Chapter Twelve #2
“Come, now,” he breathed against her mouth. “Let us return to the hall and finish our meal.”
Ellowyn nodded, rather breathlessly, as he set her on her feet. “Not a word to my mother,” she told him as he took her hand and tucked it into his elbow. “She might try to stop us.”
“And your grandmother?”
“She will fight my father to let me go with you.”
Brandt grinned at her as they headed into the warm, fragrant hall beyond. They had a plan, just the two of them, and he felt excited and nervous about it like a giddy young squire. But it was the best feeling in the world. He could hardly wait for the morrow.
As they moved back to where the feasting was taking place, the solar door creaked open and Deston stood there.
He had heard every word through the door, as he had been listening with his ear up against it.
He knew the scheme, and he knew he must stop it.
For Ellowyn’s sake, he had to. His beautiful young daughter was not meant for a killer such as de Russe.
Shortly before dawn, Ellowyn was locked in her room by her own father, who told her it was for her own good. When Brandt found out, he unleashed his men and laid siege from his prime position of inside Erith’s massive inner bailey. He wasn’t leaving the fortress without Ellowyn.
It was a very bitter and exhausting day.
*
If Brandt de Russe was one thing and one thing only, it was a military mastermind. He knew how to get his wants, and he knew how to make things happen. His systematic and rather strange siege of Erith would be something they would speak of for years to come in military circles.
When Deston had told him, from behind the bolted keep door, that he had no intention of allowing Ellowyn to sneak disgracefully off with the duke, Brandt had not been particularly surprised.
He stood on the steps leading into Erith’s big keep, hearing Deston’s refusal and looking at the de Lara brothers, standing next to him, for their reaction.
Their response, of course, was immediate. They spread the word to St. Hèver, de Reyne and le Bec, and the five knights spread out and sequestered their four hundred and ninety-two men from the de Nerra troops. Once they were all separated, Dylan returned to Brandt for instructions.
Brandt was still standing on the top step of Erith’s keep. He was looking at his men, now separated from the 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 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 them 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 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 waiting 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 battle 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 her 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 troops.
The senior knights managed to mount their horses 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.