CHAPTER 915: A DARK WIND APPROACHES

Dozens of feet above the forest floor, a dark wind rustled branches and tugged at the trunks of mighty trees as it sped toward the edge of the wilderness overlooking Hanrahan town.

Within that dark wind, shadows seemed to bend and twist, taking on new monstrous shapes one moment and vanishing the next, leaving any who glimpsed them uncertain whether or not they’d seen anything at all.

When the wind reached the camp where Sybyll’s army had spent the night, it paused, lingering in the swaying trees and listening to the threads of conversation that drifted through the air with campfire smoke.

"...hope that everyone makes it out okay. It’s fine if they’re hurt, but even Lady Heila can’t heal death, and if too many people die..."

"...you hear that they took the bell from the watch tower? Lady Heila had the Tuscans rip it out to give to Dame Sybyll as a gift..."

"...just want to go back to the Vale and go back to helping in Master Georg’s kitchens. I shouldn’t have volunteered...."

In the darkness above the camp, nestled in the shadowy canopy of the tree branches, a bright white smile appeared for a moment before vanishing as quickly as it had come when the dark wind began to move again.

The dark wind gained speed as it followed the freshly churned and muddy snow that marked the passage of hundreds of soldiers, including Tuscan giants, only to slow again when it reached one of the watch towers built by the humans several decades ago.

Here, the air carried the sharp, metalic scent of blood mixed with the putrid stench of death, while a gaping hole near the top of the sturdy tower made it clear that not only had the human guardians of the tower lost their lives, but the shining heart of the tower itself had been ripped out, leaving behind only a hollowed out husk of stone and timber that could no longer provide warning to the humans about what was even now approaching their town.

This time, the bright white smile that appeared in the darkness was accompanied by a quiet chuckle and a soft swishing sound of unrestrained eagerness moments before the dark wind began to move again, leaving behind nothing but faint scratches high up on the branches of the trees to mark its passage.

By the time the sun slipped beneath the horizon, Heila, Hauke, and most of the army had moved several leagues away from where the army camped to gather at the edge of the wilderness overlooking the glittering jewel of Hanrahan Town, nestled next to a deep, dark lake that the first Baron of Hanrahan had named Gwennan’s Jewel after his wife.

What the Eldritch once called the lake, even the shadowy figure cloaked in dark wind had forgotten many years ago, along with the name of the Eldritch village that had once stood nearby.

A fresh dusting of snow covered the valley, and though the lake was far too deep to freeze in a few days of harsh winter, many of the streams that fed it were covered in a layer of thick, treacherous ice.

The clouds that had blanketed the valley for several days, now wrung dry of what moisture they could offer to Hauke’s sorcery, had drifted away as faint whisps, leaving the skies clear to bathe the snow-covered valley in the light of a waxing moon and countless stars and making it harder for the hidden, shadowy figures who had come with the dark wind to remain concealed within the forest cannopy as they listened to the conversation taking place below.

"Your home is very pretty, Dame Sybyll," Heila said as she stood next to the armored vampire, gazing down at the city below.

"Only from this far off," the crimson-haired woman replied. "Up close, it’s as dirty an’ foul as any place, an’ it reeks of rich men gettin’ away wit’ what no man should. Me mum said it were prettier when me father was Baron, but I never seen it when he lived."

"Ye found me a pretty gift ta’ remember ’im by though," Sybyll said as she glanced over her shoulder where two towering Tuscan giants stood beside a freshly polished brass bell, taken from the watch tower that Captain Ultrech and his men had silenced.

"You should thank your cousin, Hugo, more than me," Heila said with a nod in the direction of the two human ’observers’ who stood slightly apart from the rest of the army under Emmie’s attentive eyes and her father’s watchful presence. "I only looked at the bell because Captain Ultrech was worried that the inscription might be a form of the Church’s sorcery. Hugo was the one who knew what made it special."

The inscription itself was only a few lines that read: ’This bell is a gift to my people. May it grow quiet in long years of peace and ring out loudly when demons threaten our realm. Baron Brighton Hanrahan.’

Just the fact that the words were attributed to Dame Sybyll’s fallen father wasn’t enough to make the bell special, but according to Hugo, who had studied the Hanrahan family records, the master of the foundry who cast the bells had invited Brighton Hanrahan to carve the inscription into the molds himself.

So the words on the side of the bell, cast in bronze, weren’t just something Baron Hanrahan had said, but something that he had personally written that would last for generations to come. Once Heila understood that, she hadn’t hesitated to have Ipiktok’s men retrieve the bell and she’d even gone so far as to polish it while she waited for the sun to set, restoring its surface to the same gleaming beauty it possessed on the day it had first been hung.

"Are you going to ring the bell to celebrate your victory, Dame Sybyll?" Ipiktok asked from his position among the other captains who had gathered around their vampire commander. "My men won’t mind carrying it to the fortress once we breach the walls," he offered.

"No, tha’s not tha way of it," Sybyll said as a predatory smile formed on her lush, red lips, revealing her wickedly sharp fangs. "Father cast tha’ bell ta’ warn of ’demons’ attacking me hometown. Only right ta’ ring it ta’ announce me homecoming."

"But tha’ bell won’t be enough," she added as she turned to look into the darkness of the wilderness above the army, staring upward into the branches of the towering trees that surrounded them. "An I invited a musician ta’ play fer us if he’d stop lurkin’ about in tha’ trees ta come down an’ say hello."

All around her, the various captains sprang into action, some drawing bows and pointing arrows toward the unseen presence in the trees while others drew weapons or hefted their shields as they formed a protective ring around Dame Sybyll. It was a pointless gesture, and many of the soldiers looked embarrassed when they realized that they had leaped out to ’defend’ a woman who could destroy any Eldritch Lord they’d ever served and perhaps even some of the High Lords, but some reflexes were too deeply ingrained to suppress.

High above the soldiers of the army, a peal of warm laughter split the night as a dark shadow melted and twisted, detaching itself from the trunk of a tree and falling to the ground with only the faintest of rustling leaves to mark its descent before it landed lightly on the forest floor.

"You say ’lurking in the trees’ as though it’s a bad thing, my beautiful Crimson Dancer," a deep, rich, almost velvety voice said as the shadowy figure pulled back the hood of his dark cloak to reveal the a head covered in silky smooth black fur featuring the delicate, feline features of the Soft Paws clan and topped by a pair of tufted ears that caught every sound among the army that was louder than a whisper.

"Yer almost late ta’ tha’ party, Lord Jalal," Sybyll said as she strode past the wary captains who had raised their weapons again when the feline figure dropped to the ground less than a dozen paces from where they stood.

"But ye didn’a come alone, did ye?" Sybyll said as she reached out an armored hand to affectionately scritch the famed Eldritch Lord behind one of his tufted ears. "Where are tha men I asked ye’ ta’ bring fer tonight’s dance?"