The Vampire & Her Witch

”Thank you, Lord General,” Ashlynn said with a warm smile for Thane before she surveyed the other leaders gathered around the table. Savis seemed to be recovering from his earlier clash with Thane and was looking at the map as if it were a side of beef, ready to be carved up into choice targets that he would be able to sink his claws into. Tausau, sitting next to him, had been very attentive, listening to the plan as Ashlynn unfolded it and committing each piece to memory.

Several of the people around the table who knew Ashlynn the best were waiting to learn their own roles to play in what was to come. Zedya knew that these opening moves weren’t the right place for her to contribute, though she wondered if her Lenny would be called to assist with Tausau’s Mongrels. As a veteran captain, he could be useful in coordinating, while a low-risk hunt might also be ideal for the new vampire to exercise his newly awakened powers.

Silently, Zedya made a mental note to speak with Ashlynn and Thane about it if neither of them brought up a need for Lenny in this opening phase of the war. She didn’t expect that they would neglect him deliberately, but if they thought he needed to train in the Vale the way Ashlynn seemed to intend on training her witches, Zedya was willing to speak up for something different for her progeny. After all, though she hated to see him face danger, she hated the idea of him going into battle with dull fangs that hadn’t been honed in the hunt even more.

Of everyone gathered at the table, however, Ollie looked the most uncomfortable, shifting nervously in his chair and appearing at several moments as though he wanted to speak but held himself back instead.

”Ollie?” Ashlynn asked before she resumed her explanation. ”You seem troubled by something.”

”Mother Ashlynn,” Ollie said, sitting up straight in his chair and struggling to choose his words with exceptional care. During his trial to become the Cypress Witch, he’d been haunted by a nightmarish sun that burned in the night sky, destroying crops and slowly starving his people to death. Now that it seemed like Ashlynn was about to inflict the same cruelty on their enemies, he found it difficult to accept such a cruel form of warfare, even if it was needed to fill the bellies of their own people.

”This isn’t so much a question about the plan. I understand what we’re hoping to achieve and why, and I believe that we’ll be able to succeed,” he began, wanting to distance himself from the older men in the room who seemed to question the viability of Ashlynn’s plan.

”But, what will happen to the common folk in the baronies?” Ollie asked hesitantly as all eyes in the room gathered on one of the youngest men present. Of everyone attending the meeting, only Hauke was younger, and the future Frost Walker lord had already worked to diminish his presence as an observer rather than a participant, leaving Ollie as the youngest person here with a right to speak.

”Are we condemning the farmers, the servants, and tradesmen of the baronnies to a slow death this winter in order to feed ourselves?”

Just asking the question, particularly phrased the way it was, felt like a test of his virtue of courage as he felt the weight of everyone’s gaze. Savis’s golden eyes and raised brow seemed to be silently asking Ollie if he was concerned about stepping on ants, while Marshal Jakob seemed to nod a bit too eagerly, as if he had found an unexpected ally in the conversation. It was the burst of hostility from the seat directly next to his, however, which put the most pressure on the young knight.

”Those common folk include the common soldiers who drove hundreds of villagers from their homes this summer,” Virve pointed out, tapping loudly on the table with the sharp tip of a claw. ”Even the farmers are grazing their cattle on lands that once belonged to our clansmen and neighbors, little more than a hundred years ago. If they suffer for choosing to settle on stolen land, why should we be bothered by it?” the Oak Witch said bitterly.

”Many of those people were born there,” Ollie countered. ”Their grandparents or great-grandparents stole those lands, but the people born into life as bondsmen on those farms had no more choice in their futures than I had when I was born into service in Lothian Manor. The most I could do was choose my vocation, but leaving was out of the question.”

”And yet here you sit,” Virve pointed out. ”When the choice was upon you, you made the right one. Why shouldn’t we hold them accountable for refusing the opportunities that came their way to do the right thing instead of helping the Lothian dogs to devour even more of our people’s lands...”

Around the table several people shifted awkwardly, particularly as a dull, russet energy seemed to gather around the edges of Virve’s claws as her temper flared even hotter. Hauke’s horn began to glow with a faint ice blue radiance as the young lord debated whether or not he should create a barrier between the two new witches while across the table, Savis leaned forward as if he was anticipating an explosive display that would reveal which of these two members of Ashlynn’s coven possessed the strength to back up their words.

”Virve, Ollie,” Ashlynn said sharply, holding up a hand and letting a trickle of power carry a soothing scent of earthen softness, like the smell of the forest at night, to calm the tension in the air before the argument between the two witches grew even more heated. ”I understand your perspectives, but this is a plan that aims to achieve many things at once, and in order to obtain all of our objectives, we need to wage a war that will be felt by everyone in the neighboring baronnies, not just the knights and lords who could cower behind their walls in their manors.”

”Obtaining more food for the winter to come is an important goal,” Ashlynn acknowledged. ”But it’s far from the only one. The way everyone else in the March will react to our attack is almost more important than the immediate gains of food for the winter.”

”Never forget who our real enemy is,” Nyrielle added from the head of the table. ”The Lothians and the Church are the ones directing the men at the front lines, and even they have masters who they answer to in even more distant lands.”

”Think of them like rows of tiles, all standing on end,” Ashlynn said. ”Push the first one over gently and it will fall alone without disturbing any of the others. Hit it hard enough and it will tumble into another tile, prompting that one to fall as well. But hit it too hard and you’ll knock over tiles you aren’t ready to deal with yet.”

”What we’re trying to do,” Ashlynn explained. ”Is to use our attacks against the western barons to provoke the Lothians and the local Church officials, without alarming the King in the royal capital or the Saint in the Holy City. Ollie, I know you dislike harming the common people,” she said gently. ”I don’t like it either. That’s part of why we’re targeting crops and livestock rather than burning homes and slaughtering people. I understand that an empty belly can be just as deadly as a sword through one, but the number of common folk who suffer greatly in this will be much less than what would happen otherwise.”

”At the same time,” she continued. ”Sparking a small uprising of dissatisfied commoners who must demand protection and restitution from their lords for failing to safeguard them and their goods is exactly the sort of trouble that will force the Lothians’ hands without alarming the powers behind them.”

The opening act of this war would be finely choreographed, like the dances in the opera halls of High Fen City, but Ashlynn never lost sight of who her real enemy was. In order to bring Owain down, she first needed to cut his legs out from under him, and that would require decimating the knights who were most willing to answer the call to fight against ’demons’ in the name of the Lothians.

She expected to draw a number of knights from the baronies farther to the east, and if she was very, very lucky, she might even draw out a few promising templars like the recently elevated Sir Tommin. It had been months since he and Sir Broll had stood over her body in the rain, piling shovel after shovelful of damp earth on her broken and barely breathing body after Owain’s savage beating, but she had never forgotten the pair of knights who had so eagerly done her former husband’s bidding.

One of those men had already died at her hands, and the other... Whether he fell into this trap or not, he would fall into her hands eventually.

”And then,” she said as the image of Owain’s knights falling into shallow graves to become mulch for trees danced behind her eyes. ”We’ll be ready to draw them into the jaws of our next trap...”