“De Llion laid siege to Cloryn three months ago,” he said softly. “The lord tried to fight him off. Lord Oreck was a very good knight and a fair lord. He fought valiantly for five days and four nights, but in the end, de Llion and his men managed to mount the walls. Once they were inside the bailey, it was only a matter of time before they breached the keep. They killed everything that moved, my lady. Everything.”
Allaston was listening with some horror and sorrow. “I know,” she said solemnly. “They came to Alberbury Priory and killed many nuns before abducting me. The last I saw of the priory, it was going up in flames. And then they brought me here. I spent three weeks in the vault before de Llion released me and made me his chatelaine, so I understand a bit of the workings of de Llion and his army. They are conquerors.”
The old servant was looking at her, his wrinkled face pale and drawn. “They are much more than that,” he said. “Do you know what he did to the people of Cloryn? To the lord and his wife and children?”
Allaston shook her head. “I do not know. I was not told.”
The old servant was back to hanging his head again as he stirred. “The night they breached the keep, de Llion’s men dragged the lady and her children from the keep. The lady was very kind and noble, and the two boys were brave and strong. They were so young, so very young. As de Llion’s men had their way with the lady, right there in the dirt of the bailey, still other men took the two boys and… with the youngest boy, they took him by the ankles and swung his head against the wall, killing him. The other boy was taken outside the walls where Lord Oreck had already been impaled. As the man was dying, de Llion’s men put the boy in front of him and slit his throat, right in front of his father. It was the last thing Lord Oreck saw before he died. Then, they tied the boy to Lord Oreck so the man could breathe his last against the cooling corpse of his son.”
Allaston was beyond horrified. As she listened, her mouth hung agape and tears filled her eyes. It was the worst thing she had ever heard and bile rose in her throat. It was a struggle to swallow it, not to become ill.
“Impaled?” she whispered. “What… what do you mean?”
The old man labored through the physical description of what he meant, using the wooden spoon as an example of the impaling post. “They take a man and ram the post up through his anus,” he said, using hand motions to describe the terrible deed. “The end of the spike comes up through the neck or the chest. Then they post the spike, out there beyond the walls, leaving the man to die for all to see.”
Allaston seriously thought she might become ill but she fought it. The entire concept was far beyond what she had ever imagined the most horrible death to entail. She did not know her father had used the same techniques during his time at conquest. All she had been told was that he had killed many men during that time, a small mercy her mother had withheld from a young and impressionable girl. Therefore, the tactics used by de Llion were staggeringly shocking and gruesome. It was horrific beyond belief. Until she remembered what Bretton had told her of her father’s savagery a few weeks ago.
“But… the wife?” she breathed. “What happened to her?”
The old man, seeing Allaston’s brimming tears, began to tear up himself. He stopped stirring the boiling pot, closing his eyes tightly against the memories he was dredging up. Like a nightmare, they haunted him.
“They let every soldier who wanted a turn at her rape her,” he murmured. “Several of them had her in the bailey and then they dragged her back inside the keep where even more soldiers had their way with her. She was abused until she was nearly dead, my lady. Then, they took her outside the walls where they impaled her on a post just as they had done to her husband, just as they had done to all of Lord Oreck’s men. What you smell… it is the rotting corpses outside of the walls, my lady. It is the phantoms of Lord Oreck and the people who once used to live here.”
Allaston clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the moan of horror. The tears that had once been brimming were now running down her cheeks.
“Sweet Jesus,” she wept softly. “All of them?”
The old man had tears on his face as well. “All of them,” he confirmed quietly. “All of them but me, my son, and the cook. We were fortunate. De Llion and his men had killed most of the servants but when they came to us, it was reasoned that they might need some help with the meals, so we were spared. That is the only reason we were spared.”
Allaston still had a hand over her mouth, trying not to sob aloud. “I… I was given clothing to wear,” she whispered tightly. “I was told that the lady of the castle had left it behind so I did not think anything of wearing it. I had nothing else so I took it.”
Blandings nodded, noting the lavender dress she was wearing. “That belonged to Lady Miette,” he said. “She was a kind lady. She would not mind you having it, I am sure.”
Allaston simply nodded, struggling against outright sobs. The hand was still over her mouth. “I will pray for her and for her family,” she whispered. “I will pray for her soul and for her forgiveness.”
Blandings watched her devastated reaction to the truth. He was touched, feeling somehow as if they both shared the same sorrow now. He’d been terrified to speak with her for two weeks. Now, he was no longer afraid. After hearing the circumstances behind her coming to Cloryn, he was a bit more understanding. She wasn’t de Llion’s whore, as he had feared. She didn’t have the man’s ear. She was a prisoner just like the rest of them. He began to feel guilty for having avoided her so much.
“If you need any assistance, my lady,” he ventured. “Please call upon me or my son. We will help you.”
Allaston simply nodded but her head inevitably turned in the direction of the gatehouse and thoughts of what lay beyond. “Sweet Jesus,” she breathed. “All of those people out there, now rotting in the sun.”
Blandings nodded sadly. “Aye, my lady.”
“They must be buried.”
Blandings sighed softly, turning back to his boiling pot. “Only the new lord of Cloryn can order that,” he said. “If I could, I would bury every one of them with my own hands, but I cannot move beyond the kitchens. They will kill me and I have no desire to end up impaled.”
Allaston looked at him, wiping the remainder of the tears off her face. The initial horror had passed, now she was left with a deep and abiding disgust. She was utterly revolted by all of it. “I do not fault you for that,” she said. “But to leave them out there to rot… it is barbaric at the very least.”
Blandings wanted to discourage her before she got herself in trouble. “I would not disturb the dead, my lady,” he said. “They are dead, after all. Their souls are with God and the body is just an empty shell. Do not risk your life over empty shells. The new lord of Cloryn wants them there ’else he would have taken them down already.”
It was wise advice coming from a servant. Allaston thought on it a moment, finally nodding her head reluctantly. “I am sure you are correct,” she said, eyeing the old man. “Thank you for telling me all of this. I would not have known otherwise. You have been very helpful.”
Blandings nodded, watching her as she once more turned her attention towards the gatehouse, closing her eyes for a brief moment before crossing herself.
“I will be done with these bones in a little while,” he said, taking a stir at the pot again. “If you need anything done, you need only tell me. I will do it.”
Allaston looked at the man, a grim smile on her lips. “My thanks,” she said, taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. She was trying not to linger on the horror outside of the gates now that she knew about it, but she found it to be an impossible task. “I will be in the kitchen with the cook. We have a pig to prepare.”
Blandings returned her smile before nodding and returning to his stirring. Allaston took a couple of steps in the direction of the kitchen before coming to a halt and returning her attention to the man.
“I intend to speak with de Llion about the dead ou
tside the walls,” she said. “Rest assured that I will not mention who has told me. I will go to my grave before I tell him what you and I have discussed.”
Blandings nodded. “Thank you, my lady.”
Allaston nodded her head, briefly, before resuming her walk towards the kitchen. All the while, however, her mind was filled with the army of dead outside the walls and a lovely lady named Miette. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. Now, she was coming to realize the true scope of de Llion’s brutality and the realization brought her great fear. He had told her once, back in those dark days when she was in Cloryn’s vault, of the atrocities her father had committed, atrocities that were very much the same thing Bretton was committing. Men impaled on spikes. It made her shudder just to think about it. Whatever her father had done those years ago, Bretton was now doing, too.
Allaston recalled him saying something to her once, something that now made a good deal of sense.
I have been called the Devil.
Now, she knew why.
CHAPTER NINE
Late July
Twenty-eight days after leaving Cloryn for Rhayder Castle, Bretton was finally returning.
It was early morning on a clear day that already promised to be warm. The past few weeks had been unusually warm, something that he would have enjoyed had he not had to wear layers of wool and mail, which made him sweat and soaked everything. He was filthy, sweaty, and smelly, and he was eager to return to Cloryn to celebrate his latest victory. But that wasn’t the only reason he was eager to return.
That de Velt daughter. He couldn’t stop thinking of her. She’d been on his mind every day, mostly in the early morning or when he finally decided to get a few hours of sleep at night. The dark hair and pale green eyes reached out to him, enticing him until he could hardly think of anything else. In the midst of a battle campaign, it had been an annoying and unwelcome diversion, but it was one he was unable to stop. Even as they had secured Rhayder Castle, which had taken longer than expected, he found his attention turning to the trip back to Cloryn because Allaston was there.
So he’d spent sixteen days laying siege to Rhayder Castle before finally being able to mount the walls. It had been tricky due to the moat surrounding it. It had taken days to build platforms that extended across the narrow but deep moat, enough so that they could move in ladders to mount the walls. That was his main mode of operation, bypassing the gatehouse and going for the walls because they were often less protected than the gatehouse. If one could get up and over them, then it was much easier than trying to smash through a portcullis. He also made the best of postern gates, of which Rhayder had one. While some men used grappling hooks and ladders to mount the fifteen-foot-high walls, Dallan and Teague had managed to compromise the postern gate. Once the gate was open and his men flooded in, it was a short time before the drawbridge was lowered.
After sixteen days of besieging Rhayder Castle, when it fell, it fell quickly. Bretton had the entire castle secured within hours. Then he’d spent an additional eight days destroying the lord of Rhayder’s army and establishing his own rule. There was a rather large village near Rhayder and he had made sure to convene a meeting of the town fathers to lay down his law and inform them of the penalty should he be disobeyed. The villagers had fearfully agreed, terrified of the macabre army of the dead and dying being impaled and posted outside of the walls. The Devil is in our midst, the whispers said.
Much as Ajax de Velt had done those years ago, Bretton de Llion did now – displaying the dead as a warning to all who would disobey or contest his authority. And with that, Bretton had three castles under his control. It was time to return to Cloryn, regroup, and strike out for Comen Castle in a few days. Comen’s end was coming.
After traveling all the previous day, they had moved out before sunrise for their last few miles to Cloryn. The castle was sighted in the distance just as the sun began to rise and Bretton sent a rider on to the castle to inform the inhabitants of his approach. He also requested food and comfort for his men, a message that was directed at Allaston. As the army drew closer, Cloryn’s gates opened to welcome them.
Approaching the castle from the east, they weren’t hit with the stench of the dead until they were very close because of the path of prevailing winds. Riding at the head of his army with Dallan, Teague, and Grayton, the stench was stronger than usual because of the warm weather they had been having. Flies and insects were swarming as they approached the gatehouse. Near the gate itself, now open with the great fanged portcullis lifted, were the bodies of the lord and lady of Cloryn. But Bretton wasn’t looking at the decaying corpses. He was looking straight ahead at the open gatehouse. But his commanders were looking at the bodies.
“Bretton,” Grayton ventured. “Far be it from me to suggest how you conduct your campaign of terror, but this smell is not going to help anyone’s appetite. It has been four months. Mayhap it is time to consider burying our enemies.”
Bretton was still looking straight ahead as the gatehouse loomed overhead. “Six months,” he said steadily. “Not a day less.”
“Why?”
“Because that is how long de Velt left them up.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Ask anyone who was alive during the time of de Velt’s raids and they will tell you,” he said. “He left the bodies of the dead up for six months.”
Grayton looked at Dallan, who shrugged. There was no use trying to convince the man otherwise. He was obsessed with emulating, and punishing, de Velt, so it was not a subject open for debate. In fact, his obsession had been lucrative as of late, so they let the subject die and focused instead on what lay ahead. Food, comfort, and rest that they were all looking forward to.
Bretton entered the bailey of Cloryn and realized he was hoping to see Allaston right away, waiting to greet him, but all that met him was the vast, dusty bailey and several soldiers he had left behind to guard the fortress while he was away. Word of de Llion’s victory was spreading among the men and Bretton could hear a cry of triumph ripple through the men as he dismounted. Men were shouting his name, rallying victory, as he pushed through them, heading for the keep. Behind him, they had brought three big wagons loaded with spoils back with them from Rhayder and he could hear his men happily claiming the treasures.
As Dallan, Teague, and Grayton began disbanding the men, Bretton entered the dark and cool keep. The first thing he noticed was that the floor was swept and dried rushes, tall grass that was harvested and dried especially to cover the floor, were spread about. It smelled like hay, which wasn’t a bad smell at all. He liked it. The open room straight ahead that he sometimes used for conferring with his men was also swept and the tabletop scrubbed clean. There was even a fire in the hearth, inviting. He stepped into the room and ran his hand over the tabletop, noting it smelled of lye when he sniffed his fingertips. The lady had obviously been busy in his absence.
Taking the stairs to the second floor, he stuck his head into both chambers on this level but was met with silence. The top floor chambers, both of them, were the same. Curious that Allaston was not in the keep, he descended back to the entry level and headed out to the kitchens.
The kitchen yard was busy. There were two big pots boiling away over carefully stoked fires and he peered at both of them. One was a stew of some kind with beans and carrots, while the other seemed to be a big pot of chunks of meat and gravy. As he stuck his dirty finger into the gravy to taste it, he heard a woman’s voice coming from the stone kitchen. Like a siren’s call, the sound lured him.
Bretton came to a halt in the doorway of the kitchen, his gaze falling on Allaston as she faced away from him. Great smells assaulted his senses and heat slapped him in the face as the big bread oven was going full-bore, red-hot with crackling flames to bake with. As he watched, Allaston appeared to be kneading or beating something, he really couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, she was working it heavily on the big, wooden tabletop in front of her.
“Uldward?�
� she called, looking over her shoulder towards the cook working on the other table. “Do you have the garlic chopped yet? I must add it to this dough. We must get it into the oven.”
The big, burly cook hustled over to her, his hands full of something, and dumped everything he was carrying into the dough she was working.
“Salt!” Allaston commanded.
The cook grabbed a covered bowl that held their precious salt and liberally sprinkled it into the bread. He also put peppercorns in it, quite generously, and Allaston continued to knead it furiously. After flipping the dough over several times, as it was quite a bit of dough, she finally stood back from it, wiping at her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand.
“Now, form this into several smaller loaves of bread,” she told the cook. “This should make at least fifty smaller loaves, two men to a loaf. Let me go see to the stew outside and then we will make more dough once all of this gets into the oven.”
The cook moved forward to begin fashioning loaves of garlic-peppercorn bread as Allaston turned around to head out of the kitchen. But the moment she turned, she caught sight of Bretton in the doorway. Startled, she gasped.
“My… my lord,” she stammered. “I did not hear… I thought someone would tell me when you arrived. I did not know you had returned!”
Bretton could see that she was flustered, quite possibly frightened, that she hadn’t been advised of his return. Perhaps she thought he had expected her to greet him. In any case, he held up a hand to calm her.
“We just now returned,” he said, his eyes drinking in the sight of her. She was dressed in a light yellow surcoat and pale linen shift with her dark hair in a big, thick braid. He’d never seen anything more delightful and all of those days of dreaming about her were summarily satisfied by the sight. “My men are disbanding as we speak. I sent word ahead to have a meal prepared and I see that you have it well in hand.”
Allaston had to admit that that she was startled by the sight of him as well as fearful. This warrior, this Devil, had finally returned. After all of the horrible things she had been told of him yesterday, she wasn’t quite sure how she would feel upon seeing him again. At the moment, all she could feel was anxiety. But in the same breath, she felt something more, something very odd – something of warmth stirring within her chest, and the sight of his handsome, scruffy face was doing something very strange to her emotions. She thought her heart might have actually fluttered.
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