STORMWOLFE
A Medieval Romance
A Sons of de Wolfe Novel
By Kathryn Le Veque
PROLOGUE
December, 1291 A.D.
Castle Questing, Northumbria
They were outto get him.
He knew these walls. God, he knew them so well. He’d been born here and had grown up here until the time he’d gone to foster, so the old stone walls of Castle Questing were like being in the embrace of his mother or his father. The walls loved him, protected him, and he was as fond of this place as if it were a member of his family.
For certain, it was.
But now, these comforting walls represented great peril.
He knew they were out to get him, perhaps waiting for him around the very next corner. There was danger everywhere and all he had to do was make it to the entry of the keep and beyond that, freedom.
He wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
The trouble was that those stalking him were as clever as he was, born and bred for battle, so they would be thinking exactly as he was. Therein lay the key to surviving this; if he wanted to evade them, he had to think differently. He had to think in a way that they wouldn’t.
But that wasn’t so easy; he was a de Wolfe.
Still, he was younger, faster, and smarter, wasn’t he? Those who were stalking him may have had the money and the titles and the reputations, the finest knights England had ever seen, but that didn’t matter in the long run becausehewas going to defeat them. He knew the identities of his stalkers well.
Nighthawk…
ShadowWolfe…
DarkWolfe…
The Dragon Wolfe…
The Wolfe…
Some of the most powerful names on the Scottish borders, but they were little match for the man who brought a storm with him wherever he went. Where Thomas de Wolfe walked, thunder rolled. That’s what those in the north said. Each de Wolfe knight had his own particular brand of power, but with Thomas, it had always been dangerous unpredictability. He was as fast as lightning and twice as deadly, but wildly unstable. Those were the rumors, anyway, but those who had witnessed such talent swore by it. The youngest son of the Wolfe of the Border brought his own individual type of death to any given situation.
There was no one else like him, anywhere.
Which was why he wasn’t going to let them catch him. He had four older brothers and a father out for him at the moment, all of them elderly in his opinion. At thirty years and five, he was the baby of the de Wolfe brothers, who were at least fifteen or more years older than he was. Not that it made them any weakeror slower. In fact, even his eldest brothers, as old as they were, could outfight men half their age. It was a specific de Wolfe trait, because their father had been fighting battles well into his seventh decade of life. He was still fighting even now, at least whenever his wife would let him.
Old knights never died. They simply fought until their bones crumbled and their skin turned to dust.
And that was the unfortunate part in all of this– Thomas knew they were ready for him, stalking him, waiting for the moment to pounce. And it wasn’t dealing with just one skilled knight, it was dealing with more than his brothers and father because he knew for a fact that others were in on this. His uncle, Paris, was here at Questing, and more still. All of them, hunting him down like an animal, an animal who had been lured to Questing yesterday under false pretenses. He thought he’d come for a conference on some unrest along the border, but it didn’t take him long to figure out he’d been duped.
Damn them!
Now, he had to flee.
Castle Questing was a vast maze of chambers, corridors, servant’s alcoves, and secret staircases. As a child, he’d found endless entertainment in the old castle, and now as an adult, he still remembered those hidden staircases and alcoves. He’d been moving from one to another for the past two hours, trying to evade capture. Now, he was closer than ever to that entry door.
He’d been hiding in a seldom used servant’s staircase for the past twenty minutes but knowing that, at some point, his brothers would check it. He’d been one step ahead of them since this insane chase started and he didn’t intend to relinquish that lead. Down to the bottom of the staircase, then about twenty feet down a small corridor, and he’d been at the foyer with the entry door ahead of him.
