by Victoria Zak
Text copyright ©2015 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Kathryn Le Veque. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original World of de Wolfe Pack remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Kathryn Le Veque, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
De Wolfe’s Honor
By: Victoria Zak
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
About the Author
Books by Victoria Zak
Chapter One
The sun beat down on their weary bodies as the three steadfast companions trudged across the desert. They had been riding through thick sand and hot air for God knows how long. The days were long, sweltering and silent and the nights cold and haunting. The knight, Thomas de Wolfe’s throat burned from lack of water when he swallowed, and a mixture of sweat and sand caked what little of his face was exposed. Even though he was powerfully built, the armor he wore with pride weighed heavily on his broad shoulders. But Sir Thomas de Wolfe cared naught about his aching muscles or lack of comfort. He looked forward, fearless, unflinching, and pressed on in his journey to the Holy Land.
Though the three men had been traveling for many weeks, Thomas was still unable to leave behind somber thoughts of Tacey de Shera. After her tragic death, Thomas could no longer stay in her beloved Wales, nor return home to England, at least not yet. He needed time to heal. Her death, still too fresh, had come too soon and snatched away a life Thomas dreamed still to have. They had needed more time.
Tacey had died during childbirth, and if Thomas went back home to England it would only bring him more heartache, for her infant daughter was there, being fostered by his father William de Wolfe and his mother Lady Jordan. Even though the babe wasn’t his, Thomas had promised Tacey he would protect her daughter, watch over her until she married.
“Your wings were ready much too soon, but my heart was not ready to let you go,” he muttered through a dry throat. Somehow saying those words made his reality all too clear. Anger festered in his heart. He cursed God for taking his love. He could not help himself, he honestly loathed the day Tacey’s daughter had been born. This troubled Thomas.
Which was why he was now on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In search of something… What that thing was he didn’t quite know, but he did know he wouldn’t be returning home anytime soon. In his current state he dwelled in a dark place and cared naught if he ever left it. He was in no shape to fulfill his promise, nor care for an infant. Aye, it would be best to stay away.
“Did you say something, Thomas?” Adonis de Norville asked as he rode next to his best friend.
“Not of any importance,” the knight replied sharply, as if to say he wasn’t interested in useless chatter.
“The wind has picked up! I think we should seek shelter!” Adonis yelled over a gust of gritty air.
Thomas pulled the cowl covering his mouth down to speak. “Where may we look for this so-called shelter you speak of? For all I see are mountains of sand.”
Adonis shrugged off Thomas’s foul mood.
Thomas pulled the cowl back over his mouth. He supposed Adonis didn’t deserve his foul mood. The red-headed knight was suffering as well and was the only one of the three who still had his wits about him.
Kevin Hage, son of Kieran Hage, hadn’t said a word since leaving Anglesey. He had lost a woman, not to death, but to another man. For as long he could remember Kevin had fancied Thomas’s little sister, Penelope. But fate had a way of its own; she belonged to someone else.
As for Adonis, Thomas had yet to discover what ailed him. The man was always calm, suave, and in control. He brought peace to their friendship. Although Thomas had a suspicion that Adonis fought his own demons alone.
Another gust of wind stirred, sending sand into his eyes. He halted his horse and tried to brush away the grit. As he blinked, his vision blurred. He called out to his friends to stop and wait for him, but it was useless. They couldn’t hear over the howling wind. An eerie sense of dread pricked up his spine when Kevin and Adonis disappeared into the flurries sand.
There was a good reason he was an impressive knight and it wasn’t based solely on brawn. He was intelligent, resourceful and listened to his inner voice. Foreknowledge, intuition, call it what you will, it had saved his life on more than one occasion. And now was one of those times he knew that trouble lurked.
As if the invisible malice had tapped him on the shoulder, Thomas slowly looked behind him. A storm blowing great clouds of sand rolled over the land, engulfing everything in sight. It swirled and moved quickly toward Thomas and his companions. His eyes went wide in horror, for he knew no one survived a desert sandstorm without proper shelter to avoid being swept away or buried alive. Being out in the open and exposed, he would have to endure its wrath and would, by a miracle alone, make it out alive.
Kicking his charger into a full run, the only thing Thomas could do was try to outrun the blizzard of sand and stay ahead of its destruction. Hopefully he would find his friends in the process, for this storm was approaching fast.
With all its might and speed, the war horse galloped over the dunes, but alas, the fine steed’s speed wasn’t enough to outdistance the storm. Thomas found himself amid an ocean of stinging dust. It consumed all his senses and he became disoriented. “Kevin…Adonis!” the knight called out in one last hope that they were still alive.
Breathing became hard and his throat thickened as he desperately tried to keep the cowl wrapped around his mouth and nose so his lungs wouldn’t fill with grit. A gust of wind swooped down and collected more sand to add to its arsenal. Through the confusion of it all, Thomas’s horse reared its front legs straight into the air. Frantically, he grabbed onto whatever he could to regain control, but with his vision clouded it was hard to see and he was thrown from the horse.
He landed on his back and the gritty air from his lungs escaped in a rush. He gasped as he struggled to regain his strength. This wasn’t the way he wanted to be remembered; dying alone in a dust storm on his way to the Holy Land.
Thomas stood, fighting to maintain his balance against the blasting winds. With his stance wide, he braced himself. His clothes rippled in the wind as the assault continued from every direction. It took all of his might to close the distance between him and his steed. As he grabbed the reins that dangled from the horse’s neck, the charger reared up, kicking Thomas in the head with its mighty hoof.
The blunt blow sent Thomas flying backward. He tried to blink back the fog, keep his wits about him, but alas, he lost the fight and fell into the darkness as the dust storm raged on.
~~~~~
“One of the worst storms I’ve seen on a long time,” Philippus Von Bombastus said as he walked in the aftermath of the sandstorm. “Lucky for me I had adequate shelter in my cave on the side of the mountain that kept me safe from this atrocity.” He had developed the habit of speaking out loud to himself long ago, because he was always alone, and the silence weighted heavily upon him. In his cave he dedicated his life to translating Arabic alchemy works into Latin, discovering the relationship between man and the cosmos, and to the betterment o
f mankind. He approached his craft with a belief that purity of mind, body and spirit were necessary to pursue the alchemical quest successfully. “A veritable medieval Aristotle,” he muttered to himself, blushing at his own audacity.
It was his life’s dream to find that one missing element to complete the elixir of immortality, and he was close. So close he could feel it in his old bones. Believing that all matter was composed of four elements: earth, air, fire and water, he had traveled the world to where the elements survived in their purest forms, which had led him on his last journey to the middle of the desert outside the Holy Land.
Unfortunately, Von Bombastus had to keep his life's work hidden from the rest of the world. The Church claimed it was wizardry, the devil’s work. “Even though I can cure everything from common ailments to life threatening diseases,” he informed a roughened stone grumpily. “The world isn’t ready to accept my knowledge.” Philippus spit out some granules of sand that had snuck into his mouth. “Do you think it is easy to be mocked by the ignorance of people who still believe in tales of alchemists turning lead into gold?” he demanded angrily of a wisp of cloud in the burning blue sky. “This attitude over simplifies the principles of alchemy and furthermore it destroys my hope for the future of mankind!” Having made his point, he felt, with aggressive deliberation, he lowered his gaze to the grainy earth beneath his feet.
Trudging through the sand, his long white robe snapping and flicking in the residual winds left behind, Philippus pulled the hood tighter around his head, capturing his long white hair and beard. As if a hand reached up from the earth below and grabbed his foot, he stumbled suddenly and fell to the ground.
Pushing himself up, he spat sand from his mouth and noticed a fragment of a black object sticking out from the sand. “What’s this?” he demanded of no one in particular, since no one was nearby to respond. As he rubbed his hand over the object he felt something hard. Philippus tilted his head curiously, brushing away more sand, until the mystery became clearer; it was a horse’s hoof. “Yes, but where, precisely,” he inquired of the hoof, “is your rider?
Philippus shot straight up to his feet and searched the surroundings for a lone rider. As he spun around, expecting to be ambushed at any moment, he squinted into a still nothingness. Peaks upon peaks covered in sand filled the landscape, each mound exactly like the other. There were no places to hide, and the only trail of foot tracks was his own. He exhaled and stroked his beard nervously. “Unless I miss my guess, the poor soul who belongs with the horse lost his battle with the storm and was buried somewhere deep within the sand.” He paused to sigh dramatically. “Alas.”
From the corner of his worldly eyes, he spotted a flash of brown material surface along the ripples of undisturbed sand. Slowly, not knowing what he would find, he brushed the sand away and uncovered more of the material. He pulled on the brown wool to recover it, but it wouldn’t budge. It was attached to something…or someone.
“Ah ha! One must never give up, you see!” With haste, Philippus dug deeper, sending sand flying all around him, as if he had gone mad with determination. “If a man is buried beneath, I must save the poor soul.”
The sun bore down with its blazing rays onto the old man, but he did not waver in his task. To his surprise, he uncovered the hilt of a sword. A wolf with ruby red eyes decorated the hilt. “This looks to be of noble design, sir,” he observed. He dug deeper and indeed there was a man. “No,” he huffed and puffed, pausing when chainmail came into sight, “a knight. A knight is buried just below here. Lucky us both men there is only a shallow layer of sand covering the body, because I have no tools, and will have to use my hands to remove it.” He sighed with more than a little self-pity.
Quickly, he unearthed the knight’s face and felt for a pulse. “Nothing. Damn it all.” Sitting back on his heels and wiping the sweat from his brow, he couldn’t shake the grim feeling that this man’s death was much more than a tragedy, though he was too out-of –breath to speak. The man’s surcoat named him English, the armor he wore told a tale of a noble knight who had seen his share of battle, and the man being out in the middle of the desert suggested to Philippus that the knight was on a spiritual quest. Perhaps he was seeking a cure for a troubled heart. “Why? you ask. Because I’ve seen it before,” he explained, shaking his fist at the sky. “I am wise; don’t argue with me.”
A thought passed through his clever mind, but quickly he dismissed it, for the thought was reckless. “In no manner do I claim to be God,” he warned the silent body of the knight, As he stood and finished unearthing the knight, he glanced at the man’s face as if the corpse was trying to communicate with him, a blast of bleakness hit him in the chest like a stone. Too taken aback to reply, he nevertheless knew that he had to do it; he had to use the philosopher's stone.
Philippus took the man’s arms and dragged him toward the cave. He had strength, but the terrain was unforgiving. “And you are not,” he complained, “a light fellow by any means.” The odds of reaching the cave in time were against him, yet he had to try. he did not know how long ago the man had perished, time was of the essence.
~~~~~
A fortnight had passed and still the knight lay unresponsive on a cot barely big enough to hold his large body. Von Bombastus sat at a table in the corner of the hollowed-out cave, observing his patient, displeased with his own failure. He had fallen completely silent as he stroked his long white beard, deep in thought, conjuring a plan of which experiment to do next, for he was running out of options.
He peered over at a red stone glaring at him from across the room. It taunted and teased him, but he refused to listen to its absurdity. “Baah.” He stood from the table and walked over to a shelf where the stone sat perched. He glared at the blasted rock and took a beaker of red liquid from behind it and sat back down. As he poured one liquid into another, making a bubbling concoction, he weighed it until he was satisfied with the results. This would be his last attempt to bring the man back to life.
Philippus held the beaker next to a lit candle. Red liquid swirled to life and tiny bubbles rose to the surface. He glanced at the man lying on the cot. “Aye, the elixir of life.”
Chapter Two
With a desperate surge Thomas gasped for air like he was drowning. Wide-eyed, he inhaled, filling his lungs again and again. He coughed and swallowed hard past the dryness in his throat and sat straight up from the cot. He was alive. How could this be?
White light flashed behind his eyes. Pain ripped over his body, tearing muscle from bone. A wave of nausea crashed into him and he leaned over the cot and vomited violently. Rolling into a ball, he clenched his stomach in hopes of relieving the harrowing pain clawing at his core. Fever conquered his veins and spread like wildfire. He thrashed from side to side, howling out in fury.
He blinked his heavy eyes, weary, trying to wake. In flashes a man in a white robe with matching long hair and beard held a beaker in his hands and hovered over him. The liquid swished in the man’s shaking grasp. Next Thomas felt the burn sliding down his throat. God, when was the pain going to end?
Another flash and Thomas was naked, walking through a forest. Mud squished between his toes, fallen twigs and thorns pierced his feet and he could not feel their bite. A familiar awareness washed over him, as though he’d been here before. The colors were more vibrant; the greens in the grass were bright; the reds in the leaves were rich, and the blues in the sky were crisp. Tilting his head up, nose to the wind, Thomas inhaled deeply. An earthy fragrance of pine and moss consumed his senses unlike anything before. He gave pause and placed his hand over his heart; it beat to a different rhythm. This feral, powerful strength raced through his veins and throbbed to the tips of his ears. His blood pulsed with the earth.
Reality or a dream, he could not distinguish between the two as he found himself walking a twisting dirt trail. Bluebells of a striking royal blue hue covered the ground. The sun shone through the tops of tall pines, cascading rays of light like misty fingers rea
ching down from the sky. Something within him drove him farther as if he was hunting prey. Crouching, Thomas’s body became tense and alert while he searched the shadows, but for what he did not know.
The wildness of the forest drew him in deeper. Ahead a man came into view and Thomas hid behind a thick-trunked tree. The man was bent down, hunched over a dead stag with his back to Thomas. As Thomas crept closer, the vegetation crunched beneath his feet and startled the man. The man raised his head and looked behind him. Thomas gasped in horror. It was him…Thomas de Wolfe. Dark eyes with a savage gleam stared back at him. Blood dripped from the man’s mouth and stained his lips. In his left hand he held a fist-full of bloody raw meat.
Thomas grabbed the tree in front of him to steady his balance while his stomach lurched. No longer able to hold back the bile, he emptied the contents of his stomach. This could not be real. It was as though he was on the outside looking in upon this madness, upon this demon.
When the last wave of revulsion passed, Thomas dared another glance and prayed that it was all a dream, some twisted nightmare that would soon end. Slowly, he opened his eyes and met the intense glare of a wolf as white as freshly fallen snow. Blood stained the fur around its mouth and chest. The beast growled low and wild, snapping its razor sharp teeth while it guarded the stag. The white beast dared Thomas to move. Thomas’s eyes widened and he shook his head. It cannot be. But it was. He was staring into his own dark depths.
