“How many?”
“I’d say a hundred, at the very least. The village is crawling with Scots.”
Thomas was already on the move, with Desmond and William beside him. As he headed away from the table, he paused briefly to speak to his father. “You and your men remain here at Wark, Papa,” he said. “You will have command of the fortress. I will take Desmond and most of my army to the village, but I need you to keep the castle secure. That is the most important thing.”
He was trying to spare his father’s pride as one of the greatest knights who had ever lived, who now, in his eighth decade, was simply too old to ride to battle. Truthfully, it was difficult for William not to go. That had been his calling for over sixty years, but he’d made his wife a promise a few years back that he would no longer actively fight. Whatever he did had to be from a command standpoint and not active engagement. He’d pushedthe fighting aspect of his career for as long as he could, when he became so old that his sons were focusing on protecting him in a fight and little more. That was when he knew it was time to retire.
But he didn’t go quietly.
Even now, William could feel his wife’s gaze upon him, her critical eye. He knew she was watching him to see if he was going to go back on his word to her, but William had no intention of breaking a promise to his wife.
No matter how difficult it was.
Old knights never die…
“Aye,” he said to his son. “Go muster your army and I’ll put my men on the walls. Be careful, Tommy.”
Thomas and Desmond fled, thundering out of the hall along with nearly every other man who, moments before, had been singing and even drunk in some cases. All of them rushing out into the cold, silvery night, doing what they’d always been doing at Wark Castle–
Protecting the border.
As William stood there, feeling rather useless and sad to watch the hall drain of men when he couldn’t go with them, his wife with Caria in-hand came up beside him.
“How can I help?” she asked her husband quietly. “What do ye need me tae do?”
William turned to her, trying to keep the disappointment out of his eyes. “Assume we’ll have wounded,” he said. “Get Caria to her nurse and make sure the keep is secured. Then, have Adelaide and even Desmond’s sister help you here in the hall to prepare for the wounded. This is nothing new for you, love. You know what to do.”
Jordan did. Turning back to the table, she instructed Adelaide and Maitland to remain in the hall and wait for her to return, but as soon as she hustled out with Caria to take the childto the keep, Edmund decided that he didn’t want his daughter to remain in the hall and escorted her to the keep personally. They stayed clear of Lady de Wolfe, because Jordan never saw them retreating to Adelaide’s bower and bolting the door. And there they remained. When Jordan finally returned to the hall, only Maitland had waited for her. Jordan didn’t even ask where Adelaide was, because she already knew.
Useless girl.
In little time, Jordan came to see just how smart and resourceful Maitland de Ryes Bowlin was when it came to organizing an infirmary, and Jordan came to like the woman even more than she already did. She never had to ask twice for something to be done and, as the evening went, Maitland seemed to know what Jordan was going to say before she said it. It became a symbiotic relationship of the best kind.
Now, all they could do was wait.
*
In Thomas’ estimation,there had been more than one hundred men.
In truth, he had no idea where they’d all come from. A raid this size had been organized well in advance because he was positive there were Scots from other clans participating. As he’d charged into the heart of Coldstream, into the merchant district where the raiders seemed to be doing the most looting, he thought he caught sight of a Scotsman he’d seen before, months ago when his father had held a great gathering of sorts to speak to the clans along this stretch of the border about thereiverswho had been hitting the villages rather hard on both sides of the borders.
Elliot, Kerr, Scott, Maxwell, Haye and Johnstone had all been at the gathering, with Gordon and Armstrong remainingstandoffish. The border reivers were not from the clans, but rather a mix of Scots and English outlaws who had no regard for citizens on either side of the borders. They would raid the Scots as easily as the English, and along with the clan unrest, the rise of the reivers had been particularly taxing on those charged with border security.
That was why the great Wolfe of the Border had called the gathering, which had been moderately successful. William’s goal had been to get a commitment from the clans to work in conjunction with the English to rid the borders of the reivers, and there had been instances of successful cooperation. That was why Thomas had been shocked to see a man he thought he recognized from one of those participating clans. It didn’t make any sense to him.
But then, he saw the man again, this time heading right for him, and he unsheathed both his broadsword and a rather lovely wolf-head dagger that he always carried on his person. There was a good deal of fighting as the man in the long tunic and braies approached on a sturdy horse. He was holding up a hand to show he was unarmed and he informed Thomas that he and his men had followed a gang of reivers from the village of Duns, one step behind them as the group tore through the countryside.
It was then that Thomas realized that there weretwofactions in Coldstream– reivers as well as men from Clan Kerr, trying to stop them. He was just about to tell Desmond of his suspicions when the hut he was next to collapsed forward under the weight of a group of men fighting on the other side of it.
Thomas and his horse were shoved forward and the horse nearly fell over, unbalancing Thomas to the point of falling from the horse. He landed on his feet with his sword still in his hand, but the wolf-head dagger fell by the wayside as one of the reivers who had busted through the wall of the hut took a swipe at Thomas, catching the man on the shoulder near his neck,enough to carve through his mail and drive the blade into his shoulder.
But Thomas didn’t falter. He leapt onto his horse again, weapon in hand, and went after the reiver with a vengeance. Three strokes of his blade later, the reiver was on the muddy ground, bleeding to death, and Thomas was furious with what was going on. Along with that fury came a storm of action and of behavior, a storm so fierce that Thomas liberated that anger and the fight turned vicious. The StormWolfe was unleashed.
Dhiib aleasifahad returned.
The reivers were clever, but they weren’t any match for an enraged English knight. Thomas’ sword cut down two men trying to pummel a hapless villager, a man who was holding on desperately to a ham that the reivers were trying to steal, and as the reivers fell in a bloodied heap, the man ran off with his precious ham.
But Thomas wasn’t done.
