The de Lohr Dynasty

by Le Veque, Kathryn

  Caston lifted his eyebrows. “Unless you have proof that he is responsible for Lord Etzel’s death, it is not enough,” he said. “The only person who could testify to that is dead. But for the harassment he has dealt the denizens of Shadowmoor, he should be punished at the very least.”

  Maddoc was nodding his head in agreement as Caston spoke. “Thrown in the vault and then set fire to the vault,” he said, looking at Daniel. “If you do not end this now, he will haunt you the rest of your days. You will never know peace. I seem to remember someone giving me the same advice about….”

  He froze, suddenly realizing who he was speaking in front of. He was about to mention Brighton de Royans by name, for when Brighton tried to kill him and Maddoc had the opportunity to fight back, Daniel had advised him to kill the man because if he did not, he would never know peace. He would be looking over his shoulder every day for the rest of his life, waiting for Brighton to pop up and try to steal his wife from him again. It had been Daniel’s advice that had contributed to Brighton’s demise.

  Daniel, too, was looking at Maddoc, trying to conceal his horror at what he knew Maddoc was about to say. Very quickly, he sought to finish the man’s sentence before Caston asked any questions about it.

  “I gave you advice about an enemy, Maddoc,” he said, trying to cover. “An enemy much the same as Bramley. If I allow Bramley to live, then I will only know turmoil. The man has committed so many atrocities against Shadowmoor that it is justice we will be dealing out. Think of your oath as a knight, Maddoc. What does it say?”

  Maddoc recollected the words easily. “I do swear by the Eternal Power of the Trinity, to be both a true and chivalric Knight, to obey my Commanders and to aid my brethren,” he recited quietly. “I also swear by all that is holy and dear unto me, to aid those less fortunate than I, to relieve the distress of the world and to fulfill my knightly obligations. This oath do I give of my own free and independent will, so help me God.”

  Daniel smiled at the recitation of the chivalric oath. “To aid those less fortunate,” he repeated softly. “To relieve the distress of the world. Is that not what we will be doing? It is right there in the oath.”

  Maddoc nodded firmly, looking to Caston. “It is in our oath.”

  Caston nodded as well. It seemed that there was no question as to what they needed to do. The weak must be protected and Daniel must fight for his lady at all costs.

  It might be very costly, indeed.

  “Now what, Danny?” Maddoc asked, turning to eye Bramley, still standing at the gate. “Do we open the gates and bring him in?”

  Daniel turned to look at Bramley. “Would it really be that easy?” he muttered. “Inviting the man in under the pretense of surrendering Shadowmoor and then cutting his throat when his guard is down?”

  Maddoc crossed his big arms, eyeing Daniel and Caston. “It may or may not be that easy,” he said. “Let us prepare for the worst. I will go and find de Russe, and we will gather the men and prepare them for the ambush. Danny, I suggest you tell Bramley that we are preparing to turn the fortress over to him. Give me ten minutes to spread the word amongst my men and put them into position. Caston, you had better let your men know as well.”

  “Bramley may be too smart to simply walk in,” Caston said pointedly. “What do we do if he refuses to enter?”

  “Then we hunt him down like an animal,” Daniel said. “Whether he dies in the bailey of Shadowmoor or we are forced to chase him down, out there on the moors, either way he dies.”

  It was settled. Now, they had to put their plan into motion, the plan that would once and for all rid them of Bramley and his poison. Up until this moment, until the missive from Henry, Daniel was simply hoping the man would fade away and leave them in peace, but it was clear that he would never leave them in peace. By bringing them the missive from Henry, Bramley had signed his own death warrant because they were all banded together to rid their shire of the man once and for all. Today Shadowmoor, tomorrow Netherghyll. After that, there was no knowing where his greed would stop. Therefore, they had to stop it while they still could.

  Now, the time was right. They would wipe Bramley from the earth along with his men, and they would pretend they’d never seen the missive declaring that Shadowmoor, and Liselotte, belonged to Bramley. At this moment, Daniel finally knew what it meant to do anything for the love of a woman. The wanderer with the bachelor’s soul had transformed into something more than a man, more than a knight. He was now a warrior driven by love, the most powerful force in the world.

  Now, he understood.

  And that brought him great peace and confidence in what needed to be done. As Maddoc and Caston went to collect the men for the coming battle, Daniel made his way over to the gate. Bramley was still there, his angry face evident in the open slats between the iron bars. Daniel still had the missive in his hand as he approached.

  “Well?” Bramley demanded. “Are you satisfied that it is real?”

  Daniel nodded. “It is real.”

  Bramley’s expression turned triumphant. “Then you have until sunset to get out of my fortress,” he said. “Get out and take all of your men with you.”

  Daniel cocked an eyebrow. “For a man who is outnumbered ten to one, you speak boldly, Bramley Roland Fitzroy.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “Aren’t those your names?”

  Bramley scowled. “Nay,” he said through clenched teeth. “You may call me the Lord of Shadowmoor now.”

  Daniel didn’t say anything to that statement, but inside, it was the spark that lit the fire, and that fire burned hot. He silently indicated for the men at the gate to open it, and they dutifully complied, rolling back the old iron chains as they creaked and groaned, slowly opening the ancient gates that had stood for so very long.

  Daniel stood at the apex of the opening gates, right in the center, so as they rolled open, it was just him standing there, alone. Bramley, now able to step inside the fortress, did so even though la Londe and de Witt were pulling at him, advising him not to do so. He ignored his hired henchmen, charging into Shadowmoor as if he owned the place.

  Finally, it was everything he had been waiting for.

  “Get out of my fortress, de Lohr,” Bramley commanded.

  Daniel folded his big arms around his chest. “Make me.”

  Bramley’s eyebrows shot up, gravely insulted. “You would deny me?” he said. “Even with Henry’s missive in your hand, you would deny me? I told you to get out. I meant it.”

  Daniel simply stood there. “I will when I am ready.”

  Bramley, infuriated, marched up on Daniel as la Londe and de Witt followed him nervously. Their liege had stepped into the lion’s den and didn’t seem to care, but they cared a great deal. They were heavily outmanned and they knew, instinctively, that this was a trap.

  Something bad was about to happen.

  Something bad, indeed. As Bramley drew close, Daniel could see that the man was balling a fist to strike him. Therefore, he was prepared. When Bramley came close enough and lifted his hand, Daniel lashed out a massive fist and caught Bramley right in the face.

  The man fell to the ground and from that point, the fight was on.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Even as outmanned as Bramley and his men were, the fight wasn’t as simple as one would have expected. Bramley had hired mercenaries as his men-at-arms and as his knights, so these were seasoned fighters who fought dirty when the situation called for it.

  This situation called for it.

  They went after the knights first, the head of the command structure, which was actually very astute. They may have been mercenaries, but they knew battle. They knew how to destroy a command structure and cripple an army. As Bramley scrambled to get off of the ground where Daniel’s blow had sent him, la Londe and a few of Bramley’s men-at-arms went after Daniel while de Witt and several more men went after Caston. Seeing this, Maddoc and Marc de Russe unsheathed their broadswords and began sw
inging, killing men that got in their way and tossing aside the injured.

  De Lohr men and Netherghyll troops closed in as well but there was a problem with that; the two armies didn’t know each other very well and it was difficult to know precisely who the enemy was. It turned into a bit of a mess with three armies all struggling with each other in the center of Shadowmoor’s bailey. With Daniel and Caston in the midst of a multi-man attack, Maddoc and Marc began to see how the armies were clashing. Some de Lohr men were accidentally beating up on Netherghyll men.

  As Maddoc plowed forward to help Daniel and Caston, Marc backed off of the fight and went to settle the confusion among the men. Pulling some of his senior sergeants out of the fray, he pointed out the difference between the Netherghyll men, who were uniformly equipped, and the Bramley men, who were not. The senior sergeants then had the duty of moving forward to explain to the de Lohr and Netherghyll men what they were looking for. Because the brawl had happened so fast, there hadn’t been time for Maddoc and Caston to explain the situation to all of the men. Now, word was spreading slowly and the focus of the battle was shifting.

  After that, many of Bramley’s men were subdued or killed right away. The de Lohr and Netherghyll armies, working in a team, were a fearsome thing. Meanwhile, Maddoc had managed to make it to Daniel’s side. Daniel had a bloodied lip, and he’d taken a few blows, but he was whole for the most part. He’d been set upon by at least ten men, including la Londe, but in the years to come, that amount would increase to twenty or thirty men. And Maddoc would insist that he had single-handedly saved Daniel from death. But all of that aside, the real goal was to get to Bramley.

  Leaving Maddoc to trade vicious blows with la Londe, Daniel went on the hunt for his target. The last he’d seen of Bramley, the man had been on the ground, sent there by one of Daniel’s heavy hits. But now Bramley wasn’t where Daniel had left him and as he emerged from the tumultuous gathering of men, looking like the roiling sea during a storm, he caught sight of Bramley between the area of battle and the keep.

  And he had the missive in his hand.

  Daniel was seized with fear when he saw that Bramley was closer to the keep, and kitchens and hall, than he was. Liselotte was over there, somewhere. The last he had seen of her was near the kitchens. He hadn’t had the time to seek her out when Bramley had been sighted so he could only pray she’d gone into the keep and locked herself in, but he couldn’t be sure. Wherever she was, he had to make sure he got to her before Bramley did. He broke into a run, heading for Bramley, but Bramley saw him coming. He had his sword in hand, holding it defensively.

  “Stop where you are, de Lohr!” he shouted. “Come no further. This is my fortress now and you are commanded to leave. If you leave now, I will not tell Henry how you defied his command. Take your men and go!”

  Daniel wasn’t in any mood for the man’s buffoonery. “I am not leaving,” he said. “And I have told you this before. Do you think you are the only one who has Henry’s ear? My uncle and father have far more influence with the man than you could ever hope to have. Right now, my men are killing every one of your men. Their bodies will be in a burning pyre outside of the walls by nightfall and you will join them. I am at an end tolerating you and your foolery. This will end today.”

  Bramley seemed to be pondering what Daniel was saying; no more jesting, no more flippant attitude. The man was deadly serious, in every way, and Bramley struggled not to let fear get the better of him.

  “You have no right,” he hissed. “You killed Brynner and for all I know, it was you who killed Etzel. It is you who have caused terrible tragedy to Shadowmoor, more than I ever could.”

  “Lies.”

  “I may have taken their food, but you took their lives!”

  Daniel raised his sword. “I will not debate this with a madman,” he said. “I hope you are right with God, Bramley Roland Fitzroy, because you shall soon be meeting Him personally. You can explain to Him why you did what you did and how your deeds justified the end, how you bribed Brynner with drink to kill his own father and how you starved the people of Shadowmoor to the brink of destruction simply because you wanted what they had. Is that what you have always done? Persecuted those who have denied you? Your mother was not only a whore, she was an evil bitch as well to raise a son like you.”

  He was saying it to deliberately provoke Bramley, to try to coerce the man to make a stupid move. But Bramley didn’t move; he stood there with a red face, his mouth working angrily.

  “You know nothing of me,” he hissed. “You will not slander my mother, you bastard.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow. “It is not I who is the bastard,” he said. “I believe that title falls to your sister. Quite a family, Bramley Roland Fitzroy – a bitch for a mother and a bastard for a sister. And now a fool for a brother.”

  Bramley, for all of his foolishness, seemed to sense what Daniel was doing. He was still red in the face, and still quite upset, but he held his ground. He didn’t move. After a moment, he held up the missive.

  “That may be,” he said. “But I have been legally granted what you so badly want. What does that make you?”

  Daniel smiled thinly; he could see they weren’t getting anywhere and it was time to end this. He was ready to be finished, with all of it.

  “Your worst nightmare.”

  With that, he charged Bramley, who tried to hold him off, but Daniel was stronger than Bramley was. Two crushing thrusts on Bramley’s sword and Bramley stumbled back, nearly falling. But Daniel didn’t let him rest; he continued to charge madly, beating Bramley down, hardly giving the man time to recover before he was dealing out several more blows that sent Bramley to the ground.

  Now, it was getting serious as Bramley rolled away from Daniel’s thrust just in time to avoid being gored in the neck. Bramley grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it up into Daniel’s face, trying to blind him, but Daniel had been far enough way that the dirt didn’t make it into his eyes. He grabbed for Bramley, catching the man on the shoulder, but Bramley brought his sword around and narrowly missed cutting off Daniel’s left hand.

  On and on it went as the two of them rolled through the bailey near the keep, viciously fighting. Bramley was a surprisingly strong opponent, much to Daniel’s displeasure, because he’d hoped to make short work of him. Somewhere, somehow, Bramley had been given decent training because he knew how to handle himself in a fight. As far as Daniel was concerned, it wouldn’t save his life – it would only prolong it.

  The death watch began.

  Most of the fighting in the bailey with the armies had come to a conclusion. La Londe lay dead of a sword strike to the neck, courtesy of Maddoc, while de Witt had come to a gruesome end when Caston gutted him. Nearly all of Bramley’s men had been subdued or killed, and those who were still attempting to fight were being cornered and forced to surrender. Dead and wounded littered the dirt of the bailey.

  Maddoc, Caston, and Marc de Russe had made their way over to the battle between Daniel and Bramley, watching Daniel deal blow after heavy blow and watching Bramley grow progressively weaker. They wouldn’t interfere, of course, but it was rather astonishing to watch Daniel’s ferocity when dealing with Bramley. Daniel had always been a strong fighter, but this was different. It was more than fury behind his fight.

  It was the love of a good woman.

  As they watched the battle continue, they didn’t notice a slender woman with bronze-colored hair standing in the kitchen yard. Liselotte had been in the kitchen when the fight had started and she had remained there, terrified, until one of the servants told her that Sir Daniel was doing battle with Bramley over by the keep. Then, she could no longer stay away.

  She had to see for herself what was happening and now she stood, watching Daniel deal Bramley a nasty beating. But as she watched, she found herself wishing he would simply end it with Bramley. She thought maybe Daniel was toying with him somehow, drawing out his death to satisfy his own sense of vengeance, and she didn’t like
watching it one bit. What if Bramley got the upper hand? The mere thought terrified her.

  But as she witnessed the beating, something more occurred to her. Daniel was intent to punish the man for everything he’d done, for the pain he caused. But the truth was that Liselotte had been dealing with that pain daily for the past four years. She’d always felt so guilty because of what Bramley had done to the people of Shadowmoor, as she’d once told Daniel, and as she watched Daniel fight on her behalf, there was something in her that felt the need to do her own fighting. As strange as it seemed, and probably as foolish as it seemed, she felt the need to settle this once and for all by herself.

  She’d never had that chance; the chance to defend herself from a man who had done all he could to destroy her. He had never really wanted her; she knew that. He’d only wanted Shadowmoor and saw her as a simple way to achieve his end. But the truth was that she had only been his excuse, never his goal.

  She’d been the victim of a petty vicious fool.

  As she stood there and continued to observe the battle, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see Gunnar standing there. He had two puppies in his arms, two following him, and then two goats that seemed to want to nibble on his pants. He kept pushing them away. But he, too, was watching the fight.

  “Will Daniel win?” he asked.

  She could hear the fear in his voice. “Aye,” she replied. “He will soon.”

  Gunnar was mostly looking at Bramley as the man struggled against Daniel’s strength. “I wanted to kill him, too,” he said. “I would have killed him for you, Leese, if I was bigger.”

  Liselotte put her hand on her brother’s head, comfortingly. “You are a very brave boy, Gunnar,” she said. “I know you would have helped if you could.”

  Gunnar reached into his tunic, the one that Daniel had bought for him, and pulled something out of the pocket. It took Liselotte a moment to realize that it was her father’s dagger, the same one Brynner had used to kill him. Because it had been Etzel’s, Liselotte had given it to her younger brother as a keepsake. It had turned into Gunnar’s most valued possession.