Prologue
Four Crosses Castle
Welsh Marches
“The gatehouse has been breached!”
The small lad heard his mother issue the words, such panic pouring out of her mouth that it was difficult to understand her.
Terror vomited out of every pore in her body.
But the small lad understood little of what was causing her such fear.
All he knew was that he and his sister and mother had been locked up in the keep of Four Crosses Castle, a castle that had belonged to his family for generations, for two straight days.
Food was running in short supply and he had been hungry all day because of it.
A little bread and cheese was all his mother had been able to give him and his sister that morning and they’d had nothing else since.
He also knew that there was a great siege going on, great projectiles and war machines trying to break down the walls of Four Crosses, and they couldn’t chance opening the keep in any fashion, not even to accept the wounded that had been shoved into the stables, stables that were now burning.
The wounded were burning even as men struggled to move them out of the stables, filling the air with the heavy, greasy smell of burning human flesh.
But the young lad didn’t know what the smell was; he just knew it made his nose wrinkle up. It also made his belly ache, like he wanted to vomit forth but couldn’t. After two days of little food, there wasn’t much to come up anyway.
“Come, Bretton,” Lady Brethwyn de Llion grasped her five year old son by the arm, pulling the boy along as she ran for the chamber door. Her daughter, two years older than Bretton, delayed them slightly by going to grab her poppet, causing her mother to scream. “Ceri, come! Come now!”
The little girl scrambled after her mother and brother, following them out of the chamber and down the dark, narrow stairs that spiraled to the next level.
There were servants on that level, waiting for them in the darkness, men and women who were weeping and whispering fearfully.
Once Lady de Llion reached the group, she gestured frantically to the small hall off to the left.
“Down into the kitchens below and out through the postern gate,” she hissed. “Hurry! There is no time to waste!”
She dashed off, dragging her children along behind her as the servants followed in a panic.
It was a great rush into the small hall with its tall hearth and hungry dogs, and on to the trap door cut into the floor that led by ladder to the kitchens below.
The trap door had been propped up, tied off with a piece of rope to hold it firm.
Lady de Llion put her children on the ladder first, helping them down, as the servants hovered around them and pushed their way onto the ladder once Lady de Llion followed the children.
Even though they had been frenzied, the group had been orderly until a great banging was suddenly heard upon the keep entry door.
Like terrified animals, everyone froze for a moment, listening, realizing quickly that it was the enemy army attempting to break their way into the keep.
Order dissolved and the servants began shoving each other out of the way, making their way down the ladder, pushing and falling through the hole into the kitchens below.
One of the servants, an old man who tended Lord de Llion, fell on top of Ceri.
The little girl was nearly crushed beneath him and Lady de Llion screamed, kicking the man off her daughter and gathering the child into her arms. Ceri was nearly unconscious, badly injured, and cried out when she tried to breathe because it hurt.
Lady de Llion was beside herself as she kneeled on the dirt floor, clutching her child against her.
“You fool!” she screeched at the servant, who had broken his arm in the fall. “You have killed her! Damn you!”
The old servant was weeping at what he had done, holding his broken arm against his body in a painful gesture.
Bretton stood next to his mother, watching the situation with big eyes, having no real idea what had happened but knowing now that the ordeal was becoming increasingly frightening.
They were running, running from something terrible.
It was something terrible that they had feared for two days and the terror was tangible now, worse than ever.
He could nearly taste it. He wanted his father, a man upon whom all things calmed and comforted.
He missed him. He tugged on his mother’s arm.
“Mama?” he asked. “Where is Papa?”
Lady de Llion wept, clutching her daughter in one arm and reaching for her son with the other. She thrust the boy towards an older woman.
“Rosalie, take him,” she begged. “Take him and run. Take him far, far away from here and do not return, no matter what. Do you understand me?”
The older woman with the missing teeth grasped the boy, who was more intent on staying with his mother. In fact, he fought against the older woman for the privilege.
“Aye, my lady,” the older woman said, finally picking the boy up, who was kicking and screaming. “But you must come. Stand up and carry the lass! We will all help you!”
Lady de Llion held her little girl tightly, who now had bright red blood about her lips that were turning shades of blue. She was gasping for every breath, growing weaker by the moment.
“Nay,” Lady de Llion sobbed. “She is… my sweet Ceri is dying. And my husband! He is dead, too!”
One servant broke away from the group and threw open the bolt of the heavy iron door leading out into the kitchen yard beyond as the others hovered around Lady de Llion.
“My lady, please,” the woman holding Bretton begged. “Come with us!”
Lady de Llion had already given up the fight. She wasn’t a strong woman in the best of times and now, with the great jaws of defeat snapping at her, she was more inclined to surrender than to resist. She shook her head violently, her wimple coming loose and spilling forth dark hair.
“There is no hope,” she muttered. “De Velt has won. He has put my husband to the stake and soon he will put me to the stake. But I cannot allow it, do you hear? I will not!”
With that, she stood up, carrying her daughter with her, and moved to the butcher block that stood big and heavy in the center of the kitchen.
All manner of butcher knives hung from an iron frame overhead and she grabbed a long, slender, and wicked-looking knife that was used to filet meat from the bone.
Without hope, without any comfort or sanity whatsoever, Lady de Llion plunged the knife into Ceri’s small chest, stilling the little girl forever.
As the servants screamed and moved to stop her, she turned the knife on herself.
Bretton saw the entire incident. It was surreal, beyond the comprehension of the small child, and he was too shocked to utter a sound.
He just stared at his sister as her blood ran bright red upon the dirt of the kitchen, mingling with his mother’s blood from a slit throat.
It was a horrific scene, but one not unknown in the annals of a de Velt attack.
Whenever the man took the offensive, he left no living body in his wake.
Bretton only had a few moments of seeing his mother and sister in their blood bath before Rosalie was stealing him from the kitchen, racing through the dark and bloody night to the postern gate that led down the eastern slope of Four Crosses, down a narrow and treacherous path, through thickets of trees, to a stream below that fed into the castle’s water supply. Others followed in her wake.
It was dark down there, shielded from the castle above by a thick canopy of branches overhead.
Bretton, the shock of his mother and sister’s death sinking deep, had begun to weep but Rosalie put her hand over his mouth to still the sound.
They could hear men behind them, de Velt’s men, and they were desperate to quiet the boy.
The group of refugees plopped into the stream, following its path as it ran through the vale, hiding their tracks from those who would follow.
Rosalie carried Bretton until the boy grew heavy and then she passed him to another man, the castle smithy, who carried the sniffling lad for another hour until they felt safe enough to clamor out of the stream.
It was a desperate flight in the dead of night, feeling de Velt’s death-grip that had come upon them all.
The land was hilly and rough here and the small group struggled through it with only a sliver moon above to light their way.
The smithy, in the lead, ended up on a goat path that wound its way up a small mountain to a relatively flat summit.
They had to gain their bearings in this dark land, to determine where to go to safety, but a sight on the eastern horizon caught their attention.
They could see flames in the distance, atop a mountain, and they knew that it was Four Crosses Castle.
De Velt didn’t normally burn the castles he confiscated so the refugees of Four Crosses could only imagine that someone, mayhap Lord de Llion himself, had set the castle ablaze.
There was no way of knowing who had actually caused the blaze, but one thing was certain: Four Crosses Castle, as they knew it, was gone forever, destroyed by a man whose bloodlust was second only to his evil.
Satan himself trembled in fear of Jax de Velt and his apocalyptic destruction.
No man survived it. Those who stood on the mountaintop, watching the flames in the distance, knew they were among a very select few.
God had been with them this night because they, in fact, had survived.
Gentle tears filled the cold night air, tears from the few women who now realized they were alive, now realized they were homeless. It was much to bear. As the servants began to discuss what they should do now, where they should go, Bretton stood and watched his castle burn.
His papa was there, his mother and sister, too.
All he loved was burning before him. He was sad, terrified, and overwhelmed with the course the night had taken.
He wasn’t sure what to feel any longer. He was simply numb, as numb as a child could be.
All he knew was that a man had caused all of this horror and destruction, a terrible man of terrible reputation, and that man’s name was de Velt.
Ajax de Velt. It was a name seared into his brain, never to be forgotten.
It was a name he learned to hate. Hatred would breed revenge. Even at his young age, he could feel an unalterable sense of vengeance.