William took another gulp of wine before answering. “Nay, I did not mention it, mostly because they were some of the agents working in stealth for me in the north, and the less everyone knows, the better,” he said. “But I knew, eventually, that the time would be right to tell you, so now you know – the royal blood of that powerful and mysterious kingdom is now part of my stable of knights, and they have been utterly flawless.”
Christopher shook his head, still in disbelief, but there was pleasure there. The pleasure of friends he thought he had lost. “Not even Jax told me that,” he said. “I cannot believe they have been in England for two years and I never knew.”
William nodded. “As the story goes, they were in the service of a Flemish duke who is allied with Jax de Velt and that is how they came into the man’s service. He adores them.”
“But how did they get from The Levant to the Flemish lord?”
William held up a hand. “Those Thuringian knights you spoke of,” he said. “But that is a story for another time. For now, we must focus on what is happening in the north. Four weeks ago, I sent a missive to Cole and Ajax de Velt and asked them to unleash their army on Fountainhall with the intention of capturing Canmore as a prize. I instructed them to muster their army and march for Scotland on the first of the month, which was more than five days ago. My guess is that they have already arrived and that the siege is progressing in earnest.”
Christopher snorted ironically. “If I know Jax, and I do, the siege is probably already over,” he said. “Jax de Velt has never laid siege for more than a couple of days in his entire life. I would wager that the battle is finished and Canmore is already heading for England.”
William, however, saw no irony in the statement. He was a man who controlled England, and with it, thousands of men, lords, and armies. He never did anything without a specific motive in mind, and his motive in sending Jax de Velt into Scotland was quite plain.
Gart had said it best.
Impact.
With this much at stake, he wanted impact. But things could go wrong and sometimes, they did. William could only hope this was not one of those times. Therefore, he simply nodded coolly to Christopher’s suggestion.
“Let’s hope so,” he muttered quietly. “God, I hope so.”
CHAPTER ONE
The siege of Fountainhall Castle
Seat of Alpin Canmore
It was a scene from old.
Jax de Velt and his sons, Cole and Julian, had roused their army and marched on the Scottish fortress of Fountainhall because William Marshal had ordered it for a very specific reason –
They wanted Fountainhall’s liege, Alpin Canmore.
Set amongst the gently rolling hills of the Scottish Lowlands, where the rocks and hills and purple heather came together to form a landscape like no other in the known world, Fountainhall was a feather in the cap of Scotland’s borders. Stout and strong, built from granite quarried near Edinburgh, it was a statement to the English kings with their eyes on the prize of Edinburgh and points beyond. It was the guard dog at the gateway into the land of the Scots.
Come and get yer pain, lads…
Fountainhall taunted the English.
But not today.
Today, the fortress was taking a beating from the army of the most feared man in England, Scotland, and Wales.
The Dark Lord and his horrific army had returned.
No one had seen death and destruction like this on the border in thirty years. Jax had been tamed by his overlord, the Earl of Northumberland, and he’d sworn to a peace treaty that had worked very well, at least for the English. They left him alone and he left them alone.
But the Scots hadn’t been part of that treaty.
Unfortunately for Canmore, Jax’s lands were threatened by raiders coming from Canmore lands but, even worse, there was the rumor of a massive and terrible treaty on the wind, one that would more than likely affect Jax before anyone else because his properties were on the Scots side of the border. Jax had learned of the terrible treaty from his own son, perhaps the best spy the world had ever seen.
Aye… Jax de Velt, the darkest knight of all, had raised a spy.
But he’d also raised one of the most fearsome knights of his generation in Coleby de Velt, and when it was determined that the threat against de Velt properties was too great, the prompt from William Marshal was all Jax needed to mobilize that army of killers that he kept within his tall, pale walls. However, it was more than simply moving against Canmore because of the threat, for The Marshal had a very specific purpose in mind.
A hostage.
And the de Velt army rolled into Scotland like a tempest.
It was chaos.
It was a relatively short march to Fountainhall from Pelinom Castle, seat of de Velt. With a swift horse, it would take a full day, but with an army, it took a day and a half. Truth be told, Jax hadn’t marched for battle in such a manner in over twenty-five years. Given that his two properties, Pelinom Castle and Foulburn Castle, were on the borders, he’d seen his share of action. Reiver activity surged from time to time, and he’d been called into English disputes throughout the years, but he never fought the battles he used to fight. The blood, the brutality, the senseless death and destruction. Those tactics were a thing of the past.
Until William Marshal asked him to unleash that monster again.
Not strangely, it hadn’t been difficult to draw on the beast he used to be. It had never really gone away. Cole and Julian knew what their father was capable of, just like everyone else, but they’d never seen it at that level until their foray into Scotland.
Then they became part of it.
The Scots never stood a chance.
Fountainhall Castle never really stood a chance, either. It was a walled and moated castle, but it wasn’t very large and the moat was hardly a deterrent to an English army with siege engines and ladders. Jax had brought everything he had with him and at noon on the day of his arrival, the siege of Fountainhall began in earnest.
Unfortunately for the occupants, it didn’t take very long.
Jax’s siege engines with iron projectiles blew holes in the yellow granite walls and destroyed the gatehouse. Once they were in the outer bailey, those same engines loaded up bombs of flaming oil and destroyed a second, smaller gatehouse that led into the complex of the castle. At that point, the army started to stream in and grab victims.
No mercy.
That was the order given by Jax who, in his sixth decade, was still an utterly terrifying and formidable knight. He was completely in control of his army and everything around him, and for sons who had never seen the monster their father had once been, they were seeing a new side to him that they didn’t recognize. It was startling and, admittedly, intimidating. About half of Jax’s forces were men who had been with him back in those days when The Dark Lord terrorized the borders, so they knew what to do when their liege gave the word and, like old times, they were also given permission to take anything of value.
Spoils of war.
Once the interior gatehouse was down, it was Cole and Julian’s task to find Alpin Canmore while their father and his army took care of the Scots. As they fought their way into the inner ward, prisoners were taken by the de Velt army all around them. Men who resisted were disabled on the spot. Not killed, but disabled, because a horrible death was planned for them. For the past six hours, Jax had men in the nearby woods, chopping down young trees and preparing the spikes that the Scots would soon be impaled with.