The Vampire & Her Witch

Harrod took off at a sprint, his cloven hooves moving swiftly over the uneven terrain as he sprinted toward the woman who had been foolish enough to bring her child along with her on whatever foolish mission brought her here in the small hours of the morning.

The notion that he could do anything to capture her, or the child, was utter nonsense, and if Milo had grown up as one of the Vale’s soldiers instead of spending his life as a hunter for his secluded village, he’d have understood that. The soldiers of the Horned Clan were fast over rough terrain, but half of that speed wasn’t real.

The Horned Clan seemed fast in places like this because everyone else had to move so slowly or risk tripping, falling, and injuring themselves. But on the smooth, sandy shore of the riverbank where the woman was riding, her horse would have an absolute advantage in speed. Still, if he could get close enough, he might be able to knock her and the child from their saddle...

But it wasn’t meant to be. As fast as he moved and as much as he tried to hop from tree-root to soft grass, the ground was littered with fallen leaves that crunched underfoot, and there was no way he could dash fast enough to reach the mounted woman and still be quiet about his approach.

”Demons!” The woman cried when she saw Harrod’s figure emerging from the underbrush, dashing toward her. ”Hold tight, Dalwyn!”

”Stop!” Harrod shouted, hoping she wouldn’t do anything more foolish than she already had by coming here. ”Stop now, and you won’t be harmed!”

It would have been nice if she listened to his shouted order, but Harrod wasn’t surprised when she didn’t. After all, there was only one of him, and she had the advantage. So when she pulled back on the reins of her horse and pivoted to ride parallel to the stream within the cops of trees instead of along the riverbank, Harrod could only curse in frustration as she galloped away from him.

”Milo!” Harrod shouted. ”Do it!”

Concealed in the bushes, Milo took a deep breath, steadying himself by running the tips of his claws along the length of his bow. The bow itself was something that few men outside the Heartwood clan could even draw, and it had taken Milo almost a month to carve and shape it under Old Nan’s guidance and even longer to master it. This wasn’t a bow for hunting wild game for the dinner table, after all, but a bow for fighting in a war against people who came to hurt his clan.

”The bow is the trunk of the tree,” Milo said solemnly as a faint green aura enveloped the bow. ”And I am the wind that bends the tree.”

The woman on the horse was moving swiftly, and in a few more heartbeats, she would pass within a few hundred paces of the place where Milo hid, coming as close to him as she ever wood before the distance between them began to grow again, but Milo took his time in preparing his shot, seemingly unhurried as he drew back the heavy bow.

The sorcery he used was ancient. According to his mother, it had been passed down within the Heartwood Clan since the Mother of Forests took one of them into her coven. Now, in his hands, the bow held all of the might of the tree from which it had been carved, ready to launch his broadhead arrow with a force that no ordinary bow could match.

”Forgive me,” he whispered as he carefully adjusted his aim before letting go.

-THWAP-

The sound of the bowstring striking his armguard felt unnaturally loud in Milo’s ears, but he didn’t allow it to break his focus as his senses followed the arrow he’d launched, nudging its course ever so slightly with the faintest shifts in wind to ensure that it found its mark.

The arrow could have punched through the plate armor of a knight, though the layers underneath would likely have slowed it somewhat, but the woman’s horse had no armor to protect it, and even the thick bone of its skull was unable to resist the power of an arrow launched by Milo’s bow and guided by his sorcery.

-THIIIK!-

The horse didn’t even have time to cry out in pain or fear when the arrow buried itself halfway to the fletching in its head. The instant the head struck, the horse’s head drooped as its muscles went limp before the graceful beast lost all coordination.

The horse went down in a tangle of limbs, flinging the woman and her child from the saddle as it fell.

”Nooo!” the woman wailed, clutching tightly to the child in her arms moments before she slammed into the frost-covered ground with a sickening -CRUNCH- that was audible even from where Milo crouched behind the bushes.

”Harrod!” Milo shouted. ”Help them!”

Milo wanted nothing more than to rush to the mother and child, hoping against hope that they hadn’t been hurt too badly in the fall, but he had to do something much more important first.

His hands moved quickly, sweeping aside the dead, wet leaves on the ground to expose the frozen soil beneath before he fetched a rolled-up ball of dried wood shavings soaked in oil from one of the many pouches at his waist. Using a small piece of flint, Milo struck several sparks with his belt knife, quickly setting the oil-soaked tinder ablaze.

”Please, see this quickly,” Milo muttered as he fished a small packet of finely ground powder from another pouch before sprinkling it on the feeble flames of the fire he’d started.

Instantly, the flames grew several times hotter than they’d been before, and Milo quickly started feeding the fire with dead leaves, small twigs, and anything else that would burn, whether it was wet or not. The flames fed eagerly on the detritus of the fores,t and within a handful of heartbeats, a strange purple flame burned brightly before him, sending up a plume of thick, purple smoke that was so unnatural it couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a witch’s signal fire.

Heila had prepared several such packets of Signalling Powder, and each color carried a specific meaning for this mission. Green was meant to signal ’success’ while yellow signalled ’danger’... but purple was reserved for a message that Milo had hoped he’d never have to use.

’Send Help.’

He only hoped that Sir Ollie saw the message and came in time, because a fall from a galloping horse was a very dangerous thing, and without the intervention of a witch, a child might lose his life...