The Vampire & Her Witch

At the same time as Ollie raced toward a copse of trees, riding bareback with Sir Cynwrig in their haste to reach Lady Cerys, a very different hunt was taking shape less than a hundred leagues away in the Lothian’s private hunting preserve.

The hunting lodge sat in a shallow clearing carved from the hemlock and cedar forest that blanketed the western foothills, and even from its covered porch, Owain Lothian could see the banners.

They hung from poles driven into the frozen ground along the approach road, damp and heavy in the pre-dawn drizzle, their colors muted in the grey morning light. The crossed axes of House Lothian flew at the head of the line, blue and yellow barely distinguishable against the pewter sky, along with his personal standard, the sword before the bear’s claw, hanging just below it. Those, at least, looked as they should.

But there were so few of the others.

Owain stood beneath the eaves of the lodge’s broad porch, holding a cup of warmed wine in his hand that he hadn’t bothered to sip from since taking it from the hands of a servant on his way outside.

The lodge itself was a sturdy timber structure surrounded by a wooden palisade wall. It had been built by his grandfather to service the Lothian hunting preserve when Owain’s father was still too young to ride a horse.

The lodge was large enough to host a gathering of thirty or forty men in moderate comfort, with its own kennels and stables. It also held a large kitchen, capable of cooking for hundreds of men at once, and it had been sending the smell of roasting meat and fresh bread into the cold air since well before Owain’s arrival.

It was a fine setting for a lord’s hunt, and it should have been the stage for a lord’s triumph. Instead, the banners along the road told a story that left a taste in his mouth that was so bitter no amount of wine could wash away.

He counted them again, as though the number might change if he looked hard enough.

The rolling hills of House Hanrahan, flanked by a scythe and a woodsman’s axe, were absent. The watch tower of House Dunn, flanked by a shepherd’s crook and a curved sword, was also absent.

The Aleese barony’s standard of a heavy warhorse bearing twin lances was also missing, even though Baron Tybal had arrived days ago, but at least the Baron had sent his eldest son in his place. It was the same with the Leufroys, whose tree-and-lake standard should have hung alongside the personal crest of young Tulori Leufroy.

Owain clicked his tongue in distaste as he gazed at the Leufroy heir’s sigil, an open book with a sword for its spine. Baron Valeri had emulated Baron Loghlan Dunn, sending his son to the prestigious academy in Keating, and Owain had no doubt that the result would be another pompous and difficult-to-manage upstart who thought he knew better than his liege lord.

The Otkers had sent their heir as well. The river-and-canyon sigil flanked by spears was nowhere to be seen, leaving only the personal crest of Serge Otker, a set of merchant’s scales balanced on a dagger’s point, to indicate that the Otkers intended to pay him any respect.

Only two baronial standards flew in full alongside the personal crests of their lords. The stone tower flanked by a pick-axe and a warhammer of Baron Wes Iriso, and the bunch of grapes flanked by arrows and a spear that represented Baron Erling Fayle’s domain. The two weakest baronies in the March. The two who could least afford to refuse Owain’s invitation.

Owain’s fingers tightened around the warm cup of wine as he fought to keep his irritation from showing on his face when he spotted a trio of young men, boys really, arriving together at the head of a short column of knights and servants. Technically, the youths weren’t late, but they were cutting it very close for people of their age and station.

Baron Preden Saliou was far too old to attend a hunt in the winter, leaving him no choice but to send his grandson, Riwall, in his place, even if the young man was still a squire who had yet to stand his vigil as a knight. If the boy had brought more of his family’s knights, he could at least have stomached the young man’s presence, and he might even have let him serve as his squire for the hunt, but it seemed like Baron Saliou had no intention of paying Owain any more respect than his peers were.

But while Owain could stomach Riwall’s presence, the sight of Baron Onen LeGleau’s youngest son, Juhel, was a direct insult to Owain’s prestige. An insult that Baron Telent Rundle had seen fit to match by sending his second son, Breok.

The trio of boys ranged from thirteen to fifteen years of age, and they collectively represented the baronies who were the most well-connected to noble families outside the March. If anyone had been responsible for coordinating the small turnout for this hunt, Owain suspected that it was one of those three lords, as if they were making a subtle statement that he would have to work to earn their support in the days to come.

Owain had imagined all of this playing out differently, and the reality before him was... disappointing. In the days since his father’s death, while the arrangements for the Grand Ceremony consumed the attention of every steward and servant in Lothian Manor, Owain had looked forward to this hunt with something close to genuine anticipation.

Not just for the kill itself, though he hungered for that too. The coiled tension of a blade in his hand, and the clarity that came when the world narrowed to just him and his prey, combined with the absolute certainty of the killing blow as he rode the razor’s edge between victory and death was something that the death of a few acolytes could never substitute for.

But beyond the kill, this hunt was supposed to be a statement. This was supposed to be the moment that the new Marquis rode out with his assembled vassals, leading them into the forest, and demonstrating with every decision and each command that Lothian March had a worthy master.

When his father hunted, the entire March had answered. The elder Lothian lords told stories of Marquis Bors riding at the head of a column that stretched back half a league, with every barony’s finest knights competing for the honor of riding closest to the Marquis.

Even in the final years, when his father began his slow retreat from public events following the death of Owain’s mother, the few hunts that Bors Lothian hosted had drawn enough men to fill the lodge twice over and spill out into a camp of pavilions along the palisade wall.

And what did his own first hunt draw? Two minor barons, three heirs, three squires, and a scattering of knights so thin that the banners along the approach road looked like the remnants of a defeated army rather than the vanguard of a victorious one.

”This is pathetic,” Owain fumed under his breath. He hadn’t even taken the throne yet, and already, some men were showing signs of rebellion. The only saving grace was that Jocelynn was too busy making a show of her late sister’s memorial to witness his humiliation.

He couldn’t do anything about it at the moment, but the time would come to revisit these slights, and when it did, these barons would learn that Owain wasn’t as weak or as forgiving as his father was...