He turned his horse to approach the opening where massive timber gates once stood. One of the huge pieces of wood lay to the side, unsplintered, the great beam that should have prevented entry unbroken. Few people milled about the carnage, most of them children and a handful of women—the attackers had meant to spare none. His own score of men were the only ones astride—even Obny’s beasts were slaughtered, their steaming bodies devoid of tack and fallen in such a manner as to indicate they were trying to escape the flames when butchered.
When Nick and his men had arrived, the Welsh were already in retreat. The party had paused atop the final knoll in time to witness scores of Welsh fording the Wye, slinking back across the border and destroying all hope of immediate retaliation. For Nick to have ordered pursuit would have been tantamount to suicide. Their numbers were just too great.
“Mama! Mama!” a small girl shrieked.
Nick looked down and watched apathetically as the child pounded tiny fists on the chest of a woman severed cleanly in two at her waist. As Majesty carried him slowly past, the sightless eyes of the dead woman seemed to follow Nicholas, accuse him.
The horrific sounds swelling Obny’s carcass invaded Nick’s brain, swirled around it in a grotesque wail. Moans and cries and retching sounds flowed around the crashing of burning and falling timbers. Nick was no stranger to the carnage of battle, but this had been no real contest—the town’s inhabitants slaughtered with such ferocity that many lay with their entrails exposed.
The only part of the town still actively burning was the keep, and Nick drew up before the hellish inferno with an absence of emotion. The great hall, where Nick’s own father and Handaar had taught Nicholas to brawl and drink like a man, collapsed in on itself with a tortured wail of defeat and a shower of sparks.
As Nicholas stared at the gnashing pile of flaming timbers, Tristan drew his horse even with Majesty. Neither man said anything. Randall soon joined them and after a moment, he spoke.
“It’s all gone, Sire,” he said, and Nick noted the break in his voice. “I have counted but ten and seven survivors—mostly children.”
Nicholas did not want to ask, but had to know. “And Lord Handaar?”
A beat of silence passed. “He is not among them.”
Nick turned his attention back to the burning keep while Tristan asked Randall, “Stores?”
“Everything is gone, my lord. Burned.”
Nick nodded to himself.
Randall cleared his throat. “I’ve ordered the living to be gathered at a cottage untouched, to the east.”
Again, Nicholas nodded. He tore his eyes from the smoldering shell and slowly scanned what once was the bailey. Bodies lay nearly shoulder to shoulder, men and women, young and old, laid low within the very walls meant to protect them.
Nicholas felt each of their wounds on his own body, and his blood ran just as cold as the dead’s, chilled by an anger and a guilt so fierce he could not fully comprehend the reality of it. Little more than a fortnight ago, he had been in London, at the king’s birthday celebration, the only weighty thoughts in his head where his next bit of sport would come from, how he would escape matrimony’s clutches among the marriage-hungry maidens. When he would have his next drink. He’d met Simone then, as well, not long before Obny was attacked by the small band of Welsh—seemingly of no consequence.
But now Nicholas knew it had been a scouting party—a preliminary raid to test Obny’s fortitude. Had Nick been at Hartmoore, he would have come to Handaar’s aid, scoured the border, routing out the instigators, possibly preventing this massacre. But Nick had been in London. In far, faraway London, dallying with Simone, getting himself wed.
His vision blurred with the thoughts and the smoke. Then a glimpse of white, a patch that should have been invisible from across the bailey, caught Nick’s eye. He blinked. Beyond the wide, muddied rump of a fallen horse: a snowy fringe of hair ringing a smooth circle of flesh. A bloodied, crumpled leather coif lay near it. Nick slowly dismounted, dread eating a hungry spiral in his stomach.
“Nick?” Tristan called from behind him.
But Nicholas was moving, faster now. He neared the dead beast and steeled himself for what lay inevitably beyond.
Lord Handaar’s prone form came into view, his right leg buried beneath the horse, his left tossed back at an unnatural angle. He lay twisted on his back, displaying clearly the bloody slashes in his tunic. One shoulder had been hacked clean to the bone and a wide, bruising gash marred his brow.
He was without mail.
Nick fell to his knees in the churning mud, a macabre combination of dust and blood. “My lord,” he whispered hoarsely, reaching out a trembling hand to the man’s chest. “Oh God, forgive me, Handaar.”
The stuttering orange light fluttered over Handaar’s craggy features, causing Nick to look more closely at the twitching of an eyelid.
“Handaar? Do you yet live, old friend?” He dropped his head to the man’s bloodied chest and listened.
There! Faint and impossibly slow, a whisper of a heartbeat sounded. Nick scrambled to his feet and drew his sword.
“Tristan! Randall!” he roared, raising his weapon high and lunging at the dead horse. “Help me! Handaar is alive!”
Nick began hacking at the carcass pinning his friend, flailing with his sword and sending wide arcs of still-warm blood flying. His brother and his first man were at his side in a blink.
“What do I do, my lord?” Randall asked urgently.
“We must free him!” Nick never paused in his blows to the horse’s limbs, but shouted to be heard over the thick, thudding cuts. “Take the head and neck!”
