The Vampire & Her Witch

Aleser regarded his sister carefully for a moment, his tongue sampling the air around her as he tried to decide whether he was a brother speaking to his sister or a general speaking to his ruler. She’d addressed him as ’brother,’ but that didn’t mean anything. Erna could switch between sibling and ruler and back again with the speed of a striking snake.

The problem was that tonight’s disaster had been both completely foreseeable and it was the result of an order that Erna had given as the High Lady of the High Fen. He’d executed her orders as faithfully as he could, but there were limits to what he could achieve in such a short time.

”Things started well,” Erna prompted as Aleser considered his answer. ”There was no sign that we’d see this sort of problem three weeks ago. The champions you recruited knew full well what we intended and what they should have been preparing for, so why did they fail so spectacularly?”

”This isn’t all on them, Sister,” Aleser said, hoping that familial closeness would help him disarm his sister’s foul mood. ”The crowd...”

”The crowd isn’t as fickle as you like to think it is,” Erna interrupted. ”The crowd in the arena is the beating heart of the city. They cheer for greatness, and they denounce incompetence, and they’re wise enough to know the difference. Never underestimate the collective wisdom of the crowd, Brother. They can be swayed, but they cannot be deceived, not for very long.”

”They knew that tonight was a disaster,” Erna said flatly. ”And they weren’t wrong. So how did it fall apart so quickly?”

”The crowd desires a champion, Sister,” Aleser said. ”They want to imagine themselves as the gladiator on the sands, or they want to imagine the man upon the sands fighting to win their heart or protect their child, or a dozen other things. A champion, a real champion, is more than just a man who can fight and kill; he is an ideal that people can revere and aspire to...”

”Our city has dozens of famous champions,” Erna said as she rolled the warm cup of mulled wine in her hand, allowing its warmth to soothe her agitated heart. ”And you invited hundreds more from every town and village across the fen large enough to host a fighting ring.”

”I even offered pardons for skilled fighters convicted of lesser crimes so long as they could prove themselves in the sands,” Erna added. ”And forgiveness of their debts. You gained a thousand men, so why was this too much for them to handle?”

”Because a champion isn’t a soldier, Sister,” Aleser said with a heavy sigh. ”He fights for fame and glory. He fights to have his name remembered for a hundred years or more. Alone on the sands, against one famous warrior or half a dozen lesser ones, he has a chance for glory. But when you place so many warriors on the sands...”

”I told you that we needed a new breed of champion,” Erna said, draining the last of the wine in her cup as she turned to look out at the brightly lit streets of High Fen City passing them by while Hekiet navigated her boat expertly through the canals.

Some people were still out despite the chill in the air, rushing from building to building trialed by clouds of their own freezing breath. There were very few members of the Scaled Clan moving about, and even the furry men and women of the Clan of Painted Masks seemed to prefer the comfort of their hearths to moving about.

But High Fen City couldn’t be defined by just a few prominent clans, even if its ruler hailed from one of those clans herself. The city held more than a hundred thousand people, and while the Scaled Clan, the Clan of Painted Masks and the Glass Eyed Clan accounted for eight parts in ten of the city’s population, there were still tens of thousands of people from the Clan of the Great Claw, the Horned Clan, and half a dozen smaller clans who were far less bothered by the cold than Erna and her brother were.

Many of those people wandered through the streets now, stopping at carts where merchants sold savory, spiced meat, freshly roasted on skewers or cups of warm, sticky-sweet porridge filled with bits of dried fruit and nuts. Others clustered around alehouses or shops still selling their wares late into the night, and a few, here and there, argued endlessly about which of the day’s current champions could have stood against the famed gladiators of yesteryear.

”We need a new breed of champion,” Aleser agreed. ”But the arena may not be able to forge that champion.”

”It was working weeks ago,” Erna said as the tip of her tail began thumping against the hull of the boat. She tried to keep her tone even, but it was clear that Aleser was wading into dangerous territory.

”Weeks ago we presented the people with something they were familiar with,” the general sighed. ”The arena has long held battles between multiple men as a way to increase danger and drama. Partners are favored because people invest in the bond between champions fighting to protect each other and defeat their opponents,” he explained.

”The same logic holds when we give them forced pairings in chained battles,” Aleser continued. ”The crowd invests in the idea of overcoming past differences to claim victory in the present. It isn’t just the battle that the crowd invests in, but the feelings the battle stirs within them.”

”The battles we’ll face in the future won’t be duels fought between champions,” Erna said bluntly. ”Her Dominion made it clear that humans not only refuse to fight that way, but they slaughter people who aren’t trained to fight at all.”

”If human armies arrive at the High Fen, they won’t be trying to pave the way for their commander to claim the throne and serve as the next High Lord of the High Fen,” Erna said as her tail thumped the deck of the boat hard enough to rattle the chains of the braziers. ”They’ll be coming to slaughter every man, woman, and child who calls this place home so they can rule over the ashes of everything we held dear.”

”I cannot send pairs or trios of men onto the field against hundreds of these humans who have no respect for our ways,” Erna said. ”So tell, Brother, how will we forge the champions we need if we cannot do it in the arena?”