The Vampire & Her Witch

There was too little time to waste on second-guessing himself.

The distance between Taghai and Reynold was shrinking rapidly as both champions charged toward each other, and Taghai still had decisions to make.

”Starlight, reveal the truth. Gather where his armor gaps,” Taghai said, focusing his will on the one thing he felt confident witchcraft wouldn’t have changed. ”Guide my lance toward his death.”

No armor was perfect.

Every suit of armor traded weight and mobility for protection, and every warrior and armorer approached those tradeoffs differently.

To Taghai’s eyes, glittering lines of starlight blazed within the cold greenish-blue nimbus that surrounded Reynold. Some light winked at him from Reynold’s hips and the gap between the armor for his legs and the armor of his breastplate. That gap grew and shrank as Reynold rose and fell in the saddle, matching his body’s movements to his horse’s gait.

Other gaps appeared at his armpits, flaring brightly as Reynold raised his lance into position for a killing blow, but these were nearly impossible to reach with a lance from the opposite side of the list.

The gap at Reynold’s neck, however, where a helm built for tournaments would have been fitted more securely to the breastplate, and a larger pauldron would have guarded his head... That wasn’t just a real weakness; it was just the sort of lethal gap that Taghai needed to put this duel to an end in a single pass.

”I swore I’d take your head,” Taghai shouted as the distance fell away to nothing. ”NOW I WILL!”

On the opposite side of the icy, glittering tilt-barrier, Reynold smiled behind his visor as he saw Taghai take the bait.

Whether it was fury from insults, panic at finding Reynold had reached the list well ahead of him, or deep-seated hatred that blossomed in Taghai’s heart, Reynold neither knew nor cared. Star Chaser had carried him to this moment, and now that they were here, the moment was his.

Reynold’s foot twitched in the saddle, tapping Star Chaser’s ribs in a silent request to pull ever so slightly away from the barrier. A hundred paces separated him from Taghai. A hundred paces, a handful of heartbeats to make his final adjustments.

Reynold’s left arm came up in a tight curl, his hand reaching for his helm just beside his ear while his elbow pointed straight at Taghai’s chest, just the way Sir Thane and Dame Sybyll had taught him.

”In the final moment, squeeze your fist and shift your elbow,” Thane’s voice echoed in his head. ”If you want to deflect enough force to live, you can’t hold a static target for your foe to pin against you. Let your guard look weak until the moment you lock your line.”

”Ye’ll blind yerself this way,” Sybyll added, patting her horse, Poppy, on the neck while she spoke. ”So let yer horse be yer eyes. Trust him ta’ shift yer line when tha’ moment comes. Drop yer reins, set yer lance an’ drive it home.”

It sounded overly optimistic at the time, but now, with less than fifty paces between him and Taghai, Reynold did exactly as he’d been taught. The shield stopped him from seeing most of Taghai’s armored bulk. All he could see was the shield he’d come to destroy and the point of his lance as he guided it toward the gleaming, hooked rune at the center of the shield.

Star Chaser’s heartbeat echoed alongside his over the last twenty paces. The two were of one mind and one purpose.

Star Chaser’s gait altered by just a hair, taking a quick, doubled step as he shifted to the side and in that moment, Reynold tightened his grip on the heater shield and pulled his elbow tightly toward his breastplate...

-CRASH!-

Everything happened at once.

The sound of impact, of shattering ice and timber, echoed across the outdoor arena like the sound of a battering ram striking a gate.

A shiver ran up his right arm as the lance struck something solid, and Reynold’s body absorbed the force of his charge. Then, in less than the blink of an eye, pain flared in Reynold’s arm, from his forearm, through his elbow and all the way to the shoulder joint.

”AAAAARRRGGGGG!” Reynold screamed in pain as he felt something in his shoulder tearing before the loud -POP- of a joint pulling free of the socket. The edge of his shield came up with tremendous force, battering his helm and turning his vision white while his ears lost the sound of the world, replaced only with a high-pitched ringing that pierced his skull.

Shards of splintered wood clattered off his helm and his breastplate, seemingly harmless until sharp, burning pain flared at the gap between his tassets and his thigh. A splinter of wood the length of a dagger protruded from the wound, freely spilling hot blood into the cold night air.

Reynold’s whole world twisted, and for a moment, he waited for the familiar sensation of floating that meant he’d been unhorsed... but it never came. Star Chaser thundered on beneath him, and somehow, despite the pain in his leg, Reynold managed to hold on to his seat.

The first thing he saw, when his vision started to clear, was the shattered stub of his lance. His right arm tingled with the force of the blow, but from the look of it, he’d landed a solid enough hit.

But had it worked?

If he had to ride again... he was done for. His shield had survived. A long crack ran down its length, but it had survived. That meant he’d earned the right to ride again if he’d failed, but all it took was one glance at the long, bloody splinter protruding from his leg to know that he was done.

”Lord Reynold!” the crowd cried.

”Reynold, the Lark of Aleese!”

”Lord Raynold and victory!”

Reynold didn’t quite dare to believe his ears. They were still ringing from the force of the blow to his helm. But when he turned, he was greeted with an extraordinary sight.

The shattered remains of Taghai’s shield lay strewn across the list, but that was less important than the state of the man himself.

Three feet of broken lance protruded from the gap in Taghai’s armor at his armpit, and the heavy, bullish man was covered in enough dirt and blood to suggest that he’d fallen badly when the force of Reynold’s blow knocked him off balance.

Already, a flurry of snow swirled around the fallen warrior as Lady Heila raced through the air to reach his side.

Stubbornly, Taghai clung to the icy tilt-barrier, attempting to drag himself to his feet, only to give up when Lady Heila reached his side.

”Congratulations, Lord Reynold,” a light, musical voice said from what sounded like several feet away. Only it couldn’t have been, because as soon as Reynold turned his head, once the world stopped spinning, he found Empress Ashlynn already at his side, reaching out toward his wounded leg with a hand wrapped in emerald energy.

”You’ve won on the first pass, Lord Reynold,” the Evergreen Empress said. ”And you’ll live to tell the tale.”