The Vampire & Her Witch

At the head of the column of lords, knights, squires, and hunters, the lead handler’s tracking hound finally found what it had been searching for.

The change was subtle enough that most of the riders in the column missed it entirely, but Erling’s eyes were on the dog the moment its body language shifted. One heartbeat, the hound was working the trail with the steady, methodical patience of an experienced tracker, nose sweeping back and forth across the fern-covered ground. The next, it went rigid, every muscle in its lean body pulling taut against the long leather leash as its nose locked onto a single point in the earth.

Its tail stiffened. Its ears pressed forward. And then it moved, not with the wandering uncertainty of a dog following a cold trail, but with the absolute conviction of an animal that knew exactly where its quarry had walked and just how recently it had passed by.

The handler felt the change through the leash, and his hand came up in a sharp gesture to the huntsman walking beside him. Fabel, the Master of the Hounds, acknowledged the signal with a curt nod and turned to pass the information up the column to Sir Gilander.

”Fresh sign,” Erling murmured to Wes, who followed his gaze to the hound.

”How can you tell from here?” Wes asked, squinting through the fog at a dog that was at least forty paces ahead of them.

”The way it moves,” Erling said. ”When a dog is working an old trail, it stops and starts. It checks and rechecks, going back on itself when it loses the scent. But when the trail is fresh, the dog doesn’t hesitate. It moves like it’s being pulled by a rope.”

The hound was doing exactly that, pulling its handler forward with an urgency that forced the handler into a half-jog to keep up. Even from this distance, Erling could see the leash stretched to its full length, the white leather drawn tight between man and dog like the string of a bow just before the arrow is loosed.

The effect on the column was immediate. Gilander’s voice carried back through the riders, quiet but firm, and the casual posture of the procession tightened. Knights who had been slouching in their saddles straightened. Conversations died mid-sentence. Hands drifted toward weapons and horns, and the air itself seemed to sharpen as the news settled over the hunting party like a change in the weather.

They weren’t just riding leisurely through a forest anymore. They were hunters closing in on their prey.

Owain was the first to react with purpose. Even from the back of the column, Erling could see the shift in the man’s bearing as Gilander leaned over to speak with him. The political frustrations that had dogged Owain all morning seemed to fall away from him like water rolling off his cloak, and something else took their place.

Something focused. Something predatory.

For a moment, watching the way Owain’s shoulders settled and his head lifted while his hands grew still on his reins, Erling was reminded of the tracking hound. The same absolute certainty. The same sense of a creature that had found the trail it was born to follow. It was a look that he’d never seen on the Lothian Lord’s face before, but somehow, it suited Owain more than the charming smile he wore to court ever did.

The column’s pace slowed as they entered a stretch of old-growth trees where the cedars grew so thick that the canopy blocked what little light the overcast sky provided. Moss hung in heavy curtains from the branches overhead, dripping steadily onto the ferns below, and the fog was so dense that the riders at the front of the column were little more than ghostly silhouettes by the time Erling and Wes passed through behind them.

In the gloom, the column began to spread apart. Gilander was directing riders to their positions with hand signals and quiet commands, and Erling could see the professional huntsmen peeling off from the main group, leading leashed hounds toward the relay points that had been scouted earlier that morning.

This part of the hunt was delicate, but it shouldn’t be dangerous. Confronting an imperial bull elk in its bed when it was rested and motivated to protect its territory would be foolish. First, they would have to drive the beast from the place where it rested, with the hunters fanning out to block its paths of escape.

Everyone carried horns at the ready, prepared to warn the animal with blasts of sound that would also signal to the other hunters which direction the beast was running while they drove it toward the killing ground that Owain Lothian had selected.

No one knew which direction the elk would bolt when it ran, and everyone in the hunting party felt a tension growing between their shoulders as they waited for the moment when they would learn if they needed to ride quickly to block the beast or if their morning ride would resume its leisurely pace while others enjoyed both the excitement and the danger of the drive.

As the column thinned and the structure of the procession dissolved, the natural gaps between the riders widened, and the young lords who had been scattered through the middle of the column found themselves drawn together like debris caught in a slow eddy.

Reynold Aleese had fallen back from his position near the front, his broad frame cutting through the fog like the prow of a ship. His dark braid hung heavy with moisture against his back, and his gray eyes moved restlessly through the timber, scanning the terrain with the instincts of a man who had spent too many nights sleeping in hostile country to ever fully relax in a forest, even one that belonged to his liege lord.

Tulori Leufroy had drifted to one side of the trail, his horse picking its way carefully through the ferns, and his wide eyes were still cataloguing everything around him, though the scholarly curiosity in his gaze had been replaced by something more alert, more present.

Even Serge Otker had managed to sit up straighter in his saddle, though from the pallor of his skin and the careful way he gripped his reins, Erling suspected that the change had more to do with the cold air cutting through his wine-soaked haze than any genuine interest in the hunt.

For the first time that day, all five of the young lords were within easy speaking distance, though none of them uttered a word as they waited for the drive to begin.

Erling adjusted his bowstring one last time, testing the draw against his fingers. Whatever happened next, he was ready...