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The ruins of Castle Heton

“I saw two escorts leaving Wark,” a breathless man said. “One is heading north and west, and the other is heading right for us. I hurried back to tell you.”

Heton had once been a great tower, a beacon of strength against the Scots along the England-Scotland border, but a tower that had collapsed under a siege forty years ago when Clan Elliot tried to take it and the English descended on it.

Now, it was a mound of ghostly ruins.

The tower had been four stories of stone and might, and the walls surrounding the small courtyard had been tall and impenetrable.

That was when William de Wolfe, the newly-appointed commander of Northwood Castle’s army, had devised a clever plan.

While a part of the army had made a big show of attacking the gatehouse to draw the attention of the Scots, William had set the rest of their army to digging a tunnel from the northeast corner, undermining the wall, and into the vault beneath the keep.

Part of the wall had collapsed because of the tunnel, and the northeast corner of the keep had sunk as well.

After that, the English had rushed in and the Scots had been all but purged.

It would seem that those in the area had been dealing with a de Wolfe, father or sons, for a very long time.

As they did last night.

They called themselves the Thurrock Cú , or the Thurrock Dogs, and their leader, The Bold Hobelar.

Hobelar wasn’t his real name, but that was what the men knew him by, men who were both Scots and English, men with no real loyalties to anyone other than themselves.

There used to be a hundred of them, spread out between Heton and another ruined tower north of the River Tweed, but now their number had been decimated by half, and even more after the run-in with the knights from Wark Castle last night.

Now, they were a weary, injured few, but there were enough.

Enough to strike back.

“An escort,” Hobelar repeated in a thick Scots accent, scratching his head with a bandaged right hand. “How big?”

The breathless man came near the fire, burning in the partially collapsed but enormous vault of the castle formerly owned by Hobelar’s mother’s family.

They could have a fire in the morning like this, when it mingled with the smell of other cooking fires in the area.

Men had returned during the night wet and half-drowned, at least those who had made it out of the river once the Wark army had pushed them over the cliff.

Fifty-three men had gone on the raid at sunset the previous evening, heading up to Duns with the hope of raiding enough cattle or livestock to bring south, across the River Tweed, but so far, only thirty-two had made it back to Heton, with no cattle, and Hobelar was bent on revenge.

The breathless man knew this as he settled down by the fire, warming his freezing hands.

He knew his lord and he knew the man was humiliated and furious with the loss of life and the fact the Wark’s commander had outsmarted him.

“I’ve counted at least thirty armed men and a great lord traveling on a very expensive horse,” he said.

“There is a wagon carrying many chests that I am certain are filled with gold.”

Hobelar digested that. “What about the group that headed northwest?”

The breathless man shook his head. “Not so many, but there were two big knights from what I could see,” he said. “They had women with them, too. It seemed to me that they were heading to Kelso.”

Hobelar sat back on the broken stone he used for a seat, noting the expectant faces looking at him.

He was the son of a great Scottish laird and an English mother from the House of de Grey, and he’d spent his childhood in Scotland in the summers and Essex in the winter.

As a young man, he’d found a life as a mercenary in Saxony and Ghent, and that lust for lawlessness had never left him.

He was back on the borders now, home to him, and had his own group of outlaws that had been moderately successful for the past year, successful enough to drive out another gang of reivers who had controlled the area.

Now, it was just Hobelar and his men, and the defeat they had suffered last night at the hands of the commander of Wark had been devastating.

He couldn’t risk another.

“The party headin’ towards us,” he said. “How swiftly do they move?”

The breathless man accepted a piece of roasted bird from a man who had been cooking the fowl over the fire.

“Not swiftly at all,” he said. “We can easily catch them to the south if we leave now. They are carrying much riches, Hobelar… the wagon was full of such things. It would be small compensation for the defeat of last night, but it would be something.”

It was his way of suggesting to Hobelar that they take the easy target. Morale was terrible this morning and even if it was an easy kill, they needed it. They wanted it.

In truth, Hobelar understood that.

“We lost twenty-one men last night,” he muttered. “Twenty-one men drowned by the de Wolfe bastard at Wark.”

“The youngest cub,” someone muttered.

Hobelar looked around to see his men nodding grimly.

Most of them were still wet from the dunking they had taken last night.

They smelled like rot and mold, and of a river that had claimed far too many victims over the years.

That cold and clinging water had nearly claimed more, but those sitting around Hobelar’s fire were strong.

They were worthy of the fight.

“Aye, the youngest Wolfe cub,” Hobelar repeated.

Then, he pulled something out of his belt, something that one of his men had brought to him– a beautiful dagger with a wolf’s head handle.

Hobelar had seen that wolf head before, on the shields used by the de Wolfe armies, and he held it up to inspect it.

“There are cubs at Berwick and Kale Water Castle, and as far west as Monteviot and Sibbald’s Hold in Scotland.

When I was a wee lad, the Wolfe himself was only just risin’ tae power.

Now, his sons command the castles around here.

They are all the same tae me– all killers, the bleeders of Scots.

I looked the youngest cub in the face last night and saw the murder in his eyes.

But we are not enough tae face them; not as we are.

But we canna be silenced. We may not be able tae raise a great army against de Wolfe and his cubs, but we shall cause him pain. Aye, we will.”

The breathless man was not so breathless any longer. Hughes was his name, and he sucked the last of the meat off of the skinny bird bone he’d been given. He was also English, and from the north, and he knew the de Wolfe name well. Everyone in the north of England did.

“Then what will we do?” he asked Hobelar, watching the man as he fixated on the wolf’s head dagger.

“William de Wolfe is still alive, in command of his seat at Castle Questing. It is quite possible that it is the man himself coming from Wark with his trunks loaded with gold. Who else would command such fine horses and weapons and trunks?”

Hobelar looked at him. “What colors are the escort flyin’?”

“Red and yellow, but it could be a ruse. It could be meant to confuse.”

Hobelar shook his head. “They’d be flyin’ the de Wolfe black and silver proudly were it the man himself,” he said, finally lowering the dagger and looking at his men.

“They would not try tae deceive anyone. Still… whoever it is, he must be important. We can cause great trouble for de Wolfe by attackin’ his allies. ”

“Then we shall attack them?”

Hobelar nodded. “We must meet him on the road and we must move swiftly,” he said.

“We dunna want tae let him get within range of Etal Castle; the garrison could send out help should they see us. Nay, we must catch them on the road before they reach Branxton. Beyond that, we will lose them. We will show de Wolfe that he canna destroy us. We will make the man hurt.”

Already, the wet and exhausted reivers were moving, putting out the fire and gathering their weapons. The horses, those that had made it out of the river, were resting beneath the overgrowth of trees that infested the bailey of Heton, and the men rushed out to prepare them.

The day was advancing and they had little time to waste.

Soon enough, they were charging from the bones of Heton’s stone rib cage, out into the landscape beyond as they headed south to the road where the party from Wark had been seen.

From the delay of the report, they estimated the party to be less than an hour out of Wark, which would put them on a particular stretch of road that passed through a heavily-wooded area.

It was forested and it was hilly, providing an excellent opportunity for an ambush.

The reivers had swords and axes, but they also had crossbows, stolen from the dead.

Hobelar sent those with the crossbows up ahead to begin the ambush and by the time they intercepted the party from Wark, the arrows were flying and men were falling, including a well-dressed lord at the center of the escort. When he went down, his men panicked.

After that, it was chaos, but Hobelar’s men were the better for it– the wagon containing all of the expensive trunks somehow ended up back at Castle Heton, and just a couple of hours after the ambush, Hobelar and his men were celebrating a very lucrative ambush of a de Wolfe ally.

Victory was theirs.

Hobelar fell asleep in the sunshine of the afternoon wearing the expensive silk robes of Edmund de Vauden.