The Vampire & Her Witch

The balcony that Ashlynn led Liam to jutted from the tower’s side like an eagle’s perch, high enough above the ground that the wind tugged insistently at the white lace spilling from Liam’s cuffs and made him grateful for the heavy wool of his maroon tunic beneath all the fashionable embroidery.

The tailors in Keating had laughed at him when he brought them such a heavy fabric to work with, but then, they’d never endured the rough winters in the foothills of the mountains, or attended feasts in the humble, and often drafty, manors of frontier knights. But in the end, even though they’d laughed, they’d been more than willing to take his gold in order to elevate the humble wool of his home barony into a garment that wouldn’t look out of place at the feasts or festivals of Keating City.

Below them, the ancient fortress spread out in layers of stone and activity, though the patchy fog that clung to the valley obscured almost as much as it revealed.

In the inner bailey directly below, servants moved through their routines with the unhurried efficiency of people who knew their work well. A small herd of goats picked their way across the winter grasses that still clung stubbornly to life within the fortress walls, their bells creating a gentle music that drifted up through the cold air. Near the stables, grooms led horses between buildings, their breath and the horses’ mingling into clouds of mist. Elsewhere, figures moved between workshops and outbuildings, some carrying supplies while others tended fires, all of them living the thousand small lives that kept a fortress running through the cold, dark winter months.

But it was the sight beyond the inner walls that drew Liam’s attention and held it.

Where the fortress town had once huddled close to the fortress like children seeking shelter, now it sprawled outward with the ambitious confidence of a rising power. Wooden scaffolding rose through the fog like the skeletons of giants, marking where buildings taller than any the Vale had seen in generations were taking shape.

Even at this distance, even through the clouds of fog and mist, Liam could hear the rhythm of construction; hammers pounding away rhythmically, saws chewing through wood, chisels ringing against stone, and sporadic voices calling instructions over the din. The sounds formed a sort of symphony of craftsmen making use of every precious hour of winter daylight, unwilling to let the season slow their work.

It was a view that told a story, and Liam was certain that Ashlynn had brought him here deliberately to see it.

”Different how?” she asked again, her voice carrying easily in the clear air above the fog. ”What was it about your time with Emmie and Heila in the healer’s tents in Hanrahan that was so different from what you saw with Loman over the summer?”

”You’re incredibly well informed, Lady Ashlynn,” Liam said carefully, buying a few moments to organize his thoughts. ”It seems like nothing happens near your domain that you don’t hear about.”

”You attacked a village that belonged to the Nightweaver Clan, Lord Liam,” Ashlynn said, shaking her head at the young man with a wry smile on her lips. ”Unless you’re prepared to stop every spider larger than a grain of millet from entering your camp, you should expect that some of them are acting as the eyes and ears of your enemies.”

”Commander Bassinger was testing Loman this summer,” Ashlynn explained, seeing no point in keeping it a secret now that things had reached this point. ”Even I had heard rumors that Loman might one day become an Exemplar, and so had the spies of the Vale. We needed to know if he’d awakened that level of power. Why else did you think our soldiers wounded so many of your soldiers that they could have killed them cleanly instead?”

”We thought it was just cruelty,” Liam said with a bitter snort. ”Like a cat, playing with a mouse before devouring it. But it was all a test to see the limits of Loman’s abilities as a healer?”

”The Vale learned to fear the power of Exemplars long ago, Lord Liam,” Ashlynn said simply. ”What you saw from Loman in Hanrahan should be proof enough of why. But you still haven’t answered my question,” she prompted. ”How were Eldritch healing tents different from what you experienced with Loman, or in the campaigns you fought without him?”

”You’re better prepared for one,” Liam said with a heavy sigh. ”Lady Heila brought an impressive amount of medicine with her. The Church in Hanrahan refused to treat any of the wounded that had been touched by Lady Heila’s healing miracle in the plaza, but she still had enough medicine to treat not only the wounded on Dame Sybyll’s side of the battle, but her enemies as well.”

”Whenever I’ve raised a force, I have to count every silver penny,” Liam continued as he looked out over the growing city emerging from the fog. ”Essence of the poppy is expensive, and so are the medicines that break fevers and cleanse wounds of infection. I have to decide carefully how much we’re likely to need because it won’t all last over the winter, and if I buy too much, then I’ll run short of arrows, or beef, or something else that will force us to cut the campaign short.”

”Heila is only one witch,” Ashlynn pointed out. ”And Emmie hasn’t learned enough sorcery yet to use real healing arts. But you have the whole of the Church to call on for miracle workers. Do you really need as much medicine as Heila brought to the battle?”

”It’s not the same, and you know it,” Liam said, turning away from the view of the city to look at Ashlynn directly. The cold didn’t seem to bother her at all, and she looked as calm and composed as a lady discussing which hats were in fashion or what to wear to a ball, even though they were talking about something as dire as the treatment of wounded soldiers after a battle.

”The Church isn’t allowed to send anyone stronger than an acolyte to tend to our villages,” Liam said as his hands clenched into fists, hidden by the lace that spilled from the cuffs of his tunic. ”Our hamlets make do with even less support from the Church. They’re only visited by acolytes on holy days or if they have to beg for one to come because of an emergency.”

”Unless I’m willing to make a generous ’donation’ to the Temple in Dunn at the start of our campaign, the most we can expect is an acolyte or two to oversee the physicians who tend our wounded,” Liam said as the polite mask he wore crumpled under the weight of memories.

He’d seen dozens of companions, men he’d trusted to have his back in pitched battles, suffering in the healer’s tents with wounds that the physicians said would never fully heal. The acolytes were next to useless, and the only miracles they seemed capable of offering did little more than ease pain and help dying men prepare to leave this life for the next one.

Compared to what he’d seen from Lady Heila and her squire Emmie, with medicines that could cleanse wounds of infection in minutes, speed the knitting of flesh so that healing took days instead of weeks, and blocked pain without inducing the stupor or confusion that accompanied using the essence of the poppy...

The difference was far too great, and that was before he considered the genuine miracles that Lady Heila wrought, where she mended broken bones and breathed life back into men who hovered at the edge of death.

”One witch and her squire did more for the wounded on both sides of one battle than I’ve seen the Church do for my men in four years of summer campaigns against the Eldritch villages,” Liam admitted. ”The difference... the difference is enough to make a man wonder if the Church understands what a miracle really is.”

If Loman had heard what Liam just said, it would likely drive a wedge between the two men that would be impossible to remove. Loman had worked himself to the brink of exhaustion on more than one occasion in order to tend to Liam’s wounded soldiers...

But Loman had only appeared to give that aid because Bors Lothian ordered his son to support Liam’s efforts. Moreover, the Marquis had only done so after Loman declared his intention to compete with Owain to become the next Marquis.

As dedicated as Loman might have been to his work, and as much compassion as he demonstrated for the wounded, Liam held no illusions that Loman had come to help him out of pure altruism or because he believed that the Holy Lord of Light demanded that the Church support the men who were fighting in its holy war against ’demons.’ Loman had only helped the men of Dunn when there was something for the Lothian Lord to gain from it.

Perhaps Ashlynn’s witches were the same. After all, Liam had seen firsthand how the people of Hanrahan shifted their loyalties after Hauke protected soldiers from Loman’s indiscriminate rain of luminous arrows and Heila healed the wounded...

But neither of them did it to gain power for themselves. They did it in the service of Lady Ashlynn’s greater goals to build peace between their people after generations of war, and that too was very different from what he’d seen from the human side of this war.