Page 47

Castle Questing, Northumbria

T hey were out to get him.

He knew these walls. God, he knew them so well.

He’d been born here and had grown up here until the time he’d gone to foster, so the old stone walls of Castle Questing were like being in the embrace of his mother or his father.

The walls loved him, protected him, and he was as fond of this place as if it were a member of his family.

For certain, it was.

But now, these comforting walls represented great peril.

He knew they were out to get him, perhaps waiting for him around the very next corner. There was danger everywhere and all he had to do was make it to the entry of the keep and beyond that, freedom.

He wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The trouble was that those stalking him were as clever as he was, born and bred for battle, so they would be thinking exactly as he was. Therein lay the key to surviving this; if he wanted to evade them, he had to think differently. He had to think in a way that they wouldn’t.

But that wasn’t so easy; he was a de Wolfe.

Still, he was younger, faster, and smarter, wasn’t he?

Those who were stalking him may have had the money and the titles and the reputations, the finest knights England had ever seen, but that didn’t matter in the long run because he was going to defeat them.

He knew the identities of his stalkers well.

Nighthawk…

ShadowWolfe…

DarkWolfe…

The Dragon Wolfe…

The Wolfe…

Some of the most powerful names on the Scottish borders, but they were little match for the man who brought a storm with him wherever he went.

Where Thomas de Wolfe walked, thunder rolled.

That’s what those in the north said. Each de Wolfe knight had his own particular brand of power, but with Thomas, it had always been dangerous unpredictability.

He was as fast as lightning and twice as deadly, but wildly unstable.

Those were the rumors, anyway, but those who had witnessed such talent swore by it.

The youngest son of the Wolfe of the Border brought his own individual type of death to any given situation.

There was no one else like him, anywhere.

Which was why he wasn’t going to let them catch him.

He had four older brothers and a father out for him at the moment, all of them elderly in his opinion.

At thirty years and five, he was the baby of the de Wolfe brothers, who were at least fifteen or more years older than he was.

Not that it made them any weaker or slower.

In fact, even his eldest brothers, as old as they were, could outfight men half their age.

It was a specific de Wolfe trait, because their father had been fighting battles well into his seventh decade of life.

He was still fighting even now, at least whenever his wife would let him.

Old knights never died. They simply fought until their bones crumbled and their skin turned to dust.

And that was the unfortunate part in all of this– Thomas knew they were ready for him, stalking him, waiting for the moment to pounce.

And it wasn’t dealing with just one skilled knight, it was dealing with more than his brothers and father because he knew for a fact that others were in on this.

His uncle, Paris, was here at Questing, and more still.

All of them, hunting him down like an animal, an animal who had been lured to Questing yesterday under false pretenses.

He thought he’d come for a conference on some unrest along the border, but it didn’t take him long to figure out he’d been duped.

Damn them!

Now, he had to flee.

Castle Questing was a vast maze of chambers, corridors, servant’s alcoves, and secret staircases.

As a child, he’d found endless entertainment in the old castle, and now as an adult, he still remembered those hidden staircases and alcoves.

He’d been moving from one to another for the past two hours, trying to evade capture.

Now, he was closer than ever to that entry door.

He’d been hiding in a seldom used servant’s staircase for the past twenty minutes but knowing that, at some point, his brothers would check it.

He’d been one step ahead of them since this insane chase started and he didn’t intend to relinquish that lead.

Down to the bottom of the staircase, then about twenty feet down a small corridor, and he’d been at the foyer with the entry door ahead of him.

He could smell freedom.

But that vestige of hope would prove to be his downfall. His focus was on the door and not where it should be– in the shadows around it.

The wolves pounced.

*

“He is reckless and mean,” a big, blond man hissed to a collection of battled-scarred knights.

“You know what happens when he fights; he has no restraint and no regard. If we are not careful, someone is going to come away missing an eye. No offense, Papa, but none of us want to end up like you, courtesy of our baby brother.”

Scott de Wolfe was looking at his father, William, who had, in fact, lost an eye over forty years ago in a battle in Wales. Elderly, but still strong, competent, and intelligent, the legendary William de Wolfe shook his head at his eldest son.

“If you lose an eye to your brother, I will be ashamed of you,” he said. “At least I lost mine in battle. You would be losing yours in a fist fight. That does not say much for your skills.”

It was a serious situation they were all facing, but one with an odd undercurrent of humor. Ridiculousness, really. Thomas de Wolfe was running from his destiny like a child running from a physic’s potion, but it was a concerning situation, nonetheless.

The youngest de Wolfe brother had grown up, matured, and become one of the fiercest knights England had ever seen.

Not simply the borders– but in England as a whole.

As a youth, he’d been reckless and silly, but blindingly brilliant.

He was innovative and cunning, outsmarting his parents on more than one occasion.

As a young man, he’d been dutiful but resentful of living in the shadows of his elder, and greater, brothers.

A young man with something to prove.

But then came the fateful trip to Wales to escort his youngest sister to her new husband, a man who also had a sister Thomas had fallen for.

It was something they didn’t really speak of any longer, mostly because it was in the past and wasn’t something to be fondly recalled.

It had been a moment in time that had shaped Thomas’ entire life and he’d returned from Wales a different man.

Changed.

His father, William, had known he’d had to do something for his distressed son and that help had come in the form of a mission of mercy, of sorts.

Kevin Hage, son of William’s dearest friend, Kieran, was determined to go to The Levant to fight with the Christian armies against a new wave of Mamluks to escape the woman he’d lost. It had been the very sister Thomas had escorted to Wales, in fact, who had broken Kevin’s heart, and Kieran Hage himself had begged Thomas to go with his son.

In truth, Thomas and Kevin had shared the loss of the women they had loved, one to death and one to another man, and in that sense, they were kindred spirits.

They both needed to get away, to find a life for themselves that did not include their women.

So, they had gone to The Levant and they’d learned warfare on an entirely different level, learning to fight against an enemy that was not English or Scottish or even Welsh, an enemy who hated them on a level they’d never seen before.

They had learned to be killers.

In fact, Kevin had learned that lesson so deeply that he’d become an English assassin known as the Scorpion, the knight with the deadly sting.

Thomas, too, had learned the lesson so well that it had become ingrained into him, a man who thought like a hunter and hunted like a killer, who struck as fast as a bolt of lightning.

Dhiib aleasifa , the Mamluks called him.

StormWolfe.

The hunter who brought the storms with him.

The Thomas who returned to England afterwards was not the same Thomas who had left them.

Some thought that the time in The Levant might have done Thomas more harm than good, because the man who returned was a true hunter-killer in every sense of the phrase.

He’d served the Duke of Dorset for a time after his return to England before heading home, where his father had given him command of Wark Castle.

Scott had been correct when he’d said Thomas was mean; he could be quite mean when the mood struck him, and deadly in the blink of an eye.

Therefore, every man in that solar knew that Thomas would not be taken without a fight, which was why they were converging near the keep entry in a pack for safety.

The postern gate from the keep that led into the kitchens had been barred and locked, so there was no chance he could go that way.

Soldiers were covering the exterior in case he decided to drop from one of the windows, and one very capable knight was waiting in the stables in case he made it that far.

Better still, the commander of Questing, James de Wolfe who was also known by Blayth, was standing just outside the entry door.

Every possible exit was covered, meaning Thomas was being driven to the entry where the majority would be waiting for him.

At the moment, however, they were simply anticipating his movements as best they could.

He was somewhere in the keep, lurking. There was a small guard room, a solar, and then a main receiving chamber and a servant’s corridor that comprised the access points of the foyer.

But at the moment, the knights were gathered in the solar, planning for the inevitable. Waiting.

A storm was about to roll through.