“Do all of you have battle posts?” Heads were bobbing an affirmative so he continued. “Get to your posts, then. Who is the senior sergeant? I need a senior man!”
Julian could bellow orders loud enough for the Scots to hear him. Even Lista was startled by the volume of his voice but, in the same breath, she’d never heard anything so steady and commanding and comforting in her entire life. Surely nothing terrible could happen with Julian in command. As she climbed off the table, Julian was already huddling with three older soldiers in the middle of the hall, men she had known her entire life, and those three men had the room moving as Julian filtered out with them.
In little time, the entire hall was cleared and around Felkington, a horn could be heard.The battle horn.Lista hadn’t heard it in a very long time.
“What do we do?” Addington asked.
Lista turned to her friend, reaching out to clutch the woman’s hands. “We make sure the stairwells are secure,” she said. “Wemake sure that all of the doors with stairs leading into the courtyard are secure and then we start preparing for wounded, if any. Will you help me?”
Addington nodded firmly. “Of course I will,” she said. “I am a de Velt, too, and this is not my first battle.”
She smiled and Lista smiled in return. “Then you are a seasoned veteran,” she said. “Come along– we must hurry.”
Gathering their skirts, the women flew out of the hall to prepare the stairwells while the soldiers were moving frantically below. They presumed it was just another raid until lightning lit up the sky and hundreds of Scots could be seen on the approach to Felkington.
It was starting to look more like a siege.
The night would be a long one.
CHAPTER TEN
It took Julianabout ten minutes to assess what was happening.
Along with Ashton and the three senior sergeants, one of whom had been part of the escort from Berwick, Julian assumed that the Scots had come to raid the vineyard and the gardens for stores.
Hisstores.
When he married Lista, all of this would become his, so already he was protective over it. Mostly, he was protective over Lista. These Scots bastards who had come down from the border, bypassed Northwood Castle, which was a massive castle along the River Tweed and quite accustomed to border raids, had come straight down to Felkington nestled in her little valley. They’d deliberately avoided Northwood and her enormous army.
That made Julian particularly angry.
Given that he had just been in that vineyard in the afternoon, he didn’t want the Scots ruining it or the gardens that had a variety of vegetables and flowers. It was all so tranquil and beautiful and to think about the Scots damaging that infuriated him. The Scots seemed to be focused on raiding anything contained within that ten-foot wall and weren’t particularlyfocused on the castle itself, which gave Julian time to form an army. Never one to simply stay idle while there was an attack going on around him, Julian took one hundred and fifty men with him and left the safety of the castle, leaving Ashton to seal it up behind him.
Out into the field he went.
When the Scots saw the Felkington army coming, they moved to meet them. But Julian noticed something particularly strange going on in the middle of the road that led to the gatehouse. There was a mounted knight, all by himself, fighting off a gang of Scots that were clearly trying to dismount him and steal his horse. Julian was mounted, of course, and charged towards the English knight who was ably keeping the Scots at bay, but once Julian joined the fight and cut off a couple of heads, the Scots fled in terror.
Julian and the other knight went after them.
They were swarming the garden and the vineyard. Since the gate was closed, Julian couldn’t get his horse through, but he pulled the animal alongside the wall and climbed over it. Fully armed, wearing armor that weighed more than a ten-year-old child, he began plowing through the Scots as they stole vegetables and ripped young trees out by the roots in order to steal what fruit they were bearing.
Julian wasn’t even trying to chase them away. He was out to kill them and the Scots realized that very early on. He had a massive sword, serrated on one side, that could slice through a man’s neck as easily as a hot knife through butter. When he started leaving headless bodies amidst the carrots and apples, the Scots couldn’t get back over the wall fast enough. Worse still was the other English knight who had followed him, a big knight who was beating men with crushing blows. He didn’t seem to be killing like Julian was, but he was definitely thrashing men as they tried to flee.
On it went into the night.
The storm, which had been lighting up the sky overhead, had eased up by midnight. There were still Scots around, men who were hiding out and then trying to steal goats and chickens, but Julian found them and the body count piled up. The other English knight was rooting out any who might be hiding and driving them straight to Julian. In truth, they made a very efficient team, as men often did who had experienced a great deal of battle in their lifetimes. There was intuitive behavior and tactics that helped them work well together, teamwork that continued until dawn.
When the sun finally began to rise and the storm clouds cleared out over a wet and verdant land, Julian found himself out of the garden, standing by the open portcullis leading into the courtyard of Felkington. There were many soldiers in the garden and vineyard, cleaning up, taking inventory of what had been damaged or lost. Julian thought that the English knight had departed sometime towards the dawn because he hadn’t seen the man in the last hour, when he suddenly emerged from the garden leading a scruffy Scotsman by the neck.
He came right up to Julian and tossed the man on the ground.
“I thought you might like to find out where the Scots came from,” he said in a smooth baritone voice. “You can also send this fool back with a message to his clan as a warning to those who try to raid this castle again. What castle is this, by the way?”
Julian pulled off his helm, handing it to a nearby soldier. His hair fell over his right eye as it always did, especially when facing someone he’d never met before.
“Felkington Castle,” he said. “I am Julian de Velt and my comrade is Ashton de Royans. Who are you?”
The knight pulled off his helm, revealing a younger knight with dark eyes and black hair, sweaty against his pale skin. He grinned.
