The Vampire & Her Witch

Sir Carwyn Belvin stared at the flat tailed demon in disbelief as his mind struggled to catch up to everything that was happening. Glancing in the direction of his men, he found that many of them held broken shields and bled from wounds to their legs and arms, but none of them seemed to be on the edge of death.

The other flat tailed demons had moved to encircle his men and many of them held bows drawn, ready to fire the instant they received a command but two of the strange serpentine demons with their brightly colored, plumed helms had placed themselves between the flat tailed demons and his men. Was this some kind of internal discord among the demons?

”I don’t understand,” Carwyn said, blinking and shaking his head as he tried to clear the fog in his mind. ”I am unhorsed and disarmed. I am defeated. Why does he want to give me another chance?”

”Because he doesn’t know how disgusting and cruel you humans are,” the flat tailed demon spat without bothering to translate. ”Because he’s never seen one of you ’knights’ burning villages and murdering helpless pregnant women. Because he thinks you’re a ’champion’ like him, and the battle shouldn’t end just because he killed your beast. Because... because... because he hasn’t lost anything to you monsters and he thinks he’s still in the Arena in High Fen City.”

The way the demon spoke, with venom and hatred in his voice and hot tears in his eyes, took Carwyn completely by surprise. More than that, he was stunned to hear a demon calling knights monsters and accusing them of...

”Your village,” Carwyn said as his eyes widened in sudden understanding. ”Your village was destroyed by Lord Owain and his men this summer, wasn’t it?” It was a story he’d heard just weeks ago while Lord Owain was touring Baron Hanrahan’s territory with a pair of guild masters who intended to become knights.

At the time, it had sounded like a fierce battle against devious monsters who set traps and ambushes to slaughter his men. Owain described it as purging the land of an infestation and complained that many of the demons had escaped, leaving behind only a few of the elderly and women with ’bellies full of demon spawn.’

”I, I wasn’t there!” Carwyn protested as he suddenly wondered if this attack on his village’s caravan was some kind of retribution for Owain’s summer campaign against the demons. ”We, we never did anything to your village or your people,” he pleaded. ”We didn’t even send soldiers to help Lord Owain!”

For a moment, hope began to burn in his heart. It was feeble and flickering, sustained only by the hope that, if he could speak to this demon and convince him that this had all been a terrible misunderstanding, they might be able to walk away from all of this. Next to that feeble hope, immense gratitude swelled in his chest that he’d listened to his father and stayed home instead of joining either young lord Owain or Liam in their campaigns against the demons.

That hope, faint and feeble as it was, snuffed out like a candle flame when the demon next spoke.

”You think we don’t know that?” The flat tailed demon snarled. ”If you’d been there, even if Sir Ollie was here himself, nothing would stop us from killing you! We should still kill you! But Barsali wants to give you a chance to fight like a champion. He thinks you deserve it because he thinks that human knights are like Sir Ollie. So get up! Get up and take his offer because if you don’t, then I’ll kill you myself!”

”Kăkûtiṣ sāvrǽn? Nǽmna iörā yǽi? Iñ-kē īmâk, tǽrā ky lim fidōn uzunā pî horâ, kāvūn prī hēfē këzārnā,” the serpentine demon referred to as Barsali said, gesturing to the wounded soldiers and tilting his head as if he was confused when he looked from the flat tailed demon to the knight lying in the mud.

”Get up, human,” the flat tailed demon said as its tail thumped the ground in obvious agitation. ”Get up and fight him, and he’ll spare your men’s lives, even if you fall here. If you win, you and your men can go free. If you lose, you and your men become captives. Those are his terms.”

”Isn’t that too good for me?” Carwyn said, more to stall for time than because he had any real questions. The numbness had begun to fade from his left arm, and he could feel his fingers again. His breathing was still shallo,w and he was certain he’d cracked at least a few ribs, but the pain had gone from sharp and hot to dull and throbbing, and his vision was clearer by the minute.

”Why should I believe his offer?” Carwyn asked. ”Ask him,” he added quickly, pointing at the serpentine demon with a shaky hand. ”I want to hear his words,” he said.

Carwyn was hoping that he could force the flat tailed demon, who clearly hated humans, to translate instead of arguing with him directly. The smaller demon was clearly not only a junior soldier under the command of this ’Barsali’ but biased against humans as well.

Whether or not the demon translated truthfully, he couldn’t be sure, but if the positions were reversed, Carwyn knew how he would treat one of his men who twisted his words when relaying his messages. He could only hope that the demons possessed a similar level of discipline.

After a brief exchange in the demon’s infernal tongue, the one who had been translating turned back to Carwyn with a defeated look in his eyes.

”He says that the terms of a wager are sacred when champions take to the sands,” the demon said. ”He says that he would never insult the Blood Princess or the Willow Whip by breaking his word. So long as you swear to order your men to obey his commands and surrender if you fall, he swears they will not die here.”

”Tell him that’s not good enough,” Carwyn said as he struggled to his feet. ”Tell him that, if I fight this duel here, he has to promise to leave my village alone. We had nothing to do with the attack on your village,” he said, locking eyes with the serpentine demon through the cage of the other man’s helm. ”Tell him that I will fight him and I will die for my village, but after that, our debts are settled.”

”He can’t promise you that,” the flat tailed demon said after another exchange in their own language. ”This raid has nothing to do with what Owain Lothian did to my clan. The most he can promise is to let your farmers and workers go and take only the soldiers. Whether your village is attacked or not is not his decision to make.”

”Very well,” Sir Carwyn said, drawing the deepest breath he could while he rotated his right shoulder, feeling out the extent of his injuries. It had been too much to expect that he could save his village by dying in a duel, but he felt like he had to try.

The terms were already skewed far too much in his favor and Carwyn didn’t know if that was because the demon was treating him like sport or if they had their own twisted sense of honor about these fights but in the end, it didn’t matter why it was doing this. If the demon was lying, things wouldn’t be any worse than they already were, but if it was telling the truth then it was the only chance Carwyn had to save his men’s lives.

”Tell him I accept his offer,” Carwynn said as he stepped up out of the ditch to meet Barsali’s reptilian gaze. ”Tell him that I give him my word,” he added as he held out his hand. ”So long as my men’s lives will be spared, I will face him in single combat!”