The Vampire & Her Witch

”You want me to destroy their settlements?” The Clanless vampire said, scratching a furry eyebrow with the tip of one of his small, dexterous fingers that looked so incongruous on his large, bearish frame.

”It’s easier to burn a village to the ground in the summer when the thatch is dry and the streams are running low,” he said, thinking of the occasions over the years when he’d been forced to teach a lesson to smaller Eldritch settlements for picking on the Clanless trying to make their way to his manor. He’d learned long ago that dealing with them immediately might be the most satisfying, but choosing the right time could be far more devastating.

”No, we don’t care about the people or soldiers in the Hamlets,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head lightly. ”We want you to steal from them. Sheep, goats, cattle, chickens... In the dark of night, when the living are huddled around their fires and sheltering from the rain, we want you to empty their barns and coops, carrying away as much of their livestock as you can.”

”If you’re lucky, you may not need to fight at all,” Thane added. ”But if you do encounter the soldiers protecting these hamlets, you can expect as many as two dozen men under the command of one of the Dunns’ ’captains,’ men who are training to become knights if a position ever becomes available to them.”

”This, this is how you intend to solve the shortage in foodstuffs?” Jakob said, unable to hide his astonishment at such an underhanded move as the opening of their war. ”By stealing livestock from common folk?”

”Not just livestock,” Ashlynn said, tapping further south on the map around the Hanrahan Barony. ”The Dunns have spread themselves thin in order to raise more head of cattle than any other barony, and their herds of sheep produce more wool than anyone else in the march as well. That makes them an ideal target for small raids by irregulars, but men can’t feast on beef and mutton alone,” she pointed out.

”But Hanrahan Barony is lush with vast fields of wheat and barley,” Ashlynn added. ”And their farms produce dozens of other useful crops that fill up storehouses in their villages, waiting to be carted to Lothian City to be sold each market day. Commander Tausau, your Mongrel Horde won’t be very useful attacking those caravans of wagons hauling grain and produce because they move during the day, but the other irregular soldiers should be more than capable of overcoming a single knight and his escort.”

”My Lady,” Commander Bassinger interjected, pursing his lips together as he tried to imagine what these raids would look like for the soldiers carrying them out. ”We allowed the Dunns to keep the territory they claimed in the summer campaign. Even though we made them pay a price for it, they still built camps to hold the positions of several fallen villages. If Commander Tausau’s men have to detour around the Dunn’s advanced positions in order to conduct these raids, they may not be able to return to the Vale by sunrise.”

”We only need the Mongrel Horde to be present for the initial raid,” Ashlynn said smoothly. She didn’t intend to get so far into the details of their plan in this meeting when there was still so much to cover. They hadn’t even talked about the fourth person they needed to take on a leadership role yet and in her mind, these were questions that should be resolved between Lord General Thane and Commander Tausau, but since the question had been asked, she answered for the entire group.

”The vampires of the Mongrel Horde can withdraw once they’ve ensured that there are no soldiers in pursuit that could threaten the rest of the raid,” she added. ”We only need them to provide an overwhelming individual power during the moments of greatest danger.”

There were other reasons to use the Mongrel Horde as well. The Lothians and their vassals had been fighting the Vale for so long that they were accustomed to encountering the Horned Clan and the Clan of the Great Claw, or perhaps a few of the smaller clans from the outlying villages like the Nightweaver Clan or the Heartwood Clan. But Ashlynn and Nyrielle had brought warriors from clans that the humans had never fought before, and none were more visually terrifying than Tausau’s misshapen Mongrel Horde.

The appearance of such terrifying looking ’demons’ alone would be a shock to the defending soldiers and when it was paired with the unexpected strength that came with being Tausau’s progeny, Ashlynn was certain that it would provoke those who had studied their history or listened to the songs of old to remember tales of Nyrielle’s forty-seven progeny during what humans had called the War of Undying Demons.

If she could provoke the Lothian’s Vassals into thinking that new, unspeakable horrors were spilling forth from the Vale, that would make some of her next objectives even easier to achieve.

”Still,” Marshal Jakob added, frowning as he looked at the map. While he appreciated that Lady Ashlynn was trying to solve their immediate crisis, when he considered the logistics of pulling off such an ambitious raid, it felt like there were too many details that hadn’t been carefully considered. ”You’re talking about hundreds of heads of cattle, sheep, chickens... It’s going to be very noisy, and those beasts can be very skittish about strange smells. Many of them may be frightened the moment they catch the scent of Eldritch people, how will you...”

”Everyone, hold your questions,” Thane said, holding up a hand before the aging Marshal could further pick things apart. He appreciated the time that Lady Ashlynn had given him to recollect himself, but people like Jakob and Bassinger had yet to adapt to just how much Ashlynn had changed since she first entered the Vale. Perhaps if they’d seen the battle in the High Pass that Nyrielle had told him about, or if they’d spent more time with her in the days since her return, things would be easier for her, but for now, he allowed a trace of his power to seep into his voice as he chastised the Marshal.

”When you understand the fullness of our plan, then you may raise questions, but if you speak out of turn, you’ll only confuse matters. Lady Ashlynn,” he said, giving an artful bow from his chair. ”Please continue.”

Beside him, Nyrielle gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. There had been a time when she never would have tolerated questions like these. It would have been enough to tell people her intentions, and they could accept them or they could leave her service. She had no use for subordinates who would not follow orders.

Ashlynn, however, insisted that this method of building consensus would be important when they began to integrate more human leaders into their growing nation. While it was somewhat foreign to Nyrielle, the lessons Ashlynn received by watching her father hold court for many years were clearly useful, even among a mostly Eldritch audience, leaving Nyrielle with little to do other than sit back and watch her lover with pride as the young Mother of Trees used words and the logic of her arguments to sway the leaders in the room, without relying on her considerable strength to force anyone to bend to her will.

Still, if the resistance to her darling’s ideas grew too strong, Nyrielle thought as her fingers briefly lengthened into wickedly sharp claws, she wouldn’t hesitate to make her own position known... as forcefully as the situation required.