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“Nay,” Payton-Forrester shook his head. “There are too damn many of them.”

Paris searched and searched, straining to recognize the tiny men below. Then, suddenly, he froze. His blue eyes widened and utter disbelief filled him like a flood.

He could not believe what his eyes were telling him. It was too incredible. He gripped the side of the wall, leaning forward as if the action could make him see all the better. He sincerely thought he was hallucinating out of pure wishing.

It was a miracle.

A slow smile spread across his face. “My dear, sweet God,” he murmured.

“What is it?” Payton-Forrester demanded.

Paris let out an almost hysterical chuckle, sounding more like he was gasping for air. He chuckled again. Then he broke out in loud, happy bursts of laughter. “Lads, ’tis not only the king’s armies that have come to our aid, but the damn Wolf is leading them.”

Payton-Forrester and Brockenhurst almost fell off the wall trying to jockey for a better position to see precisely what Paris was talking about.

“Where is he?” Brockenhurst demanded.

Paris raised a gauntleted hand, pointing. “There, Stephen; astride the dark gray destrier, smack in the middle of the fight.”

Brockenhurst saw him. He smiled widely. Payton-Forrester caught sight of William as well.

“Paris, you said he was dead,” he gasped.

“I said he was dying,” Paris corrected him. “I could only assume that he had died since Kieran had held out so little hope.” He grinned down at the battlefield. “Jordan was right.”

“Jordan? His wife?” Payton-Forrester asked.

“Aye,” Paris replied. “She pulled him through just like she said she would.”

Brockenhurst stood back, crossing his arms confidently. “Well, lads, I say we notify the troops. Knowing The Wolf is fighting outside these very walls ought to boost moral tenfold. It should only be a matter of time before he breaks through the lines and sends those bastards back where they came from.”

The three men heartily agreed on that issue. “Take care of it, Stephen. I shall keep an eye on the fighting from here.”

And he did exactly that, his eyes never leaving William; not for a minute. He didn’t even care that he was grinning like an idiot.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The Scots were tired, as they well should have been. They had been fighting for nearly three weeks off and on; first at Langton and then at Northwood. William was having little difficulty dispatching them, since he was fresh. It seemed more to him like cutting wheat the way men were falling beneath his sword. At one point he even managed to pull one of the king’s knights aside and told him to send Northumbria and The Lyceum’s troops home; with three thousand fresh men to the fight, the Scots were as good as gone.

Northumbria pulled back and headed for home licking his wounds, but old Baron Harringham stayed on, hanging back in the trees and monitoring the fight. He had only five hundred men after the attack on his keep last year, but he had pledged the entire five hundred to aid Northwood when a frightened peasant came to his keep with a horrible story to tell. Besides, Harringham liked to see a good fight. And with the king’s troops involved, it promised to be entertaining.

The battle raged into the night. It began to rain terribly, drenching everyone until they were like soggy rags. But they kept going, sword on sword, dodging maces and arrows. William set up a line of Welsh archers that pounded the Scots mercilessly. He was trying to herd them away from the main gates as a dog herds sheep when, eventually, his efforts began to pay off.

Unfortunately, several hundred Scots had taken refuge in the outer bailey and he was having a devil of a time getting his own men in to flush them out. He didn’t want any of Northwood’s troops trying to remove them because that would have meant opening the only gate that separated Northwood from complete occupation. He preferred to keep the embattled allied troops safe in the inner bailey and allow him to worry about removing the Scots.

The war rampaged on into the wee morning hours. William managed to get several hundred troops into the outer bailey and began the process of driving the Scots out. He put Deinwald to monitoring the progress on the outer bailey while he and Kieran continued beating the hell out of the Scots outside the wall.

The rain had turned to sleet and was freezing up on their armor, making it as cold as hell, but they were sweating and clammy with the exertion of fighting. He knew the Scots were miserable, fighting in their hunting tartans or whatever other scraps of clothing they wore. A few of their knights wore armor and mail, but for the most part, the soldiers looked like peasants to him.

And they were unskilled, too. He was having little trouble when engaging them and usually managed a clean kill within a minute or so. It was almost as if the clans had gone into the villages to recruit men to fight, which they probably had.

When the pink-gold haze of dawn colored the eastern sky, the Scots began to break ranks and run north. The Scots in the outer bailey had been cleaned out, allowing the inner gates to be open for the first time in over two weeks. It took William a moment to realize he heard his name being chanted by the English troops pouring out through the inner gates.

He paused for a moment, listening to the chant and a chill running up his spine. God, how he had missed it. The armies were gushing out of the gates, swords in hand, helping chase off the Scots that had plagued them for so long. He recognized many of the men, men who were smiling and waving at him even as they chased after the Scots. They were so damn glad to see him that he had to smile.

William had come home again.

His knights were riding out to greet him. He recognized the destriers and thereby identified the heavily armored men. Michael, Corin, Marc, Jason and Ranulf. Paris, Lewis and Adam were missing.