She felt embarrassed even as she said it, so she stopped talking and picked up her cup, drinking deeply of her wine. Cassius watched her, a smile tugging on his lips.
“You’re sweet,” he murmured. “I think I like you, Dacia of Doncaster.”
She just looked at him and giggled, unsure what more to say because she was quite certain she’d said enough.
“And I like you,” she said. “I am glad we are friends.”
“So am I. In fact, I am glad that I will be remaining here for a few more days. Mayhap we can become better friends.”
Dacia didn’t say anything more because she didn’t want to sound too happy that he was remaining. She wasn’t adept in the ways of men and women, and there was a fine line between gentle flirtation and reading too much into the situation. She’d seen that from Amata and she didn’t want to do the same thing. But if Cassius had been this charming with her cousin, she didn’t blame her for thinking there was something more to it.
But something told her Cassius hadn’t been like this with Amata.
Call it a hunch.
Before she could reply, however, there was a commotion at the hall entry. One of Darian’s junior knights had just come through the door, pushing through the crowd as he approached the dais. He had a harried look about him, young and excitable as he was, and some of the soldiers in the hall were standing up, curious as to why he seemed so agitated.
Darian stood up as well when he saw him.
The knight headed right to him.
“My lord,” he said. “There is trouble in Doncaster.”
Darian frowned. “What trouble?”
The knight gestured in the direction of the gatehouse. “We have many panicked villagers pouring through the gates,” he said. “Someone is looting and burning the town. We have been asked to help.”
“Looting and burning?” Darian asked, incredulous. “Who?”
“It does not matter who,” Cassius answered for the knight. He and Rhori and Bose were already on their feet, already on the move. “Rouse your garrison, de Lohr. You have a village to defend.”
Rhori and Bose began shouting to the men, ordering them to arms, and Darian’s junior knights began to take up the cry. Darian, caught off guard by the announcement of raiders and Cassius’ subsequent action, caught up to Cassius and grabbed him by the arm.
“This is my command, Cassius,” he said. “I will give the orders.”
Cassius could see that the pleasant relationship between them threatened to deteriorate into a competition. It was something he’d feared when Doncaster has asked him to stay but, at this moment, he could see that very thing reflected in Darian’s eyes. The man was a good knight, but he’d rarely dealt with trouble at Edenthorpe.
He wasn’t moving fast enough.
“Then give them,” Cassius said, not backing down. “While you are asking questions, men are burning down your village. If I were a gambling man, I would say it was probably the same men who attacked Edenthorpe last night, so it is quite possible that this is a ruse. Keep that in mind when giving orders and do not empty your garrison of men or you might find someone else in possession when you return. Take half with you and put the other half on the walls or you might be very sorry.”
He didn’t even wait for an answer. He pushed past Darian, heading out to the knights’ quarters to don his armor. Doncaster wanted his help even if Darian didn’t.
Doncaster was going to get what he asked for.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was chaos.
By the time Doncaster’s men arrived, the southern section of the village of Doncaster was burning. Cassius, leading a large contingent of men, charged first into the town, a street that happened to have metal merchants and smithies. The raiders had hit this side of the village first, decimating businesses, but the owners had appeared with swords and clubs and had chased many of them off, so the mercenaries had circled around to the market street.
That’s where Cassius found most of the fighting. The tunics of Clabecq were recognizable in the flames and moonlight, as they were not trying to hide them any longer. He unsheathed his de Wolfe-standard sword and plunged into the fight.
And a nasty fight it was.
Cassius was enormous and made quite a target, but he was also something to run from. Half of the mercenaries were moving away from him while the other half were moving towards him. Rhori joined him and, together, along with several hundred Doncaster men, engaged in a terrible battle that saw men falling, men running, and a few dying.
And Cassius was right in the middle of it.
The mercenaries were few, and highly skilled, but they were also highly clever. Knowing they couldn’t match Doncaster’s numbers, they scattered, which caused small groups of Doncaster men to go in chase. They were separating the army in a tactical move, piece by piece, that Cassius saw early on. He began ordering the Doncaster men to remain grouped and to not run after the individual mercenaries.
But those individual mercenaries were creating an issue.
They were the ones who were setting the fires and generally causing havoc, trying to force the army to splinter. Darian had his hands full because he was over by the church dedicated to St. George, trying to keep a gang of mercenaries from raiding the church. That put him in a stationary position, meaning he couldn’t move away and manage the battle.
Cassius, once again, took charge.
He broke up his troops into four big groups and assigned each group a section of the town. The men formed lines and began to move through the streets, fighting with the mercenaries, but sweeping them towards the town gates to essentially sweep them out of the town. It worked well enough for the metal worker avenue and for the avenue of the bakers, but the avenue of the merchants was a more difficult fight.
That’s where things got down and dirty.
There were three gates leading into Doncaster’s village and Cassius made sure those gates were covered with a heavy presence of Doncaster soldiers as the fighting on the avenue of merchants turned into hand-to-hand combat. The mercenaries were resorting to dirty tricks to battle the Doncaster men, including climbing on roofs and either dropping heavy things on the Doncaster men, like pots or rocks, or by jumping on top of them.
Cassius saw more than one soldier go down by someone jumping off the roof on top of them. He even saw one of Darian’s junior knights get toppled off his horse that way. Bose was able to help the young knight, who was badly injured, but he took a blade to the arm for his efforts. Still able to fight, Bose had dispatched his enemy in a spectacularly gruesome way before making sure the young knight was taken away from the fight.
And the battle raged on. The Doncaster men had the mercenaries overwhelmed, but they didn’t go down easily. Cassius had also given the order for the men to take away whatever booty the mercenaries happened to be carrying, so it soon became a fight for the mercenaries to purely keep what they’d already taken.
That’s when the punches began to fly in earnest.
There was so much blood being splattered around that it was difficult to tell where it was coming from and who, exactly, was injured. Bose had beaten down a man who was carrying hams as well as finery he’d taken from a merchant stall, pounding him unconscious until he could finally take the items away from him. All of the ill-gotten gains were being hauled back to the church for protection so the merchants and villagers could reclaim their items when the fight was over.
“Cass,” Rhori called above the sounds of battle. “The south side of the village is burning heavily. We should put men to help fight the fire. The villagers are afraid to come out of their homes and if we don’t do something, the town will be gone by morning.”
Cassius could see the heavy smoke rising to the south and he knew Rhori wasn’t wrong. With the brittle material the cottages were built with, they could go up very easily in a blaze.
“Select a contingent of men to fight the fire,” he directed. “Some to protect the villagers and som
e to help fight. Where’s de Lohr?”
“Still at the church as far as I know,” Rhori said. “Do you want me to fetch him?”
Cassius shook his head. “Nay,” he said, lashing out a big boot and kicking a mercenary in the face when he came too close. “Leave him where he is most needed. In fact, I think…”
He was cut off when the sounds of bolts being launched filled the air. Two arrows sailed past his head, striking both a mercenary and a Doncaster soldier. But before Cassius could get out of the way and under cover, two big bolts sailed into him, one hitting him in the shoulder and the other somewhere down on his torso.
The force of the strikes were hard enough to nearly topple him from his horse, but he held fast. He didn’t want to end up on the ground where he would surely be set upon. As he struggled to stay upright, Rhori was beside him, shoving him up onto his saddle.
“Christ, Cass,” he muttered. “We need to get you back to the castle. Can you ride?”
In extreme pain, Cassius grunted. “Bloody bastards,” he muttered as another series of bolts sailed through the air, missing him and barely missing Rhori. “Get the hell out of here. Tell the men to retreat to the church. Go!”
“But –”
“Go!” Cassius boomed. “I will make it back to the castle on my own, but you are now in charge. Find out who’s shooting off those arrows and cut their bloody heads off!”
Rhori wanted to go with him; he truly did, but a direct order from Cassius wasn’t meant to be disobeyed. With two ugly projectiles sticking out of him, Cassius took off down an avenue, heading towards the gate that led back to the castle, while Rhori bellowed at the men to retreat back to the church. It was really all they could do as more bolts began to fly and Doncaster men began to go down. Somewhere in the mayhem, Rhori sent two men after Cassius to ensure he made it back to the castle. The last thing they needed was for Cassius to pass out and end up in a ditch somewhere.
Or worse.
Retreat to the church they did, with tales of Cassius de Wolfe being struck by arrows and still managing to fight his way out. Brave and strong, Cassius wasn’t going to let a group of barbaric mercenaries end him.
He was a de Wolfe, after all.
A minor skirmish with mercenaries turned into an all-night murder spree for the Doncaster men, Rhori and Bose. Now, they had a personal score to settle.
Marcil and his mercenaries did not survive the night.
There were already men trickling into the great hall.
Dacia was ready for them. She knew that, with any battle, there needed to be a place to tend the wounded and that logical place was the great hall. In the skirmishes she could remember from the past, she seemed to recall the servants setting up an infirmary in the great hall with the help of Mother Mary. Dacia had been quite young at the time and didn’t remember much of it, but she knew enough to know that men would be returning from battle soon, some of them injured, and she had to have a place to put them.
Already, men were trickling in, mostly with bloody head and upper body wounds, and she put those with more severe wounds closer to the hearth and tended them first. Edie was with her, as was Fulco and her maids, and between the eight of them, the men were well covered.
Argos the dog was also in the hall, mostly following Dacia around, and she was learning to ignore him. It seemed that he simply wanted to follow her about so she let him, and the casualties were light, so he wasn’t in the way. But Dacia was coming to believe that the fight hadn’t been too terrible because of the limited wounded. In fact, it was so light that her grandfather went to bed. He didn’t see any need to stay up and help, not even to manage his castle’s own defenses.
That left everyone else at Doncaster overseeing the safety of the fortress and with Dacia in charge of the wounded, everything was organized brilliantly. Men were receiving the best of care. When one of Darian’s knights was brought in with a myriad of wounds, he was put in a more secluded area of the hall so he could have some privacy.
Dacia was tending to the knight when she caught sight of someone entering the hall through the servants’ alcove. She thought it was another servant until she glanced up again and caught sight of Amata.
Immediately, she returned her attention to the knight, who had several puncture wounds and what she suspected to be a broken jaw. She’d brought her medicament bag with her, which included a sewing kit, and she finished sewing up the last puncture wound on the knight’s hip with very fine silk thread. The knight was young, and trying hard to be brave, and she had one of the servants bring the man some beef broth. With his jaw, he didn’t have to chew it, so she was just packing her things up when Amata approached.
“What happened?” she said, looking around the hall with shock. “Why are these men wounded?”
Dacia wasn’t ready to play nice yet. She continued putting her things away. “There was a raid in the village,” she said. “The men rode out to chase them away. Some were wounded as a result.”
Amata was still wide-eyed. “The chamber I am in faces the rear of the castle,” she said. “I did not know this was going on until I heard some of the servants speaking of it. Can I help?”
Truth be told, it would be nice for her help, but Dacia wasn’t sure just how much help Amata was capable of. She didn’t like blood or dirt, and she had never seen her cousin work very hard at anything other than attracting men, so she thought carefully on her answer.
“If you can go to each man and see if he would like something warm to drink or some broth, that would be helpful,” she said. “They should not eat anything solid, like meat, so only liquid for now. You can help the men who cannot eat very well. Can you do this?”
Amata nodded. “I can,” she said. Then, she started looking around again. “Where is Cousin Vincent?”
“He has gone to bed.”
Amata looked at her curiously. “He did not stay to help his own men?”
Dacia shrugged. “You know that he does not like war,” she said. “He has never been comfortable with it. He provides the money and the titles and lets other men do the fighting.”
Amata simply nodded, looking around at the men nearest her. “Where should I begin?”
“Anywhere. Just pick any man and start with him.”
Dacia started to move away, but Amata stopped her. “CeeCee,” she said. “I… I am sorry I became angry with you. I really did come to Edenthorpe to see you.”
Dacia paused, looking at her cousin. The hurt and humiliation from Amata’s treatment still hadn’t vanished. “You came to see Cassius,” she said. “Amata, I know you. I know how you think. Lying to me is only going to make this worse, so do not think I will fall for your false apologies any longer. The only way we will find forgiveness is if you are completely honest with me.”
Amata frowned as if she were going to become angry again. “I’d hoped to see him,” she said. “I will not deny that. But I wanted to see you, too. I did not come here only hoping to see Sir Cassius, but now I see that my efforts were in vain. His focus is on you.”
Dacia was careful in her answer. “His focus is not on me,” she said. “He has simply been kind to me, much as he was kind to you at the Lords of Misrule feast, but the difference is that I did not follow him to someone else’s castle. If he had wanted you to come to him, he would have sent for you.”
Amata was beginning to lose her temper. She had come into the hall perfectly calm and willing to forget about their earlier argument, mostly because she knew Dacia had been right. But her willingness to be humble only went so far.
“How would you even know what a man wants?” she demanded. “You have never known a man in your life.”
“And you have known too many.”
Amata didn’t have the restraint she’d had earlier when Cassius had been witnessing everything. She and Dacia had experienced plenty of arguments in their lifetime together and Amata had always emerged the victor. Lifting her hand, she slapped Dacia across the face, not hard enough to re
ally hurt, but the message was obvious. She didn’t want Dacia to gain the upper hand. She wanted her to shut her mouth and be submissive like she usually was.
But Dacia wasn’t having any of it. Feeling the throb of Amata’s slap on her cheek, she set her bag down, turned fully to Amata, and slapped her so hard that the woman toppled over onto a chair behind her. Amata ended up sitting in the chair, her hand to her stinging cheek and looking at Dacia as if the woman had just done something horribly wrong.
Dacia’s eyes narrowed.
“Hit me again and I shall give it back to you stronger than you can imagine,” she said. “I am tired of being your pawn, your obedient dog, and anything else that strikes your fancy. You are a petty, vain, and terrible girl, Amata. I told you I did not want to see you anymore. I meant it.”
Amata rubbed her cheek, her eyes spitting daggers at her cousin. “You are wicked,” she hissed. “Everything Mother Mary said about you was right – you are a demon. The devil has taken you over!”
“Then if that is the case, you had better not push me too far or I will wave my hand and incinerate you,” she said. “If I were you, I would be very afraid of someone possessed by a demon. It will not end in your favor if you provoke me again.”
Amata stood up from the chair, one fist balled and the other hand on her stinging cheek. “I am going to tell Cousin Vincent what you have said!”
Dacia took a deep breath. “If you do, I will tell your father every secret you have ever kept from him,” she said. “I will also make sure he knows that you steal from him. Do not cross me, Amata. You will not like the results.”
Amata was furious that she couldn’t gain the upper hand. She started to say something more, but a woman was suddenly between them. Edie had made an appearance, having seen the exchange and heard some of the argument.
Her focus was on Amata.
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