The Vampire & Her Witch

For a moment, Liam Dunn stared numbly at the Lothian Marquis. He understood the question that had been asked. After their losses, could they still pay their tithes and send soldiers to fight the demons next year. It was a simple, rational question. It just wasn’t the one he’d hoped to hear.

’How many men have lost their lives?’ would have been a better question. Or ’Will your people be able to get through the winter after what has happened to them?’ Anything to show that the man responsible for Lothian March cared about the people who fought and bled and died for the Dunns and their Lothian lords. Instead, they were asked if they could still pay their tithe and send more soldiers to fight in the coming war.

Sitting behind him, Baron Otker watched the young lord squirm with a barely concealed smile on his face. For years, the Dunns had dominated almost every industry of value within the march and they’d only grown more dominant under the rule of Liam’s father. Once, the Otkers had enjoyed handsome profits from helping the Dunns ship everything from bales of wool to rough hewn logs on their way to the mills in Keating Duchy.

In the years since the War of Inches, however, they had aggressively reinvested everything they plundered from Airgead Mountain into their own local industries. Bales of freshly shorn wool had given way to spun thread and they’d even begun planting vast fields of flowers in order to dye their own wool. Saw mills dotted the barony and what timber sailed down river was already bound for customers like the ship builders in Blackwell County.

Combined with their relentless expansion and their flaunting of the restrictions about how many knights they could appoint and how many villages they could establish, the Dunns had grown so mighty within Lothian March that Baron Otker wasn’t the only one hoping to see them fall. So while young Liam Dunn squirmed and fought to control his temper, Baron Otker leaned back in his chair, sipping on mulled wine as if he was watching a play on a grand stage rather than dire news presented to the Lothian Court.

”Our autumn tithe was already in Maeril Village when the attacks happened,” Liam said after taking several deep breaths to compose himself before he said something he might regret. Still, he couldn’t let matters stand without speaking up for the people they’d lost.

”My father is still tallying the dead,” Liam added, turning to look at Loman Lothian instead of addressing the lord of the march. ”At the very least, we’ve seen the almost complete destruction of our garrisons in Sooner’s Reach and Kitchner’s Fell. Captain Jorg is among the fallen,” he said, looking directly into Loman’s eyes.

During their summer campaign against the demon villages, Loman had spent half a day meticulously removing an arrow from Captain Jorg’s leg before bestowing the blessings of the Holy Lord of Light on him. The man was a good soldier who had served the Dunn’s for more than a decade and his assignment to Sooner’s Reach was supposed to be a reward for his service and a chance to spend some time recuperating from his injuries.

”I, I remember Captain Jorg,” Loman said after a moment. His hands gripped his cup of mulled wine firmly enough that the cup shook in his hand, spilling a bit of the hot liquid over the back of his hand, but Loman hardly noticed. He was thinking of the soldier’s soft grey eyes as he boasted to his companions in the healer’s tent that he’d be leaving to defend a sleepy village where the most dangerous thing for leagues were jealous bulls guarding their herds.

”He was a good man,” Loman said after a moment. ”I’m sure he met his struggle well in his final moments and that he awaits us all on the soft sands of the Heavenly Shores,” he said, raising his cup in a silent toast to the fallen soldier and pouring a small splash of wine on the floor of the great hall.

The gesture was matched first by Baron Leufroy, followed almost as quickly by Sir Tommin and Inquisitor Diarmuid before each person sitting at the tables slowly poured a final sip of wine for the fallen soldiers and innocent farmers who had lost their lives in the sudden, inexplicable demon attacks.

Not everyone who poured wine did so to honor the dead, but one look at Liam’s withering glance was enough to prompt Bastian to move and Baron Otker had been playing this game for more than enough years to recognize when rivalry had to give way to ritual. He might not care about the dead men, but he wasn’t about to provoke a fight over their worthless lives by refusing to offer a sip to the slain.

”Winter is the worst time to die on a demon’s blade,” High Priest Aubin said, shaking his head sadly. ”The temple will light bonfires for the next three nights, from sunset to sunrise to help the dead find their way through the darkness of the long nights.”

The High Priest was certain that there would be many bonfires lit in the nights to come once the war began in earnest. That had been the way of it before and it would be again. During the War of Inches, it felt like the skies turned black with the smoke of pyres and guiding fires for weeks at a time whenever one side or another launched a new offensive.

To be lighting guiding fires already, however, before the Winter’s Night Vigils, felt like an ominous sign. Silently, as he promised to light bonfires for the fallen, the aging priest also promised to write to the Exemplars and the Saint in the Holy City.

He’d found nothing in the almanacs or the sacred texts to warn about doom on the horizon but there were plenty of things that even he hadn’t been allowed to see. Perhaps only the Saint himself would understand the darkness looming before them and how the Holy Lord of Light intended for them to fight it.

But then, as if a curtain had been pulled from in front of his eyes, he finally understood that the Saint had likely foreseen this long ago. After all, the Church was setting aside something as significant as Owain Lothian’s murder of his noble wife in order to use him as a weapon in the upcoming Holy War and the Church continued to press for a beginning of their campaign against the demons.

Now that they were seeing the return of ancient threats, it suddenly made sense to the old priest. It wasn’t his place to doubt or question because the Holy Lord of Light had already paved their path to salvation. All he had to do was walk it... and ensure that the lords on this council walked it as well.

In the end, all would be as the Holy Lord of Light intended because there could be no other outcome.