The Vampire & Her Witch

”You’ve glimpsed the demon giants. Do you think your gates will hold them back?”

Loman’s question should have been a simple one, but there was something in his tone and the focused way that he didn’t take his eyes off the enemy as he spoke that put Baron Hanrahan instantly on edge and made him hesitant about providing the bold, confident answer that he normally would have.

”I, I didn’t see any rams with them,” Ian Hanrahan said slowly as he mopped sweat from his brow as he thought about how many years it had been since either the timbers of the gates or the iron strapping had been replaced. Frantically, he tried to think of a number he could give Loman that wouldn’t disappoint or upset the Lothian Lord.

”But the gates themselves, um, even the West Gate, it’s been, er, at least,” he rambled as he felt the intense pressure of Inquisitor Diarmuid’s eyes landing on him, bringing with it the realization that he would never get away with even a minor fib or exaggeration before these men. Even if most of Loman’s attention was on the advancing demon army, the same couldn’t be said of the other men.

”It’s been at least twenty years since it was last replaced,” Baron Hanrahan admitted with a heavy sigh as his whole body deflated and his shoulders slumped. ”There hasn’t been a reason to repair or renew them since the last war. I, I was planning to replace the gates this spring in preparation for the Holy War but I... I haven’t begun the work,” he said at last, looking awkwardly out the window toward the ’fire serpent’ advancing across the snow in order to avoid meeting the gazes of the men around him.

In truth, he’d been putting off even buying supplies as he felt like there would be opportunities to exploit with men like Guild Master Tiernan of the Iron Mongers coming to settle in the march and perhaps even becoming one of his vassals but however many sovereigns he might have saved, they wouldn’t do anything to save him and Hanrahan town now.

”The gates will fail quickly then,” Loman said with a sigh as he set down the perspective glass, nodding to himself as his mind rapidly assembled the few pieces of a puzzle that he had into a shape that was at the very least unsettling.

Whether it was simple neglect and more of the penny pinching miserliness he was starting to expect from Baron Hanrahan or something more sinister, it changed nothing about the problem they were facing. The defenses the town needed to rely on were poorly maintained and likely wholly inadequate to counter the threat they were about to face.

After a moment spent collecting his thoughts, his gaze swept from the portly, nervously sweating baron standing before him to his son Bastian. The young lord looked like he was trying to figure out how he could gain the most glory in the battle to come by fetching the treasured weapons of his family and ordering bonfires to be lit atop each of the towers while hanging the largest Hanrahan banners they could find from the battlements.

From the outside, he certainly looked industrious, but his actions would do absolutely nothing to shift the course of the battle to come, leaving Loman to wonder if it was incompetence from a man who should be more than old enough to know better, or something just as sinister as allowing the iron-bound wooden gates to rust and rot for decades without repair.

”Lord Bastian, Sir Dollin, please come here,” Loman said with a dark expression on his face as he waved the other men over. For a moment, he wished that he could hand this problem over to Inquisitor Diarmuid, and eventually, he would likely do exactly that. For now, however, they had less than twenty minutes before the demons would arrive, assuming they didn’t charge across the final distance, and he needed the Inquisitor at his side in the battle to come.

”Your Worship,” Sir Dollin said, kneeling formally at Loman’s feet and placing an armored hand on Bastian’s shoulder to pull the young lord down with him to do the same. ”What commands do you have for us?”

”Sir Dollin, how are the guest rooms that were prepared for my visit? Are they safe and secure?” Loman asked, drawing confused looks from everyone who had gathered by the windows. Even Inquisitor Diarmuid and Sir Tommin exchanged puzzled glances, wondering why the Disciple of an Exemplar would be asking about his guest chambers just minutes before the enemy would arrive at the gates.

”Of course they are, your Worship,” Sir Dollin said with a frown. ”Do you, do you want to use your guest chambers for the people in the great hall? They’re spacious, and you can easily host five or ten visitors if you’re willing to use the whole suite, but if that’s what you have in mind, I would recommend selecting only the most important guests in the hall to receive the honor of the extra protection,” he said, hoping the answer that he would have given if Baron Hanrahan had asked the same question would please the Lothian Lord.

”That’s fine, so long as the door to the suite is sturdy and can be guarded by a single man, I only need to have two people placed in those chambers,” Loman said.

”If it’s only two, then it’s no problem at all,” the white haired knight said with a bright smile as he realized the young lord’s intentions. It seemed, he thought, that even holy men weren’t immune to a man’s desires on the eve of battle, and there were few ways into a woman’s heart that were more certain than to send her ’somewhere safe’ to await the end of the battle when her hero would return covered in the blood of the slain and the sweet smell of victory.

”Who would you like me to pull aside for you, my lord?” Sir Dollin asked as he turned to survey the crowd. ”There was a young woman that you spoke with earlier tonight who...”

”No,” Loman said decisively. ”I need you to take Baron Hanrahan and Lord Bastian into custody. Take them away from this hall at once, lock them in my chambers, and do not let them anywhere near their studies or their chambers where there may be evidence of their crimes.”