The Vampire & Her Witch

The camp erupted into motion as people abandoned their tasks and hurried toward the edge of the encampment where Baron Loghlan and his party were descending into the riverside hollow that held the camp. Eira found herself caught up in the surge of bodies, moving with the crowd as everyone pressed forward to hear the news.

She could see Lord Liam pushing his way through the throng of people, his expression carefully controlled, but his eyes sharp as he assessed the returning party. Lady Mairwen was also making her way forward, though with considerably more difficulty, given the press of bodies around her, until Liam reached her side and cleared the way for his mother.

”Come on, Morwen,” Eira said, clutching her friend’s hand as she used her elbows to pointedly draw attention to their presence and status when soldiers and servants failed to make way for them. She wasn’t trying to be rude, but she needed to hear what had happened, and she wanted to be close enough to Baron Loghlan and Lord Liam to speak with them if possible.

Eira’s mother had warned her that courting Liam would require more of her than she might think. The chances that his father would attempt to match him with the daughter of one of Lothian March’s other barons was high, and if not that, there were several other ladies of status whom Liam had likely become acquainted with in his years in Keating.

In order to draw his eye long enough to enter his heart, Eira would have to find a way to be more than just a beautiful young woman. She would have to demonstrate that she was every bit as capable as Lady Mairwen was at helping Liam to govern the barony, which would require years of hard study without the benefit of an education from an academy that her parents could never afford to send her to.

Eira refused to back down from the challenge. She knew that a match between someone as outstanding as Lord Liam and the daughter of one of his vassals was unlikely. The gap in status wasn’t impossible to overcome, but it made standing out on a crowded field much more difficult.

Nonetheless, the heart wanted what the heart wanted, and when she felt herself falling deeper and deeper in love with him with each year that he visited her village, she poured herself fully into the studies that would mold her into a lady who could rule at his side.

But if she wanted to sit beside him, she had to be present at important moments like this one, or he would never see her as anything but a pretty face with soft eyes when she gazed at him. Which meant that she was willing to be a little forceful in asserting herself as she elbowed grown men aside to reach the front of the crowd, pulling Morwen along with her.

As she drew closer, she could see that Baron Loghlan looked tired but unharmed. Sir Gavin and Sir Bedwyr flanked him, both knights looking somewhat shaken but whole. But there was no sign of Sir Ollie, and more worryingly, no sign of Lady Cerys or her son Dalwyn.

Lady Mairwen must have noticed the same thing, because Eira saw the older woman’s face go pale with concern as she finally reached her husband’s side.

”Loghlan,” Mairwen said, her voice tight with worry that she was trying to control. ”Where is Lady Cerys? And Sir Cynwrig? Why haven’t they come back with you?”

The crowd quieted at her question, everyone straining to hear the baron’s response. Loghlan raised his hands, calling for silence, and waited until the murmuring had died down before speaking.

”Please, everyone,” he said, projecting his deep voice across the crowd. ”I know you’re all worried and you have questions. There’s no danger and everyone is fine, more or less,” he said, hoping to ease the panic among his people as quickly as he could, only to provoke a fresh wave of murmured questions when he said ’more or less.’

”Let me explain what happened,” Loghlan said in a tone that was forceful enough to quiet the murmuring. ”I’ll answer what I can, but you need to listen from the beginning to the end. I won’t look kindly on people jumping in to get things out of order and causing more confusion,” he said with a meaningful glance at Liam.

Loghlan paused, looking around at the assembled faces to ensure that all of his knights had made it here along with many of their ladies, and Eira could see him choosing his words carefully.

”This morning, Lady Cerys took her son out for an early ride,” Loghlan began, his voice carrying across the gathered crowd. ”I don’t know if I should call it a blessing or a curse, but she chanced upon an ancient demon trap,” he said. eliciting a wave of startled gasps from the crowd. Eira, however, noticed the hesitation in his voice and the tightening in his eyes when he used the word ’demon’ instead of the word ’Eldritch.’

”I call it a blessing, because the trap was so old, from the Brother’s War or maybe even the War of Undying Demons, that it only fired a single powerful arrow before it consumed itself in witchfire and smoke,” he explained. ”And as much of a curse as it is to encounter such a thing, the arrow missed Lady Cerys, because it surely would have taken her life and her son’s as well if it had struck her directly,” he said, shuddering as he recalled how deeply in the horse’s skull Milo’s arrow had been.

Loghlan knew that he had to offer an explanation for the slain horse on the chance that someone rode out and discovered it, and this was the best he’d been able to come up with. An ancient trap instead of an Eldritch Archer. A stroke of good and bad fortune mixed together, along with an explanation for the strange purple smoke they’d seen...

It was a bald-faced lie, but Sir Ollie and his companions had just done a very thorough job of teaching Loghlan how little he or any of the people in the Kingdom of Gaal truly understood about the Eldritch. So if Loghlan said it was a trap, and it consumed itself in witchfire, who was to say that it wasn’t possible?

For now, all that mattered was that it was believable enough to restore peace and order to the camp, and hopefully, to provide a harrowing, cautionary tale that wouldn’t prompt too much investigation from the Lothians or the Church when they finally arrived in Lothian City.

If Loghlan understood Lord Owain as well as he thought he did, the soon-to-be Marquis would gloat over their misfortune while chastising them for arriving late to the pre-coronation events like the hunt that was taking place today.

The Church would take it as a cautionary tale, using it to remind the common folk to seek out the shelter of the Church and not to stray from the lands claimed by their lords for fear of meeting a similar fate, but the most they would do is to send an Inquisitor to investigate the place where things happened.

At that point, it would be impossible to hide the effects of Sir Ollie’s witchcraft on the copse of trees, but Loghlan chose to place his faith in Lady Ashlynn. After seeing what just one of her witches was capable of doing, he’d come to fully agree with his son’s assessment that nothing could stop Lady Ashlynn from conquering the March, which meant that by the time the Inquisition found the copse of trees, it would already be too late for them to move against him for his role in things today.

”Fortunately,” Loghlan continued, raising his voice to be heard over the rising noise. ”Fortunately, Sir Ollie is well versed in the methods used by even uncommon demons and their witchcraft. He’s seen this sort of witchcraft before, and he rode out immediately with Sir Cynwrig to help.”

Now that he’d said so much, even Loghlan’s warning that he wouldn’t tolerate disruptive questions couldn’t hold back all the voices in the crowd. There might not be a demon army or dark witches preparing to descend on their camp at any moment, but that hardly meant they were safe, and the people demanded answers, some of which would be difficult to provide...