The Vampire & Her Witch

The trackers arrived as the tables were being cleared, three men in heavy leathers and wool cloaks darkened with rain, moving through the lodge’s great room with the confidence of masters who knew that, for this one hour, even lords would defer to their expertise.

Huntsman Fabel was the eldest of the three, a lean man with a face like weathered cedar bark and hands that had worked with hounds and horses for longer than most of the men in the room had been alive. He served the Lothian household as the Master of the Hounds, keeper of the hunting preserve’s kennels, and he was the man responsible for knowing every ridge, creek drainage, and game trail within the preserve’s boundaries.

He was not a knight, nor did he have much hope of ever becoming one. But when he walked into the great room with his long leash coiled over one shoulder and the evidence of the morning’s scouting cupped carefully in his hands, the conversation in the great hall fell away as every man in the room, highborn or otherwise, turned to listen.

Sir Gilander rose from the high table and met Fabel at the center of the room, performing his duty as the Master of the Hunt with the same level of dedication that he’d once used to safeguard Marquis Bors.

Huntsman Fabel could have come all the way up to the high table to present his findings directly to the lords sitting there, but there was an element of ceremony in moments like these, and Gilander treated it just as solemnly as he would have treated ceremonial duty when presenting the Marquis’s honor guard.

”My lord,” Fabel said, offering the old knight a nod that carried more professional respect than most of the courtly bows exchanged between members of the Lothian court. ”We’ve sussed out where the bull’s resting. He’s bedded down on the flat above Coldwater Creek. There’s heavy timber there where the old cedars grow thick enough to break the wind. We found him there three days ago, and he hasn’t moved more than a quarter league since.”

The huntsman held out his evidence as he spoke. In one hand, he carried a short stick, cut to the exact width of the bull’s hoofprint, with notches along its length marking the depth of the impression in the soft earth. In the other hand, he held a curled strip of bark that cradled a sample of the animal’s droppings, dark and dense with the fibrous remnants of the pine needles, twigs and bark it had been feeding on.

Gilander took the stick and turned it in his weathered fingers, his experienced eye measuring what the notches told him. Then he examined the droppings with the same detachment, breaking a piece apart between his fingers to assess the consistency and the moisture within.

”This is a large animal,” Gilander said confidently. ”And one in good health,” he added as he looked at the droppings. ”There’s no sign that it’s sickly or weak,” he praised the animal. ”Nothing to say that it’s unworthy of the hunt.”

”It’s larger than anything we’ve seen in the preserve in at least ten years, my lord, or maybe twenty,” Fabel confirmed, smiling widely enough to reveal his yellowed teeth. ”A solitary bull, likely nine or ten years old from the signs we can see.”

”He came down from the high country after the rut,” the huntsman explained. ”And he probably settled on that flat because it gives him a good view. There’s a good wind from the valley below too. He’s been feeding on the hemlock trees and fern shoots in the drainage, and bedding in the same spot each night.”

”And his rack?” Gilander asked,

”I got close enough this morning to count,” Fabel said, and something shifted in his voice, a note of professional wonder that the old huntsman couldn’t quite suppress. ”Seven points on each side, my lord. The spread is wider than my outstretched arms, and the main beams are thick as my forearm,” he added, extending one weathered arm as illustration.

Owain had been listening from his seat at the high table, his expression betraying nothing of the churning frustrations beneath the surface, but now he rose and crossed the room to where Gilander stood with the huntsman.

”You’re telling me,” Owain said as he took the measuring stick from Gilander and held it up, turning it slowly between his fingers, ”that there is a bull in my preserve with a fourteen-point rack wider than a man’s reach? An imperial bull elk?” Owain asked, placing extra emphasis on the word ’imperial’ as if it was the best news he’d received all day, and he didn’t quite dare to believe it.

”Yes, my lord,” Fabel said, meeting Owain’s gaze without flinching. ”He is the finest animal I’ve tracked in twenty years of managing this preserve. A beast worthy of a lord’s hunt.”

Something shifted in Owain’s chest at those words. Not warmth, exactly. Warmth was not something that came naturally to him. Not the way it seemed to come to men like his brother Loman, who could make a room feel lighter simply by walking into it. What Owain felt was closer to focus, the narrowing of purpose that came when the noise of politics and obligation fell away, and the world resolved itself into something simple and clean.

A target. A blade. The space between them.

”Then he’s mine,” Owain said, and his voice carried a weight that made the simple claim feel like something more than a hunter’s boast. It was a declaration, spoken in a room full of men who had come, whether willingly or reluctantly, to witness the authority of the next Marquis of Lothian March.

He turned to face the room, the measuring stick still in his hand, and addressed the assembled lords and knights.

”Gentlemen,” he said, and the word drew every eye in the great room toward him. ”Sir Gilander will direct the positioning of the relays and the beaters. I expect every man to follow his instructions to the letter. Our prey will be driven south along the Coldwater Creek toward the bluffs, and I will take the kill myself. With a blade,” he promised, resting his hand on the pommel of a sword that looked strangely understated for the future Marquis.

He paused, letting the silence settle over the room like a blanket of fresh snow.

”No one,” he added quietly, ”is to interfere with my kill.”

It was not a request. It carried the same tone as the orders he gave in the training yard, where men learned through bruises and broken bones what it meant to disappoint him.

”To your horses,” Owain commanded. ”We ride within the hour!”