The Vampire & Her Witch Chapter 1874: Nothing Broken (Part One)

Reynold Aleese woke to sunlight streaming through his window.

That was the first thing wrong with the morning. The light came through the heavy drapes at an angle that put the sun well above the manor wall, which meant it was late in the morning. Far later in the morning than he was used to, which meant nobody had come to get him.

The second wrong thing was that he had rolled over to work it out.

For a moment, he lay very still. Then he flexed his right hand, and made a fist, and opened it again. He rotated his wrist, and slowly drew his shoulder back, waiting for the hot, searing pain of a joint too badly abused to move as it should... but the pain never came.

He tried the other side, and then his neck, and then, carefully, he took a breath all the way to the bottom of his lungs.

The breath went in and came out, and nothing anywhere in him objected to it.

Reynold pulled back the blankets and the pile of furs and looked down at himself in the cold morning air, revealing the toned, sturdy physique cultivated by years of hard training and long days spent in the saddle.

Under the sparse hair across his belly, there was the familiar long white scar along his ribs from a Swift Hooved archer who had taught a much younger Reynold that even scouting trips required at least a coat of mail over his gambeson.

Looking lower, the mangled, twisted scar on his left thigh where his physician had been forced to dig out a barbed arrow looked just as it had for the past three years, and the sunken knuckle on his sword hand was the same as it had been since he took a heavy blow to the hand from his father while he was still young enough to be a squire.

But that was all. The signs of the old injuries remained, and they’d changed not a bit. The fresh ones, however... The black bruising across the shoulder that had been forced back into its socket the night before and the mass of purple over the hip he had landed on twice... Nothing was swollen or hot. Nothing ached or screamed in pain. He was fine.

No, he was better than fine, Reynold thought as he slipped out from under the warm blankets and furs, setting his feet solidly on the floor while interlacing his fingers and reaching toward the ceiling to stretch every inch of his muscular frame.

He felt... He felt like he was a man barely more than twenty rather than like a man nearing thirty. He’d just had the best sleep of his life after one of the most punishing nights of his life, and his mind struggled to accept that everything that had happened the past two nights had really happened.

"Sleep on it," the Oak Witch had told him, sounding like a woman being asked to explain why water is wet. "That’s all. Don’t fuss over it. You’re a soldier, aren’t you? So see yourself to bed and don’t make me fetch Heila for something so minor. The arm will mend and the rest will too. Even in this barren place, there’s life enough to nurture your body, but the Oak’s healing is slow, so give it time," she’d said.

A grumble from his stomach prodded him into motion, sending him to the wash basin to wipe away the traces of dried sweat that were the only remaining signs of last night’s exertions.

Two nights, he thought, splashing the cold water in the basin on his face to drive away the last lingering cobwebs in his mind. Two nights to prepare for a clash unlike any he’d ever faced. It sounded ridiculous, but thinking back to the first night, he had to admit that his teachers had done a great deal with the little time they had.

Two nights ago, in the last minutes of daylight, Reynold Aleese had made his way to the training ground behind Lothian Manor, past the stables to the bare patch of frozen earth where generations of Lothian Lords had honed their skills on horseback.

The tilt, the barrier that would separate opposing riders jousting against each other, was little more than a long rope held up by posts every ten paces. Many of those posts bore the scars of serving as stands for stationary targets, which Reynold supposed wasn’t surprising. Owain had never been one to favor the lance, and he’d left the glory of riding in the lists to lesser knights while he honed himself into the greatest swordsman the march had ever seen.

Now, however, the yard had been refreshed, and several wooden lances were stacked neatly against the wall of a shed, along with training shields, spears, wooden targets attached to rope and half a dozen other things that felt as familiar to Reynold as childhood toys.

Reynold thought he’d arrived early, at least half an hour before full dark, but he found one other person waiting in the training yard, sitting on a wooden box with a book on his knees as he slowly turned the pages.

"Erling," Reynold called, smiling as he greeted the man who had come to wager his life alongside Reynold for no reason other than to help a friend protect his father’s life and his family’s lands. "Or should I call you Lord Governor Fayle now?" Reynold teased.

"Reynold," Erling said, smiling as he closed the book and stood, taking in the appearance of his new friend. "The emerald and midnight look good on you," he said as he took in the harlequin-patterned gambeson Reynold wore. "Have you found yourself a place in Empress Ashlynn’s guard then?"

"It’s not that," Reynold said, shaking his head. "The man who delivered it said the inner layer is an Eldritch silk that’s tougher than anything in our padded armor. I was told that I’d need every bit of help I could get if I wanted to survive to face the Southern Steppe in a few days."

"It can’t be that bad, can it?" Erling asked, frowning at the young lord. "With just a few days to prepare, how rough can they be? No one would want to see you injured in training and unable to fight against Lord Dirar’s champion..."

"That’s why we’re here," a deep, feminine voice called across the yard as a new group of people arrived, led by the bearish figure of Virve, the Oak Witch. "Lady Heila has her own matters to attend to, she’s far too busy for the likes of you," Virve said, walking forward as her boots crunched heavily on the frozen ground.

"But you get Ollie and me both," she said with a smile that looked anything but comforting. "So Dame Sybyll and Sir Thane can be as hard on you as they’d like..."