Chapter One

Wiston Castle

May 1147

Evan

Evan couldn’t have been happier with his new companions and his new job—even if at the moment, he was struggling to remember that fact.

Hearts pounding loud enough to drown out the rain, the six men pressed their bellies to the wet grass, blending into the ground and the darkness above them. The weather would have been aggravating if it hadn’t been the reason they’d chosen this particular moment in the first place to begin the attack on the Flemish castle of Wiston, owned by the improbably named Walter FitzWizo. Forty years earlier, King Henry of England had given Walter’s family and his group of Fleming mercenaries this portion of southern Wales. In all that time, nobody had been able to evict them from it.

Until, hopefully, now.

Prince Hywel had entrusted his Dragons—Evan and his five companions—with the task of going over the wall first. Ahead of Evan was Gruffydd, once Prince Rhun’s captain, now the Dragons’ leader. Gruffydd nodded to Cadoc, the former assassin and preeminent archer of the group, who rose to his feet and directed his great bow towards the nearest sentry on the wall-walk. He could bring down a man from three hundred paces, though tonight his target stood only a third of that distance away on the nearest tower and was silhouetted against the sputtering and flickering torch behind him.

Cadoc loosed the arrow, which whispered through the air, audible over the rain only because Evan imagined he could hear it. It hit the soldier in the chest, and the power of the shot dropped him below the level of the wall. It was almost unfair how little the man’s death taxed Cadoc’s abilities.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for someone to raise the alarm, but no bell sounded, and the fallen soldier didn’t call a warning—or at least not one they could hear from where they waited. His death had been instantaneous.

The last three squad members were young men in their early twenties, newly minted men-at-arms who’d distinguished themselves with their intelligence and physical skills: Steffan, who could do things with a knife Evan wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it for himself; Iago, whose bulk made Evan feel as small as a child; and Aron, Evan’s favorite of the three and a son of Hywel’s foster father, Cadifor. At first glance, Aron’s open face seemed naive or even simple, but underneath that innocent exterior lay a sharp wit that had the power to leave Evan in stitches.

With the sentry down, the wall was free of watchers, and Gruffydd signaled that they should move forward. Steffan, as the knifeman, and Gruffydd, their leader, went first, moving at a low crouch. With the muddy ground and slippery grass, they had to concentrate on placing their feet carefully, so as not to fall and give the game away too soon.

A few weeks ago, Prince Hywel, Evan’s lord, had chosen expediency and opportunity over caution and his better judgement. He’d allied himself not only with King Cadell of Deheubarth but a passel of Norman lords as well, all of whom were currently in rebellion against King Stephen, whereas Walter FitzWizo, their current opponent, remained loyal. It seemed the perfect opportunity to strike a blow for Welshmen and for Hywel to gain stature among his peers. The plain truth was that the prince’s status as the future King of Gwynedd would be built less on his ability to govern than on his martial prowess—in other words, on opportunities like this.

Though it might not feel like it at the moment, they’d been lucky that the rain had come when it did, because they’d had a two-week dry spell that had threatened to undo the entire expedition. The bulk of FitzWizo’s men had been lured outside the castle, convinced that they were facing a small party of Welsh raiders, who’d been burning Flemish holdings throughout this region of Wales—a bit too gleefully in Evan’s opinion. Women and children had died along the way, and nobody but Prince Hywel and his men seemed to care—with the exception of Angharad, King Cadell’s niece. How she’d heard about it, Evan didn’t know, since up until yesterday, the alliance had put out that they were marching east to confront King Stephen’s forces, not traveling west to Wiston.

Regardless, she’d come to the Dragons in tears about her uncle’s activities, having already gone to the king himself. He’d dismissed her concerns like a man brushing a crumb off his sleeve, stating that she hadn’t been on the receiving end of FitzWizo’s depredations over the years nor among the families and villages displaced by the Flemings’ coming. All of which was true, if callous. But it had fallen to Evan to tell her that there was nothing any of the men from Gwynedd could do about it.

Angharad appeared to be the only leak in Cadell’s wall of secrecy. At any moment, FitzWizo would discover that he and his men were facing an army instead of a marauding band—and furthermore that they no longer had a fortress to retreat to.

That was where the Dragons came in.

Wiston was a typical motte and bailey castle. It consisted of a keep built on a forty-foot mound over the remains of an ancient Welsh fort. It was protected by a palisade five hundred feet in length on a side. In front of the wooden fence were a rampart and a deep ditch, which, for the Dragons’ immediate purposes, simply meant the distance they had to scale to reach the top of the wall was greater than it would have been from ground level.

Because of the palisade, the castle was not nearly as defensible as it would have been had FitzWizo invested in stone. Walter knew it too, and that was why he’d taken the news of marauders in his lands as a signal to march the bulk of his men out to meet them on better ground of his choosing, closer to the border of Deheubarth, rather than to wait for them to come to him. At dawn—an hour or so from now—Cadell intended to engage Walter’s army. The Dragons had every intention of winning this fight here at the castle before the real battle began.

Gruffydd threw his grappling hook upwards, and it slipped easily between two of the palisade’s slats and held. As part of their preparations, Aron had made knots in their ropes every foot to help in the scaling. Evan went up his rope quickly, and then held it for Iago, who followed last.

Huffing, the big man landed in a heavy squat on the wall-walk, his feet thunking onto the wood a little more loudly than Evan might have liked. Steffan and Gruffydd, who’d shared a different rope, had already killed a second man who’d come out of a nearby tower. Aron and Evan dragged him into the shadows to lie beside the man Cadoc had shot with the arrow. Such was the power of Cadoc’s bow that the arrow had penetrated the man’s chest to a depth of six inches, even through his mail.

Nobody had yet said a word, and they didn’t need to now. Gruffydd indicated they should split up to their respective parts of the castle as they’d planned. Gruffydd, Iago, and Steffan would go to the main gate, kill whoever was there, and open the gate so that the men who were waiting outside could enter. Among this force would be Prince Hywel and a host of men from Gwynedd, but the company as a whole was led by a master swordsman from Deheubarth, Sir Robert, who’d been Evan’s first teacher. Evan hadn’t seen any of the people he’d grown up with in the south in over ten years—since the 1136 war—which also happened to be the last time Gwynedd had allied with Deheubarth.

Meanwhile, Cadoc would keep watch from the top of the palisade, eliminating anyone who moved in the bailey or the wall-walk—anyone who wasn’t one of the six of them, that is. In particular, he needed to kill any soldier who exited the barracks. Fortunately, because the castle was built in wood, its defenses didn’t include a portcullis or barbican. Once the main gate was opened, there would be no stopping the attackers from taking the fort.

That didn’t mean that it would be smooth sailing from that moment on, however. The genius of a motte and bailey castle lay in the construction of the mound upon which the keep perched. As the last defense of the castle, a ten-foot-deep ditch surrounded the motte at the bottom and a second palisade wall enclosed the keep on three sides at the top. On the fourth side, the wooden palisade ran down both sides of the stairway to an inner gatehouse that protected its entrance.

It was Evan and Aron’s job to secure the drawbridge across the ditch and open this inner gate before anyone in the keep knew they were under attack.

Unfortunately, the gate could be opened only by the guard on the motte side. Thus, they first needed to subdue the guards on the bailey side, disable the drawbridge workings, get the key to the wicket gate that allowed the passage of one man at a time from one side to the other, and kill that last guard. Only then could they open the gate for the rest of their army and head up the stairs to the keep.

Leaping down the wooden steps to the courtyard, Evan and Aron raced towards the inner gatehouse, making sure they followed the curve of the palisade so as to stay out of Cadoc’s line of sight. Their feet splashed through puddles that had formed in the few hours it had been raining, and Evan brushed his wet hair out of his face, wishing he’d had the foresight to cut it short like Gareth’s.

Ahead of him, a man appeared from underneath the gatehouse on the other side of the ditch. He hadn’t seen Evan and Aron yet, and at the same instant that he set foot on the bridge, an arrow hit his breastbone. He staggered, his hands grasping at the shaft protruding from his chest, and toppled backwards to lie flat on the ground.

“The man doesn’t miss. I’ll give him that.” Aron ran across the drawbridge and crouched over the fallen guard. Just as with the first man on the wall-walk, the arrow had killed him as close to instantly as not to matter, so he’d had no chance to cry out. That, of course, had been the point.

The gate behind the drawbridge remained closed, as it should always be, even were the castle not under siege. Fortunately, the rain covered many sounds, and it seemed as if the rest of the garrison still did not know what was afoot.

Evan bent to the fallen soldier and patted him down, looking for the key to the wicket gate without which this entire endeavor would be a failure. He didn’t find it, so with Aron’s help, he rolled the dead man off the bridge into the ditch below. The body fell with a sodden thud, which could just be heard above the sound of the rain. In daylight, the body would be obvious, but in the dead of night, were someone to look outside any of the craft huts or the barracks, it was too dark down there for them to see anything.

“I don’t see another guard.” Evan was still crouched, trying to keep his profile low to the ground.

“He’s inside his guardhouse, nice and dry.” Aron laughed mockingly under his breath. “He should know better.”

Evan had spent enough nights on boring guard duty to know that it was nearly impossible to stay alert all the time. The dead guard had probably drawn straws with his companion to decide whose task it was to take a turn around the bailey. “Don’t get cocky, Aron.”

“Never. But if it’s too easy, it isn’t fun.”

“And don’t say that either.” Evan ran at a crouch to the gatehouse itself. Above the gate was the room that housed the workings for the drawbridge, though the winch itself was down below, where it was easily accessible. Breathing hard and perhaps as uncomfortable as Aron with how well things were going so far, he went to each of the chains that controlled the drawbridge and jammed an iron pike into the gears.

Disabling the drawbridge couldn’t be done without making a little bit of noise, and it was probably that which finally drew the second guard out of his warm guardroom on the left side of the gatehouse archway. Aron had just pressed his back to one side of the door when it opened. “Edward, wat ben je aan het doen—”

Aron pivoted and met the newcomer’s chest with his knife. The man collapsed over his hand, and, with Evan’s help, Aron eased him down to the ground to sit with his back against the guardroom wall and his feet splayed out in front of him. While Aron cleaned his knife, Evan searched this man for a key as he’d done to his companion, who was now at the bottom of the ditch.

The key was on a chain around the man’s neck, and Evan pulled it over his head and tossed it to Aron. The young man caught it in his left hand and immediately went to the wicket door, which was only four feet high: another precaution so that any opposing force that managed to make it through the rest of the castle’s defenses could be stopped here. The only way to get through the door was in a hunched over position. The key fit the lock and turned easily, but Evan and Aron didn’t yet enter.

“Edward?” a voice came from the other side of the gate.

Evan motioned towards Aron, knowing that the guard would know he wasn’t Flemish the moment he opened his mouth.

Aron bobbed his head in a nod. “Ja.” He had a facility for languages, which was yet another reason he’d been chosen as a member of the Dragons. If Evan hadn’t known his own worth in battle, he might have started to feel inferior among so many skilled companions.

The man approached the wicket door. “Alles goed?”

“Ja,” Aron said again—just as Evan drove his shoulder into the little door, putting his entire weight into the effort. The door hit FitzWizo’s soldier full on from his knees to his chin, catching him completely by surprise. He fell backwards onto his rear, and by the time he realized the action wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t Edward coming through the door, Evan had driven his knife into his chest.

It was only then, as they opened the inner gate and jammed another iron pike into the hinges so the gate couldn’t be easily closed, that Evan looked to the main entrance to the castle. Their timing had been nearly perfect. Gruffydd had just opened the main gate and was signaling with a torch that the way was clear.

Iago arrived beside Aron. “I can’t believe they don’t know we’re here.”

“I guess we’re just that good,” Aron said.

Evan ignored him and spoke to Iago. “The barracks?”

Iago lifted one shoulder. “I barred the front door after I threw a burning taper inside. They’ll notice it soon and come out the windows, which I could do nothing about.”

“I say we get to the motte before the alarm is raised,” Aron said. “It can’t be much longer now.”

Evan glanced again towards Gruffydd. Through the open gate, he could make out the figures of moving men, the first of whom had almost reached the castle.

“We were told to wait,” Iago said.

Aron scoffed. “Did it make sense to you as to why?”

Iago’s eyes narrowed. “No. And not to Prince Hywel either, though he didn’t argue.”

Aron started up the steps. “It’s better to die on the stage than to live your life in the wings. Isn’t that what Prince Hywel says?”

“Personally, I’d rather not die at all,” Evan said under his breath, but he appreciated Aron’s point and went up the stairs after him.

Iago took the steps three at a time. Even though he was a large man, he was puffing less than Evan by the time they reached the top. A last few steps took them up to the narrow doorway that was the only entrance to the three-story keep. Nobody guarded the outside, unsurprising given the lack of porch and the pouring rain.

Inside would be an anteroom with at least one guard on duty at all times. Beyond would be the great hall, such as it was—this was not a big keep—with the apartments for the lord on the floor above. Storage and armaments would be at ground level, but accessible only from the inside through a trap door and ladder. Finally, there would be a guardroom at the top for household guards.

It was only as the Dragons hesitated by the door that a defender on the top of the keep finally realized Wiston Castle was under attack. A bell clanged from above them, followed by a shout, which was immediately cut off. A moment later, a body hit the ground not far from the top of the steps, yet another of Cadoc’s three-foot arrows protruding from the dead man’s torso.

Iago hastened back down the stairs and dragged the body around the corner to the back of the keep to leave it in the shadows of the palisade. They didn’t want it to be lying near the steps when whoever was guarding the front door to the keep opened it at their knock.

If he opened it.

He couldn’t have missed the ringing of the bell, but the only way for him to know how much of the fort had been breached—or even if they were really under attack—was to open that door.

Aron knocked.

“Wie gaat daar?”

Evan prodded Aron and said in a harsh whisper, “Answer him!”

Aron shrugged. “Edward.”

“Ja.”

The door opened, and for the third time that night, one of Walter FitzWizo’s men died from a knife to the chest.

“Stop!” The call came from behind them, at the bottom of the stairs, and the three Dragons turned, even Aron, who had wedged himself into the doorway with the body. A company of twenty men had surged through the lower gate and were heading up the steps towards the keep.

Evan frowned, but the three men from Gwynedd stepped back anyway, unwilling to openly disobey what was clearly a direct order. The man in the lead, the gray-haired Sir Robert, didn’t deign to comment as he went by, just shot Evan a scornful look. Evan also recognized the man who followed right behind Robert. Alban was of an age with Evan, and the two men had known each other well many years ago. He was also the second-in-command of King Cadell’s personal guard.

Alban’s men charged through the doorway one at a time, though not before two of them pulled the body of the man Evan had killed out of the doorway and dropped him on the ground.

Meanwhile, Alban put his nose right in Evan’s face. “You were told to leave the keep to us!”

Evan couldn’t deny it, but he wasn’t willing to go down before Alban that easily. Evan was a knight now, same as Alban, and the order made as little sense in this moment as it had when it had been given. “You weren’t here, and if we hadn’t convinced the guard to open the door just as the alarm was raised, you wouldn’t be entering the keep now.”

Alban swept his gaze over Aron and Iago, both of whom gazed steadily back at him. Evan could hear shouts and fighting inside the keep. The twenty men Sir Robert had led inside were more than FitzWizo had left behind, and the remnant of the garrison at Wiston had been completely unprepared for attack.

Then Alban surprised Evan by bobbing his head. “No harm done.” He clapped his hand on Evan’s shoulder. “You did what you came here to do. You have the thanks of the men of Deheubarth, but you should find Prince Hywel now. Last I saw, he was on the wall-walk above the main gatehouse.”

It was a dismissal, made all the clearer when Alban entered the keep after his men and closed the door behind him.