The Vampire & Her Witch

In the courtyard below Jocelynn’s balcony, Sir Rian Aleese gulped heavily at a cup of water while relishing in the feeling of the cool autumn air and faint morning drizzle on his sweaty face. Leaning against a pillar opposite him, Lord Owain mopped lightly at his brow with a towel while Sir Hugo Hanrahan stood nearby holding another cup of cool water.

Faint clouds of steam rose from both armored men as they caught their breath after an intense practice session. New dings and scratches marred both men’s practice armor along with the cracked remains of a wooden shield that had buckled under Owain’s rain of heavy blows. Other than the three men, however, the courtyard was completely empty.

”It looks like you’ve lost your audience today, my Lord,” Sir Rian said as he threw his empty wooden cup at a distracted looking Sir Hugo, forcing the hawk-nosed bastard to scramble to catch it without dropping the cup that was waiting for Lord Owain. ”I haven’t seen Lady Jocelynn miss one of our sessions since you moved our morning practice outside her chambers.”

”Watch your tongue, Rian,” Owain chastised, flinging a sweaty towel at the pot-bellied knight’s flushed face. ”I’m sure Lady Jocelynn is only interested in learning how real men fight. The tournaments she’s seen growing up are little more than games of tag, fought by men who have never put their life on the line to slay demons. Now that she’s seen how real men wage war, she can’t get enough,” he said with a wide, cocky grin.

”Clearly she’s had enough of watching Sir Rian get beaten like a sand sack,” Hugo teased, though he stood half behind Owain when he said it. ”She rushed off her balcony as soon as you took the field. Maybe if you put your helm on instead of showing your face, she wouldn’t have lost her appetite so quickly.”

”Bastard!” Rian snapped, though there was no venom in his words and his muscles were still shaking too much after his bout with Owain to chase the scholarly Steward down for a friendly punch with an armored fist.

On horseback, with a lance in his hand or a spiked flail, Sir Rian had every confidence that he could fight Owain to a draw. The Aleese Barony bordered the Southern Steppe and the lands of the Horse Demons and even common soldiers in his father’s lands learned to ride horses to fight against their incredibly mobile enemies. For all his bulk, Sir Rian had spent more years in the saddle than even Sir Owain and he’d killed more than a few demons of the nomadic horde that plagued Lothian March’s southern border.

But on foot, wielding training weapons that were safe to use against the future Lothian Marquis, the heavy knight found himself struggling to keep up with the fleet footed young lord. He was constantly on the defense against Owain’s powerful, two-handed sword strikes and by the end of the match, he’d flung his helmet across the courtyard, just for the relief of feeling the fresh air cooling his overheated head.

”You’re spending too much time with that engineer,” Rain chided, wishing he had something else he could throw at the dark-haired Steward. ”Taking lessons in scolding like a woman.”

”All right, enough,” Owain said, holding up a hand and silencing both men. ”Lady Jocelynn has done us a favor today by keeping Master Isabell occupied. That woman has been a buzzing gnat in my ear ever since we returned home, asking when she can meet with my father to finalize their grants of lands.”

”So why don’t you let her meet with Lord Bors?” Sir Rian asked. ”He’ll either give her what she wants or he won’t. Why do you have to take the heat for it when you could just make it his problem?”

”Because I don’t want to live with the consequences of my father’s decision if he gives in to her foolish demands,” Owain snapped before lowering his voice and striding across the courtyard to put an gauntleted hand on Rian’s armored shoulder. ”Until we crack the Vale’s curtain walls and tear down their fortress, I need that woman alive. Otherwise, I’ll have to beg the Church to use their Inquisitors to do the work and you can imagine the price they’ll extract for the service.”

”My Lord is worried that she won’t survive the folly of trying to occupy the mouth of the Vale before it’s been conquered,” Sir Hugo said, holding out the cup of water for Owain to snatch from his hands. ”Lord Bors might sign over the lands simply to secure the agreement with her guild, but it seems like Lord Owain has come to value Master Isabell’s capabilities personally.”

”If a person is useful, then put them to use,” Owain said simply after gulping down half the cup of water. ”Master Isabell is more useful than I imagined so I intend to wring what use I can from her aging bones before finding a time to bring our relationship to its natural conclusion,” he said with a dark grin. ”Have we received word from the Black Merchant? I had hoped he would bring other relationships to their conclusion while we were out touring the countryside.”

It had already been weeks since he sent Hugo and Rian with a chest of gold and jewels to purchase Spider Demon venom to use against three people he wanted to see suffering before they died, but as of yet, there had been no news and he was beginning to suspect that even the famed Black Merchant had met his match this time.

”There is news, my lord,” Hugo said, reaching into a breast pocket and retrieving a small slip of paper that had arrived via carrier pigeon the night before. ”Madame Pyre has sent a request to the temple asking if they can send a healer to see to her son. She didn’t mention Sir Tommin in her request, but it’s impossible that the Church isn’t aware of their new Templar’s former family.”

”I would have thought the bitch would succumb before the pup,” Owain said with a low chuckle. ”Either way, remind me to invite Loman and his traitorous lapdog to join Lady Jocelynn and I for dinner in the coming weeks. I want to see Tommin’s face before his brat dies.”

”Of course, my lord,” Hugo said, bowing deeply and swallowing in relief that he was able to deliver good news. Sir Tommin, as far as the Steward was aware, hadn’t done anything more worse to Owain than leaving his service to answer the calling of his faith, and for this simple insult, Owain’s former personal guard would watch his wife and child die slow, agonizing deaths as the Spider Demon venom tortured their bodies and their minds.

Of course, if Hugo knew that Sir Tommin was one of the two knights that Owain had commanded to dispose of Ashlynn’s body after beating her to death, he might have seen the Templar’s sudden surge of devotion in a different light. As is, however, he was still unaware of the events that had transpired on Owain’s wedding night or the conspiracies that had unfolded afterward, leaving him with a view of his lord as a man who would seek horrifying retribution for even the smallest of slights.

The thought of what Owain would do to his Steward if he ever managed to fall into disfavor was enough to give even a brave man nightmares... and Sir Hugo was anything but a brave man.