The Vampire & Her Witch

For ten long minutes, Sybyll stood silently before the walls of Hanrahan Town.

Deep within her heart, she knew that Ian Hanrahan wasn't a man who would answer her challenge. He wasn't a man who would strap on his armor and face death, alone or at the head of an army. At best, he might send his brat, Bastian, to face the woman who had come to claim her birthright, but he would never have the courage to face her directly.

Still, she gave him the time, standing in the cold and the snow at the head of her army, she waited with her face bare to the wind and her long-handled ax planted in the frozen earth while she cradled her helm in one hand.

While she waited, she listened, training the senses that had been honed just as much as the rest of her body on the defenders of Hanrahan Town and straining her ears to the limits until she could separate all of the individual threads of conversation.

"…Lord Loman says that nothing changes. Hold the line at the West Gate Plaza as long as you can…"

"...lords are mad men if they think a few arrows are going to do anything about those giants…"

"...abandon the gatehouse as soon as we've lit the oil or we'll burn alive in our own holy flames…"

"...waiting is the worst part, but after today, you'll call yourself a slayer of demons and you'll be boasting to your woman of this before you know it, just remember…"

There were more, countless more, as hundreds of men shuffled impatiently in their positions atop the walls or behind them, but as the lords and commanders of the Hanrahan forces passed their final orders or reassured their soldiers, they revealed their intentions to the woman in crimson armor who adjusted her plans in turn.

"It's time," Sybyll said when the minutes she'd generously given the defenders to prepare and Ian Hanrahan to do the right thing finally expired. "Heila, I'll be countin' on ye' ta' open tha' gates fer us," she said as she returned to the small cluster of people who would form the vanguard of the assault. "Hauke, tha' Inquisitor's hidin' in tha' gatehouse wit' barrels o' sacred oil ta' pour down an' set ablaze. Think ye' can stop 'im?"

"The windows are narrow slits," Hauke said confidently. "I can cover them with ice thick enough that they'll need minutes with an ax to open them up again."

"Those slits are for archers to fire out at us," Captain Ipiktok rumbled as he knelt with the other captains. "I saw this at the Summer Villa. Inside the gatehouse, the floor is filled with holes to thrust spears through or pour oil on people advancing through the gates. It's a coward's way of fighting from within a stone shell," he added with a disdainful snort from the end of his long, flexible trunk.

"Humans are weak and frail," Heila reminded the Eldritch captains. "Their methods of fighting rely on clever tricks, ambushes, superior weapons, and more, all to make up for their weakness and frailty. It isn't cowardice, and if you think them cowards, they will kill you with their cunning."

The Vale of Mists had learned this the hard way over more than a century of war, as had the people of Airgead Mountain and the Southern Steppe. With each war, the humans learned new things, and they grew stronger and more dangerous. If they didn't, then men like Liam Dunn would never have been able to drive so many Eldritch villagers from their homes, and the Eldritch people would have retaken their lands long ago.

"Holes in the floor," Hauke said, furrowing his white, bushy brows in thought. "I can still fill them with ice, but I need to see them. I'll have to get close," he said nervously as he looked at the archers on the wall.

"We'll clear a path fer ye," Dame Sybyll reassured the young Frost Walker lord. "Ipiktok, yer job remains the same, and so do tha' rest o' yers," she said as she looked around the group of captains. "Jalal, leave me cousin here wit' Lady Heila's squire fer tha' first wave. There are some templars standing wit' Sir Tommin in tha' plaza who need a dancin' partner. Think yer' up to it?"

"And here I thought I'd come all this way to be a nursemaid," the feline lord purred with a wide grin on his thin lips. "How many of these men in metal do I need to dance with while you deal with their leader?"

"Four from tha' sounds o' it," Sybyll said bluntly. "Too many?" she asked when she saw the eagerness fade from his eyes and his hands tighten on the hilts of the long, wickedly curved knives he wore at his waist.

"Four ordinary knights would be a challenge, my beautiful Crimson Dancer," Lord Jalal admitted. "It takes time to find the gaps in their armor and tear them apart. Four Templars is a bit much, even for me."

"Then ye' need help from a slayer o' champions," Sybyll said as she began working at the straps of her darksteel gauntlets, temporarily removing her left gauntlet to reveal a pale hand with slender, delicate-looking fingers.

"Kurtz," she called to the horned gladiator who stood guard over Liam Dunn. "Let me cousin Hugo watch over Lord Liam there," she said. "Hugo can kill 'im if he tries to run. Lord Jalal needs a Champion to dance wit tha' Templars wit' 'im."

"Dame Sybyll?" Kurz asked in confusion as he knelt before the commander of the army and Lady Heila whom he had pledged to protect. He understood that she needed very little protection from him most of the time, and he'd been content to act as Liam Dunn's jailer because it allowed him to watch over Emmie.

Now, however, his heart hammered in his chest as he anticipated a return to battle, even as his mind shouted at him that human Templars might be a greater champion than he was capable of defeating.

"I won't take ye as one o' me progeny," Sybyll said as she used the edge of her ax to slice into the palm of her pale hand, cutting a thin, crimson line into her pale flesh as she concentrated on the power that slumbered within her blood. "But until tha' sun rises, ye' can have strength like one o' mine," she said with a smile as she held out her hand to the wide-eyed gladiator.

"So drink. Taste the Potence of Blood," she said as an aura of bloody power filled the air with the feeling of the barely restrained carnage that sang in the hearts of every warrior who had known the red haze of fierce battles. "And spill blood on the snow as if it were tha' sands of yer arena."