Medieval Master Warlords (36 page)

Allaston was overwhelmed with the horror of his suggestion. “You cannot,” she hissed. “I am destined for the Church. I am to be a Bride of Christ!”

Bretton cocked his head, a thoughtful gesture. “A bride, aye,” he said slowly. “But not of Christ. Mayhap I will wed you myself, a further insult to de Velt. I will send the bloody bed linens from our wedding night to him to show him that I have taken his flesh and blood as my own, to do with as I will. And you still do not think that will bring the man to my doorstep? Think again.”

Allaston gazed at him with more hatred than she had ever experienced. In fact, she was wild with it.

“I will kill myself before I let you touch me,” she snarled. “You will lose your bait, your captive… you will lose everything!”

Bretton had little doubt that she meant what she said. “Mayhap,” he said quietly, eyeing the woman. “But I would not worry about taking your own life. Whatever illness you have will more than likely kill you before you can take a dagger to your throat.”

Allaston nodded with great flourish. “One can only hope,” she said. “As long as I am dead before I have to feel your filthy hand against my flesh, that is all I am concerned with.”

Bretton actually cracked a smile, thin and without humor. “Then I will have to take you before you rot away from whatever is killing you,” he said. “I prefer my women pliable. The only way you will be pliable is if you are too ill to fight back.”

Allaston’s hatred was turning to rage. “Touch me and you will regret it,” she hissed, “for I will fight you to my dying breath.”

He didn’t doubt her for a minute.

℘

In the great hall of Cloryn Castle, men were settling down for the evening. The hall was older, with a great fire pit in the center of the room rather than a hearth in the Norman fashion, and smoke billowed up to the ceiling and hung about in great clouds before escaping through several roof vents in the thatching. It was long and skinny, with a dirt floor and four massive feasting tables in various positions around the room. It was a big enough room for de Llion’s entire army of twelve hundred men. Rough, crude, brutal mercenary soldiers that lived life moment by moment rather than day by day. Such were the uncertainties of their world.

Soldiers that were currently celebrating another victory in a campaign that had been full of them. After the destruction of Alberbury Priory, Bretton and his army of Irish and Germanic mercenaries had moved south to Ithon Castle, a rather small but important outpost and they had succeeded in breaching it. The garrison commander, a son of one of Jax de Velt’s greatest generals, had been killed along with his wife and three daughters. Bretton hadn’t shed a tear throughout the event and, when everyone was dead, he had decapitated the dead commander and had sent the head with one of his soldiers to Jax de Velt’s residence in Northumberland. By his estimation, ten days after Ithon’s destruction, de Velt should have the head. De Velt should already be concerned with what was happening to his Welsh properties.

That was how de Llion wanted it. The nun left alive to deliver a message, the daughter of his greatest enemy kidnapped and languishing in the vault… aye, that was how Bretton wanted it. All of this was quite calculated and, so far, had gone according to plan. Bretton, as well as his hired men, were pleased. But Bretton couldn’t take the time to savor the victories. He had a schedule to keep and it was that schedule that occupied his thoughts as he made his way into the loud, smoky great hall. As he approached one of the big tables where his commanders were gathered, one of them, a big man with a bald head and big teeth, lifted a cup to him.

“Another castle is ours, Bretton,” the man had a heavy Irish accent. “That is cause for much celebration.”

Bretton sat down on the bench opposite the man. There was a pitcher of cheap red wine and a few cups within his reach and he took a vessel, filling it to the rim.

“Aye,” he agreed, almost modestly. “Ithon is indeed ours and now staffed with my men. My messenger should have reached Northumberland by now and I suspect de Velt is looking at the head of his garrison commander and wondering what in the Hell has happened.”

There were three other commanders at the table in addition to the big, bald one. One commander, with a shock of wild blond hair and big arms, pounded the table with his fist in agreement.

“He will want to know,” he declared. “De Velt’s curiosity will get the better of him, bringing him right to our doorstep.”

Bretton eyed the man. “What will bring him to our doorstep is the daughter,” he said. “I have just sent a rider off with a second token for de Velt, one he should be receiving in a few days.”

The commanders were curious. “What token?” the big blond asked.

Bretton drank deeply from his cup before answering. “Hair belonging to his daughter,” he replied. “I have just sent him a mass of silken dark hair.”

The blond commander looked at the others, surprised by de Llion’s statement. “Did you kill the woman?” he asked, rather hesitantly. “You did not mention that you would kill her.”

Bretton shook his head. “Nay, d’Avignon, I did not kill her,” he replied. “She is still safely tucked away in the vault, although she seems to have become ill during her stay. She is not well.”

A big commander with curly auburn hair reached for the pitcher and began refilling his cup. “What do you intend to do about it?” he asked. “If she dies before we can lure de Velt, then our efforts will have been for naught. We were lucky to find her as it was. Who knows how much trouble it would take to find another de Velt offspring.”

The man had a point. Bretton turned to look at his second in command, a friend for many years. Grayton du Reims was related to the Earl of East Anglia and was a wise and powerful man. He was a warrior with impeccable bloodlines, a younger son of a father who would not inherit lands or titles. Therefore, Grayton had to make his own way and, at the tender age of eleven, had run away from home to earn his fortune. He had worked for a mercenary knight who had taught him his trade, a vocation that Grayton eagerly took to. He was not a consecrated knight but should have been. He was skilled and powerful, and Bretton relied on him a great deal. His wisdom was paramount in all things.

“Then what would you suggest?” Bretton asked. “Send for a physic? Purchase expensive medicines? She is a prisoner and nothing more.”

Grayton frowned. “She is a valuable bargaining tool,” he countered. “Take your emotion out of the situation, Bretton. What you have is a very valuable commodity. I have been against you putting her in the vault since the beginning, you know this. I have made no secret of it. You must take care of this prize if you are truly going to use her to lure her father. It seems to me that you have turned your hatred of de Velt onto the daughter. She is the embodiment of all you loathe. If she dies, she will do us no good, and I did not burn a priory and kill nuns in vain.”

Bretton didn’t want to admit that Grayton was correct. He was stubborn. “You are mad,” he muttered, noting that the servants were starting to bring forth the evening meal. “She is an object and nothing more. I do not hate her nor do I love her. She means little more to me than this table.”

Grayton shook his head. “You would repair this table if it was broken because it serves a purpose,” he said. “So does the woman serve a purpose. Get her out of the vault, make her comfortable, and hope she recovers.”

Bretton made a face. “
You
get her out of the vault and make her comfortable,” he said, too prideful to admit Grayton was right. “I put her in your care if you are so concerned about her.”

“Then you agree with me?”

“I agree that you worry like an old woman. And if she escapes from you, I will have your head.”

Grayton grinned. Bretton was as stubborn as they came. Slapping the man on the shoulder, he stood up and made his way from the hall. The other commanders watched him go, including Bretton, who eventually turned back to his wine.

“D’Avignon,” he said, turning the focus away from Grayton and his correct assessment of their prized prisoner because he was starting to feel foolish about it. “Now that we have been returned to Cloryn for a few hours, how do the men fare? Well enough so that we should be prepared to move to our next target by the coming week?”

Sir Olivier d’Avignon, the burly blond knight, paid great attention to his liege’s question. After a moment, he nodded. “They seem well enough,” he said. “Since we landed in Liverpool, we’ve done nothing but march from one place to another, so if we could remain at Cloryn for a few days, it would serve the men well. They need to rest after the warfare we have conducted. It has been rather taxing.”

That was putting it mildly. Sieges, death, destruction, men impaled on poles and decapitations were only part of the havoc they had wreaked. But that was their way, the manner in which Bretton’s army functioned, having taken their clues from Ajax de Velt and his reign of terror those years ago. Bretton thought back to the path that had brought him to this moment in time, thinking over all of the work and sacrifice he had to make in order to see his desires fulfilled. Lost in reflection, he sipped pensively at his wine.

“From Liverpool, we laid siege to Clun, Knighton and Dolforwyn. We weren’t trying to take those castles, only harass them. Then it was straight to Cloryn Castle,” he muttered. “Once our base was established at Cloryn, it was on to Alberbury for the de Velt daughter. The man we paid to locate the de Velt children took three years to find one we could get to and, in the end, we found de Velt’s daughter just where he said she would be. Once we confiscated her, we brought her back to Cloryn and locked her in the vault while we moved on to Ithon Castle, another of de Velt’s holdings. Now, it belongs to me as well. After Ithon, we will take Rhayder Castle and then we will have an unbreakable link of three castles, all bordering one another. Once we have that stretch of the border secured and under my control, we will move to Comen Castle, Erwood Castle, and finally Four Crosses Castle. By that time, I will have taken every castle along the Marches that de Velt ever held and, hopefully, he will be moving his army to engage me.”

The commanders listened to the plan that had been drilled into their heads ever since they had known Bretton. Much like the rest of them, Bretton had a background as a mercenary but, unlike them, he had lived the life of a mercenary with an end goal in mind. The man had plans. Mercenaries didn’t come any meaner or deadlier than Bretton de Llion. Since having lost his parents at a young age, his younger years were rather blurred but it was rumored that he had been sold to a merchant who had taken him to Ireland and subsequently abused him until he had been old enough to fight back.

After that, it had been established that Bretton had become a squire for an Irish mercenary who had taught the lad his trade. Powerful and skilled at only seventeen years of age, Bretton left his Irish master and began to sell his sword to anyone who would pay a high price, earning himself a great deal of money in the process. Then, it was his turn to hire men on, and with his army for hire, he had made even more money because Ireland was full of lords willing to pay to destroy their neighbor. But there came a point where de Llion had his own plans for his army, and that was to take six castles along the Welsh border, castles that belonged to the feared English warlord, Jax de Velt. Bretton’s men came to understand that there was a vendetta in these plans, a vengeance that sang of bitterness and sorrow, something de Llion wouldn’t easily discuss.

But he did discuss it, every so often when he was drunk, and the reasons behind his vendetta would make brief appearances, enough so that his commanders understood that de Velt had murdered his family and stolen his father’s castle. Men with vendettas were often the fiercest and the most isolated of men. Fierce because there was emotion in their cause and isolated because their pain was their own. Bretton de Llion was one of these men. He kept his emotions bottled up, yet wore his pain on his sleeve in the guise of blood-letting brutality, an odd combination. He was lonely, as he had been his entire life, and that was the way he wanted it.

“It is difficult to believe that we are finally here,” the commander with the heavy Irish accent spoke in response to Bretton’s statement. Sir Dallan de Birmingham was from a fine Irish family and had indeed been knighted, but he discovered early in his career that he liked being paid for his services. His loyalty could be bought and de Llion paid handsomely for the privilege. “All of the years we have been planning this – how long has it been? At least six years that we have been planning to take de Velt’s castles in Wales. The plan has become a part of my very foundation and I am eager to establish myself along the Marches.”

Bretton eyed Dallan. The man was in it for the money and power, purely. He was greedy and he could be shifty, so Dallan was a commander that bore watching. As long as things were going his way, he was loyal to the core, but the moment he was displeased, he could very easily show that displeasure in dangerous ways.

“Your time will come,” Bretton said steadily. “I promised you a castle and you shall have it, but it will be a castle of
my
choosing. Rhayder is rumored to be a large castle with two villages paying tribute, so mayhap that will be the one I grant you. Mayhap not. Either way, you will never forget that your loyalty is to me above all else.”

Dallan’s easy manner hardened somewhat as he gazed at Bretton. “You need not remind me,” he said. “My loyalty is yours for always. I swore fealty to you and that is not in question.”