The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1286: Even Now (Part One)

The copse of trees came into view as Ollie urged his horse through the frost-covered grass at a pace that made Sir Cynwrig clutch desperately at the young witch’s waist to keep from being thrown. Without a saddle, every stride the horse took threatened to unseat one or both of them, but Ollie didn’t slow down, not even when the terrain grew rough with exposed roots and scattered stones.

The purple smoke had already begun to dissipate by the time they arrived, but its purpose had been served. Ollie had seen it, and now he was here.

But what he found made his heart sink.

The first thing he noticed was the horse lying motionless on the ground with an arrow buried deep in its skull. The shaft protruded at an angle that left no doubt about what had killed it, and even from a distance, Ollie recognized the distinctive fletching of one of Milo’s arrows. The dull brown feathers stood out starkly against the dark blood that had pooled around the horse’s head, already beginning to freeze in the cold morning air.

The second thing he noticed was Milo, sitting cross-legged on the ground with a small boy clutched in his lap. The child couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old, and he was sobbing uncontrollably into Milo’s chest while the Heartwood warrior did his best to comfort him. Milo’s normally animated tail was drooping so low that it dragged on the ground behind him, and his whiskers twitched with worry as he gently stroked the boy’s hair with one clawed hand.

"It’s alright," Milo was saying, his voice soft and trembling with an emotion that Ollie hadn’t heard from his friend since the days when Old Nan had sunk into a deep depression after the death of her younger son and the loss of their village. "It’s going to be alright. Sir Ollie is here now. He’ll save your mother. He can make things right, I promise."

But even as Milo said those words, the eyes that lifted to meet Ollie’s gaze were filled with uncertainty and fear. Even Milo wasn’t sure that Ollie could make things right again, but he was saying what the child needed to hear, whether he believed it to be true or not.

The third thing Ollie noticed was Harrod, kneeling beside a woman’s crumpled form a few paces away from the dead horse. The horned soldier’s hands were red with blood, and several of Heila’s medicine pouches and bottles lay open on the ground beside him, scattered across the ground as if he’d been frantically searching through them for something that might help.

"Sir Ollie!" Harrod called out in a tone that was both urgent and relieved. "She’s hurt badly. I’ve tried everything Heila taught me, but she won’t let me help her. She keeps fighting me, and I can’t...." Harrod’s voice trailed off as he punched the ground in frustration.

Part of him wanted to offer the woman a quick end, to put her out of her misery as a final mercy, but even he couldn’t do that with her child watching from a few feet away, especially since Milo had lit the signal to summon Sir Ollie. But the supplies he carried were only for small wounds, intended to stop minor injuries from becoming debilitating so a person could escape to safety or return to the fight...

They weren’t miracle cures that could handle something as extensive as this foolish human’s wounds, and right now, only one of the human’s miracle workers or a witch could save her.

Ollie slid down from the horse before it had even come to a complete stop, and he felt rather than saw Sir Cynwrig tumble to the ground behind him as the distressed knight lost his grip. But Ollie’s attention was already fixed on the scene before him, his mind racing as he tried to process what had happened and what he needed to do about it.

"Dalwyn!" Cynwrig’s voice cracked as he scrambled to his feet and rushed toward his son, his bare feet surely aching from the cold ground and sharp stones underfoot, but the knight didn’t seem to notice. "Dalwyn, are you hurt? Let me see you!"

The boy’s head lifted from Milo’s chest at the sound of his father’s voice, and fresh tears spilled down his cheeks as he reached out with small, trembling hands.

"Papa!" Dalwyn wailed. "Papa, Mama’s hurt! Our horse is hurt, and Mama fell, and she’s bleeding and she, she, she..." the child’s voice trailed off, consumed by loud, body-shaking sobs as the young boy thought of the last words his mother had said before the demons arrived.

"Run, Dalwyn," she’d said, touching his face with trembling fingers that left bloody prints on his cheek. "Before the demons get you..." She told him what to do, but he couldn’t leave her. Instead, he took his mother’s belt knife and prepared to defend her, just like he knew his Papa would have.

But when the demons arrived, the first thing they said wasn’t a threat or a curse, it was ’I have medicine, let me help her,’ and Dalwyn wasn’t strong enough to say no to that, just like he wasn’t strong enough to hold onto his knife when the soft, furry demon with the wide, flat tail, scooped him off his feet and held him close while whispering promises that help was coming soon and his Mama would be all right.

And now, now his Papa had come for him, and help was finally here. Papa would make everything all right, just like he always did... He had to.

"I know, I know," Cynwrig said gently as he pulled his son from Milo’s lap and into his own arms, clutching the boy tightly against his chest. His hands moved quickly over Dalwyn’s small body, checking for injuries even as he tried to comfort the terrified child.

There were scrapes and bruises; the sleeve of his tunic had torn open on a sharp rock somewhere, and once the shock of the moment passed, he would probably ache for days, but he was surprisingly unhurt for a boy of his age who’d been thrown from a horse.

"It’s alright," Cynwrig said softly. "You’re safe now. Papa’s here. Papa’s here, and everything is going to be all right..."

Ollie spared them only a glance, smiling faintly in relief that the child was fine before moving to where Harrod knelt beside Lady Cerys. While Dalwyn seemed to have gotten through this nightmare with only minor injuries, the woman who’d been responsible for carrying him away hadn’t been nearly so lucky...