CHAPTER 878: STRANGE HOMECOMING (PART ONE)

Far from Lothian City, at the northern edge of Hanrahan Barony, Sir Carwyn sat uneasily atop a borrowed horse. His breath formed puffy white clouds in the early morning air that was so cold, his chest felt like it had been pricked by dozens of icy needles every time he drew a deep breath. Before him, a strange caravan of soldiers, both human and Eldritch, along with more than a dozen carts and wagons snaked its way along roads that had been muddy quagmires just weeks ago.

Now, however, the mud had frozen solid, making the horse’s footfalls sound like they were walking atop hollow logs while the wagon wheels crunched the frozen mud into fresh, shallow ruts as they rolled along the dirt track that had seen little use since the village’s founding more than a century ago.

It had been less than two weeks since he left the village escorting a similar caravan toward Hanrahan Town. Then, the heaviest thoughts weighing on his mind were concerns about his wife’s pickled radishes and whether they would truly generate the returns on their investment that she believed they would. His mind had been full of thoughts about the child she carried in her belly and whether or not he would be as good of a provider for his child as his father, Sir Rhodri Belvin, had been for him.

Now, he was still fretting about the approaching birth of his first child, but the context of that worry had changed as dramatically as the composition of the caravan that he led. Before, he worried if the merchants of Lothian City would value his goods fairly. Now, he worried if his people would value their lives enough to accept Eldritch rule. When he left, the carts and wagons were filled with vegetables and oats bound for market. Now that he was returning, those carts and wagons carried supplies for an occupying army.

The strange weather did nothing to ease his mind. First there had been the unnaturally fierce thunder storm that shook the Vale of Mists, not long after his arrival. Now, the air itself felt wrong, dry and brittle in a way that made his nostrils sting with each breath. The air should still carry the damp, heavy feeling of late autumn, but instead, he could all but feel the snowflakes ready to dance in the air of deep winter approaching far too early.

"You look worried," a deep, rumbling voice said from beside him, pulling him out of his thoughts before the cold weather froze even those in place. The voice belonged to a bearish soldier named Loftur who had become the de facto translator between Carwyn and Captain Barsali while both men worked to learn each other’s native tongues, and he stood almost as tall as Carwyn was on horseback.

"You’re coming home," Loftur added as he reached up to pat the human knight on his armored back. "Your woman is waiting for you. You should be happy, not worried."

Loftur was a simple man who had never fought against humans. Instead, he was a native of Orava Village who spent much of each summer guarding the waystations between the Vale of Mist and the High Pass, watching for any trouble that approached from the Eldritch side of their border and breaking up fights between competing traders who sometimes found themselves occupying the same camp at the same time.

To Loftur, time away from home was always difficult, whether it was a week, a month, or a whole season. At the same time, reunions were joyous things and any year when you came home safe and on time was a good year. While he understood that some things were different for humans, this kind of worry didn’t seem like it served his new companion well.

"I wish I could ride ahead to tell my people that we’re coming," Carwyn complained as his fists tightened on the reins enough to prompt his horse to shift uncomfortably. When he spoke his words were accompanied by a thick cloud of steam that hung in the unnaturally still air longer than it should have. The cold seemed to leach the warmth from his breath almost before it left his lips, and he pulled his cloak tighter against the bitter cold. "I’m worried that they’ll think we’re attacking them."

"So what if they do?" Loftur snorted. "You said that your village lacks the strength to resist us. If they attack, they will fail." Between the soldiers of the First Army and all the other men from the Vale of Mists who had come to occupy Sir Carwyn’s village, plus Carwyn’s own liberated soldiers, there were nearly fifty men in the caravan.

It was more than enough to overwhelm the dozen or so fighting men that the human knight claimed were the village’s only remaining protectors. It didn’t make any sense that the humans would fight such a lopsided battle and so Lotfur found it hard to believe that there would be another tragic battle like the one he’d heard about in the High Pass.

"You don’t understand," the young knight said as he shook his head. This was something that he had argued with Lord General Thane about before they left, but in the end, the Lord General remained firm that Carwyn and his men travel together with their escort of Eldritch soldiers. Carwyn may have earned Lady Ashlynn’s trust with his words and his pledge to shift his allegiance to Dame Sybyll Hanrahan, but it would take more than that for the vampire general to trust him.

"A man who has changed his allegiance once may change it again," Thane said when Carywn asked how he could prove that he could be trusted. "You will never be trusted the way you would have been before. Now, you will have to earn the trust that a knight is due with your actions, because your loyalty can no longer be assumed."

The vampire knight hadn’t meant it as an insult, and when Carwyn spoke to him, he was surprised how seriously Sir Thane took the position and duties of a knight, but that didn’t change his judgment. In the Lord General’s eyes, Carwyn might have made the right decision when he threw in with Dame Sybyll, but that didn’t mean he could be trusted.

For Carwyn, the hardest part hadn’t been the decision itself. He’d experienced Dame Sybyll’s extraordinary strength first hand, and he’d also felt what it was like to receive the miraculous healing of a witch who pulled him back from the edge of death, just because a man he thought of as his enemy found him to be a ’worthy Champion.’

He knew that resistance would only lead to pointless slaughter in service of Baron Ian Hanrahan’s murderous ambitions, and that the ’demons’ wanted to live simple lives, free of conflict, just as much as he did.

No, the hardest part of all of this was the doubt that had seeped into his heart along with the intense winter cold. Would Olwyna still look at him with soft tenderness when she learned he’d sworn to serve the Crimson Knight, and by extension, a powerful witch and an even more terrifying vampire? Would she understand that he’d chosen their child’s future over the hollow honor of dying for a cause that was already lost? Or would she see only a husband who had betrayed everything she thought he stood for?

"I’m not worried that my people will attack us," Carwyn told the soldier next to him as he struggled to find a way to articulate the web of fears that had grown tight around his heart. "I’m worried that they will see your strength and think that it’s hopeless. I’m worried that people will decide that it’s better to die on their own blades instead of falling victim to your claws," he said with an anxious look on his face.

Even though he couldn’t make himself say the words, a silent statement followed what he’d already said, and its words were written clearly on his face. More than anything, he was worried that his wife would take her own life just minutes before they could be reunited.