The Vampire & Her Witch

The waiting was the hardest part.

Erling had known that since he was old enough to hold a bow, but knowing didn’t make the experience any easier to endure. It had taken him years to cultivate the kind of patience it took to remain still while you waited for your quarry to make a move.

Now, while Erling’s breathing was smooth and steady, as if the pressure of the moment couldn’t touch him, both Tulori and Serge stood high in their stirrups, craning their necks and searching for the first sign of the imperial elk. Their horses shifted nervously under them, their hooves clopping on the ground until Lord Reynold shot the young men a fierce glare and motioned for them to settle down.

”If you can’t wait,” Reynold hissed at the young pair. ”Go ride out in front. Once you’re hanging from the elk’s antlers, it’ll be much easier to corner, and we can go back to the lodge early.”

Tulori at least had the grace to look sheepish as he settled back into his saddle. The most that could be said for Serge Otker was that he managed to return to his seat without falling from his horse.

The column of lords, knights, and hunters had spread into a wide crescent along the slope above Coldwater Creek, with each rider positioned within earshot of the men on either side of him. Technically, Serge and Tulori Leufroy were closer together than they were supposed to be, but no one wasted any words trying to correct them. If everything went according to Owain’s plans, neither danger nor glory would come anywhere near them.

The silence that followed was absolute in a way that only a forest in winter could produce. No birdsong, no insects, no rustling of leaves in a breeze. Just the slow drip of dew drops from the canopy, the faint trickle of the creek somewhere below them, and the sound of horses breathing through their noses while they shifted their weight from one hoof to another on the damp, uneven ground.

Erling sat very still in his saddle, his horn bow resting across his thigh and his eyes fixed on the wall of hemlock and cedar that rose from the far side of the creek bed. Somewhere on the flat above the slopes leading down to the creek, the imperial bull that Huntsman Fabel had tracked was resting in its bed, probably chewing its cud without a care in the world while the beaters crept into position behind it.

From here, the flat was invisible, hidden behind a curtain of fog and old-growth timber that might as well have been a stone wall. The only sign that anything was happening at all was the faint, intermittent crunch of footsteps and the occasional muffled snap of a twig from somewhere high on the ridge, where the beaters were fanning out to close the paths of escape behind the elk.

The beaters were experienced men who knew these ridges of the Lothian hunting preserve the way Erling knew the grasslands of home. They moved through the fog and ferns of the underbrush with practiced care, working in pairs and communicating with hand signals and the occasional soft whistle that could have been mistaken for a bird call.

Their job was to form a wall of human scent and sound behind the elk, pushing it downhill toward the creek where the mounted hunters waited.

Once the elk was moving, the relay hounds would be loosed to run it south along the creek bed, driving it toward the bluffs where Owain would be waiting with his sword.

At least, that was the plan. The elk might have other ideas.

Sir Gilander had positioned the five young lords and their knights along the eastern slope of the creek bed, spread across a section of the trail that overlooked a natural pinch point where the creek bent sharply around a rocky outcrop.

In theory, it was a good position, one that should have given tremendous respect to the lords who found themselves stationed there. If the elk tried to break east instead of running south, the riders here would be the ones responsible for turning it back toward the creek bed with their horns and their voices. On the surface of things, they were here to play a vital role.

Erling checked the terrain with a hunter’s eye while they waited. The slope below him was steep enough that a horse would struggle on it, thick with sword fern and the mossy trunks of fallen trees that would trip animals or men who tried to move with any kind of haste. The creek itself was shallow but fast-moving, its banks lined with pale, skeletal red alders whose bare branches reached across the water like grasping fingers.

On the far side, the ground rose gently toward the flat where the elk rested, with the massive trunks of old-growth cedar standing like dark pillars in the fog, their shaggy red-brown bark glistening with moisture.

If you marked out the position of Erling and the other young lords on a map, then their placement looked proper, but sitting here, surveying the steep slope before them, Erling felt the sting of the unspoken insult. The chances that the Elk would charge such a steep slope were beyond thin. The squires could likely have guarded this position and been every bit as effective.

Briefly, Erling exchanged a look with Reynold and received a tight-lipped nod in reply. No wonder he’d snapped at Tulori and Serge. For all that Owain had spoken of giving Reynold a position in his vanguard, the heir to the Aleese Barony had been relegated to a position that amounted to a spectator’s stand, and he knew it.

Suddenly, a horn sounded, interrupting Erling’s thoughts and Reynold’s brooding with the sound of its call.

It came from high on the ridge, thin and distant, muffled by the fog and the timber until it sounded less like a hunting call and more like the cry of something lost in the grey winter air. But there was nothing uncertain about its meaning. The beaters were in position, and the drive was about to begin.

Gilander’s answering horn cut through the stillness from somewhere to the south, two sharp blasts followed by a long note that echoed off the walls of the slope leading to the creek and rolled through the forest like the precursor to a cavalry charge.

Every man in the hunting party who carried a horn raised it to his lips and repeated the call, and suddenly, the silence that had blanketed the forest shattered into a cascading wave of sound that seemed to come from every direction all at once.

Erling’s horse tossed its head and stamped, the animal’s muscles going rigid beneath him as the sound of the horns woke something primal in its blood. Around him, the other riders gripped their reins and steadied their mounts, and from somewhere down the line, one of the squires let out a sharp gasp that might have been excitement or panic as he struggled to rein in his startled mount.

Then, from high on the ridge, the beaters added their voices to the chorus. They shouted and beat the trunks of trees with heavy wooden clubs, and the sound of their clamor added to the chaos of the moment, utterly destroying the serenity of the forest in the early morning light.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the elk moved, letting loose a high-pitched bugle that pierced through the clatter and chaos like the tip of a lance tearing through a knight’s armor...