Dark Destroyer Read Free Page B

Therefore, Jasper knew what it was to fight for the crown and to provide the king with what was necessary in order to advance his cause, one way or the other.
    The latest cause had been France but, then again, France had been a cause since before he was born. It was the continuous cause as far as Jasper was concerned and the need to claim regions of France for England had drained coffers all across the country. But, as one of the king’s most powerful warlords, Jasper could not refuse the request for coinage or manpower, and he had often supplied both.
    As Lord of the Trilaterals – three castles along the Welsh Marches that maintained the volatile border between Craven Arms to the south and Welshpool to the north, the House of de Lara commanded a good deal of power. Edward leaned heavily upon it while Jasper, not unlike his father before him, was increasingly disillusioned about the crown and its agenda across the sea. Money and men were contributed with no real results. Stagnation made for cynicism.
    But that disillusionment had seen some relief since the return of Jasper’s army from France and the news of a major English victory. He’d only lost three hundred men and, after the story relayed to him by his commanders – Gates de Wolfe, Alexander de Lohr, Tobias Aston, and Stephan d’Avignon – Jasper thought that his losses were rather low considering what they had faced back in September near the town of Poitiers. The English had triumphed against superior French forces and even now, three weeks after the return of his army, Jasper forced his men to tell him nightly of the Battle of Poitiers so that Jasper didn’t miss any of the details. Every night, he learned something new from a different perspective. He knew his knights were growing weary of repeating the tale constantly, but Jasper would continue to demand the stories until he was satisfied.
    And tonight would be no different. Jasper, his household, and his army were in shelter at Hyssington Castle, the biggest of his three holdings along the Welsh Marches, mostly because winters here seemed to be less severe than at the mountainous Trelystan Castle, which was the biggest of the three, or Caradoc Castle, the smallest of the three and also the one that was the most difficult to reach through a rocky pass. If the pass got snowed in, they would be stuck there until the thaw, which was an unpleasant thought. Therefore, the de Laras always wintered at Hyssington as she sat atop a gentle slope surrounded by a somewhat flat valley. The view was for miles all around, now a great white landscape that glistened magically under the rarity of sunlight.
    But being sequestered at Hyssington made for crowded conditions with the returning army crammed in with the rest of the de Lara subjects. Hyssington had a single-storied troop house, a three-storied keep that was squat and large, plus a gatehouse that also had living quarters in it. It was three-storied as well, larger than the keep, and had one room on each side on the second floor, with the portcullis in between, and then the top floor had four big chambers that also included murder holes in one of the rooms. Soldiers mostly used those holes for a garderobe, which Lady de Lara tried to discourage because she didn’t like human waste pouring out right at the entrance to the gatehouse where it could be tracked all over the castle. In fact, she had been known to yell at men for such a thing.
    The great hall of Hyssington was a massive structure that could easily hold eight hundred men or more and these days, in the midst of the snowy winter, it slept hundreds while across the bailey, the troop house contained those who weren’t sleeping in the hall. On this evening well after sunset, the great hall was full of men and smoke, with not one but two hearths, at opposite sides of the hall, billowing out heat and flame and smoke in an attempt to stave off the cold winter’s night.
    Gates was coming from the gatehouse where he