Kieran grinned. “If he does, I would just give it to him. The man is terrifying.”
William snorted. “I shall determine that for myself.”
Paris leaned forward on his saddle. “He’s not, mayhap,yourbastard, is he?”
William shook his head. “I am not aware that I have any.”
Paris pressed him because the man never knew when to shut up. “You were not celibate before you met your wife,” he said. “Herringthorpe looks enough like you that I should be suspicious. You must find out who his mother is.”
The humor of the conversation was running thin and William gave him an impatient look. “Enough,” he muttered. “I would have known by now if I had any little de Wolfe bastards running around, so cease your innuendos. You are being ridiculous.”
“Herringthorpe is not little,” Kieran said quietly. “I’m not saying he’s your son, of course, but he has to have some de Wolfe blood in him. The resemblance is uncanny. Mayhap a distant cousin?”
William simply shrugged. “Possibly,” he said, disinterested. “There are enough de Wolfe relations throughout England, so it’s possible.”
The subject wasn’t worth speaking on any longer, so they let it drop, mostly because William was growing irritated and Paris wouldn’t press him so much that William would take a swing at him. That had happened before. Therefore, Kieran headed back to the encampment to tend to his horse while William and Paris headed towards the castle where the gatehouse was smoldering and heavy fighting was going on. William unsheathed his broadsword, followed by Paris, and charged into the battle where he noticed that two of his sons were fighting in a pocket of angry de Whitton soldiers.
The Wolfe was on the hunt.
Near the gatehouse entry, the portcullis had been heated by a bonfire and then chains were used, tied to horses, that partially pulled the portcullis away from the opening. It was a twisted mess, but men were still able to get in and out. He could see his eldest sons, twins Scott and Troy, and his third son, Patrick. Atty, as the family called him, was more than a head taller than any man around him. Patrick had inherited the height from some towering ancestor so in a fight, he was never difficult to find.
William headed towards his sons.
The Wolfe began to swing his sword, clipping men who were foolish enough to be in his way. Those who turned to fight were summarily dispatched, but the closer they drew to the gate, the thicker the fighting. William found himself not only fighting with his sword, but kicking men in the face only to have them fall to the ground and be trampled by his horse. The truth was that his horse was as much a weapon as his broadsword. The beast could kill a man easily. He could feel the concussion of bodies crunching beneath his horse’s hooves as he rode up to his eldestthree sons, watching Scott dispatch a man bearing de Whitton colors who tried to take his arm off.
“Where is James?” William bellowed above the noise of battle.
Three hands pointed north and William found himself looking up to the battlements of the castle where heavy fighting was going on. He could see that there was a great deal of activity– swords flashing, men battling, and he could see his son, James, in the thick of it. The man was bellowing like a barbarian, tossing men aside, gutting others, in a fighting frenzy beyond compare. Sweet, humorous James was a madman in battle. William could also see Kieran’s sons, Alec and Christian, as they wrestled with de Whitton men who simply didn’t want to surrender.
The army from Bamburgh, along with de Wolfe and his allies, had managed to divide the de Whitton army, but a hundred men or more had run up to the battlements, which was where the worst of the fighting seemed to be taking place. As it was, the gate was more or less secured and the gatehouse seemed to have surrendered in general. William pushed through the twisted gate to get a better look at the fighting on the battlements from the inside but the moment he entered the vast bailey, there was a new wave of de Whitton men and he, along with Paris, found themselves being pushed back the way they’d come.
The de Wolfe sword was swinging.
Truth be told, William was more at home in a fight than most. Even missing his left eye, which had been lost to a Welsh archer many years ago, he had better sight than most full-sighted men. He was joined by many de Wolfe soldiers as well as Patrick, who had shoved his bulk in through the opening, and they methodically began to cut down the de Whitton tide.
But then, William noticed something.
He saw why the rush of de Whitton soldiers had pushed towards him because on the other side of the group of men, he could see Bamburgh’s royal troops pushing them towards the gate. Leading the troops was none other than Herringthorpe himself and William only knew that because the man wasn’t wearing the crimson and gold of the royal army. From what William had been told, he never did. The enormous knight was wearing the latest and greatest protection money could buy and swinging a sword that was the height and weight of a seven-year-old child.
Most impressive, indeed.
What was even more impressive was the fact that the man had been badly wounded in a skirmish at Etal Castle about eight months before. It had been his first major skirmish since taking command of Bamburgh and William remembered hearing the story. He’d lain by the river’s edge for three days before a scouting party from Etal finally found him and rumor had it that he’d lingered near death for several days before he finally started to improve.
One couldn’t tell that by looking at him now.
The man moved like a force of nature.
Herringthorpe was pushing the troops in William’s direction and he knew why– so de Wolfe and his men could cut them down or beat them down enough so they would surrender. Sandwiched between Bamburgh and de Wolfe, the remaining de Whitton troops had little choice but to surrender.
There was really no choice at all.
It was the classic collapse of an army.
When James, Alec and Christian began throwing men from the battlements into the crowd below, William knew that the skirmish was lost for de Whitton. Rather than back off and let his men subdue the enemy, William took pride in leading by example. He’d never been one to let his men do the dirty work,so he involved himself in the blood and gore of a defeated army. He kicked men down, shouting at them to stay on their knees while his soldiers moved in to restrain them, but when one of de Whitton’s knights surrendered to him personally, he showed the man respect.
De Wolfe might have been hell in battle, but he was not without honor.
On and on it went until the sun began to set and the de Whitton army was nothing more than a broken mess of defeated men. James, Alec and Christian came off the battlements and, at that point, William backed off. He let the younger knights do their duty while he and Paris slipped out of the gate only to find Kieran and several other senior knights from Northwood Castle ensuring that any troops on the exterior of the castle had also been subdued and restrained.
