CHAPTER ONE
January, 1356 A.D.
London, England
She’d had the dream before. She was standing on the edge of a meadow, looking at a massive castle in the distance, partially obscured by sheets of driving rain. In spite of the weather, smoke rose in ribbons over the damaged battlements.
Overhead, the sky was the color of pewter with fat, angry clouds, but upon earth, the field was flooded from the unforgiving rain that had been falling for days, perhaps weeks, mayhap even months. It was difficult to know. It seemed as if it had been raining forever.
A great battle had concluded upon the field and there was a sea of bodies strewn about, like pieces of driftwood upon an endless muddy sea. Her heart was in her throat as she observed the scene, her breathing coming in panicked little gasps. Something was here for her, something she loved so desperately that she couldn’t think of anything else. The feelings were so strong that they overwhelmed her, blinding her to her own safety as she plunged into the sea of death, searching, looking for something she wasn’t quite sure of yet could feel it more strongly in her heart than anything.
… her heart….
She awoke in a cold sweat.
London, 1356 A.D.
Reign of Edward III
It smelled like death.
Chargers bearing great and bloody knights clip-clopped wearily along the street leading from the great wharf along the Thames followed by equally weary men-at-arms who had seen perhaps one too many battles. They were exhausted, beaten, bloodied and doomed by the depression that often infects those who have witnessed much strife.
They collectively expelled a stench that smelled like death. The Lady Ellowyn de Nerra ignored the stench for the most part as she watched the great army of the Duke of Exeter disembark their sea-scarred cogs. They filtered up from the wharfs along the Thames, a great rolling tide of humanity that brought about the reality and carnage the Black Prince’s war in France had delivered to England.
Ellowyn wasn’t observing the downtrodden army because she was curious. She was looking for someone, the great duke who had taken command of eight hundred of her father’s retainers. Although she’d never actually seen the man whose warrior skills were legendary, she’d heard much about him from her father as well as others. He was a warrior whose name struck fear into the hearts of both English and French alike, a name so awesome that to even whisper it was like mentioning the Devil himself. Men did not take the name of Brandt de Russe lightly. The French even had a name for him; L’Ange noir, they whispered fearfully. The Black Angel. The most powerful knight in the arsenal of the Black Prince, the Black Angel brought the Apocalypse with him wherever he went.
The duke’s army was kicking up clouds of dust in the already dirty city of London. They were heading for the training grounds about a mile west of the Tower of London, the mammoth structure that loomed over to the east from where Ellowyn was standing. She could just see the black spires of the White Tower reaching to the sky. However, her attention was on the army as it rumbled past, turning to the escort of soldiers she had brought with her from her father’s seat of Erith Castle. These men had remained behind while others went on to fight with the Black Prince, but they knew de Russe on sight.
“Do you see him yet?” Ellowyn asked the soldier standing to her right.
The man, seasoned and blind in one eye, shook his head as his one good eye skimmed the returning troops. “Not yet, my lady,” he replied, “but make no mistake. You will know de Russe when you see him.”
Ellowyn looked at him queerly. “How is that possible when I have never met the man?”
The soldier wriggled his bushy eyebrows. “Because he is the biggest man alive and he wears armor with great spikes blooming from the shoulders. Some say he drinks the blood of his victims and hangs their innards over his shoulders. That is why they call him the Lord of War. In battle, the man has no equal.”
Ellowyn thought on that a moment before returning her attention to the men shuffling past her. There were so many of them and she was beginning to get impatient.
“Well,” she sighed. “I wish the man would hurry along. We must return home soon or father will drag himself from his sick bed like Lazarus rising from the dead and hunt us down.”
The old blind sergeant fought off a smile. “Your father is a determined man, my lady,” he said, thinking that Deston de Nerra’s headstrong daughter was far more determined than her father ever was. “But I doubt he… by Jesus and Mary, there he is. Do you see him, my lady?”
The sergeant’s excited tone had Ellowyn’s head bobbing to catch a glimpse, although she was not entirely sure who, exactly, she was straining to catch a glimpse of.
“Who?” she demanded. “Is it de Russe?”
The sergeant grasped her shoulder, gently turning her towards the wharf where the gentle waters flowed and the boats bobbed about like corks. He was pointing down to the water’s edge in the distance.
“There,” he said, some satisfaction in his voice. “He is standing at the edge of the ship with the big black charger behind him. See him now?”
Ellowyn did. Even at a distance, she could see an enormous man in heavy layers of protection, plate armor intermingled with mail. The man was standing at the mouth of the gangway as the last of the soldiers disembarked the cog, and she began to walk in his direction.
The contingent of escort soldiers moved to follow but it was made difficult by the fact that Ellowyn was a small woman and able to dodge around people much more easily than a gang of well-armed men. The sergeant struggled to keep sight of the petite young woman with the deliciously curvy figure, a marvel of womanhood that brought suitors from all corners of the kingdom seeking a glimpse of her glory. With her buttock-length golden-red hair and almond-shaped green eyes, she was an unearthly beauty. But she was also stubborn, opinionated, intelligent and determined, a combination that tended to shake even the most staunch of admirers.
“My lady?” the sergeant called to her as she began to lose herself in the crowed. “You must wait for us, my lady!”
Ellowyn heard his words but she ignored them. She was nearing the ships and resolved to speak with de Russe, as instructed by her father. She had a message to deliver and was determined to be done with it so they could return to the cool green fields of Cumbria. She’d been on the road for weeks and was longing for home.
She wound her way through the crowds standing along the smelly wharf, dodging soldiers and wagons as they off-loaded, until she finally came to the edge of the water. Being rather short, she had to stand on one of the many tarred logs that were sunk deep into the shore, logs that the big ships would anchor on to so they wouldn’t drift back out into the river.
Over the heads of others, she could see an enormous warrior standing with his equally enormous charger, watching the last of the men trickle off the boat. She jumped off the anchor log as her escort struggled to catch up to her. She made haste for the knight with the well-worn armor.
“My lord?” she called, gathering up her heavy skirts so she wouldn’t drag them through a huge puddle of horse urine. “My lord, are you de Russe?”
The warrior was speaking with another man in used and dented armor. He heard Ellowyn approach and he turned to look at her. He was without his helm, his cropped hair as black as night and square-jawed, chiseled features holding a handsome edge. However, his eyes were the most noticeable, smoke-colored and intense beneath intelligently arched brows. His gaze lingered on Ellowyn a moment before, without answering, turning back to the conversation at hand.
The man had completely ignored her. Struggling not to become incensed, Ellowyn came up beside him and tried again.
“My lord?” she said politely. “Are you the duke?”
The man acted as if he hadn’t heard her. He continued talking to the knight next to him. Coming to understand now that he was deliberately ignoring her, Ellowyn’s patience began to fracture.
“My lord de Russe?” she didn’t sound so polite. “If you would kindly address me, I would be grateful.”
The knight did nothing more than turn a calculated back to her. Ellowyn found herself staring at the backside of the biggest man she had ever seen. She was perhaps a little over five feet in height, but the knight with his back to her was easily three times her size and well over a foot taller. Standing next to him, her head came to his sternum at the most, and the circumferences of the fists resting upon his hips were nearly as large as her head. She took a moment to inspect the man, but his tremendous size did nothing to deter her rising irritation.
“My lord,” she said shortly, reaching out to thump him on his mailed arm. “I require your attention.”
He didn’t respond. He continued to focus on the man beside him. Infuriated, Ellowyn walked around him and thrust herself in between the two men. Her angry face scowled into his dark eyes.
“You will not ignore me,” she commanded. “I have come on behalf of….”
The colossal knight cut her off. “Be gone, wench,” he rumbled. “Although you are pleasing to the eye, I have no use for you.”
Ellowyn’s mouth popped open in outrage. “You will not speak to me as if I am a common trollop,” she fired back. “I have business with you.”
The knight did nothing more than reach out and push her away. He’d really only meant to brush her aside but with his strength and her diminutive size, he ended up knocking her onto her arse.
Ellowyn ended up in the puddle of urine she had tried so hard to avoid and she bolted up, muddied and dirty, and pushed her way between the men with more determination than before. When the knight wouldn’t look at her, she hammered a fist against his dented breastplate.
“Touch me again and you shall suffer the consequences,” she hissed. “My name is Ellowyn de Nerra and you have eight hundred of my father’s men under your command. My father has sent me with a message for you.”
That got his attention. The warrior looked at her, perhaps more closely this time, although his stone-like expression didn’t register as much.
“You are de Nerra’s daughter?” he asked.
Ellowyn was so angry that she was shaking. “I am,” she seethed, “and when I tell my father how you have shown me such disrespect, he will cease all ties with you, I am sure.”
The warrior could see how furious she was. “Lady Ellowyn, had you told me who you were at the first, I would not have had cause to cast you aside,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. “You did not identify yourself.”
“And this is how you treat every woman who does not identify herself? Are you so grand and glorious that you feel yourself head and heart above the rest of the world?”
He didn’t rise to her anger, although he had to admit, it had been a long time since he had faced such fury. No one dared show him any emotion other than blind obedience, but this small and quite beautiful woman was different. She had much courage. Her anger threatened to bring a smile to his impassive lips, but he fought it.
“I thought you were a whore,” he said bluntly. “What message does your father have for me?”
If she had been outraged before, his forthright reply set her to fuming. Her delicately arched eyebrows flew up.
“Do I look like a whore?” she nearly shouted.
He felt that odd urge to smile again. “Nay, my lady, you do not,” he thought perhaps he’d better make some attempt to ease her before she exploded in all directions. “As I said, you did not identify yourself and….”
She waved a sharp hand at him. “Bite your tongue,” she barked. “Listen to me and listen well. My father wants all of his men rested and ready to return to Erith Castle immediately. He expects a full accounting of how many men he has lost and expectations as to when he can expect monetary or manpower compensation for those losses. I am staying at Grey’s Inn on Holborn Road and you will have all of my father’s men delivered to me tomorrow at dawn. If you delay, I shall return home and tell him of your utter lack of respect for him and his directives. Is this in any way unclear?”
It had been years since he had been intimidated or fearful, but looking down into that beautiful red face, he realized that not only was he intimidated, he was contrite. He really was. Shocked, and somewhat amused at himself, he simply nodded his head.
“It is, my lady.”
“Do you have anything more slanderous or offensive to say to me?”
“Nay, my lady.”
“Then I bid you good day.”
With that, she turned around and hustled off, dodging errant soldiers and beasts of burden. The warrior just stood there and watched her storm off, eventually surrounded by her escort who had, throughout the exchange, simply stood by in shock as their lady raged at a man three times her size.
More than that, she was raging at the deadly and legendary Duke of Exeter, Brandt de Russe. There was no one living in recent memory that had managed to do such a thing and emerge unscathed. Brandt reached up and scratched his head as if the entire circumstance had confused him.
“That was de Nerra’s daughter?” he turned back to the knight standing next to him. “I did not even know he had one.”
Sir Dylan de Lara lifted his dark eyebrows, catching a glimpse of the well-dressed woman as she faded down the avenue.
“He does indeed,” he replied. “His son and heir committed himself to the Benedictines some time ago, a sincere shame because from what I heard, the man had the makings of a great knight. But he lives in a monastery somewhere in Lincolnshire while de Nerra’s only other child is the lady you just met.”
Brandt digested the information. “With that courage, she would make a fine knight herself,” he muttered, scratching at his neck because his mail was chafing badly. “I do believe I have just been threatened.”
“I concur.”
“Then I suppose I should do as I have been instructed and have her father’s five hundred and sixty-two men waiting for her at Grey’s Inn come dawn.”
“That might be wise.”
He stopped scratching his neck and pulled at the mail irritably. “Perhaps I should simply take them over to the inn tonight and be done with it. I shall let her worry about how she is going to house and feed almost six hundred exhausted men.”
“I am not entirely sure that is fair to the men.”
De Russe was at the end of his part in the discussion. He mounted his massive warhorse, scarred and muscular, and spurred the animal up the avenue where the hordes of men had gone.
De Lara watched him go, thinking that perhaps he should follow. He was, after all, the man’s second-in-command, a position that few men could hold simply because de Russe did not allow anyone, man or woman, to get close to him. He had known Dylan and his twin, Alex, for a few years and they all had much the same brooding, intense and courageous personalities. In that respect, they could tolerate each other. It was enough to keep them bonded.
Mounting his big bay stallion, Dylan spurred the edgy horse off the cog and followed de Russe’s trail, heading into the heart of London.
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