BATTLEWOLFE
A Medieval Romance
Part of the original de Wolfe Pack Series
By Kathryn Le Veque
PROLOGUE
January
Year of Our Lord 1267
The Scots border
It had beena horrific skirmish.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t been for love or money or even territory. It had been a revenge attack, with Clan Scott and Clan Johnstone leading the charge, heading for Etal Castle because two drunken Etal soldiers had found a Scott lass tending a flock of young sheep just over the Scotland border near Coldstream and they’d attacked her. The girl had managed to get away with torn clothing and nothing more, but the drunken soldiers had stolen her flock and sold them off to unsuspecting English farmers.
That had lit a fuse to the powder keg that was the Scots border.
It was a mess from the start. Because Clan Scott was involved, Castle Questing and the empire of Baron Kilham, William de Wolfe, abstained from supporting Etal. When the request for support had been sent from Lord Manners of Etal Castle, William had calmly replied why he could not defend Etalagainst his wife’s kin and went so far as to call the men who had assaulted the Scott lass idiots. He further asserted that they were lucky he wasn’t joining Clan Scott considering his wife was a Scott and directly related to the clan chief.
Etal hadn’t taken that news kindly.
With the biggest warlord in Northumberland abstaining, they were in trouble. Etal had been forced to call upon the royal garrison at Bamburgh with their newly appointed commander because Berwick and Alnwick, with ties to de Wolfe, had also abstained. The only help Etal could get was from Bamburgh because no one else in the north wanted to involve themselves in what was essentially a revenge plot. Involving themselves would not only enrage de Wolfe, but it would put them in the sights of most of the border clans. When everyone was trying so hard to keep the peace on the rough and ready hills of the borderland between Scotland and England, Etal would have to fight this battle alone.
Except for Bamburgh Castle.
Enormous and well-staffed with about two thousand royal troops, Bamburgh answered the call. Since it was a royal garrison, it didn’t have the family ties or loyalty ties that most of the fortresses did in the north. Because the king’s troops were inherently against the Scots whatever the situation, Bamburgh agreed to support Etal when Clan Scott and Clan Johnstone crossed the River Tweed east of Coldstream and headed south, through lands belonging to de Wolfe and his close ally, Northwood Castle.
De Wolfe didn’t stop them.
The Scots eventually came to a field with no name, only knowing it was north of Etal Castle, which could be easily seen in the distance. There were quite a few hills and dales in the area and the Scots came over a rise with Etal Castle laid out before them in the distance. The only problem, as they saw it, were thethousands of English that were on the field between them and the castle, but they forged forward anyway. Them, their support groups, and even the women who came along to steal from the dead.
It was simply the way of things.
The battle was nasty from the start. The English, mostly those in the crimson and gold of Bamburgh, were resistant to letting the Scots near Etal, so the fight was brutal from the outset and throughout the day, which turned into a very long day and an even longer night. Men didn’t usually fight at night, as those battles were rare especially if there was no light of the moon but, in this case, the battle waged into the night. The moon was full and bright, illuminating the land and the killing below.
And the next morning came.
For a battle that had been expected to be nothing more than a skirmish, it had become quite deadly. The Scots were incensed, the English were angry, and the entire situation grew out of hand. As dawn broke over the glistening fields, the English and the Scots were slugging it out in meadows that had turned from grass to mud to slicks of bloody mud mixed with mashed grass. Both sides were extremely weary and even the English were considering retreating to Etal and locking it up to wait out the Scots, who still had to make it back across the River Tweed.
The number of wounded was great. Because the Scots had been shadowed by gangs of women preparing to scavenge what they could from the dead or dying enemy, the English had made sure to collect their wounded and dead, hauling them back to Etal. Unfortunately, there had been several English who had separated from the main body, including the commander of Bamburgh’s army and several elite soldiers. They’d gone off chasing what seemed to be the command of the Scots army and as dawn broke, no one had seen them for quite some time but no patrols were sent out. It was safer, for the moment, to stay inEtal until the Scots retreated. They couldn’t open the gatehouse to send out patrols and risk the Scots somehow making a last surge for the castle.
What the bulk of the English didn’t know is that the splintered faction of Bamburgh men had ended up in their own vicious battle with some of the Scots’ commanders, off to the northeast where the River Till cut a swath through the countryside. That had taken place during the night and even though there had been a full moon, they had been fighting in the heavy foliage that surrounded the river for most of the night.
And that’s where she found herself now.
By the river.
Her mother had told her to go to the river where her father and uncle and older brothers had been fighting. The carnage was heavy there, she’d been told. The women had been watching everything from a rise to the north and when they saw men finally moving away from the trees as the purple dawn began to break, indicating that the fighting was over, her mother told her to head in that direction. She’d even sent a couple of young women with her so she wouldn’t be completely alone.
Get what ye can from the Sassenach, her mother had said.Tend yer kin should ye find them.
Annaleigh Desdemona Scott simply didn’t have the stomach for the brutality that went along with warfare. Her mother and some of the other older women had no hesitation when it came to cutting off a finger to get to a gold ring or even an entire hand if a man was wearing precious metal around his wrist and they couldn’t get it off. In the past, she’d seen full hands in baskets.
But Annaleigh wasn’t as ruthless as they were.
