The Vampire & Her Witch

Color instantly drained from Sir Rain’s face as he imagined the fate of such a soldier. Bad enough to try to hold onto your saddle when your bowels were in a twist and you felt like your gut would explode at any moment. It was undignified in the extreme but men had soiled themselves rather than stop to dismount and remove their armor when the army was on the move.

But this flatleaf nettle poison, if Sir Ollie and Lady Ashlynn were to be believed, was far worse than a simple case of the squirts, and the notion of inflicting such a fate on a man, any man, even your worst enemy, was one he shuddered to contemplate.

”With legs that go weak and his guts in a twist, your man can’t grip the horse with his legs. He can’t rise or fall in the saddle and has to suffer the bucking and bouncing of the horse’s gait,” Sir Rain explained, looking at Darragh with a new level of disgust.

”If the man is lucky, he’ll fall from the horse,” Rain said flatly. ”He may break bones or crack his head in the fall but he’ll probably survive. Sir Hugo’s brother survived such a fall, but it took the efforts of a priest from the Church, praying over him for months, before he recovered his wits and his ability to speak without slurring his words like a drunkard.”

”And what if the man isn’t lucky?” Ollie asked. He was the son of a stablehand but Ollie’s father had mostly talked to him about how to care for horses. Feeding them, grooming them, and mucking out their stalls were close to the limits of his father’s knowledge.

It wasn’t until he reached the Vale of Mists and began to receive lessons from Sir Thane that he began to understand the way knights thought of horses but he’d had very little time to learn more than the basics of staying atop a horse and guiding it gently with reigns. Anything beyond that and he was truly out of his depth.

”If a man isn’t lucky when he falls, his foot may become tangled in the stirrup,” Sir Rain said darkly. ”If that happens, and the horse bolts, then he’ll be dragged for leagues. If he survives, his skin will be flayed from his body from being hauled along the road, his bones will be broken and his wits addled. It’s the worst fate a cavalry man can suffer and men who survive it...” he explained, trailing off as he thought about the last time he’d seen one of his soldiers dragged by his own horse when he fell in battle against the Horse Demons of the Southern Steppe.

”If he survives, something breaks inside the man,” Sir Rain said, glaring at the kneeling figure of Darragh. ”Even if he walks again, he’ll never ride again for the rest of his life.”

”You see now why I don’t think we need to hear what he has to say,” Ashlynn said as she slowly walked closer to the kneeling figure of Darragh. Up close, she loomed over the man even though she wasn’t that tall and his eyes widened in terror as he realized that she was about to bring this ’tribunal’ to an end... an end that would almost certainly declare him guilty!

”Nrrrrr! Nrrrrrr! Iiiissshhhh! Eeesssss aa Isssssh! Aaaaaa eeeee! Aaaaa eeeee!” Darragh screamed, his eyes wide in terror and his pupils reduced to trembling pinpricks as he stared at the woman who was only slightly less powerful than the Demon Lady of the Vale herself.

”Sir Rain,” Aslynn said formally in a voice that was sharper and more clipped than anything she’d said so far. ”This man is accused of betraying his liege lady, his local lord, and his fellow soldiers. Guilty or innocent, what say you?”

”Guilty,” Sir Rain said, staring down at the struggling man in contempt that only grew stronger when he saw the man’s terror at Ashlynn’s approach. A few minutes ago, he’d contemplated making an argument that this man should be returned to Lord Owain. After all, he was Owain’s bondsman and it should be his lord who judges his crimes. Then he would have had an excuse to take the man away where he could question him to learn the secrets that Lady Ashlynn was so protective of.

That desire died the moment he learned what the man had done to his fellow soldiers and the danger he’d put them in. Sir Rain’s morals might be a bit flexible, they had to be if he wanted to serve Owain Lothian personally, but even he had lines he wouldn’t cross.

”And you, Sir Hugo? What say you?” Ashlynn asked, turning her attention to Owian’s dark-haired steward.

”I can’t call him innocent,” Hugo said, looking at the man who gazed at him as if he was his only hope of salvation in this world. ”But, even though horrible things could have happened, all of those disasters were prevented. His poisoning was clumsy and he was caught. His escape was thwarted, and any secrets he might have, he hasn’t been able to tell them.”

”To me, he might have attempted to betray his liege lady, his local lord and his companions,” Hugo said. ”But his attempts all failed and he caused no real harm. That should be a lesser crime of some sort... shouldn’t it?” he said uncertainly.

”So you think that, because he failed and he was caught, his crime is less?” Ashlynn said, staring at Hugo with emerald eyes that were harder than diamonds and colder than ice. ”You think he should be given some kind of lesser punishment?”

”I, I cannot say,” Hugo said with great difficulty, finding Lady Ashlynn’s fury even more frightening than her husband’s. With Owain, the worst he needed to fear was usually harsh words or a ’personal lesson’ on the training grounds. If he could endure the beating, then all was usually well.

But Lady Ashlynn, when he met her gaze, he felt like the whole weight of the world was sitting on his chest. The feeling was so intense that, had he not already been seated on the tailgate of the wagon, he would have fallen to his knees or his backside, just from the weight of her stare.

”If, if I could question him,” Hugo stammered. ”If I could understand his motives better. What he intended and why... I might, might be able to agree that he’s an irredeemable traitor. But, with just this,” he said, swallowing heavily. ”With just this, I can’t, can’t call him guilty,” he said, lowering his head and looking away from Lady Ashlynn when her piercing gaze became too much to bear.

He was certain that it wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. All of this felt more and more like a show, like she had already arrived at her decision before it even started and she was only using this moment to convince the people watching of the righteousness of her decision.

If he were really smart, or if he was cunning the way Lord Owain was, he would have used this moment to voice out his agreement. To firmly declare the man to be guilty just for the sake of getting on Lady Ashlynn’s good side.

After all, she had said that their conduct during this tribunal would determine whether they became guests or captives, and Sir Rain had clearly decided to take the first step, trampling the accused traitor beneath his feet as he rode the momentum of the conversation to the destination that Lady Ashlynn clearly wanted him to reach.

But Hugo couldn’t do it. Even to save his own skin, he couldn’t do it. Maybe it was because he’d been treated as a commoner for much of his life, trampled beneath the feet of his nobleborn family until his father finally acknowledged him, just because he was afraid Bastian wouldn’t recover from his injuries.

Or maybe it was because there were still far too many pieces of the puzzle that he hadn’t seen yet to feel like he really understood what was happening here. And as long as he didn’t understand, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything, one way or another, about the trial taking place.

So he gave the only answer he could... and hoped that he could survive the consequences of giving it.