The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn shook her head as she listened to the conversation between Sir Garrik and Owain. Perhaps the men didn’t realize that she could hear them over the din of the brawl and from so far away, but even if they thought their conversation went unnoticed, it did nothing to excuse their conduct.

Owain intended to humble his allies. He couldn’t understand how helping others rise up would, in return, help him rise. Left to his own devices, he would be the tallest man in the march because he would keep everyone else on their knees.

For a moment, Ashlynn’s hand drifted to the hilt of Water’s Edge. She could put an end to all of this now with one clean stroke of the sword... Except that she couldn’t. Not yet. Not if she wanted to rule over anything but ashes after this ended.

Besides, she thought as she gave in to the darkness that seethed in her own heart for a moment. She still had business with these Inquisitors, and she wasn’t about to let Owain’s ham-handed scheming to humble them provoke enough sympathy from her to rescue them from the fate they’d earned...

At the far end of the table where the brawl had started, an Inquisitor older and more experienced than the acolytes was not content to be taken quietly. He snatched up the intricately decorated lash that hung from his belt, a weapon of braided leather with small metal beads woven into the tips, designed to leave scars that would remind the penitent of their sins for the rest of their lives.

”Back!” the Inquisitor commanded, cracking the lash at the nearest Blackwell knight with a practiced flick of his wrist that sent the metal-tipped strands whistling through the air. The lash caught the knight’s forearm, wrapping around his arm with enough force to crack bone and rend flesh were it not for the quality of the armor. For a moment, the Inquisitor seemed to believe that his weapon and his authority would be enough to hold back the tide.

”You take me for a slave?” the knight shouted, wrapping his hand around the lash and yanking hard enough to pull the Inquisitor off balance. ”You think you can whip us into submission to make us row for you?”

”What, row...?” the inquisitor blinked in confusion before a gauntleted fist slammed into his midriff, driving the wind from his lungs and leaving him gasping. In the next instant, the knight wrapped the lash around the Inquisitor’s neck and lifted him off the ground until he dangled like a prize fish.

”A lash is a slaver’s tool,” the knight spat as he watched the Inquisitor’s face turn a darkening shade of red. ”We’re not slaves to you. We don’t fear you, and there’s nothing ’holy’ about things you do,” he said over the strangled sounds of the Inquisitor gasping for air as the man clawed at the lash wrapped around his own neck.

”I won’t kill you,” the knight said coldly as the Inquisitor slumped, unconscious, in his grasp. He quickly untangled the lash from his arm and the Inquisitor’s neck before dumping the man in the central aisle. ”But Light knows I want to...”

”This, this can’t be,” Recared muttered as he backed away from the storm of violence. ”You there,” he shouted, pointing at one of the heavily armored Templars who had begun moving toward the table. ”Help us! You have to protect us...”

Recared had fought demons before. He’d been in battle, unleashing Holy Flames on the wicked, foul creatures of the night. But he’d never been this close to violence. There had always been a ring of steel and swords around him, whether they were from the Temple Guard, the Templars, or even the soldiers of a lord’s army. The men of the Inquisition needed to be defended as they summoned the miracles of the Holy Lord of Light.

Here in the Great Hall, surrounded by so many knights who were still loyal to Lord Owain, facing a witch who threatened their home, there should have been at least a dozen men who would stand for them against the heretics. But no one came to their aid until a lone Templar seemed to come to his senses, crossing the gap between the servant’s entrance he guarded and the fighting in a series of long, powerful strides.

”Abbot Recared,” Sir Beathan said as he drew close to the man who commanded the Inquisitors of Lothian March. ”It’s not safe here for you,” the young templar said an instant before his armored fist struck out in a devastating blow to the Abbot’s face.

The abbot looked older and more weathered than he’d been just hours ago, and the skin over his cheek split in a spray of blood that mingled with the blood already staining the Templar’s tabard. Punching the abbot, however, fell far short of the punishment the man needed to suffer in order to atone for what his order had done and what he had just tried to do, and Beathan followed his first powerful punch with a second one, this time catching the abbot in the floating ribs.

Bones cracked, and the abbot’s eyes went wide as the Templar he’d turned to for protection pummeled him again and again. Bright pink spittle flew from his lips as he struggled to speak, to protest, or to speak the words of a prayer that would save him from this heretical templar, but every time he drew breath to speak, another armored fist fell on his battered body.

”You speak when Lady Ashlynn says you can speak,” Beathan said as he started dragging the battered abbot toward the central aisle, where several other inquisitors and acolytes had already been laid out like fish pulled from the sea.

”Ho-holy L-lor- OOF,” Recared grunted as whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by another blow to his already broken ribs.

”You had your chance to pray, Abbot,” the Templar said coldly as he dumped the man at Ashlynn’s feet. ”You wasted it on hate,” he said before he borrowed a phrase he’d heard from the flame-haired knight who followed Lady Ashlynn.

”Now, your life belongs to her,” Beathan said. ”And no amount of praying will change that.”