Chapter 1: Unto The Breach

The siege-fires burnished a halo in the night sky over Harfleur, Silhouetting the broken city walls and the dead and dying men upon them. Within those walls, the sounds of battle still echoed through the streets as Englishmen ranged through the cobbled streets looking for the loot that would fill their pockets about that which the young King Henry promised.

Sir Edward de Valence lifted his visor as he rode through the narrow streets littered with the bodies of the dead and dying, careful to make sure that the injured of the enemy would not fight again. The ranks had broken and the raping of the port of Harfleur had begun in earnest. He had even dismissed his own men so that they could loot their share. He had another mission in mind.

The House of D'Astier was where he had remembered it on the street of wine merchants. Phillip D'Astier was a name that many a merchant of the grape envied and hated. His methods were mercenary and cruel and his silver graced many an official's hand. His cogs doubled as privateers. His gold could buy death.

And it had.

Edward's young son, Bruce, had perished in France while there on business. Edward's gold bought him the information he needed to know: Phillip D'Astier may not have held the dagger, but he had paid for it.

And now he would pay for it again.

The door to the two-story dwelling was broken down. As Edward dismounted, he could hear the cries of rage and agony within. He gathered his battleaxe and stepped through the darkened doorway.

Inside the small corridor, he found two of D'Astiers' hired men lying dead in dark pools of blood. The face of one had been crushed and from the ruins of his face, protruding teeth gave Edward an unsavory grin. The other lay entwined in his own glistening bowels. The small corridor had open doors to either side, one had a bright light that spilled out of it and lit the men's remains.

Edward quickly glanced in there, seeing the ruins of a kitchen. The other doorway opened to the main hall with it's dying embers on the hearth and upset furniture. Another two bodies lay sprawled over the wreckage, none of which Edward recognized.

The cries of anguish could be heard coming from the solar. Readying his axe, Edward rushed toward it across the great hall to the narrow doorway from which he heard the clatter.

Entering the room, Edward could see the flames starting to engulf the far side of the room and silhouetted against the inferno were three men and a woman. All three had stripped the young maiden and had tied her spread upon a rough table. By the gargoyle grins and laughs of these rough men of England, they had had their pleasure and now left the girl to be consumed by the hungry fingers of flame that were quickly spreading over tapestries and beams.

These men did not know what fortune lay tied before them.

Nor did they know that fortune would turn upon them.

The first man, still trying to tie one of his leggings, glanced up to see his life vanish in a single blink. Edward's blade swung upwards, catching underneath the roughs' chin and in a wide arc, shaving off most of the man's face, his scream gurgling though his blood. The second, frozen with inaction as his mind still tried to puzzle what was happening, could only let out a strangled cry of horror as Edward's axe buried itself into the man's soft belly. The force of the blow sent the wretch teetering nearly in half into the growing flames.

The third man had his fellows to thank for the few moments it took to arm himself. He was a nasty fellow with bulbous nose and teeth like broken puss-colored stumps. Crouched and armed with a well-worn sword, his eyes had a madman's yellow gleam.

"She's 'ur's if'n you want," he spat, smiling, "I's done 'er."

Edward remained silent and stepped toward the soldier, axe glinting red in the growing firelight.

The rough giggled a bit, and tried to step away from the metal-clad nightmare that had interrupted his fun. If he could win, he could still relish the screams and sizzling skin of the girl as his precious flames licked at her sex. That was all he really wanted.

A beam snapped under the caress of the flame, sending a firefly shower of embers over the two. The rough shrieked as the sparks landed in his hair seconds before the edge of Edward's axe. The blade cleft the rough's skull with a wet crack and stuck there. The haft of the axe had split with Edward's effort.

The fire had spread to engulf two walls of the small room. Hot plaster chunks rained down. The comedy of Dante could compare well but Edward did not seem to notice, his mind locked onto the maiden tied to the table before him.

Her nude figure was like molten bronze in the firelight. Her eyes wide and dark, her cloth-gagged lips as rose petals, her neck slight and graceful. The soft curves of her full breasts seemed to plead for his touch. Her belly was as smooth and as flat as a stream-polished stone and her quim was cloaked with a wonderful dark-furred patch. Her legs were long and lithe and his desire for the daughter of D'Astier flared as she still tried to struggle in her tethers and scream into her gag.

Drawing a dagger, Edward slit the cords binding her ankles to each of the tables' legs, then pinning them together, cinched them tight. At the head of the table, he did the same to her wrists, twisting them until they were pinned behind the maid's back. Even as helpless as she was, the bitch-child of D'Astier continued to struggle and fight as if she wanted to perish in the fire.