The conversation faded. As they watched, the men carrying the unknown pieces pulled forth what looked to be a slingshot apparatus of some kind. They were big, made of wood, and strung with leather straps. The men put the unidentifiable pieces in the sling shots and began swinging them over head. Drake bellowed for his men to watch their heads a split second before the projectiles came sailing over the wall.

“Have him back!” the man with the crown of wild gray hair shouted up at the walls. He gestured in their direction. “Take him back and keep him. We want no part of a man who cannot protect his woman!”

Puzzled, if not slightly horrified at what was perhaps being suggested, Drake and Cortez turned to the bailey where the projectiles had just landed. James was the closest; he ran up to the pieces to see what they were, only to realize that they were body parts, including a head. He peered closer, trying not to become sickened, before shouting up to Drake.

“’Tis de Witt!” he shouted. “They cut him into pieces!”

Shocked, Drake turned his attention to the men outside of the walls. “Great Bleeding Christ,” he hissed. “They cut up de Witt’s body and have brought it back to us.”

Disgusted, Cortez was still looking at the body parts down in the bailey. “De Lohr,” he shouted. “Have them gathered up and put aside. Do not leave them there.”

James nodded, already ordering a few soldiers to the unsavory task. Cortez watched the men gingerly pick up the horrific pieces before returning his attention to Drake.

“Barbarians,” he muttered. “They would cut up the husband to one of their own? God help us; what else will they do?”

Drake didn’t even want to entertain that thought. The stakes in this standoff had suddenly grown quite high, now seeing what this group was capable of. But Drake knew he had to take a very big stance against this kind of atrocity. Those body parts were a threat, just as he had delivered his threat with the bodies of Lady de Witt and her husband. It would seem that the de Mandevilles were doing him one better. They understood his message all too well and were responding in a language they could both comprehend.

The language of Death.

“I told you what would happen if you threatened me,” Drake shouted over the wall. “Do you know who I am? If you do not, then you should. My father is Thetford and my earldom will be East Anglia. Are you truly so stupid that you would openly attack me? I will send an army of ten thousand men to wipe you from this earth!”

The men below began bellowing again. A few threw rocks but they couldn’t throw high enough to reach the top of the walls. It was like watching mindless primitives as they clawed at the earth and bayed into the sky, a truly appalling display in behavior. But over the shouting and yelling, the man with the gray hair went over to the wagon his men had brought forward and pulled forth a body. Drake immediately recognized the faded red hair as that of Lady de Witt.

“Christ,” Cortez groaned. “He has brought Lady de Witt back, too? Is he going to cut her up and sail her over the wall as well?”

Drake shook his head, appalled at what he was seeing. “I cannot know,” he said. “But seeing what these men are capable of tells me that we cannot let them breach these walls under any circumstances. God only knows what they will do to us if they do.”

Cortez wasn’t hard-pressed to agree as the two of them watched the gray-haired man lug the body of Lady de Witt towards the portcullis. He had her slung across his arms where her head hung wildly and her limbs flailed in a truly horrific sight.

“Me Julia!” the gray-haired man screamed as he approached the walls. “Me Julia was slain by du Reims. Look what was done to her!”

Drake couldn’t have imagined a more nightmarish situation. “So that is her father,” he muttered to Cortez. “We sent the bodies back to Westleton, which means that must be Edmund de Mandeville.”

Cortez’s black gaze was riveted to the scene below. “Ask him.”

Drake lifted his voice. “De Mandeville!” he shouted. “Are you Edmund de Mandeville?”

The gray-haired man nodded. “I am,” he said. It sounded as if he were sobbing. “Who did this to me Julia? I would see this man!”

Drake braced himself against the wall as he spoke. “Your Julia attempted to kill my wife,” he shouted. “I told you this in the message I sent back to you. She was punished for her actions. If you do not leave now, I will order my archers to unleash their arrows upon you. Do you understand me? Go back where you came from and never return!”

Edmund de Mandeville was not sane; that much was clear. His anger turned to sobs and he dropped half of Julia’s body in the dirt, her head and shoulders, while he put a hand to his face and smeared it with dirt and tears. He walked straight at the portcullis, bellowing his sorrow.

“You killed her!” he howled, banging against the iron grate. “Murder! Murder !”

Drake and Cortez watched the man closely, Drake lifting a hand to his archers. When he dropped his hand quickly, that was the order to fire. He wasn’t sure what de Mandeville was going to do and that, in turn, made him edgy.

“He does not hear a word I am saying,” Drake said to Cortez. “The man is either deaf or mad.”

Cortez grunted. “I would say he is mad,” he said. “Look at his behavior and those of the men around him. He is insane and he has driven his men insane as well.”

Drake sighed heavily. “So we are dealing with a madman,” he said. “It would do the du Reims, and the world, great justice if I let the arrows fly right at this moment, and all of them aimed at him.”

Cortez was indecisive. “The last time you tried to send a stern message to this group, they showed up at your door and threw body parts over your walls,” he reminded him. “Mayhap if you do nothing, they will simply go away. Mayhap they needed to come to announce their displeasure and sorrow and will leave if we do not react.”

Drake cocked a thoughtful eyebrow and lowered his raised arm, very slowly, so the archers would not let loose their projectiles. “You may be correct,” he said. “Mayhap we will only watch them and see what they do. As long as they do not try to actively breach the walls, I will not respond.”

“A wise decision.”

As Drake and Cortez stood upon the wall and continued to watch the madness below, Devon was suddenly rushing at them from the bailey. He had been on the opposite side of the castle, watching the activity from the rear, but now he was racing up the ladder to where his brother was. Drake saw him and, by his brother’s apparent excitement, concern bloomed.

“What is wrong?” he demanded as Devon reached the top of the ladder. “Why are you not at your post?”

Devon was breathless. “Edward is approaching from the southwest,” he said. “They came through a forest to the south and I saw the banners. You cannot see them from your vantage point here at the entrance, but they are nearly upon us.”

Edward! Drake was startled by the news, but startled in a good way. In a way that spoke of extreme relief and joy. Aye, joy. Joy that reinforcements had unexpectedly arrived just in the nick of time and joy that he would not have to worry about what he should do with Elizaveta should the de Mandevilles breach the walls of Spexhall. He had to admit to himself, just for a brief moment, that he knew he would not let the de Mandevilles take Elizaveta alive, which meant he would have had the horrifically painful duty of making sure that didn’t happen.

He would have had to make sure she wasn’t alive when those beasts got a hold of her.

Sickening flashes struck him, images of having to end his wife’s life in order to save her from pain and horror, but he fought off the flashes, unwilling to entertain them. There was no longer any need. Suddenly, knights were rushing around the side of the walls, coming in from the north, men on horseback who plowed into the de Mandeville army without mercy. They were fully armed, and fully prepared, and it was evident they must have either seen the siege from a distance of had been told of it, because they were more than prepared to fight. De Mandeville men began falling as Drake and his men watched from the walls.

One thousand crown troops quickly overwhelmed the underarmed and unskilled de Mandeville army. It was a slaughter from the onset. Edmund de Mandeville began screaming at his men, words Drake couldn’t understand, but it was evidently a retreat because de Mandeville men began running away as fast as their legs could carry them. Lady de Witt’s body was dropped by her father as he ran off, left in the dirt to be run over repeatedly by fleeing men and the horses that were chasing them.

Drake waited until it was clear the de Mandeville army was either fleeing or dead before ordering the portcullis opened. He and his men charged out, cleaning up pockets of fighting, while Drake went straight for Lady de Witt’s battered body.

When he should have been worried about the retreat of the enemy, he was more concerned for the body of a woman he’d ordered executed. A woman that Elizaveta had asked him to spare; therefore, guilt dictated his actions. It was horrific what had happened to Lady de Witt and he felt solely responsible, so he collected her corpse and brought her back into the keep, wrapping her in a blanket given to him by the quartermaster and storing her in the cool shed near the stables. He made sure her husband’s remains were brought there, too, and he instructed the quartermaster to take the bodies to the church on the morrow for burial in the church yard. When that was settled, he returned to the remnants of the battle to see that it was over for the most part.

There were de Mandeville dead, which he ordered burned, and the majority of Edward’s army was returning from chasing off Edmund and his men. Drake stood at the open portcullis, watching as the mounted knights began to return. He recognized one of them simply by the big, black horse he rode.

“So this is what happens?” It was William de Wolfe, his old friend from the siege of Caerlaverock. “I let you out of my sight and you get into trouble again? I cannot let you go anywhere without me, de Winter.”

Drake smiled wearily. “You attract trouble like the dead attract flies,” Drake told him. “These fools smelled your scent before you even arrived. You think they were attacking my castle? Of course not! They were waiting for you!”

De Wolfe laughed, reining his horse to a halt and unlatching his helm. “It is a good thing I came when I did, then,” he said. “It looked to me as if they had grown bored of waiting for me and were starting in on you. Who were they, anyway? Anyone we know?”

Drake knew this was a longer story than just simple, cursory information. It would take time to explain all of this to de Wolfe, preferably over a meal. He waved de Wolfe into the bailey.

“Come inside,” he said. “Let us get the men situated, the dead burned, and I will tell you all that has happened since you let me out of your sight.”

It was a good enough invitation for de Wolfe. He spurred his horse forward as Drake waved him on. “I am eager to hear this,” he said.

“It will be worth the wait, trust me.”

William knew that. When Drake de Winter was involved in something, there was never any doubt that the story behind it was a good one.