The Ward of Falkroy

by Loki Renard

  This was the first time she had ever encountered true aggression. The first time she had ever been on her own, and her native arrogance had taken her as far as it could. A sharp tongue was no match for sharp steel.

  The bandit's sword cut through the air in front of her, missing her by a mere hair. It swept back and she knew that next time it would not miss. There was so much she could have done to protect herself. Charms, spells, wards, incantations, but she could not find the words and none of them came between her and the blade as it swept through the air once more, its edge dulled and chipped from hitting wood and stone.

  For the first, and last time in her life, Victoria screamed. It was a thin, piercing, feminine, weak cry of desperation.

  And she was saved.

  Something out there heard her fear. Something dark and powerful, something that came through the trees with a swiftness that blurred her vision as it passed in front of her. Suddenly the battle was no longer hers to fight. Someone had taken it from her.

  A dark haired young man clad in falcon marked leather moved through the bandits like a scythe, his sword flashing as he cut down two of them almost instantly. The bandits cried war and fought back. Victoria considered retreat, but the fear still had her in its grasp, keeping her still like a rabbit and it was the swordsman's artful movements drawing her attackers away that kept her safe.

  The stranger protected her ably with everything he had and within two minutes, all the bandits were lying dead. He slumped down, exhausted from the battle, then took a knee and collapsed onto the ground. He may have been victorious, but he had taken more than one stab through his leathers. As was common knowledge, in a sword fight the winner often only lasted a few hours, or even minutes longer than the loser.

  Victoria ran to his side and knelt down in the bloody mud, her dress soaking in sanguine muck as she attempted to help the stranger. The fear had now evaporated and she had her senses back. Perhaps it was still not too late to save him.

  Turning his head gently, she looked into his eyes. They were the most beautiful slate hue and they looked at her with a wealth of intellect and valor, quickly slipping away.

  He tried to speak and a little trickle of blood escaped his mouth, a sign that his wounds were internal and grievous. His pallor suggested that he did not have long to live, and yet he was not crying for his life, or begging for her to save him. He was stoic. Staunch. Brave. Such a brave, stupid boy.

  She felt for his pulse. It was weak. Working swiftly, she staunched his wounds as best she could, but she knew the outcome could not be good. He had been skewered in the back. She had seconds left to decide if saving his life was worth...

  His eyes closed. Victoria felt a tear trickle down her cheek, totally unbidden. There was something about this man, something that set him apart from others. He was handsome, but that alone was not the total of it. Battlefields were strewn with the corpses of handsome men who had not been saved by merit of their appeal. Without knowing him at all, she knew that his character was a rarity in the world. He had laid down his life for her without knowing who she was or whether she even deserved to have her life preserved.

  Whoever this man was, he had proved that he deserved life. Before he took his final breath, Victoria took a sapphire from her pocket and pressed it into the dying man's hand. Then she cast the one spell she had promised her mother she would never, ever cast.

  ***

  “I'm alive,” he said the next morning when his eyes opened.

  “Of course you are,” Victoria replied. She was very weak from the spell, for it had almost drawn the life from her in its casting, but she knew she would survive. Hot sweet tea, that was what was needed for both of them. She had brewed a pot over the open fire and dragged the bodies of the bandits far enough away that scavengers would not bother them at the little camp.

  Victoria pretended to attend to the tea, sneaking the occasional little glance at him as he tried to understand the circumstances of his survival. He was indeed one of the most handsome young men she had ever had the pleasure to lay eyes on.

  “Then you have saved my life, for I know death was upon me,” he said, his voice hoarse with surprise.

  “You exaggerate,” she said, waving his comments away. “Dramatic boy.”

  He sat up, his expression one of total confusion. “I don't have any pain...” He checked his body quickly, slapping himself where the blades had bit deep. “My leathers have been breached, but I don't have any wounds. What did you do to me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I do not bleed.”

  “You want to bleed?”

  He was still checking himself, a look of horror and then anger contorting his face as his fingers found bare skin. To his credit, he worked out what had happened swiftly. To his shame, he was not the least bit grateful for it.

  “My heart does not beat,” he snarled. “My skin is cold. What have you done? Why did you steal my death from me?”

  “You would prefer to be rotting now?”

  “Tell me what you did!” He shouted the demand.

  She rose to her feet and he rose to his. He was frightened, she could see that in his eyes. He had expected to die and now he found himself alive in a very strange way. She could understand his fear, but she did not like his tone.

  Not at all.

  She snapped her fingers and he fell to his knees before her, his flesh responding to her command. Standing over his fiercely angry form, she told him precisely what she had done to him.

  “I set a charm upon you. I gave you my heart. As long as mine beats, your body shall draw breath. And do not worry, your skin will warm. The first days of the charm are difficult but soon you will be practically indistinguishable from every other mercenary wenching his way across the land.”

  He cut his eyes at her with suspicion. “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all. You saved my life. I attempted to preserve yours.”

  “But you didn't,” he said, speaking through gritted teeth. “Because I am not a man anymore. I am a... thing.”

  “You still have your soul,” she said. “I did not take that. You have your tongue, with which to abuse me.”

  “But I do not have a heart that beats, or blood that flows...”

  “Ah,” she smirked, casting her eyes toward his crotch. “I see the source of your anger. You fear that it will not function. Do not fear, your manhood will respond to your intention just as your sword arm or your whining tongue do.”

  She made a gesture that drew him to his feet, stepped forward and kissed him. His lips were cold at first, but as their mouths joined and his lips parted, not only did they warm, but the heart in his chest began to pound once more, just as she had said it would.

  “What... what are you?” He stumbled back when she broke the kiss, still stricken with fear. A half dozen men with swords had not scared him for a moment, but he looked at her as if she were the most foul beast he had ever encountered.

  “You know what I am. I will tell you what you do not know. Your heart beats in time with mine. I have not taken anything from you. I have given you something of me. You have no idea how fortunate you are. I could have made you my thrall. I could have made you my slave. I could be using you even now as a little fuck puppet. But I am choosing to show you mercy,” she snarled. “So go, boy. Go now. And hope that no bandit drives his blade through my heart at an inopportune time lest we both meet our deaths.”

  ***

  Victoria drew a deep breath and looked up to the stars.

  What she had not told him all those years ago... what she would never tell him, is that giving him her heart had changed her too. She loved him as if he were part of her own body, for in effect, he was. The charm did not have the same effect in reverse. She had some limited control of his flesh, but not his thoughts or feelings, and so he was free to hate her – which, for a very long time, he did.

  Later they had reconciled, but that recollection wa
s too painful to think of in the moment. It seemed they were now back precisely where they had been on that very first day. The ego of a man was not strong enough to withstand being the toy of a girlish sorceress, or a grown one it seemed. His resentment still burned after all these years.

  And now Kelsie was learning to hate her too, for much the same reasons. They both thought her cruel and arrogant. Perhaps she was, but she was also loving them into new being. Leo would have been a pile of moldering bones if not for her, and Kelsie would be languishing in a pigsty.

  What happened to gratitude, Victoria wondered. What happened to respect? What happened to understanding that actions mattered more than words? She had saved both of them from various hells and their response was to loathe her. Perhaps she deserved their contempt. She could not understand it, nor could she deny it.

  At any rate, she had business to attend to, and moping about was not helping in the least. If Leo wanted to take responsibility for Kelsie, so be it. They would no doubt be glad to discover her absence.

  Her decision made, Victoria stood and walked into the night.

  Chapter Nine

  As Kelsie settled into a fretful sleep, Leo cast his mind back to the reason why he tolerated Victoria, as irritating a wench as she could be at times.

  The day he met her he had died. Felt the life drain from his body. It had been a curious experience, but one he had been prepared for and he had gone to it without fear, expecting to find himself in the lands of his ancestors.

  Instead, he had woken up with a witch's heart beating in his chest and Victoria herself being curt and somewhat cruel, as was her way when she was displeased.

  He still remembered precisely how it had been to open his eyes and look into hers that first time, her emerald gaze so enchanting that for a moment he was certain he had ascended to some higher realm and was looking into the eyes of an angelic creature.

  Then he had felt the dirt at his back, smelled the familiar scent of blood soaked ground and his perception had switched immediately. He had known about witches, of course, and had been taught to hate them with such disgust that finding his shattered heart beating at her whim had almost been enough to make him cut it from his breast then and there, but he had been too much of a coward to stand by his convictions of hatred. He had left the witch – who he now saw had been a young woman just as vulnerable and lost as himself, and had gone as far and as fast as he could in the opposite direction. Never had he spoken of what had taken place in the forest. He had disappeared entirely from his lands, taking himself to the southernmost kingdom of Uhr where for seven long years he learned an assassin's trade.

  Leo had considered himself tainted, broken, a shadow of what a man should be. Fortunately for him, the guild's instructors had no time for that brand of self-pity. They were merciless, taking every shred of hatred he had for himself and working it out on his body until by some miracle they eventually beat it out of him.

  It had taken seven years to accept that he had been given a gift like no other. Seven years to realize that he had left a young woman to perish in the deep woods, not because she was evil, but because he was weak.

  An assassin's trade was a bloody but profitable one. And, surprisingly, an ethical one too. The guild required more than mere money to carry out their actions. They required meaning, sense, a greater good to be achieved. None fell to Leo's blade who did not deserve it – or so he had justified it to himself. There was evil in the world, of that he had no doubt. Not of the witchcraft kind, but of the essential base greed and sadism kind. His blade had become a cleansing force and his reputation soon began to grow.

  He often thought about the witch who had given him new life, and wished that he had been better to her. He had left her without so much as a curt thank you, and to fate unknown. She claimed that his heart would beat as long as hers did, so he knew she had survived, but that did not mean that she had survived well. The area he had left her in was particularly lawless and brutal, and any one of a number of fates could have befallen her. He wished he could have just one more minute with her to thank her for what she had done. His path before meeting her had been one of misery, and now he found himself with a purpose and a skill beyond compare.

  One day, Leo was out in the city of Sellington, the seat of the Assassin's Guild. He could not recall why precisely he had decided to go out for a walk. He knew only that he was restless, and his legs seemed to carry him of their own accord through the busy streets. He felt as though he was looking for something, though he did not know quite what.

  Somewhere near the fish markets, the sound of an altercation nearby drew his interest. In a little alley well off the main street, a woman was being detained by a group of the Sellington guard. There were quite a number of them clustered about her, shouting and making a great deal of noise, blades drawn.

  Leo's chivalrous instinct drew him toward the gathering. He could see a flash of pale gold hair and then a uniquely female exclamation.

  “Leave me be, you fools!”

  The guards parted for a moment. Leo looked between their blades and locked eyes with the woman.

  It was her.

  He had run across seven kingdoms to evade her. And now he found himself face to face with her once more, a blade to her neck just as it had been the first time they'd met.

  “Slice the witch's throat,” the guard captain growled. “We have no time to burn her as she should be burned.”

  Leo stepped forward. His dark leather typically made him blend with the shadows, so revealing himself was in itself an act of force. The guards started back, surprised by the sudden apparition. Leo knew how he appeared, a tall man with dark hair falling to his shoulders, eyes like steel focused on them with an expression that heralded death.

  “Let her be,” he said. “She is no witch.”

  “She turned our Henry into a snake,” the captain stated. “She must die.”

  On the verge of yet another almost certain death, the woman had the same frosty calm and charm he remembered from the forest. Her eyes glittered with something he had at first mistaken for malevolence, but which he suddenly understood was a deep grief for all she had suffered. To a casual gaze, she seemed haughty and aloof, but she was neither. She was miserable and deeply afraid.

  “He tried to force his snake upon me,” she said. “I thought it appropriate.”

  “She is no witch,” Leo repeated. “She is a sorceress. And she is mine. I apologize for her actions, gentlemen. Here is some coin to atone for your loss.”

  He produced a heavy pouch of coin and tossed it to the captain. The man opened it, saw the unmistakeable flash of gold and began to stammer.

  “Er.. well... Henry was always hasty with... we can overlook... come on lads.”

  Leo reached out and grabbed the woman by her arm as the guards began to squabble over their shares of the pouch.

  “Come, Matilda,” he said. “We must away from here. You are needed to charm a set of fish scales.”

  She gave him a curious look, but followed in his wake, at least at first. A few blocks away, she stopped and wrenched her arm from his grasp.

  “My name is Victoria,” she said in that uniquely elegant voice. “And you're late.”

  Leo stared at her. “What do you mean, late? I just saved you.”

  “You had no choice but to save me,” she said with no small amount of arrogance. “Your heart beats with mine, remember?”

  “That makes no sense, witch. I have not seen you in years, and you say I was... what... due to save you? I did not even know you were in Sellington.”

  “You did not need to know,” she said with a little roll of her eyes. “Dull boy, I would have explained it years ago had you stayed to listen. You will come to me when I am in danger and you will ensure that I remain alive. In doing so, you preserve yourself. It is not something you need think about, or even understand...mpphhh!”

  She was cut off in her diatribe by Leo's large hand clapped over her mouth.

&nb
sp; “Silence,” Leo growled. “We are not yet safe.”

  He released his hand and she lowered her tone to something less strident.

  “We are not?”

  “The gold I paid with is painted silver. I, er, confiscated it from a money lender. They will discover the deception soon enough.”

  “So you are a charlatan as well as tardy. Figures.”

  He had been in her company only a matter of minutes and already he could not tolerate her attitude. Leo did not waste further breath on her, instead he simply caught her rump with a hard slap of his palm. It made a very satisfying sound, and the feeling of her generous and shapely rear beneath his hand was equally gratifying.