The Vampire & Her Witch

Eamon shifted uncomfortably when Ashlynn asked the question but this time, the source of his discomfort was the man standing next to him. For several quiet moments, Eamon stared at the bound and gagged Darragh, watching the soaking wet man shake and shiver in the chill autumn air and wondering if he’d ever really understood the young man he took under his wing.

The cold autumn air and wet clothing only accounted for half of Darragh’s trembling. The rest flowed from a deep, seething hatred that burned in his eyes as he glared at the two men who had betrayed their very humanity to become the puppets of a witch and demons. But as much as he hated them at this moment, he hated himself even more for thinking he could deliver a warning to the knights who now sat in judgement above him.

He’d tried. He’d done everything he could in the hopes that he could stop them from falling for Lady Ashlynn and her bewitching ways. He tried to warn them. Certainly he hoped they’d be grateful enough for his warning that they would reward them for it.

He never really expected to receive the title and knighthood that Eamon had once suggested they might earn if they could escape the demon fortress and bring back Lady Ashlynn but he would have been content with a small bag of gold sovereigns and the chance to buy some land of his own somewhere in the domains of the eastern barons who were farther away from the demon menace. But now, none of that would ever happen and he hated everyone who had snatched that hope away from him.

”When the refugees started trickling in,” Eamon said without taking his eyes off the kneeling figure of Darragh as the younger man stewed in his own rage. ”Sir Ollie needed our help keeping everyone fed. We’d been kept under guard but since he needed our help, we took it as an opportunity. I, I never expected to make that much of a difference in people’s lives,” Eamon said as memories flickered behind his eyes.

Looking back, it had been the children who affected him the most. It didn’t matter if they were from the Heartwood Clan, the Horned Clan, the Nightweavers or anyone else... Children were children and nothing was worse to a growing child than the pain of an empty belly. An empty belly meant their parents couldn’t provide for them and worse, couldn’t protect them from the dangers of the world.

An empty belly was pain that gnawed at children, keeping them awake at night when they should be dreaming of better days. It was there when they woke, tearing away any pleasant dreams they had with an immediate reminder of everything they’d lost and how much they were suffering.

Children could make games out of rocks and sticks. They would play in trees or bare dirt and laugh and dance with nothing but hands slapping knees to give them music. They could find joy in anything, even when they had nothing, but they couldn’t do any of that if an empty belly drained them of the strength to move or gnawed away at their hopes for a better day.

”The children were the first refugees to take a liking to us,” Eamon said, staring at Darragh with growing hatred as he thought about the neighbors and their children that the younger hunter had turned his back on. ”It took a while for folks to trust, but they trusted Sir Ollie’s cooking and they started thanking us when we brought in a brace of fowl or young buck... It didn’t matter if we had a good day or a lean one, they were always happy to see us and thanked us for our work,” he said.

”Mrey, ere, dmarshs!” Darragh muttered darkly. ”Eddfdg, dmarshs!” The more Eamon spoke, the looser Daithi’s grip on his hair had become and he was no longer quite as restrained but there was still nothing, absolutely nothing he could do about the gag that trapped his words in his mouth.

For a moment, he struggled against the wet ropes that bound his hands, hoping he could get free for just a moment, just long enough to tell these people the truth, but the ropes only bit deeper into his flesh as he struggled, giving him no chance to escape.

”When we built the village, folks set aside a place for us, even though we were out in the wilderness too much to help much with the construction,” Eamon said, ignoring Darragh’s struggles as he remembered the excited members of the Heartwood clan when they’d gathered around the two men to show them the small cottage they’d built to say thank you for everything the two men had done to provide for them.

”In the village, I share a cottage with Darragh,” Eamon said, his gaze sharpening as he met the young hunter’s hate filled eyes. ”The villagers he tried to betray tonight did most of the work to thank us for feeding them when they were helpless refugees. It isn’t large, but we each have a room to ourselves and a place to cook and share meals with others if we wish,” he said, describing a cottage that was luxuriously large compared to the communal barracks they’d lived in when they served Lord Owain directly.”

”We even have a small plot for a garden but we’re hunters and foragers by trade and we might be gone for days at a time before we return with anything. Normally, it would be a waste of time to try to keep a garden but some of the women folk help tend the garden whenever we’re out hunting. Miss Juni and Mister Milo even invite us over for meals sometimes to dress up our share of the hunt.”

”Lady Ashlynn,” Eamon said, with eyes that were wet with a storm of emotions that included the deep gratitude and sense of belonging he’d found among Sir Ollie’s people as well as the bitterness, resentment and hatred at the way Darragh, a man he had once mentored, had tried to throw all that away.

”We’re two drifting men who lived all our lives in the wilds,” he said, clutching his hands into tight fists as the feelings in his heart threatened to overwhelm him. ”We’ve gone where we were told, packed up at a moment’s notice and traveled all across the march but... now we have a home and neighbors and people who count on us.”

”Sir Hugo, Sir Rain, if you think that Darragh turning on Lady Ashlynn is only natural for a man who was captured... We haven’t been captives for a long time, and Sir Ollie and Lady Ashlynn trust us with so much. We were even at the banquet last night when Sir Ollie was knighted,” he added. ”So, if you ask me if I can understand why Darragh did what he did...I just can’t. I can’t understand at all,” he said, hanging his head low.