The Vampire & Her Witch

Pol took a step backward, and Harren couldn’t blame him. The burning blade lit the square like a second sun, throwing their shadows long and sharp against the gatehouse doors behind them. Every instinct in Harren’s body screamed at him to throw the bar and get out of the way.

But behind those instincts, deeper and more visceral, lived the memory of Percivus’s acolytes being dragged through Market Square. The memory of their ruined eyes, dark and glistening, streaming blood like crimson tears down their broken faces. The memory of their voices, hoarse from screaming, begging for a mercy that never came.

Owain had done that. Owain had done that to men who served the Inquisition, men who wore the crimson and gold of the Holy Lord of Light, and he’d done it because they had displeased him. If Harren opened these gates for an armed force on the night of his lord’s wedding, what Owain would do to him would make the acolytes’ fate look gentle.

The thought of defying the Inquisitor with the flaming sword terrified him... But the thought of what Owain would do to him for obeying the Inquisitor was a thousand times worse because he’d already seen it up close and in person.

”I can’t do that,” Harren said, and he was surprised by how steady his voice came out even as his legs trembled beneath him. ”These gates are sealed by order of Lord Owain. No one enters or leaves until the bells ring at the end of the coronation.”

The man with the burning blade studied him for a moment, and Harren had the uncomfortable feeling of being looked through rather than looked at, as though the fire in the man’s sword had given him the ability to see everything Harren was and everything he’d ever done, right down to the secret he kept about the merchant’s coin purse he’d pocketed during an inspection three years ago.

”My name is Ignatious,” the man said, and his voice carried across the square with a clarity that seemed to cut through the cold. ”I carry a Blade of Holy Flame. You should know what that means, and the fate that awaits you if you defy me. Open the gates, stand aside, and you will not be harmed,” he said.

Behind him, a second figure in crimson emerged from the carriage and stepped forward. He was a hawk-nosed man with coal-black hair pulled back in a tight braid, and he had the sharp, searching eyes of a born investigator. Diarmuid carried a gilded scepter in one hand, though unlike his companion’s sword, no aura of Holy Fire clung to the weapon he carried.

”You’ve done nothing to make yourself our enemies,” Diarmuid said in a tone that implied that these men weren’t seen as enemies of the Church. Yet. ”Stand aside before you do.”

A month ago, those words might have worked. A month ago, the authority of the Inquisition was absolute in Lothian March, and any guardsman who defied a direct order from a man in crimson robes would have been dragged before an Inquisitor to answer for his disobedience.

But that was before Owain beat two acolytes until they hung from their shackles like sides of bloody beef. Before he gouged out their eyes with a tool meant for eating snails. Before he paraded them through the streets and let them die of exposure outside the city gates while the entire population of Lothian City watched and learned exactly what happened to men who served the Church when the Church displeased the ruler of the march.

The Inquisition’s authority had been burned away by the same man who now sat inside the great hall, waiting for his bride. Owain had taught the people of Lothian City that the crimson robes meant nothing if the man wearing them lacked the power to protect himself from the Marquis’s fury.

”I’m sorry,” Harren said, and he meant it. His hand tightened on his mace, and he could feel Pol doing the same beside him, though the younger man’s grip was shaking badly enough that the but of his spear tapped against the frozen flagstones. ”I can’t open these gates. Whatever authority you carry, it won’t protect us from Lord Owain.”

From somewhere behind the two Inquisitors, a woman’s voice spoke, clear and calm and carrying to every corner of the square even though she didn’t yell or shout.

”Then we’ll open them ourselves,” the voice said. ”And take as prisoners any man who is wise enough to throw down his arms.”

Harren had time to tighten the strap of his helm to keep it in place. He had time to set his feet, raise his shield, and shout a warning to the men inside the gatehouse.

He didn’t have time for much else.

The flame-haired knight was faster than any man in that kind of light armor had a right to be. He crossed the distance between the column and the gate in a handful of strides, and his first punch, delivered with an armored fist, hit the shield in front of Pol with enough force to lift the younger guardsman off his feet and send him sprawling across the frozen cobblestones.

Harren swung. The knight caught the blow with a curved fighting knife that appeared in his left hand as though it had materialized from the night air, deflecting the mace wide before driving his shoulder into Harren’s chest. The impact was like being hit by a charging horse. Harren’s feet left the ground, and when he landed, the cold stones of the square knocked the breath from his lungs and the mace from his hand.

He lay there, gasping, staring up at the night sky as the sounds of a short, brutal fight erupted around the gatehouse. Steel rang against steel. Someone shouted, ’Watch the shadows!’ and then someone screamed, a high, sharp sound that cut off abruptly in a wet gurgle.

Then there was the heavy -THUNK- of the gate bar being lifted from its brackets, followed by the deep groan of the heavy timber gates swinging open on their iron hinges.

The fight was over in less than a minute.

Harren rolled onto his side and saw Pol sprawled a few paces away, alive but dazed, his shield arm hanging at an odd angle. Beyond them, the gatehouse guards who had been posted on the wall were climbing down with their hands raised, their weapons abandoned on the walkway above. Two of the inner guards lay motionless on the ground, though Harren couldn’t tell if they were dead or merely unconscious.

The column poured through the open gates into the inner bailey, and as they passed, one of the older knights, a tall man with a well-trimmed mustache and the bearing of a veteran who had spent decades watching coastlines for pirate sails, paused long enough to look down at Harren with an expression that held neither contempt nor pity.

”Stay down, lad,” Sir Elgon said. ”The fight’s over for you. You’re lucky it was Sir Ollie who hit you,” he added as he glanced at the remainder of the column rushing through the gatehouse. ”Others might not be so kind to men who serve your lord,” he said sharply.

Harren nodded his head rapidly like a hen pecking at the ground and stayed down. Behind him, the gates of Lothian Manor stood open for the first time since Owain had ordered them sealed, and the force that poured through them moved toward the inner manor with the grim, purposeful energy of people who had come a very long way to settle a debt.