Wolfeheart de wolfe pack.., p.25
WolfeHeart: de Wolfe Pack Generations, page 25
Suddenly, men in long tunics bearing short swords and ropes were skulking towards the walls. Some of them even had crude ladders between them.
Alfie’s eyes widened.
“Go get the branding irons,” he hissed to his guard.
Aldwin, Manley, and Bartram ran to get them while the rest of the guard backed away from the gate fearfully. But Alfie stood there, watching with some fascination, as men rushed up to the gate. Faces he didn’t recognize peered through the iron grate at him.
“Laddie,” one of the men said. “Will ye let us in? We need protection.”
Alfie frowned. “From what?” he asked. “You have swords. You can protect yourselves.”
There were several men crowding up against the grate, making Alfie nervous enough that he backed away. Someone stuck at arm out, grabbing for him, and he backed away further.
“Go away!” he shouted. “Go away or I’ll tell Sir Knight!”
“Help us, laddie,” the man said again. “Will ye not help protect us?”
Alfie shook his head. “You have swords,” he said. “If you needed to be protected, you would not have swords. Who are you? Why are you here?”
More hands were reaching out, trying to grab at him, but by this time, Manley and Aldwin had returned with red-hot fire brands. Alfie took one from Manley and wielded it menacingly at the men on the other side of the grate.
“Go away!” he said again. “Go away or I’ll fight you!”
The men at the grate were no longer so pleasant.
“Open the gate, ye little whelp,” one man said, taking a swipe at Alfie. “Open it now!”
His hand was reaching out and, frightened, Alfie lashed out with the fire brand, jabbing the man in the hand with it. It seared into his flesh and he screamed, which terrified the entire horse guard. The children screamed, the man screamed, and Alfie was spurred into action. He began jabbing anything that moved with his fire brand, making contact on several occasions as the men on the other side of the grate pulled back, fearful of being burned. They also tried to grab at it to take it away from him.
But Alfie could see there was a serious problem. He knew these men shouldn’t be here and he knew, instinctively, that they were bad. He barked at his horse guard, telling them to get more fire pokers, while he sent one of the little girls running for his friend, Sir Knight.
His greatest hero had to know there was trouble at the postern gate. Little did Alfie know that, at the moment, there was trouble all around Trastamara.
The attack had begun.
The alarms began to sound.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The walls of Trastamara weren’t as easy to breach as Shand had made it sound.
Win and his fellow Scots figured that out within the first hour. They’d been unsuccessful at trying to convince the child in the kitchen yard to open the postern gate. In fact, the little bastard had taken fire pokers and burned their hands when they tried to grab him.
Shand had seen the child. He knew him on sight. He named the child as Alphonse, son of Roget, but he’d stayed out of sight, not wanting the child to see him. Since Shand had been exiled from Trastamara, he didn’t want the lad telling people that he’d seen his father’s knight in the mix of Scots who were now encircling the castle with ropes fastened to grappling hooks and ladders built from wood from the nearby forest. Shand wanted to make sure he remained out of sight until absolutely necessary.
The truth was that Shand hadn’t been entirely truthful about the difficulty in breaching the castle, mostly because he didn’t want the Scots to refuse his proposal. Now that they were here, they could see that the big, gray walls were smooth, so it was difficult to get any kind of a foothold on them. Not only that, but they were built out at the bottom, which made them very difficult to scale.
Difficult, yes, but not impossible.
It was more difficult for the ladders because they couldn’t get a good bracing against the wall. There were several ladders, built that morning by hungry Scots, and they’d tried to put them up for a solid hour before they gave up and concentrated on the grappling hooks. Then someone got the idea to use the ropes from the grappling hooks to tie on to the ladders so they could stabilize them. A man could climb the ladder with the rope from the grappling hook secured at the top, providing no one from the castle loosened the rope or the hook, and then use the rope to climb all the way to the battlements.
Every wall had soldiers on it and they’d brought one hundred and seven men with them. They had no way of knowing how many men were still in Trastamara and there weren’t a great number of them on the battlements, which was encouraging.
But then, the arrows started.
Flying from the bailey and raining down on the Scots, the first barrage of arrows managed to strike several of the men, who went down screaming. But Win and his men bellowed at them, demanding they rip out the arrows and continue trying to mount the walls. The Scots were, if nothing else, tenacious, and no man would give in to pain at this early point in the battle.
The reivers were a tough bunch. They were also driven by greed and Trastamara promised to be a fine prize. On the western wall, some men managed to get onto the battlements, but the biggest knight they’d ever seen was waiting for them, tossing them right back over the wall as if they weighed no more than children.
Word spread quickly.
Shand watched as Markus de Wolfe threw men to their deaths, with two men landing right on their heads. The rest of them, and there were six who had managed to make it on the wall, landed heavily and wounded some part of their body. One man broke a bone that poked through his skin.
But that didn’t discourage the reivers.
More men made attempts to mount the walls and someone managed to get onto the wall near the gatehouse, which brought some serious fighting and the death of two more Scots. Still, Shand didn’t engage. He stayed out of it, watching from a distance as Win Foulden’s men worked hard for little reward.
With all of that going on, Win joined Shand at one point and he did not look pleased.
“It seems tae me that this wasna as easy as ye led us tae believe,” he said, sweaty and grimy from having tried to scale the gatehouse. He jabbed a finger in the direction of the castle. “They have a knight on the walls throwing my men tae their deaths.”
Shand nodded. “I know,” he said. “That is Markus de Wolfe of Berwick.”
Win cocked his head. “Berwick?” he repeated. “De Wolfe? The Earl of Berwick is a de Wolfe.”
Shand nodded. “And that knight on the wall is his son and heir,” he said. “The man is a monster. As long as we can only get a few men to the walls at a time, he will continue to defeat us.”
Win was becoming frustrated. “Then ye led us here tae a futile action?”
Shand looked at him. “I would not do that,” he said. “I thought your men would be able to scale the walls easier than they have, but it is not futile.”
Win pointed to the gray walls in exasperation. “It seems that way tae me.”
But Shand shook his head. “Come with me.”
Win followed him over to the area of the wall where the postern gate was. There was a big tower on one corner, used for storage, but there were soldiers on it, preparing to fight off Scots who were still trying to mount the walls. On the corner, near the tower, were two arched drainage openings, grated with iron like the postern gate. Shand pointed to them.
“See those?” he said. “They are protected, but the iron grates do not go terribly deep and it is not anchored in any rock. If you put men to digging on those, we can dig a deep enough hole to get underneath the grate and into the drainage culvert. There is another grate on the other end, with the kitchen yard beyond, but if your men can dig underneath both of those grates, we can gain access.”
Win peered at the grates. They were mostly buried in muck and mud, and all of the foul things that drained out of the kitchen yard, but there was enough of a space to make them passable should they be able to dig down and get underneath them. Shaking his head in disgust, he eyed Shand.
“This damnable castle had better be worth it,” he grumbled.
Shand looked at him. “Is Mordrington worth it?” he fired back. “And think of all of the lovely revenue you can collect when we control The Orchard crossing.”
The potential for controlling that bridge alone made this all worth it, but Win wasn’t going to admit it. Gathering some of his men, he pointed to the mud and explained what needed to be done.
Disgusted, but determined, the Scots got busy.
“Ama! I must fight!”
Amabella was holding on to Alfie as tightly as she could. He was a little boy, that was true, but he had a surprising amount of strength. Locked up in her chamber at the very top of the keep, Amabella was sequestered with Aleanor, Ambra, Alfie, Savia, the three maids from Berwick, and Alfie’s entire horse guard.
When the battle had started, Markus had made sure they were all in one room, locked up in the highest chamber of the keep, and armed with daggers, clubs, and fire pokers. Whatever he could find, he gave them. They were under instructions to not open the door for anyone but him or one of the other de Wolfe knights.
But Alfie had other ideas.
After the initial alarm had sounded and Markus had dressed in a hurry, he found Alfie and his horse guard using red-hot fire pokers to ward off the Scots who were trying to coax them into opening the postern gate. He’d grabbed Alfie and calmly commanded the rest of the children to follow him, and they made their way into the keep. The children had been fighting admirably but the fact remained that they were children, and vulnerable, so Markus had corralled all of them into Amabella’s chamber so he could focus on the battle.
But that was exactly where Alfie wanted to be.
“Ama!” he cried, trying to pry her arms from around his waist. “I am the king! I must fight for my people!”
Amabella hung on for dear life. “Alfie, please,” she said. “Listen to me; you know you cannot fight. You are simply making this worse. You must behave yourself and sit with your guard, do you hear? Markus will send for you if he needs you.”
Using that logic, Amabella was able to calm her son down, just a little. Alfie was still frowning, but at least he wasn’t kicking any longer.
“Will he?” he asked his mother dubiously.
She nodded seriously. “Of course he will,” she said, loosening her grip. “He put us in this chamber for a reason and if you leave, you will put everyone here in danger because an open door is a door that the enemy can get through. You do not want to do that, do you?”
Alfie didn’t. He looked at her, unhappy, but even at his young age, he understood. “But what should I do?”
Relieved that Alfie was no longer going to charge the door and put them all in jeopardy, Amabella loosened her grip on him and put him on his feet. Alfie was so much like Atlas; young, but wanting so much to grow up and be a man. She had two very brave boys on her hands and she knew that, so she knew better than to try and take that fighting spirit away. Markus had told her not to diminish a young man’s will to fight simply because he was a child.
That meant Alfie, too.
She pointed to the door.
“You must protect all of us,” she said. “Take your guard and stand in front of the door. If men come, you must fight them off and protect the women. Will you do that?”
Alfie nodded solemnly, mostly because it sounded like a very serious task. He was the king, after all, with a well-trained guard. He was more than willing to protect his mother in this battle situation. Even if he couldn’t go help Sir Knight, he could at least defend his mother and sisters.
“I will,” he said, motioning to his guard. “We can fight off anyone who comes.”
Amabella stood up from her chair, distracted by the sounds from the bailey outside her window. “Good lad,” she said. “Form a line; that’s right. And stay there to make sure no one comes in.”
Alfie and his guard did. The children, including the “knights”, were frightened and even a little unsteady about the situation, but Alfie assured them they were doing important work. The whole thing had disoriented and terrified them, but not enough to make them cower. Perhaps it should have, but they were strong.
Thanks to Alfie.
As Alfie and his guard took their positions, Amabella found herself wandering over to the window, looking out to watch the Scots down below and the soldiers on the wall. It was rather terrifying and when Aleanor wandered over to her, she deliberately turned her back on the window to partially block it from her daughter’s view. Aleanor was nervous enough without seeing men with weapons down below, trying to breach the castle.
“Ama,” Aleanor said, hugging her mother tightly. “When will this be over with?”
Amabella wrapped her arms around her daughter. “Soon,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she believed it. “Sir Markus will make short work of these Scots. Have no fear.”
But Aleanor wasn’t easily quelled. She looked up at her mother, her pale face strained. “But what if he doesn’t?” she said. “What if they enter the keep? What then? They will try and kill us!”
Amabella shushed her daughter softly. “Not so loud,” she said. “Do not frighten your sister and brother with such talk.”
“But what if…?”
Amabella shook her gently. “If the Scots get into the keep, then we must pull Alfie and his guard away from the door,” she said. “You can hide under the bed or in the wardrobe. In fact, I want you to be responsible for Ambra. Take her with you and hide. Will you do that?”
Aleanor nodded warily, fearful of having such responsibility, but in the same breath, it made her feel… grown up. Her mother was trusting her with something important and that hadn’t really happened before.
“I will,” she said. “But what of you?”
Amabella sighed heavily. She turned her head slightly to catch a glimpse of the battle going on outside. She didn’t want to think of the possibility that the Scots would make it into the keep. That would mean Markus was…
Nay.
She couldn’t think such thoughts. She wouldn’t. God didn’t bring Markus de Wolfe into her life only to cruelly snatch him away. Markus was alive and he was going to stay alive. God had overlooked her all her life and she refused to believe that He was about to play yet another wicked joke on her by taking away a man who had literally changed her life.
All would be well.
But even so… she prayed fiercely.
God, help us!
As far as battles went, it wasn’t a particularly brutal one. He’d been in worse.
But this one had consequences.
There were about one hundred Scots from what he could tell trying to scale the walls of Trastamara any way they could – ladders and ropes, mostly, although some were trying to scale the gatehouse without benefit of either of those things only to be kicked off or thrown off by Kieran.
While Kieran held the gatehouse and the nearby walls with about fifty soldiers, Markus took the rest of the walls and spread out about seventy soldiers on the two of them. The Scots were few, but they were everywhere, like vermin, so the soldiers on the walls where there to cut the ropes or kick back the ladders.
And on it went into the afternoon.
The remaining soldiers from Trastamara were positioned in the bailey, both watching for any errant Scots who might actually make it over the wall and also lobbing arrows at the attackers. It was firing blind for the most part, but they’d managed to take a few Scots down.
Markus hadn’t worked up much of a sweat. In fact, he’d rather enjoyed tossing Scots off the walls or kicking them in their faces when they got to the top of the ladders and close enough to his big feet. He knew that, eventually, they’d get tired and skulk off, more than likely around dusk, so it was simply a matter of keeping them from doing any real damage and, so far, they hadn’t.
But that opinion faded when he saw Shand.
The man wasn’t difficult to miss. He was the only one in the group not wearing a long leine tunic, but rather a mail coat and padded tunic that Atlas hadn’t stripped from him. He was lingering back in the tree line, trying to stay out of sight, but Markus had excellent eyesight. He could see him clearly. The fact that Shand was here unnerved him because the man knew Trastamara better than anyone, Atlas included. He knew her strengths and knew her weaknesses.
That began to concern Markus.
Therefore, he put several of the soldiers in the bailey on patrol in the bailey itself. He had them prowl every inch of the yard, the stables, and kitchen yard.
And that’s when they found something.
Markus came running as the soldiers in the kitchen yard sounded the alarm. There were two big drainage swales that went from the kitchen yard, through the wall, and dumped out on the other side. They discovered that Scots were digging under the iron grates, trying to use the swales as a way to breach the castle, so Markus put the men on gathering all of the hot water and stew bubbling over one of the big kitchen fires. The hot water alone was perhaps fifty gallons and they took it up to the wall and positioned it right over the diggers.
Down it went.
Men screamed as they were scalded by the hot water. The stew went down in chunks, clinging to skin and burning. It was enough to chase the Scots away from the digging, but Markus knew they’d be back. Shand was clearly exploiting that weakness in the wall, so Markus put the soldiers on stuffing as much debris as they could into the drainage swale, hoping to clog it up so the Scots couldn’t get through. As Markus put some of the men to boiling more water, shouts could be heard from the top of the wall.
Markus raced up the stairs to the wall walk in time to see a small army approaching from the north. It didn’t take him long to figure out who it was because he could see the red tunics, even from a distance.
A smile spread across his lips.
The Trastamara army was returning.
Now, things were going to get interesting.
