Swords and Shields (Reign of the House of de Winter) (40 page)

One hundred and fifty years of a family feud was about to be ended and Drake wanted Elizaveta to see it. He wanted her to be present at the end, comforted in the fact that Drake would do this for her and for the generations of du Reims before her.

Finally, the old hatred would be ended.

Ended at the hand of the new Earl of East Anglia.

Two days later

Thunderbey Castle

The siege of Thunderbey was the de Winter war machine in action.

Leaving Elizaveta at the Belstead Brook tavern on the southern end of Ipswich, two miles from Thunderbey and with four de Winter guards at her disposal, Drake and Devon joined the massive undertaking that was currently going on at Thunderbey Castle.

Davyss, not having taken up arms in ten years, had brought siege engines with him, two massive catapults and a trebuchet, that were hurling all manner of burning material into the inner ward of Thunderbey. There were twelve hundred men with them that Davyss had held back from the siege for the first day because he’d wanted to bombard the keep and inner ward with projectiles and didn’t want any of his men hurt in the process.

Therefore, the army sat and waited as a day and night of pounding the keep and inner ward with flaming projectiles did a good deal of damage. There were fires in the inner ward and one of the projectiles had sailed straight into the keep, which had been burning steadily since the night before. When Drake finally arrived and saw that his new castle was going up in flames, he wasn’t particularly concerned about it. Castles could be rebuilt, as he’d told his father, and then he’d gone to command one of the catapults while Devon went to prepare the enormous battering ram to be used against the inner gate.

The de Winter war machine was gaining strength.

The finely-built battering ram was something to behold – a massive tree trunk twenty feet long that had been studded with iron handles over the years and tipped with an enormous, iron boar’s head whose tusks were fashioned into sharp points so they could hook into wood and then rip it free. Davyss was particularly gleeful about the battering ram, since he’d been out of warfare for so long, and acted much like a man who’d just had his most beloved toys returned to him. He spent his time moving back and forth between the main battery of catapults and the battering ram as Devon and the men prepared to go into action.

By nightfall of the third day of the siege, the army from Framlingham arrived. Since Edgar de la Rosa was Daniella’s father, he had been more than happy to send men to assist de Winter in the siege of Thunderbey. In fact, he had come himself, a big man with a bushy beard who hugged Davyss as if the man were a long lost brother. Two thousand, five hundred de la Rosa men had come along to reinforce de Winter’s smaller force and now there was a sizable army preparing to breach the walls when the bombardment of the catapults was finished.

While the inhabitants of the keep and inner ward of Thunderbey were being burned and pummeled, Davyss and Edgar had a somewhat party-like atmosphere going on outside the walls as they shot flaming urns of oil over the walls which, upon impact, would shatter and spray burning oil all over everything. Every time one ruptured, the de Winter and de la Rosa armies would roar with approval. It sounded like a crowd cheering the joust. One big burst of flame against the side of the keep and the audience of soldiers would go mad. The de la Rosa soldiers even broke out their barrels of thick, bitter ale and when the projectiles would explode, they would all drink to the spectacular nature of it. The siege turned into a drinking game before Edgar put a stop to it. Drunk soldiers were no good to anyone.

As Davyss enjoyed the siege and de la Rosa scolded his drinking troops, Drake and Devon and Denys quietly worked behind the scenes. It was these men who ensured the archers were positioned for the first volley of arrows and that the foot soldiers were properly positioned for the charge against the inner ward. Denys had been in the surrounding woods for two days with two hundred men, cutting down trees and building a siege platform that would mount the walls and support the battering ram when Devon positioned it.

It was the brothers in action, very much missing Dallan, but they felt his presence because they all had something of him with them – Denys had collected Dallan’s sword, shield, daggers, and undamaged de Winter tunic, and he personally carried Dallan’s gaudy sword while Devon took the man’s daggers and Drake wore his tunic and carried his shield. Therefore, Dallan was still very much with them. It was important to all of them that they keep his memory alive because in this siege, in regaining what belonged to Drake, it was a way for all of the de Winter brothers to unite.

Swords and shields
. When the projectiles died down and the call for arms was finally sounded by Davyss, the call for swords and shields, the de Winter brothers were ready. Devon and his battering ram contingent made its way through the destroyed outer bailey towards the inner ward gates, which were also heavily damaged, while Drake and Denys went with the gang of men who were wheeling the siege tower into the outer bailey behind the battering ram.

Davyss, commanding the archers, gave the order for the arrows to fly, pinning down any resistance in the inner ward so they wouldn’t turn projectiles or arrows on those with the battering ram or the siege tower. The truth was that there had been virtually no resistance to the siege, which Davyss found slightly odd, but he was pleased nonetheless. It meant that de Mandeville’s force was either dead or in hiding, and he intended to smoke them out.

But as the arrows rained down and the battering ram began to tear apart the gate to the inner ward, Edmund de Mandeville’s army wasn’t quite dead – as Davyss and Drake and the others would quickly discover. They were simply biding their time and waiting for their chance. As soon as the battering ram tore enough of a hole for men to pass through, the de Mandeville army was there and ready.

And the fight was on.

Drake was one of the first men into the inner ward, immediately set upon by a gang of wild savages with axes and pikes.
Lespada
went to work, drawing the first blood, as the de Winter army poured through, met by the much smaller de Mandeville force. Edmund’s men, for all of their vicious fighting, were unable to stop the tide of heavily-armed men.

It was bloody and nasty from the onset, with heavy casualties for the de Mandeville troops. Drake, fighting off the onslaught, was on the hunt for Edmund de Mandeville himself. He wanted to find the man in the worst way but when he tried to enter the keep, he could see that the entire thing was on fire in the interior and there was no way to gain entry. Given that it was a stone keep, the exterior wouldn’t burn, but the interior had gone up like kindling. He could see that floors had collapsed and dead men littered the vault on the ground level below.

Concerned that Edmund de Mandeville was already dead after all of the de Winter bombardment, Drake moved through the bailey, noting that his troops had quickly subdued or killed many de Mandeville men. He soon saw Bruis de Mandeville with a gaping chest wound and Glenn de Mandeville lying near his brother with his head nearly cut off, but still no Edmund. With the sons dead, Drake’s hunt resumed in earnest for the father.

Soon after breaching the inner gate, only pockets of fighting remained, so much so that Davyss, the elderly but still powerful knight, had entered the bailey and was dispatching men without fear of being overwhelmed. Drake came to a standstill at the sight of his father, who came near him with a bloodied sword and a look of excitement in his eye. The thrill of battle was something that never died, no matter how old the knight. It brought back memories of days of glory.

“Mother will be quite angry if she hears you entered the battle,” Drake said to his father. “You told her that you would not fight.”

Davyss looked around him at the litter of bodies on the ground. “I am not fighting,” he said. “I am simply viewing the carnage.”

Drake laughed at his father, the big liar. “Would you please stay with me, then?” he asked. “Do not go off by yourself. If something happens to you, Mother will string me up by my thumbs.”

Davyss nodded, fending off a man at his feet who made a grab for him. Drake helped his father by dispatching the man, pulling his father away from the wounded who were still capable of fighting. He looked up to see Denys upon the inner wall, throwing men over the side who tried to attack him, but he’d lost sight of Devon. Remembering his panic, and the result, when he’d lost sight of Dallan in the woods those months ago, Drake pulled his father along.

“We must find Devon,” he said. “I do not see him.”

Davyss wasn’t as concerned as Drake was. “He is around here, somewhere,” he said. “Do not worry over your brother.”

Drake turned to his father, his features like stone. “I worry over everyone, including your old hide,” he said. “The last time I lost sight of a brother, the consequences were devastating. I do not intend to lose another.”

Davyss didn’t say anything, knowing he meant Dallan. He would therefore not criticize Drake’s sense of concern that he didn’t have visual contact with both his remaining brothers in the heat of a fight. Drake paused to scan the southern part of the inner ward where there was more fighting going on. It was an area with two tall yew trees in it and some outbuildings, casting shadows, but he finally spied Devon, kicking aside the enemy and dispatching the wounded, and he was relieved. But as he watched Devon bend over one of his own wounded, a figure appeared from the shadows behind him.

Edmund de Mandeville was finally showing his face in the midst of the hell and chaos. Like a nightmare from the deepest, darkest recesses of the mind, Edmund was covered with gore, his wild, gray hair sticky with black clots. He looked like an utter madman, and this madman was coming up behind Devon. Drake could see it;
dear God
, he could see it, but he was too far away to do anything about it.

Please, God… not again… I cannot lose a brother again!

Bolting, Drake took off running, screaming at his brother when he saw Edmund bring up a very big, very nasty sword, wielding it high above the back of Devon’s head. Devon hadn’t heard Drake’s cry the first time but the second time Drake bellowed, Devon seemed to hear it. Instinctively, he threw himself onto the ground just as Edmund de Mandeville swung his sword that, had Devon not fallen when he did, would have decapitated him. As the swing of de Mandeville’s sword followed through and momentum took it high above his head, a great swing from one side of his body to the other, Drake reached the man and drove Lespada straight into his chest.

Edmund opened his mouth to bellow but he couldn’t; his lungs were punctured, as was his heart, and the sword above his head clattered to the ground. Edmund fell to the dirt shortly thereafter, quite dead, bleeding out all over the earth of the castle he had, for these months, claimed as his own. Much like his ancestor who had been killed at the hands of a du Reims, this de Mandeville fell to a de Winter, the new Earl of East Anglia. For all of the years of family hatred and drama, for all of the pain the de Mandevilles had caused, now it was finally over.

The de Mandeville legacy was over.

Standing over Edmund, and breathing heavily with emotion and exertion, Drake yanked
Lespada
from the man’s chest. A few feet away, Devon labored to stand as Davyss pulled him to his feet. They both looked at de Mandeville and realized what had nearly happened.

“I never saw him,” Devon told Drake, shock evident in his tone. “I thought I had secured this area and I swear to you that I never saw him.”

Drake stared down at Edmund de Mandeville a moment longer before turning to look at his twin, his mirror image. He felt sick when he realized how close he came to losing the man but, in the same breath, he was incredibly grateful. Grateful that they were all still alive.

“He must have been hiding somewhere,” Drake said. “Mayhap he had tucked himself beneath the dead. Whatever the case, I saw him when it was nearly too late. Thank God you are not deaf or you would not be standing here speaking to me at this moment. If I lost you… Devon, I could not take losing another brother.”

His eyes suddenly filled with tears and he lowered his gaze, embarrassed at his display of emotion. Devon went to Drake and threw his arms around his brother. “You will not lose me,” he muttered, pulling back to cup his brother’s head in his hands. “If I was not here, who would be your common sense? Who would tell you when your arrogance is too great or that your wife has done nothing wrong by spending your money? Nay, I am not going away, Drake. You and I are destined to go through life together, no matter what.”