Shield of Kronos Read online

  SHIELD OF KRONOS

  A Medieval Romance

  Great Knights of de Moray series

  By Kathryn Le Veque

  © Copyright 2017 by Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.

  Kindle Edition

  Text by Kathryn Le Veque

  Cover by Kim Killion

  Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited.

  All Rights Reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for you and given as a gift for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If this book was purchased on any unauthorized platform, then it is a pirated and/or unauthorized copy and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do not purchase or accept pirated copies. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work.

  Kathryn Le Veque Novels

  Medieval Romance:

  The de Russe Legacy:

  The White Lord of Wellesbourne

  The Dark One: Dark Knight

  Beast

  Lord of War: Black Angel

  The Iron Knight

  The de Lohr Dynasty:

  While Angels Slept (Lords of East Anglia)

  Rise of the Defender

  Steelheart

  Spectre of the Sword

  Archangel

  Unending Love

  Shadowmoor

  Silversword

  Great Lords of le Bec:

  Great Protector

  To the Lady Born (House of de Royans)

  Lord of Winter (Lords of de Royans)

  Lords of Eire:

  The Darkland (Master Knights of Connaught)

  Black Sword

  Echoes of Ancient Dreams (time travel)

  De Wolfe Pack Series:

  The Wolfe

  Serpent

  Scorpion (Saxon Lords of Hage – Also related to The Questing)

  The Lion of the North

  Walls of Babylon

  Dark Destroyer

  Nighthawk

  Warwolfe

  ShadowWolfe

  Ancient Kings of Anglecynn:

  The Whispering Night

  Netherworld

  Battle Lords of de Velt:

  The Dark Lord

  Devil’s Dominion

  Reign of the House of de Winter:

  Lespada

  Swords and Shields (also related to The Questing, While Angels Slept)

  De Reyne Domination:

  Guardian of Darkness

  The Fallen One (part of Dragonblade Series)

  With Dreams Only of You

  Unrelated characters or family groups:

  The Gorgon (Also related to Lords of Thunder)

  The Warrior Poet (St. John and de Gare)

  Tender is the Knight (House of d’Vant)

  Lord of Light

  The Questing (related to The Dark Lord, Scorpion)

  The Legend (House of Summerlin)

  The Dragonblade Series: (Great Marcher Lords of de Lara)

  Dragonblade

  Island of Glass (House of St. Hever)

  The Savage Curtain (Lords of Pembury)

  The Fallen One (De Reyne Domination)

  Fragments of Grace (House of St. Hever)

  Lord of the Shadows

  Queen of Lost Stars (House of St. Hever)

  Lords of Thunder: The de Shera Brotherhood Trilogy

  The Thunder Lord

  The Thunder Warrior

  The Thunder Knight

  The Great Knights of de Moray:

  Shield of Kronos

  Highland Warriors of Munro:

  The Red Lion

  Deep Into Darkness

  The House of Ashbourne:

  Upon a Midnight Dream

  The House of D’Aurilliac:

  Valiant Chaos

  The House of De Nerra:

  The Falls of Erith

  Vestiges of Valor

  The House of De Dere:

  Of Love and Legend

  Time Travel Romance: (Saxon Lords of Hage)

  The Crusader

  Kingdom Come

  Contemporary Romance:

  Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Series:

  Valley of the Shadow

  The Eden Factor

  Canyon of the Sphinx

  The American Heroes Series:

  The Lucius Robe

  Fires of Autumn

  Evenshade

  Sea of Dreams

  Purgatory

  Other Contemporary Romance:

  Lady of Heaven

  Darkling, I Listen

  In the Dreaming Hour

  Sons of Poseidon:

  The Immortal Sea

  Multi-author Collections/Anthologies:

  Sirens of the Northern Seas (Viking romance)

  Note: All Kathryn’s novels are designed to be read as stand-alones, although many have cross-over characters or cross-over family groups. Novels that are grouped together have related characters or family groups.

  Series are clearly marked. All series contain the same characters or family groups except the American Heroes Series, which is an anthology with unrelated characters.

  There is NO particular chronological order for any of the novels because they can all be read as stand-alones, even the series.

  For more information, find it in A Reader’s Guide to the Medieval World of Le Veque.

  Author’s Note

  A good, old-fashioned damsel in distress book!

  That’s what I really wanted this book to be – a lady who is in a really bad spot, saved by a man who has fallen for her – in this case, Garret de Moray. I’m not a fan of the insta-love trope, where heroes and heroines fall in love at first sight, but sometimes that’s just the way things happen. Sometimes you just look at someone and know that’s the “one”. This book takes place over just a few days, but MAN… what a few days!

  And about Garret… as the father of Bose de Moray (THE GORGON), you just know he had to be the consummate knight. Straight-laced, chivalrous, imposing… everything his son is. When I was writing THE GORGON, I never really talked about Garret other than to mention his name, but there is a conversation between Bose and his cousin, Dag, where Dag mentions that Garret was “as cold as new snow”. Bose defends his father and says the man simply knew how to control his emotions better than most. So, now we get to know Garret de Moray and find out that he’s really not cold at all. He’s just one of those guys who has a serious personality and has a good poker face.

  You’ll catch a glimpse of old friends in this novel, namely Christopher de Lohr. This book takes place about four years after RISE OF THE DEFENDER (Christopher’s novel), so both he and his brother, David, are in the first few years of their marriages in this book. Gart Forbes, Rhys du Bois, Anthony de Velt, and a few more of Christopher’s crew make an appearance in this book, however brief. Even so, it was fun to write about them again. It always is!

  Name pronunciations in this book: while most names are “normal”, there is one name that is a little different—Jago. It’s pronounced “EE-ah-go”. It was a fairly common name in Medieval times but not something we really see today. Rickard is another common Medieval name and is pronounced “REE-card” (if you can roll your ‘r’s, even better). “Lyssa” is pronounced “Liss-uh�
��.

  Lastly, there is no epilogue to this book because I really didn’t think it needed one. I thought the ending was just so sweet and satisfying that an epilogue might actually dilute the powerful message of it. And I think you’re going to love it without one. At least, I hope so.

  So, sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy Garret and Lyssa’s story!

  Hugs,

  Kathryn

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Kathryn Le Veque Novels

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About Kathryn Le Veque

  PROLOGUE

  The Levant

  8 September 1191 A.D.

  Six miles east of Arsuf

  It is a night made of diamonds, he thought.

  On a moonlit night like this, one could see the agelessness of the land, a primordial verve that implied a sense of passing through space and time and history. There was no present, no past, and no future – simply the moment at hand, a weightless awareness of being. The moon overhead was a brilliant silver disc, bathing the land in a ghostly glow, and the stars above seemed to cower to the brilliance of the celestial body.

  The air was warm, blowing off the desert’s sands that had seen heat on this day hot enough to fry a man’s skin and burn him to the bone. England didn’t have heat like this, so searing and dry that it laid everything to waste. It had, therefore, been an adjustment for the English armies when they had first arrived with their king, Richard, two months ago in the heat of the summer. But they’d quickly adapted and quickly learned how to cope, purely from necessity.

  It was either that or die.

  In fact, it had been an adjustment for all of the pale French and English and Teutonic knights who now looked more like tanned leather because it was impractical to wear their heavy armor most of the time, which left their virgin white skin open to the blazing sun. Men were sick from sun exposure almost more than they were sick from the myriad of diseases running rampant among the Christian forces, while the Muslim armies sat back and laughed at their misery.

  Foolish Crusaders. Allah will punish them.

  Truth was, the Christian armies didn’t have to wait for Allah to punish them because God was already doing a fairly good job of it. If it wasn’t disease or battle that killed them, then surely the subversion and infighting would, which was how the knight in question, the one musing about the diamond sky and feeling the warm wind on his face, found himself on the rocky sands of the desert on this night admiring the moon above.

  He was hunting.

  Alfaar, the native guides called his prey. The Rat. A cousin to King Richard, Jago de Nantes was the son of Geoffrey of Nantes. Geoffrey was the younger brother of Richard’s father, Henry. Geoffrey of Nantes had never married but he’d had a son with a washerwoman’s daughter and when Geoffrey died, the mother brought her son to King Henry and demanded the boy receive his due. Unwilling to deny his brother’s blood, even if the child had inherited all of his mother’s stupidity and none of his father’s royal blood, he’d given the boy a dukedom simply to ease his guilt in a royal bastard. Popular rumor said Alfaar had been given a dukedom somewhere, Colchester it was said, but no one referred to him by his title. Everyone simply called him Alfaar.

  And it was Alfaar that Sir Garret de Moray was hunting this night. Garret was an older knight as far as age went – well into his mid-thirties when most knights that had come to the sands of The Levant were young and seeking glory. Garret, too, was seeking some glory because he had an older brother who would inherit everything from their father, so Garret needed to earn his way in life. He’d spent his life in service of then-Prince Richard, now King Richard, and he’d earned the trust and admiration of the man. He’d worked hard for it and he knew that, someday, he would reap the rewards. But between him and the rewards were several dirty dealings he’d had to attend to over the years, this being one of them.

  Hunting down a duke who seemed to think he was free to do as he wished.

  Alfaar had gone off again in search of blood or glory, or both, and Richard had asked Garret to find the man before he either got himself killed or somehow stirred up more trouble. He seemed to be particularly good at that. Alfaar didn’t seem to realize that orders from the king pertained to him, being that the king was his cousin, so he often went out on his own, taking his men with him, to raid villages, steal, or simply massacre people. That seemed to be his idea of glory in The Levant.

  On this night, Alfaar had gone off with a few of his men, but those men had returned without him. That was concerning and Richard cornered one of his cousin’s dirty, shifty soldiers only to discover that the duke had a plan to exact revenge against the Templars, who were also fighting in the mass of Christian armies. They were loners, for the most part, and wielded a sword fiercely in the name of Christendom. But there was history between Alfaar and the Templars – the story that Richard heard was that one or more of the Templars had evidently stolen from Alfaar, and the Plantagenet cousin had a vendetta against them.

  In truth, there had probably been no stealing involved; Alfaar was a liar among his many attributes, so Richard had quietly asked Garret and another knight to track the man down and see what he was up to. He’d even give Garret permission to arrest his cousin, which surprised Garret. He’d never been given that order before, but it certainly made Garret’s job easier. There might even be a little beating involved with that arrest, simply to derive more satisfaction from it.

  He wasn’t beyond that.

  So, Garret and another knight, his close friend Sir David de Lohr, began to follow the clues given by Alfaar’s men. Since it was revenge he sought against the Templars, their first order of business was going to the Templar encampment. The holy order gave Garret and David their full cooperation as they searched for Alfaar. Instead of finding Alfaar, they came across a Templar knight who had been ambushed. The man’s weapons and horse had been stolen in the attack. It didn’t take a great intellect to figure out what had happened, so Garret and David followed the stolen horse’s trail out across the sands on so brilliant a night, it was an easy trail to follow. It seemed as if Alfaar had no intention of covering his tracks. Out into the desert they went, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, in search of the English king’s foolish cousin.

  After an hour’s ride, the horse’s trail got mixed up with many other prints in the sand that Garret thought were the footprint of several men. Stranger still, they thought they heard voices echoing off the hills. David, a powerful knight whose brother, Christopher, was King Richard’s champion, pulled his silver steed to a halt. The desert wind blew all around them, caressing their sunburnt faces.

  “Do you hear that?” David asked. “It sounds as if someone is speaking.”

  Garret could hear it, too. It was rather ghostly, carried upon the wind as it was. “I hear it,” he muttered. Onyx-black eyes scanned the nightscape, trying to determine where the sound was coming from. “It is echoing from the hills.”

  David agreed. They both knew this land; to the east of Arsuf, it was mostly desolate, with hills and the occasional oasis. The dirt was red and rocky, dotted with clusters of thorny trees or bushes. Further east, these gentle hills would become jagged, rocky monuments with great valleys between them. But here, just a few miles east of Arsuf, there was still some hin
t of life.

  Still, these were dangerous lands.

  “They could be coming from anywhere,” Garret said, reining his horse closer to David so he could speak quietly and not be heard. “I would suggest we split up; I will head to the north and you go south. Be careful that you are not seen, for these are not hospitable lands. If you find the idiot, de Nantes, then come and find me. Do not engage him alone.”

  He had to add that at the end – do not engage him alone. David was young and brilliant and excitable, and Garret had been a calming and mentoring influence to David and his brother and their group of friends. There were several younger knights, all of them splendid in every aspect, but they had a habit of being quite rash at times, which is why Garret had been unofficially appointed their master. The knight with the black eyes and the unflappable demeanor had been a model for the younger men to follow.

  “So the great Father of the Gods has spoken,” David said with some sarcasm, knowing very well he was planning on not doing as he’d been instructed. He sought to deflect the attention off of his plans. “You think you know my mind. What makes you think I am going to engage Alfaar without you?”

  “Because I know you too well, David.”

  David glanced at him, his eyes narrowing. “Tell me truthfully, de Moray. Can you really read minds?”

  “I can read the minds of impetuous young knights.”

  “Are you really immortal, then?”

  Garret sat back on his horse, eyeing David with some annoyance now. “Christ, not that again.”

  David grinned, flashing that bright de Lohr smile, evident even in the moonlight. “Men say your wisdom is ancient, your skills unsurpassed,” he teased, mostly because it was the only thing that ever got a rise out of the stoic de Moray. “Some say you can even divine the future.”

  “If I could divine the future, do you truly think I would be here in the Holy Land with you and your ridiculous friends?”

  David laughed softly. “You are an ancient warrior from eons past,” he said rather dramatically. “Everyone says so. Your eyes are so black that you have no soul.”

  Garret sighed with great irritation. “If that is true, then I would behave myself if I were you. You never know when the demon will arise.”