Medieval Master Warlords (41 page)

Berwyn went off on a rant about how he would tear the man limb from limb if he ever got ahold of him. Rod stood there and watched him, knowing the old man meant every word. Even at his advanced age, he was still formidable on the field of battle. Berwyn didn’t get worked up very often but when he did, it was often unstoppable. Therefore, he simply stood back for a few moments and let the man work through his fury. All the while, Rod kept thinking about the mercenary army and their mimicry of Jax de Velt. As his grandfather raged, he began to recount some of the factors that he and de Lohr had discussed. They were factors that would interest Berwyn.

“If this mercenary army is indeed emulating Jax de Velt, then there is less of a chance they will come to Bronllys,” he said. “However, they may very well move on Erwood and Comen. We will be able to smell the destruction from here.”

Berwyn was muttering to himself, still pacing about, but he stopped when Rod’s words sank in.

“That is true,” he agreed. “We will have to make sure the castle is locked up. We will have to bring the villeins into the fold. It would not be safe to leave the villagers without protection.”

Rod dared to move towards the old man who seemed to be calming somewhat. “Mayhap you should ride to the village and speak with them,” he said, hoping it would deter the man from his outrage and focus him on something constructive. “We must tell them to be on their guard should the mercenaries make it this far south.”

Berwyn nodded. “That would be wise.”

“Would you like for me to go with you?”

Berwyn was weary now that the explosion of rage had eased from a roaring fire to a simmer. He was sweating and pale, but at least he was sufficiently calming. The storm had passed, for the moment.

“Nay,” he shook his head. “You have traveled all day. You must rest. This is something I will do alone. I will go and speak with the priests so they can help spread the word.”

Rod didn’t push. He was glad that his grandfather was focused on something other than the imposter using the de Llion name. Now, the man was focused on the small village that was near the castle. There was a good working relationship between the two, something Berwyn had cultivated for many years.

“Very well,” Rod said, watching his grandfather head for the exit of the great hall. “Are you sure you will be well?”

Berwyn nodded unsteadily, like a man who had too much on his mind. “Well enough,” he said, pausing by the door to look at his grandson. “What you have told me… you have not told anyone else, have you?”

Rod shook his head. “Who else would I tell?”

“Orlaith.”

Rod cocked his head, pursing his lips reproachfully. “I would tell my mother before I told you?” he asked in a tone that suggested it was a ridiculous question. “Of course I have not told her. I have not even seen her. She is at Whitebrook and it would have taken me at least four days to get there. Until we can confirm any of this, I see no reason to tell her that her nephew may be alive.”

Berwyn wagged his head back and forth. “There is no reason for her to know in any case,” he said. “Your mother was quite attached to her brother. His death saddened her greatly, as did the passing of his family. There is no need for her to know anything.”

With that, Berwyn quit the hall to go about his business, leaving Rod behind to ponder that very statement.
There is no need for her to know anything
. But what if it was true and Bretton had returned as a hated mercenary? If that was truly the case, then he had to agree with his grandfather –it would be better for his mother to not know at all.

Still… he had to wonder if they would ever know the truth. Maybe Bretton
had
returned. If that was what had happened, then he had to wonder why the man hadn’t contacted them. He had been asking himself that question since nearly the moment de Lohr revealed the name behind the mercenary army. Surely Bretton remembered his family. If he remembered Jax de Velt and the havoc the man wrought, then surely he would remember those who loved him from his childhood. Surely he remembered that he had family here on the Marches.

There was only one way to find out.

℘

It was her fault, really. She’d had the courage to attack the man but she hadn’t been able to escape as she had hoped. Therefore, she was forced to face the punishment. She had taken a risk and it had come back in her face.

Allaston was back in the vault again. Grayton, upon discovering her over Bretton’s unconscious body, had grabbed her by the neck and dragged her back down to the moldering depths of Cloryn’s dark vault. He had quite literally thrown her back upon the dirty straw that had been her only bed for three weeks before slamming the grate and making sure it was bolted. The entire time, he’d never said a word, and neither did she. In truth, there was nothing for either of them to say.

That had been a few hours ago. Allaston huddled back against the wall, still in the fine clothing she had been wearing. She suspected that she was going to remain here forever, or at least until her father showed up. Mayhap then they would release her if only to dangle her before her father to show the man their prize. Truly, she only had herself to blame and was therefore resigned to her fate. Hysterics weren’t going to change anything.

So she sat and waited, for what, she didn’t know. She was confident enough that de Llion wouldn’t kill her. He’d been clear that he needed her alive. So the only alternative was to keep her locked up because she had proven she couldn’t be trusted. As she sat there and pondered the course of her dismal future, she heard bootfalls on the steps leading into the vault.

And so it comes
, she thought to herself. Even if de Llion wasn’t going to kill her, he had said nothing about not beating or abusing her. She deserved the punishment for what she had done and braced herself for that very real possibility. Resigned though she might be, it didn’t stop tears of fear from stinging her eyes at the thought of what might lay ahead.

It was dark in the vault, as usual, with the only light coming from the stairwell that led to the gatehouse above. She could see a figure descending the steps, realizing it was de Llion simply by the sheer size of the man. He came off the stairs and turned in her direction but she couldn’t see his face because the light was behind him. All she could see as he approached were shadowed features. It made it difficult to gauge his mood, which she could only imagine wasn’t too good. When he came to the locked grate of the cell, he simply stood there. Even though Allaston was looking at him, she couldn’t see his eyes.

“I was told to leave you down here to rot,” he finally said in his raspy, deep voice. “I should, you know.”

Allaston lowered her gaze from his shadowed face. “I would expect you to.”

He paused before answering. “I would except for two good reasons,” he said. “First of all, in spite of what you did, it was astonishingly brave. It showed cunning and resourcefulness. I did not expect a female to show such courage. Second of all, you could have easily killed me but you did not. I want to know why.”

Allaston kept her gaze averted. “Because I am not a killer,” she said. “In spite of what you think, in spite of the de Velt name, I am not a killer. I could not take your life. I could not take anyone’s life.”

“Then why did you knock me unconscious?”

“Because I wanted to escape. That was my only motive.”

Bretton watched her lowered head from his position outside of the cell. After waking up with an excruciating headache almost two hours ago, lying on the floor of the chamber where Allaston had been, he truly had no idea what had happened. He remembered walking in the door and little else.

Pushing himself off the floor, he caught sight of the fire poker a few feet away. A perusal of the chamber showed that he was quite alone and that had been his first clue as to what had transpired. No prisoner and a suspiciously discarded poker. Only when he had left the room and gone in search of a soldier to sound the alarm that Allaston had escaped had he run into Grayton, who was returning from the gatehouse. Grayton had told him all he needed to know and Bretton had spent the last hour and a half listening to the man rant about Allaston and how Grayton had been mistaken to think the woman was worthy of being released form the vault. But Bretton, strangely enough, couldn’t seem to agree.

So he sat and imbibed a couple of cups of wine to stave off his headache as Grayton fumed and the barber-surgeon put three stitches in the back of his scalp. When the wine was gone and the stitches were finished, Bretton chased Grayton away before making his way down to the vault where he now stood. Looking at Allaston’s lowered head, he still couldn’t bring himself to be angry about what she had done. One small woman had managed to do what no one else had ever accomplished – she had managed to disable him. Oddly, he found some humor in that as well as admiration.

“Where were you going to go if you escaped?” he asked quietly. “Do you even know where you are?”

Allaston’s head came up and she looked at him. “Cloryn Castle,” she said. “Your man Grayton told me.”

Bretton nodded faintly. Then he reached out and threw the bolt on the cell, pulling open the old, creaking door with the rusted hinges. He just stood in the doorway, watching her.

“Where were you going to go?” he repeated.

Allaston shrugged. “I was going to find a church,” she said. “I thought the priests would help me.”

“Did you not stop to think that I would find you?” Bretton asked. “Alberbury Priory could not stop me. What makes you think another church would?”

Allaston shrugged. “I am sure that it would not,” she said, some frustration in her tone. “I simply want to return to what I was doing before you came and tore me away from my friends and mentors. I want to return to the cloister. I do not want to be a part of your war games, de Llion.”

His gaze lingered on her. “And yet, you are,” he said, his voice soft. “What about your father? Did you plan on warning him about me?”

Her frustration grew. “Of course I did,” she said. “I planned on sending him word that I was safe and not to engage you. Do you not understand? I want him to stay well away from Wales and well away from me because I love my father and I do not want you to kill him.”

He was aware of her mounting agitation. “That is between me and your father.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You just said I was a part of your war games,” she said. “Therefore, this is between you, my father, and me. You have made me an unwilling participant in all of this.”

He nodded, once, as if he understood her logic. “I will agree with you,” he said. “But trying to escape me is futile. There is nowhere for you to go that I will not find you.”

Allaston sighed heavily, exasperated. “That is probably true,” she said. “But I will ask you this question, de Llion, and you will be truthful with me. Think back to that day when my father besieged Four Crosses. If you could have done anything at that time to save your father, wouldn’t you have done it? That is what I was trying to do by making an escape attempt – I was trying to save my father.”

Bretton pondered her words. As he did, he took a few steps into the cell, standing a mere few feet from where Allaston was huddled. He crouched down so that he could look her in the eye, seeing her ghostly pale face framed by the dark cloak over her head.

“I would have done anything to save my father that day,” he said quietly, “but I was only five years of age and had not the strength, the knowledge, or the skill. Because I could not save him then, I have made it my mission in life to seek vengeance against the man who murdered him and you are a part of that plan. I am sorry if that if distasteful to you, but that is the way of things.”

Allaston stared into his bright blue eyes. There was pain in her features. “But I love my father just as you loved yours,” she admitted. “If you kill my father, you will be hurting me as deeply as you were hurt those years ago. Would you truly wish that pain upon me?”

Bretton found that he was having difficulty concentrating with her mesmerizing eyes fixed upon him pleadingly. It unbalanced him because he could feel something more than just a mere fixation. He could feel something warm spark. He’d never felt that kind of thing before and it startled him. He didn’t understand his reaction. What he didn’t understand, he didn’t like.

“You are of no consequence,” he said, his manner bordering on cold. “Whatever pain you feel is not my concern. I must do as I must and you will have to accept it.”

Allaston sat back as if he had slapped her. Tears began to form in her eyes as the weight of his words settled. There was no changing his mind, she knew. She had tried to reason with him, to be kind to him, to fight him, and to submit to him. She had tried everything. Everything except one last final offering. She was at her lowest point, knowing what she had to do and dreading it. It took every last ounce of courage she had to speak the words.

“My father
is
my concern,” she whispered. “I cannot talk you out of doing such a terrible deed, for your mind is set. But if it is a de Velt you want to kill, then instead of my father, mayhap you will consider me. If it is only de Velt blood you seek, I can give you mine.”

Bretton’s expression didn’t change. “It is not your blood I want.”

“But you want de Velt blood,” she insisted. “Killing my father will bring you nothing, but if you kill me, then you are assured of hurting my father as badly as he has hurt you. Take my life, de Llion. It is worthless now anyway, for as your prisoner, all will assume you will have had your way with me. Everything I stand for is ruined. Take my life and send my body back to my father and I can assure you that he will be greatly hurt. I will willingly let you kill me if you will only cease your bloodlust against him. If you truly want to make the man suffer, then you must take my life to accomplish that.”