Warwolfe (de Wolfe Pack Book 0)(34)

It was unhappy news, indeed. It wasn’t as if Ghislaine could have stopped Alary had she been here, but to run off while she was away seemed underhanded somehow. Still, she was astute enough to realize that there was an unspoken question hanging in the air between her and her men at the moment – the fact that she had gone missing for quite some time. Yet, she was not troubled by it. The answer was on the ground at her feet.

“My brother is a fool,” she said, her disgust real. “Had he only waited, I would have had another Norman captive. Did he think I had run off? He knows me better than that.” She started to look around, realizing that there weren’t as many men around as there had been the night before. In fact, the area seemed rather empty and her disgust turned to puzzlement. “Where did everyone go? Has everyone fled for home?”

The men were looking around because she was. “Most,” the man with the dirty hair said. “Lord Leofwine’s men departed before the sun rose to return home to his wife in Kent. And everyone else… there is no reason to remain, my lady. It is best to return home and brace for what is to come.”

Ghislaine looked at the man. He was young and she could hear the fear in his voice. He’d suffered through the worst of the battle, just as they all had. It made the situation a bit more heady for her, a bit more sad. Beyond her scheming to have the Normans kill Alary lay the very real defeat of the Anglo-Saxon army and the destruction of her people.

And there was nothing any of them could do to stop it.

“It is the Normans that will come,” she said, feeling somewhat hollow and depressed even as she said it. “The Normans are already here.”

“Aye, my lady.”

“And my brother… he had fled them.”

“Aye, my lady.”

She cast him a sidelong glance. “I would assume that Alary is returning to Tenebris?”

The man shook his head. “He did not say.”

Ghislaine sighed faintly, her thoughts moving from the defeated army to her brother’s departure. It was what she had feared but honestly hadn’t believed would happen, at least not until tomorrow. She had believed they had time before he left the encampment but she’d been wrong.

“Alary had many wounded,” she said, looking back over to the east, through a debris field of cold fires and the remnants of makeshift camps. “You said he took those who could move with him? What about his wounded?”

The man pointed off to the east. “He left them,” he said grimly. “They are over beyond that row of trees. Brothers from the small priory at Winchelsea have come to take them back to the priory for tending.”

So much hopelessness in the dead, the wounded, and the departed. Looking out over the makeshift encampment was like looking at a graveyard. Ghislaine couldn’t help but feel more grief. This was what was left of her people, her country. It would never be the same again. But her focus soon moved to the men who were standing around her, men that were loyal to her, men waiting for her orders. While others had fled, they had remained. She knew they were waiting for direction from her and she took a deep breath, summoning the bravery that she was known for. She couldn’t let her men down.

“Wytig, have the men pack what possessions they have,” she said. “We will go back to Tamworth Castle. Edwin will want to know what has happened and he will want to hear it from us.”

Wytig, the young man with the dirty hair, nodded. “Aye, my lady,” he said. Other men had heard the order and they were already starting to move, to collect what little they had in preparation for going home, but Wytig was looking at the prisoner beneath Ghislaine’s foot. “What of him? Do we take him?”

Ghislaine looked down at the priest. It reminded her that she needed to return to de Wolfe and tell him what had happened. Taking her foot off of the priest’s head, she yanked the man to his feet.

“Nay,” she said. “I will do what needs to be done with him. Gather the men and, once they are ready, go. I will catch up to you.”

Wytig nodded and turned to the dirty, beaten Anglo-Saxons, encouraging them to gather their possessions. As the men prepared to depart, Ghislaine put her knife in Jathan’s back and turned him back in the direction they had come.

“Go,” she barked.

Her men heard her, watching as she marched the prisoner back towards the trees in the distance. They all assumed that their lady was going to execute the prisoner but no one wanted to interfere. Ghislaine of Mercia could be rather unpredictable and deadly, especially when questioned, so they returned to their task and continued gathering their possessions for the march home. It was time to leave this place of defeat and destruction, and there wasn’t one man who wasn’t eager to do so.

But she wasn’t going to execute the prisoner. She was going to tell de Wolfe that Kristoph had already been taken away. Alary’s departure had been unexpected but he was only a few hours ahead of them, at most. Moreover, most of his men were on foot so it would be slow travel for the most part, time enough for Normans on horseback to catch him. Even if Alary had two hundred men, nine Norman knights on horseback could do a good deal of damage, especially if they first removed Alary with the same arrow de Wolfe had threatened her with should she betray them. Once Alary was dead, his men would be leaderless and it would make it very easy to take back their comrade and depart.

At least, that was her theory, one that Ghislaine wouldn’t hesitate to put to de Wolfe when she told him that her brother had left and had taken de Lohr with him. Alary of Mercia would be no match for angry Norman knights who wanted their friend back.