WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations by Kathryn Veque (reading an ebook txt) 📕

he sat heavily in a chair next to a big cluttered table. “What’s this about my daughter? And know that I am only speaking to you because of my respect for you as a physic and the fact that you have tended to my men on occasion. Were you anyone else, I would have thrown you from the walls myself.”

Harman wasn’t intimidated. If the de Soulis bastards couldn’t frighten him, Merek de Leia certainly couldn’t.

“My lord, I will come to the point,” he said. “I had a disturbing visit recently by John and Nicholas de Soulis. They were asking me if I had delivered a child this past spring at Falstone Castle, specifically, from your daughter. I told them that I had not. Now, let me state that I pass no judgment upon your daughter or upon your family. It is none of my affair. But Nicholas and John want that infant. And they want your daughter, too. Is she here?”

Merek stared at him a moment before his features contorted with confusion. “Want them?” he repeated. “Want them for what?”

Harman could see that Merek wasn’t taking the situation seriously. Whether it was confusion or lack of caring, he couldn’t be sure. “My lord, I must impress upon you the seriousness of what I am about to tell you. I overheard them speaking of getting their hands on the infant your daughter delivered to fulfill some sort of prophesy. I do not know what it is, but they want the child and they want your daughter. If it is de Soulis, you know it can only be for unspeakable things. You must protect your daughter and the babe from them. They plan to have me smuggle the child out of Falstone and give it over to them, but I will not do it. That means I need your protection. My wife and I must come to Falstone. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

Merek blinked slowly, clearly in disbelief. “My God,” he finally muttered. “It really was them.”

Harman was watching the man closely. “What do you mean?”

Merek glanced at him with some suspicion, but that stance quickly faded. He stood up, running his hand over his bald head, his features twisting with disbelief.

“They told her not to speak of the incident, but she did,” he mumbled. “She did not listen. She even drew the brand she’d seen on one of the horses. I knew it was them all along.”

Harman was becoming puzzled. “Are you speaking of the men who abducted your daughter from Deadwater?”

Pain rippled across Merek’s face. “Aye.”

Harman knew that, too. The entire village knew it after the brand Lady Gavriella had drawn had been circulated, mostly to warn the villagers that the House of de Soulis was on the prowl again. In years past, they’d been known to burn, loot, pillage, and rape, but those incidents had died down for a while.

It was a genuine fear that they might be resuming their harassment.

Harman prayed not.

“My lord, when it happened, why did you not summon the Constable of the North?” he asked. “Why not punish de Soulis for what they did?”

Merek looked at him in anger. Then defeat. That defeat moved on to confusion. “You would not understand.”

“I understand that your daughter was attacked,” he said quietly. “But I also understand that you did nothing about it. Why?”

Merek suddenly slammed a fist against the table, rattling everything upon it. “You will not judge me,” he boomed. “My daughter bears the shame of that attack, not de Soulis. It is my daughter who shamed the House of de Leia and summoning the constable to punish de Soulis? It would be useless. The House of de Wolfe is caught up in the troubles on the borders right now and this would be considered a personal matter, so I would plead my case, which everyone would hear, only to be denied.”

Harman didn’t agree with him. “Then you do nothing to help her?”

Merek glared at him, teeth clenched. “To help her is to let this incident fade away as if it never happened,” he growled. “To help her is to let this lie. It will be forgotten, eventually.”

“But you have an army…”

“I have an army of eight hundred men,” he shouted like a man who had wrestled with this exact question too many times to count. “I cannot take Hell’s Guardhouse with only eight hundred men. It would be futile and I would lose many men in the attempt. What happened to my daughter was… unfortunate. Of course I am outraged. But I am outraged that she allowed it to happen and to punish de Soulis would mean starting a war with him that I cannot win. And he knows it.”

Harman was at a loss. He simply couldn’t understand the man’s perspective of his daughter’s participation in an attack. “My lord, I do not believe your daughter allowed anything to happen,” he said. “I was told there were several men who abducted her from the village. She had no control. But is certain that de Soulis knows about the child and now he wants it. Mayhap he even did this deliberately. Even if you will not seek vengeance for what has happened to your daughter, surely you will not let them take her or the child.”

Merek seemed to calm unnaturally fast, but he still looked like a man who was struggling with the weight of the world on his shoulders. “She is not here,” he said, sounded exhausted. “The child is not here. I have sent them both away so there is nothing to be concerned with. They are gone and this situation shall pass. It will be forgotten. Things like this always are.”

Harman though that Merek was relying quite a bit on the hope that the situation would just go away by itself. But given what he had heard from the de Soulis father and son, he wasn’t so certain that was the case.

He just wasn’t sure what more he could say.

“I