SCORPION
Part of the de Wolfe Pack Series
A Medieval Romance
By Kathryn Le Veque
PROLOGUE
Siege of Tripoli
March, 1289 A.D.
“Watch your head!”
The shout came from behind. The massive English knight with the shaved head instinctively took the hint and ducked low, missing being decapitated by mere inches. In spite of his size, the knight was as agile as a cat. He turned and charged the man who had just tried to remove his head from his shoulders, plowing a big shoulder into his attacker’s belly.
The Mamluk warrior with the curvedkilijsabre went down, flat on his back, and the enormous knight planted his big, heavy, straight-edge broadsword squarely into the man’s chest. It was instant death.
“Kevin, we need to get out of here,” the same knight who had shouted the warning was now grasping the arm of the big, shaved-headed knight. “This is a trap. They lured you here with rumors of an enemy surrender.”
Sir Kevin Hage had realized the same thing his friend had. Tripoli had been under siege for over a month now, a bone-dry city in a dry and mysterious land. Overrun by Mamluks, Turks, Mongols, and more exotic tribes pouring in from the northand east, the last remnants of the Christian brotherhood in the Levant was trying to rid the city of the new legacy of invaders. But they were outnumbered. It had been a seemingly futile effort thus far.
Kevin and his companions, Sir Adonis de Norville and Sir Thomas de Wolfe, men he had grown up with and had now come to serve with in this strange and exotic land, the last crusade of an empire who had all but given up the quest, had been well out of England for over six years. From the snows of Wales to the searing sands of the Levant, it had all been quite an adventure, an adventure that had seen Hage acquire a reputation not only from those he fought with but from those he fought against. A man who fought with no fear, no emotion, and a hint of untapped vengeance. A man the Templars and Hospitallers alike had learned to use as a strike weapon, an assassin. Like a scorpion, Hage was often undetected until it was too late and by then, the target was dead before he realized what had hit him.
By then, it was too late….
Now, it was nearly too late for the man known as the Scorpion. Kevin looked around. They were on the north side of the city, having gained admittance by killing several gate guards at their post protecting a smaller but strategic postern gate that led into the walled city.
The lure of a possible surrender had drawn Kevin and his companions to the gate, as directed by the commander of the order of the Templars that Kevin sometimes fought with. Being English, and not officially a Templar or a Hospitaller, he fought with them when the mood suited him, or when they would pay him well enough. Now, this directive he had received to collect surrendering enemy commanders, with a massive payment to boot, was coming to smell of an ambush. Already, their passage into the city had not been easy. Now he was wondering how easy it would be to get out.
“I believe you are correct,” Kevin finally muttered, turning to Adonis. His tall, blond companion was red in the face from sunburn and heat. “De Clemont paid extraordinarily well for me to take on this task. It did not occur to me that it was because he knew he would eventually get his money back when my dead body was brought to him.”
Adonis nodded, his expression edgy, as he motioned over Thomas de Wolfe, who had just dispatched two rather violent Mamluks. When de Wolfe kicked the bodies before stealing all he could carry off of them, he made his way back over to Kevin and Adonis.
“This is a trap,” Thomas said. Dark, with hazel eyes and big shoulders, he was one of the sons of the legendary William de Wolfe and possessed all of his father’s great cunning and skill. His gaze was on Kevin. “If we venture further into the city where we have been directed to go, it will mean death for us. All of this… it has been far too planned.”
“We know,” Kevin murmured, looking around to see if any more assassins were about to pop from the shadows of the ancient city. “We must leave and leave quickly.”
Adonis looked around him with the same hunted look that Kevin had. “We cannot return to de Clemont,” he said. “The man put you in this position. If we return to him, then we return to our deaths.”
Kevin knew that. He sighed heavily, wiping the sweat off his bristly scalp. “Not even those we have fought with for six years trust us any longer,” he said. “If they are trying to kill us, then I believe our time here is done.”
Thomas nodded, shoving the coinage he had stolen into the purse in his tunic. “They fear you are no longer under their control,” he said. “You killed de Evereux….”
“He tried to kill me.”
“Even so, rumor spread that you had been hired to kill him by the Mamluks.”
Kevin grunted. “I killed the man because he was an unscrupulous French bastard who tried to steal some coinage from me,” he said as if the entire thing were ridiculous. “When I confronted him, he tried to kill me. I killed him in self-defense.”
Thomas knew that, so did Adonis. “But he was de Clemont’s cousin,” Adonis pointed out. “Everyone knew he was an immoral fool but when you killed him, they sided with de Clemont out of fear of the man. One does not side against his leader and live to tell the tale.”
Kevin was well aware. Clearing his throat softly, he looked around the dusty old walls of the antique city, walls the color of sand. Everything here was the color of sand; he hadn’t seen green grass in over six years. At that moment, he realized that he missed it very much. He wanted to go home. He was tired of this place, its dirt and heat and lice. He wanted to see the green grass of home again.
“Then it is done,” he said quietly. “We gather our possessions and we leave. We can do no more here and I refuse to lose my life on these barren sands, stripped of everything by men who are unworthy of my legacy.”
Neither Thomas nor Adonis argued with him. They, too, were glad to be leaving these desolate lands. They had only come because of Kevin, a man they had grown up with and a man who, six years ago, had lost the love of his life to another. Kevin had been aimless, directionless, and left with a massive hole in his chest where his heart used to be. At the request of Kevin’s father, Sir Kieran Hage, Thomas and Adonis had stayed with Kevin and, at his side, had eventually found their way to the Holy Land in search of wealth and adventure.
