Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
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Title Page
Copyright Warning
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Epilogue
About the Author
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Warrior’s Surrender
Warrior’s Surrender
Elizabeth Ellen Carter
Etopia Press
Copyright Warning
EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/).
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Published By
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Warrior’s Surrender
Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Ellen Carter
ISBN: 978-1-941692-29-5
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Etopia Press electronic publication: November 2014
Dedication
To my darling husband, my hero
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the encouraging team at Etopia Press and my wonderful editor, Kyle. Also to my husband who enthusiastically worked through plot points with me and came up with terrific ideas. Also to wonderful authors Noelle Clark, Susanne Bellamy, and Eva Scott, for your never-ending encouragement and support.
PROLOGUE
Durham, England—1070
The flare of a pitch-soaked torch lit the corner of the timber long-house. Lying on the floor, the torch’s yellow-orange flame licked greedily at the timber, igniting it. Roiling black smoke billowed up, filling the room and obscuring the entrance to the hall. The acrid smell mingled with the bitter, metallic tang of freshly spilled blood.
Sebastian coughed and doggedly followed his Norman lord through the rapidly thickening miasma within the burning building.
The young man’s heart pounded wildly.
The excitement of the battle fought through the afternoon still thrummed in his veins. And although he knew the foe was well and truly routed, there were still dangers as the rebellious Saxon earls of Northumbria fiercely defended a retreat that brought them all closer and closer to the Scottish border.
As a squire, Sebastian took his role of guarding his lord seriously. Even in this still unfamiliar country, he protected the flank of the warrior both on foot and horseback, using his training, agility, and skills to ensure the forces of King William of Normandy vanquished their enemies.
William was the newly crowned king of England and Sebastian had lived and fought for him in this land for two years, but never before traveled this far north. Here the wild moors were strewn with rocks and sharply cut escarpments covered with gorse and purple heather. It was without question one of the most wild and beautiful features of this uncivilized region.
Sebastian adjusted his sweat-slicked grip on the pommel of his sword to keep it from slipping from his grasp.
“Seb!” his lord called through a smoke-rasped throat. “Outside!”
Sebastian rushed to where he had last seen the door.
One or two well-aimed kicks saw the hinges give way. A roar of air rushed in, fueling the flames, which grew in size and heat, propelling the two men outside.
Screams of terror and pain filled the night air as the Norman knights laid waste. Not even this village’s only stone building—a church—was immune from the ransacking and arson.
Sebastian knew a number of his compatriots had broken ranks, that some of the screams he could hear came from women being raped in the flickering firelight of destroyed houses and outbuildings.
Disgust filled him at the thought. Fighting men in the field of battle was honorable. Raping, looting, and pillaging like the worst of the Vikings was vile.
Despite the heat from the fires, the burden of the mail across his chest and legs, and the fatigue of many hours of fighting, Sebastian kept his eyes on his lord, watchful for threats. They reached another corner of the burh, marked by a boundary palisade of sharpened logs.
“The hay barn,” said the knight. “There m
ay be more men hiding. Secure it. We’ll need fodder for the horses tonight.”
Sebastian nodded and ran in the direction indicated by the older man, toward a large two-story wooden structure with an opening large enough for a laden hay wagon to pass beneath.
Here, the smoke was less choking and the sound of the battle in the heart of the village faint. It took him a moment to adjust his senses to the absence of noise.
The barn door stood ajar and Sebastian entered. He allowed the tip of his sword to point to the ground as he paused to catch his breath and listen.
A shuffling sound toward the back of the barn caught his attention and he brought his sword back up. An animal? Too large to be a rat. A pig or a sheep, perhaps?
He moved forward cautiously to investigate. Even an agitated goat could still inflict injury if it was too distressed. Moonlight streamed in from an aperture propped open in the long wall, revealing the stacks of baled hay on the hard-packed earthen floor. The shuffling noise behind one tall stack drew him farther into the barn.
“Come out, little goat,” he called softly. “I won’t hurt you.…”
This time the sound of metal scraping against metal accompanied the sound of the movement.
Fatigue fled. Sebastian was on alert. He readied his sword and cautiously edged around the corner of one of the baled stacks.
Just two sacks propped in the shadowed corner.
He breathed a sigh of relief and chuckled until one of the sacks wriggled and a tow-headed boy aged not more than four peered out at him. What Sebastian thought was a sack in the low light was actually a voluminous cloak.
The child whimpered and turned his face away.
“Do not cry, I will not hurt you,” he assured the child in halting Saxon, a tongue still foreign to him.
He crouched forward to offer a reassuring hand when a scream erupted close to his ear. Sebastian turned in time to see a blade wielded by a feminine hand plunge toward him. He rolled and the blade skittered harmlessly across the links of armor that covered his arm.
On his hands and knees, Sebastian became aware of a third person. He regained his feet and brandished his sword to deal with a new threat—a Saxon knight.
The man’s surcoat was intricately decorated. A blue ground, the color of the summer sky, overstitched with bright yellow interlinked squares. This was a man of status, perhaps an earl.
He was dressed in quality armor, but blood streaked down one thigh. The stub of a spear shaft was clearly visible through a tear in the mail.
The knight, bearded and grizzled, ignored Sebastian and shuffled painfully toward the boy and the second figure, a flaxen-haired girl. No, a young woman maybe about fourteen years of age, Sebastian realized as she stood to her full height.
“Faeder!” the boy child cried.
“Hush, bairn!” the old man gritted out against the pain of his wound.
Angry at allowing himself to be ambushed, Sebastian positioned himself ready to fight. He was confident he could best this injured knight no matter how experienced the man was, but there could be others here, and against two or more he would be dead.
He backed away from the boy, his eyes never leaving those of the knight who looked at him with open contempt and limped the last few steps to stand between Sebastian and his two children.
“Stay away from my family. I will fight you to my last breath, Norman dog,” he sneered. Sebastian understood the rapidly delivered insult. He'd heard the curse enough times in the two years since leaving his childhood home in Normandy.
“Seb! Where are you?” called a voice from outside the barn. It was his lord.
“Here!” he responded.
The girl turned the boy to her stomach, forbidding the child to see the scene foreshadowed by his call. She glanced at her father with concern, then turned her eyes to Sebastian, an expression of nervous expectation crossing her face before setting in determined resolution.
Sebastian looked back at her. He had sisters and brothers. And he would fight to his last breath to protect them too. He could not fault a father for protecting his family.
The Saxon Earl’s sword dipped. Because of his injury, exertion had weakened him. A feverish sweat broke out over the man’s face and lingered on his graying beard.
He needed a physician, Sebastian realized. There were monks in an abbey a league away who would help.
The young Norman addressed his instructions to the girl. Her cornflower-blue eyes refused to show fear of him; her father and brother would need her bravery and strength if they were to survive this night.
“Go! Get out of here!” he hissed. “I will buy you as much time as I can. Do you understand me?”
The girl’s eyes widened in surprise and she nodded.
Sebastian turned and strode away from the Saxon family toward the door by which he had entered.
“What's keeping you?” his lord demanded from the doorway, peering into the darkness within. “Is the barn empty or not?”
Resisting the urge to look back, Sebastian answered, “Yes! It’s empty. Just bales of hay.”
CHAPTER ONE
Northumberland, England—Late summer 1077
The late afternoon sun met the tops of the trees in the west, casting golden slivers of light across the meadow.
From his vantage point on an adjacent grassy rise, Sebastian de la Croix, baron of Tyrswick, scanned the tree line ahead and waited for the appointed time.
With grudging reluctance, he considered how well his enemy did to choose this place and time to parley. As the lowering sun shone in his eyes, Sebastian could be caught unawares by a well-aimed arrow.
However, years of battle experience had drilled into him the rules of leaving nothing to chance and turning disadvantage to advantage. Thus, he had come early to the rendezvous and even now his men flanked the field, hidden from view by the very shadows his enemy perhaps hoped to use against him.
Satisfied his orders were being carried out, Sebastian nudged his large black horse forward to the campaign tent that would host this meeting.
In battle he would have worn a hauberk, but as a sign of the good faith the request for parley demanded, Sebastian wore only light protection.
His head was bare and a breeze ruffled his coal-black hair. Over a shirt, he wore a sleeveless leather aketon, a padded garment ordinarily worn under his mail. It was no match against an arrow or a crossbow bolt to be sure, but it was protection enough for a close-quarters encounter.
He dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to one of his men-at-arms and wondered about the man he was about to meet—the dispossessed Thegn of Tyrswick, Alfred, whose land and holdings Sebastian now owned by fiat of William the Conqueror himself. The meeting came somewhat as a surprise. It was popularly believed Alfred and his family were either dead or in exile in Scotland because, until six months ago, none had seen or heard of him since the mighty battle in York that ended with defeat for supporters of usurper Edgar the Atheling.
During his many battles these last few years, Sebastian had distinguished himself as a squire in his lord’s service, earning his spurs as a knight and coming to the notice of the king himself for bravery and a reputation as a cunning military strategist.
In the aftermath of the Harrying, a deadly six-month rampage from York to Durham that saw the systematic slaughter of one hundred thousand people, King William sought to secure his kingdom along the Scottish borders. He needed men he could trust rather than leave in place Saxon earls who pledged fealty with one hand and plotted treason with the other. Thus it was five years ago, just after his twenty-third birthday, Sebastian had accepted elevation to baron from William the Conqueror, and land along the Scottish border to protect with his life and, more importantly, his honor.
Now the new baron of Tyrswick waited for the noted warrior who wanted to reclaim what Sebastian now owned by right and by deed.
* * *
From the cover of the trees, a man only a few years older than the young baron watch
ed his quarry and cursed him.
Then he cursed William the Bastard of Normandy and, for good measure, cursed Lord Drefan for making this parley necessary.
Wheeling at the sound of a snapping twig, Orlege held his sword at the ready until he recognized the approaching Larcwide, his fellow man-at-arms.
“Make the most of holding that steel,” Larcwide commented dryly. “The next metalwork we will see is iron around our wrists and our legs. That's if we're lucky.”
Orlege gave a short, bitter laugh, but fatigue and hunger made the effort halfhearted at best. It had been nearly a full day since any of them had consumed more than weak herb tea.
“Any sign of Lord Drefan and his reinforcements?” Orlege asked the older man hopefully, as he had every day for six months.
Larcwide shook his head regretfully.
Orlege sighed and turned back to point to the man some distance away who was entering the deep-blue-and-red striped tent erected for the meeting. It looked obscenely festive under the circumstances.
“Look at him, strutting about wearing nothing but an aketon!” he spat. “If I had a long bow I could end his worthless life and bring honor back to Alfred’s family.”
“If you had a long bow…” Larcwide mocked. “If you had a long bow you would be signing all our death warrants for certain, including Lord Brice’s and Lady Alfreya’s. This way there’s a chance Lord Brice might see a healer and we might at least have one decent meal before we’re hanged.”
At the mention of Alfred’s son, the man-at-arms's temper subsided.
“I sat with the lad last night,” Orlege said. “Infection has set in on the wounds. He will be lucky to survive a sennight.”
“Aye,” agreed the other man. “Come.” Larcwide slapped Orlege on the back. “Let us see how Lady Alfreya fares before she has to parley with that Norman dog.”
As they walked back to camp, Orlege considered how far their fortunes had fallen.
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