Chapter One
The siege of Fountainhall Castle
Seat of Alpin Canmore
It was a scene from old.
Jax de Velt and his sons, Cole and Julian, had roused their army and marched on the Scottish fortress of Fountainhall because William Marshal had ordered it for a very specific reason –
They wanted Fountainhall’s liege, Alpin Canmore.
Set amongst the gently rolling hills of the Scottish Lowlands, where the rocks and hills and purple heather came together to form a landscape like no other in the known world, Fountainhall was a feather in the cap of Scotland’s borders.
Stout and strong, built from granite quarried near Edinburgh, it was a statement to the English kings with their eyes on the prize of Edinburgh and points beyond.
It was the guard dog at the gateway into the land of the Scots.
Come and get yer pain, lads…
Fountainhall taunted the English.
But not today.
Today, the fortress was taking a beating from the army of the most feared man in England, Scotland, and Wales.
The Dark Lord and his horrific army had returned.
No one had seen death and destruction like this on the border in thirty years. Jax had been tamed by his overlord, the Earl of Northumberland, and he’d sworn to a peace treaty that had worked very well, at least for the English. They left him alone and he left them alone.
But the Scots hadn’t been part of that treaty.
Unfortunately for Canmore, Jax’s lands were threatened by raiders coming from Canmore lands but, even worse, there was the rumor of a massive and terrible treaty on the wind, one that would more than likely affect Jax before anyone else because his properties were on the Scots side of the border.
Jax had learned of the terrible treaty from his own son, perhaps the best spy the world had ever seen.
Aye… Jax de Velt, the darkest knight of all, had raised a spy.
But he’d also raised one of the most fearsome knights of his generation in Coleby de Velt, and when it was determined that the threat against de Velt properties was too great, the prompt from William Marshal was all Jax needed to mobilize that army of killers that he kept within his tall, pale walls.
However, it was more than simply moving against Canmore because of the threat, for The Marshal had a very specific purpose in mind.
A hostage.
And the de Velt army rolled into Scotland like a tempest.
It was chaos.
It was a relatively short march to Fountainhall from Pelinom Castle, seat of de Velt.
With a swift horse, it would take a full day, but with an army, it took a day and a half.
Truth be told, Jax hadn’t marched for battle in such a manner in over twenty-five years.
Given that his two properties, Pelinom Castle and Foulburn Castle, were on the borders, he’d seen his share of action.
Reiver activity surged from time to time, and he’d been called into English disputes throughout the years, but he never fought the battles he used to fight.
The blood, the brutality, the senseless death and destruction. Those tactics were a thing of the past.
Until William Marshal asked him to unleash that monster again.
Not strangely, it hadn’t been difficult to draw on the beast he used to be. It had never really gone away. Cole and Julian knew what their father was capable of, just like everyone else, but they’d never seen it at that level until their foray into Scotland.
Then they became part of it.
The Scots never stood a chance.
Fountainhall Castle never really stood a chance, either.
It was a walled and moated castle, but it wasn’t very large and the moat was hardly a deterrent to an English army with siege engines and ladders.
Jax had brought everything he had with him and at noon on the day of his arrival, the siege of Fountainhall began in earnest.
Unfortunately for the occupants, it didn’t take very long.
Jax’s siege engines with iron projectiles blew holes in the yellow granite walls and destroyed the gatehouse.
Once they were in the outer bailey, those same engines loaded up bombs of flaming oil and destroyed a second, smaller gatehouse that led into the complex of the castle.
At that point, the army started to stream in and grab victims.
No mercy.
That was the order given by Jax who, in his sixth decade, was still an utterly terrifying and formidable knight.
He was completely in control of his army and everything around him, and for sons who had never seen the monster their father had once been, they were seeing a new side to him that they didn’t recognize.
It was startling and, admittedly, intimidating.
About half of Jax’s forces were men who had been with him back in those days when The Dark Lord terrorized the borders, so they knew what to do when their liege gave the word and, like old times, they were also given permission to take anything of value.
Spoils of war.
Once the interior gatehouse was down, it was Cole and Julian’s task to find Alpin Canmore while their father and his army took care of the Scots.
As they fought their way into the inner ward, prisoners were taken by the de Velt army all around them.
Men who resisted were disabled on the spot.
Not killed, but disabled, because a horrible death was planned for them.
For the past six hours, Jax had men in the nearby woods, chopping down young trees and preparing the spikes that the Scots would soon be impaled with.
That was Jax de Velt’s primary mode of submission when it came to an enemy army.
Cole and Julian could hear the screams of the men as the poles were shoved into their bodies and, like Jesus Christ was hung upon the cross for an audience, those impaled bodies began to go up along the road leading to Fountainhall for all to see. It was absolutely horrifying.
A macabre spectacle of dying scarecrows.
But Cole and Julian weren’t focused on what was going on around them, only what needed to be done.
They were focused on the keep specifically, which was actually built into the walls of the castle.
There were multiple doorways and stairs from what they could see, but Cole was confident he would find what they needed.
In fact, he’d already sent men ahead to gather what intelligence they would need to find their target, and he was mostly looking for the pair of brothers he had served with for the past two years, ever since they came to England from having served Count d’Acoz.
The story made known to the English was that they were knights from The Levant who served Jax, but that wasn’t the truth.
They had been sucked into William Marshal’s spy ring because Cole had recruited them.
From the first, he’d realized their special talents.
Men such as Addax and Essien al-Kort weren’t meant to be simply knights.
They were meant for greatness.
And he’d been proven right. While Cole had been entrenched in his mission for The Marshal with the Scottish royal court, Addax and Essien went right along with him.
The Scots had loved the unique pair, which had only worked to their advantage.
They became the darlings of the royal court, invited to every gathering, every exclusive feast. They were not only great warriors, but they could sing and entertain beautifully.
The Scots were inviting and trusting with the men from the far-off and mysterious land of Kitara.
Now, as Fountainhall fell all around them, the results of that misplaced trust were evident.
It had been the Princes of Kitara who had made this moment possible.
“Cole!”
Cole heard his name, his head snapping to the right where Addax al-Kort was just emerging from a doorway with a wooden staircase that led into the bailey.
Right behind him came his brother, Essien, and between them they were dragging a Scotsman dressed in female garb, a man alternately cursing them and pleading with them.
Cole and Julian headed in their direction.
“Canmore,” he said with satisfaction, inspecting the man. After a moment, he looked to Addax. “Excellent work. Where did you find him?”
Addax was an exceptionally muscular man, with features that had made many a maiden swoon. He was from a place of birth far from England, blessed with black hair and eyes the color of onyx.
“Cowering in the kitchens,” he said, his speech accented because the language he was speaking was not his native language. “He thought he could dress as a wench and we would pass him over, but his ugly legs gave him away.”
“I saw them first,” Essien insisted, a gloriously handsome brother a few years younger than Addax. “I’ve seen women’s legs from here to Alexandria, and nothing could convince me that those hairy, skinny limbs belonged to a woman.”
Cole looked straight to Alpin’s legs, which were pasty, spindly, and covered with a dark matting of hair. He lifted an eyebrow. “How astute of you, Es.”
The young knight frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
Cole pointed to the legs. “A blind man could have seen these are not the legs of a woman,” he said sarcastically, poking at the man’s ego.
But he took pity on him quickly because he’d just accomplished a difficult task.
“But excellent work, both of you. The Marshal shall hear of your skill. He will be pleased.”
Addax grinned as Essien frowned, looking between Cole and his brother, not entirely pleased that he wasn’t getting all the credit.
He was the younger, more excitable brother when compared to Addax’s cool strength or Cole’s unflappable demeanor, but he considered himself just as fine a warrior.
He was about to say so when he caught sight of what was going on near the gatehouse and the annoyance in his eyes faded.
There was virtually no fighting that he could see, but there was a good deal of noise going on.
Howls of pain.
A sense of foreboding crept over him.