Windemere Read online

  Contents

  Windemere

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Note to Reader

  Map of Frei-Ock Isles and the Southlands

  Castle Windemere

  The Forsworn

  Shadow in the Dark

  Life in the Balance

  The Apothecary and His Daughter

  The Reed and the Flail

  The Pigeon and the Assassin

  Into the Night

  Treachery

  Sedition

  A Castle for Sale

  Too Many Corpses

  Disguise and Delay

  Battle's Fury

  The Wall

  Infiltration

  A Rescue in the Dark

  The Ruse

  Comrades Lost

  The Broken Bargain

  The Smashed Hedgerow

  Flight

  The Archers of Windemere

  Farewell

  Author's Note

  ABOUT J.W. ELLIOT

  Archer of the

  Heathland

  Book Five

  Windemere

  J.W. Elliot

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, historical events, or locations are entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 J.W. Elliot

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system except as may be expressly permitted in writing by the publisher.

  Bent Bow Publishing

  P.O. Box 1426

  Middleboro, MA 02346

  Cover Design by Brandi Doane McCann

  If you enjoy this book, please consider leaving an honest review on Amazon and sharing on your social media sites.

  Please sign up for my newsletter where you can get a free short story and more free content at: www.jwelliot.com

  To Archers Young and Old

  Note to the Reader

  One of the persistent questions I have received about the Archer of the Heathland series is what about Redmond? What did he do all those years he lived off the island? And why did he come back? You now hold the answer to those questions in your hands. This is Redmond’s journey home. This book also provides crucial backstory for the next volume (Book VI) in the series, in which Brion, Finola, York, and Gwyneth travel to the southland in search of Redmond. I hope you will enjoy this step back in time to before the death of Rosland and Weyland, before Brion’s quest to save Brigid and Finola from the Salassani. Book VI will pick up where Book III Vengeance left off.

  Enjoy,

  J.W. Elliot

  Chapter 1

  The Forsworn

  The wail of a child lifted on the breeze. Redmond paused and crouched in the shadow of a rock outcrop. Waiting. Listening. The morning sun had not yet poked its head above the eastern horizon. Rocky, undulating hills bristled with pines and shrubs while the deep valleys still lay in gray shadow. A warm breeze rustled through clumps of grass and the delicate white flowers of the woodland asters, carrying with it the rich scent of pine. There was no smell of wood smoke or anything else that would suggest people were about.

  Redmond’s ears must have deceived him. There could be no children here. No one lived on the contested borders of the Barony of Longmire and the Barony of Windemere. This region of the Hallstat Kingdom of Morcia had been swept clean of inhabitants by the raids and counter-raids that left it a no man’s land. No child could be making that sound.

  The wail came again, and Redmond slipped an arrow onto the string of his longbow. He fell to his belly and crawled forward until he could peer down on the old road that snaked its way among the hills toward the north end of Long Lake.

  “Shut up,” a male voice growled. The slap of flesh on flesh split the air.

  The voice came from directly below Redmond, concealed from view by a pile of boulders. Redmond stole over the lip of the hill to kneel behind a huge pine from where he could see them. A big man with a round belly the shape of a wine barrel, dressed in a pale green tunic and brown trousers, dragged a boy, who could be no more than ten or eleven years old, from inside a hollow log. They struggled not fifteen feet below him.

  “You run away again and it’ll be the lash,” the man said. He heaved the boy from the ground. The boy kicked and squirmed.

  “Release the child,” Redmond called as he gripped the string of his bow and stepped from behind the tree.

  The two froze for an instant before the man spun to gaze up the hill at Redmond.

  “Let him go,” Redmond said.

  The man whipped a knife from his sheath and pressed it to the boy’s throat. The boy stared up at Redmond with wide eyes. This was no father disciplining a wayward child. Redmond had seen his kind more often than he would have liked in the Kingdom of Morcia. This man was a slave catcher or slaver himself. But why would they be here, so far from any inhabited town or village?

  “You work for Lord Otto of Windemere?” Redmond asked.

  “Just walk away and forget what you saw,” the man said, “or you’ll regret it.”

  Redmond glanced around dramatically. “And who’s going to make me regret it?” he asked. “I only see the two of us. Besides, I have trouble forgetting things like this.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” the man said.

  “You hurt the boy, and you’re a dead man,” Redmond replied. Ever since the Salassani raid on his village many years ago, he could not abide men who preyed upon women and children. Much to his dislike, slavery was a fundamental part of Hallstat society here in the southlands, and children were often the easiest targets.

  The man edged his way up the road holding the child in front of him as a shield. He was moving south. Why south? What could there be along the southern shores of Long Lake that would attract slavers who traded in children? The southern villages were farther away than the northern ones.

  “You’re leaving me no choice,” Redmond said.

  The man stepped on a stone that rolled under his boot, causing him to stumble. The boy slammed his head back into the man’s face in a desperate bid for freedom. The slaver dropped the boy with a curse. Then he lunged to grab him.

  Redmond’s arrow caught the slaver in the throat. He staggered backward, clutching at the shaft before he tripped and tumbled over the side of the road into the rocks and trees below.

  The boy scrambled back to the hollow log and dove inside. Redmond let him go and bounded down the hill to check on the slaver. The shaft of the arrow had snapped in his fall, but the blood still leaked from the ghastly wound. His body lay at an awkward angle with one arm bent beneath him. A pine tree had arrested his fall. The man stared up at Redmond. There was no point questioning him. He wouldn’t be able to speak with a wound like that. There was nothing Redmond could do to help him.

  “You gave me no choice,” Redmond said.

  The man’s fingers spasmed as they clutched at the broken arrow shaft. His eyes took on the cold, glassy look of death, and his body stopped quivering. Redmond checked the man’s pockets but only found a bag filled with silver dust and a few small silver nuggets. He hefted the bag thoughtfully, climbed up to the road, and squatted beside a rotted tree.

  “It’s safe to come out,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

  A brown head poked out.

  “He can’t hurt you anymore either,” Redmond said.

  Redmond backed up so the boy could come out on his own without fear that he would harm him.

  The boy crawled out. Dirt smeared his face where a red welt still burned. His clothes barely covered his
thin body. He had a starved look about him.

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy frowned. “Henry,” he said in a tremulous voice.

  “I’m Redmond. I work for the Baron of Longmire. You’re on his lands, but I’m curious to know how you came to be here.”

  Redmond slipped his waterskin over his head, took a swallow, and handed it to the boy who drank greedily. When he finished, he handed it back to Redmond.

  “I wanna go home,” the boy said.

  Redmond stepped over to sit on the log. “Tell me where that is, and I’ll do what I can to get you there.”

  The distant blowing of horns echoed over the hills. Redmond snapped his head up. He had left his men not half an hour ago to scout the area. There had been no sign of soldiers from Windemere or anyone else until he came across the slaver and the boy. He lunged to his feet.

  “Stay here, lad,” he said. “I’ll come back for you.”

  He tossed the boy the bag of silver and scrambled up the hill, racing toward the little bridge that controlled the pass which cut through the hill country around Long Lake. They had been ordered to prevent any of the Baron of Windemere’s men from using the pass to prey on the villages clustered at the northern end of the lake.

  The deep-throated bellow of the horns called him on over the rugged terrain. He ducked beneath gnarled trees and tore through the wild rose bushes. The horns ceased calling. An eerie quiet settled over the hill country. Redmond pounded over the broken ground and up the last rise.

  He paused on the ridge in confusion. His men were gone. The valley was empty. The pass was unguarded. The distant crash of steel and the hoarse cries of battle reached his ears. Redmond leapt down the hill, sliding and lunging in a cascade of loose stone and soil. The sounds of battle could only be coming from farther up the road where it passed out into the broad valley beyond. But why had his men left their post? There was no sign of battle here. What or who could have driven them from the gorge?

  Redmond pelted down the rutted road, now overgrown with grass and weeds, before he broke through the gap to the long, narrow valley that split the hills. The creek spread out on the grassy plain where Redmond’s archers struggled over a tiny bridge. There were only one hundred and twenty of them, and a force more than twice their size encompassed them. It was an indefensible position, and Redmond could not understand why his men would defy his orders and advance to such a weak location.

  A host of men-at-arms on horseback and on foot encircled them. Mail armor and steel helmets glinted in the early morning sun. Their ranks bristled with lances, maces, swords, and axes. The footmen closed with Redmond’s men, while the knights on their big chargers waited behind a row of crossbowmen with their long, wooden shields planted at intervals wide enough to allow the knights to ride through.

  Redmond recognized the big black horse with the white, speckled flank. It was Lord Dacrey’s, one of the Baron of Longmire’s commanders. Why would Dacrey be attacking Redmond’s archers? Not pausing to catch his breath, Redmond raced down the sloping road. There had to be some mistake. He had to stop this.

  “Lord Dacrey,” he called when he came within earshot, but no one heard him over the tumult of battle.

  “Stop,” he called again.

  His men were dying. Killed by their own comrades. His sword slapped against his side as his boots pounded the road.

  “Hold!” he yelled again.

  Lord Dacrey turned his head. He wore a distinctive helm with bronze flourishes that ran up the noseguard and over the top of the helmet. He whirled his horse around to face Redmond with a sharp, unintelligible command. Several knights reined their chargers around and lowered their lances at Redmond.

  What was happening? Redmond slowed and jogged up the rise to stop before the threatening points of the lances.

  “Stop this madness,” Redmond panted.

  Dacrey studied him before nodding. A mounted man-at-arms raised a horn to his lips and blew two sharp blasts. The attackers hesitated and then withdrew, leaving more than a dozen men dead or dying amid the bayberry bushes and marsh grasses lining the creek. Redmond’s archers hesitated, uncertain what the respite might mean.

  “What are you doing?” Redmond demanded.

  “Following orders,” Dacrey said.

  “Baron Longmire ordered you to kill his own men?”

  Redmond gripped his bow in a tight fist. He wanted to shoot the insolent smirk off Dacrey’s face.

  “Did I say anything about Longmire?” Dacrey sneered. “Tell your men to lay down their weapons and no one else will get hurt.”

  Redmond glanced at his men. They huddled together, some still with their longbows in hand. A dozen appeared to be seriously injured and others were spattered in blood. Jannik, the big redheaded Rosythian, stood at their forefront with his huge battlehammer clutched in his hands.

  Redmond’s men were sturdy bowmen drawn from all over the mainland and the Frei-Ock Islands to serve as mercenaries for the feuding barons and nobles of Morcia. But they had not been prepared for betrayal.

  “You’re surrounded,” Lord Dacrey said. “Baron Dragos doesn’t pay you enough to die to hold this little pass.”

  “And who is paying you now?” Redmond asked.

  Dacrey’s horse pranced sideways. “That’s none of your concern.”

  “It’s my concern,” Redmond replied, “when my men are betrayed by Baron Longmire’s own knights.”

  “Either surrender, or we’ll leave your bodies to the crows,” Dacrey said.

  “What guarantee do you give us?” Redmond demanded.

  He had grown weary of these squabbling barons and wished, yet again, that he had stayed in the Kingdom of Deira. At least there the nobles didn’t prey on each other like they did in Morcia. He certainly didn’t want to see his men die for no purpose. And he wondered how Dacrey had lured them out of the pass where they held an easily defensible position.

  “You can choose to fight a battle you cannot win, or you can spend a few weeks in leisure while we convince your baron to withdraw his claim to lands that are not his own.”

  Redmond knew full well these lands had been granted to the Baron of Longmire after the King had confiscated them from the Baron of Windemere.

  “Your baron?” Redmond repeated. “Then you admit you are forsworn? How can we trust a man who so recently sang a different tune?”

  “I will personally guarantee your safety,” Dacrey said, “and you may yet find more profitable employment.”

  Redmond scoffed. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m giving you a way out of an impossible situation,” Dacrey said. “Take it or leave it.”

  Redmond glanced at his men where they clustered on the other side of the bridge. Their position was untenable with the enemy both before and behind. They were exposed. There was no escape or redoubt to which they could retreat. If he didn’t surrender, he would be nothing more than a butcher.

  “Give us your word of honor spoken here before all these men,” Redmond said, “that you will spare the life of every man here and guarantee their freedom.”

  “Done,” Sir Dacrey said.

  “I want an oath,” Redmond insisted.

  Sir Dacrey removed his helmet. His dark hair spilled over his mail shirt. “I give you my word of honor, Captain Redmond, that you and your men will be spared and set free once this matter is settled.”

  Some of Redmond’s men dropped their weapons and raised their hands. What more could he do?

  Redmond set his bow on the grass and unbuckled his sword. As he raised his hands over his head, he remembered the boy he had left back at the rotten log. What would happen to Henry now? Should he tell Dacrey where Henry was hidden? If he did, Dacrey might simply re-enslave him. If he didn’t, the boy would likely starve out here on his own. Redmond glanced back up the road toward the pass. Henry crouched in the shadow of a boulder at the mouth of the canyon. The boy had followed him.

  Chapter 2


  A Shadow in the Dark

  Night settled over the hill country, bringing with it a cold drizzle that spat upon the men huddled in a tight group under the watchful eye of the guard. Redmond wriggled where he sat with his back to a rotten fence post to see if he could find relief from the pinch of the leather straps around his wrists. His men were no longer secured in a line but left to lounge on the soggy ground with their hands tied behind their backs. The groans of the injured floated through the night, but otherwise, they sat in grim silence. No fires could be lit in the steady downpour.

  Most of Dacrey’s army moved off after disarming Redmond’s men. They had tied their captives in a long line and forced them on the foot-bruising march to Windemere. By the grumbling of the guards and the way they drew their hoods up and hunched over against the rain, they weren’t enjoying the march much more than Redmond and his men. The guards couldn’t even seek shelter in the burned-out remains of the farmhouses that littered the valley. The destruction had been too complete.

  Redmond made sure he was on the far edge of his company as they settled in for the night. He noted the location of the guards and the timing of their movements. It would be a dark night without any moon. When the moment presented itself, he would slip free and disappear into the hills. If he could reach Baron Longmire’s men posted at the mouth of the Wolf River on the north end of Long Lake, he could lead them back to rescue his men before they reached the castle at Windemere. He would have preferred to seek the aid of the rest of his mercenary band posted farther south to protect the villages at the other end of the lake, but they were too far away.

  He might even find the boy, Henry, lurking in the darkness alone and scared. Redmond hadn’t said anything to Dacrey about the boy and hoped he wouldn’t find him. At least alone the boy had a chance of freedom. To leave the boy unprotected in the wild went against every inclination of Redmond’s nature. But what could he do? The lives of a hundred good men outweighed the life of one boy. Still, Redmond hoped Henry had found shelter. Maybe he had gone back to his hollow log.