The Vampire & Her Witch

"You all understand the first purpose of our raids," Ashlynn continued a moment later as she shook off the memories that tried to drag her back into the shallow grave Owain’s knights had buried her in. "We need supplies, and if we can’t grow or raise enough on our own, we will raid them from our enemies. Not once or twice, but continuously until we manage to provoke a response from the Lothians themselves."

"What if the Lothans don’t respond?" Ignatious asked, breaking his silence for the first time in the meeting. "The Dunns are proud men. They may attempt to resolve things themselves instead of looking weak in front of the Marquis."

It had been that way eighty years ago when Ignatious was still part of the Inquisition, fighting alongside the local lords. At the time, not only the Dunns but all of the minor lords vied for advantages, whether it was in the assaults they led or the castles they defended, there was constant competition to exit the war better and stronger than their rivals while setting those same rivals up to suffer even greater losses.

For Baron Dunn and Baron Hanrahan to face assaults on their farms and livestock would be an embarrassment that they should work to conceal until they had resolved the problem. Even if it caused a shortfall in their winter tithe to the Marquis, showing up with a sack full of trophies taken from ’demons’ and an excuse of excessive raids was far better than appearing before your liege lord with your hat in hand, hoping he would help to solve the problem plaguing your lands.

"If we only attacked Baron Dunn, that might be true," Ashlynn acknowledged. "But I’ve studied Baron Hanrahan well. He only set foot on the field of battle once during the War of Inches, and his Barony has been struggling ever since the funds from that war dried up a few years ago. If we put pressure on him, he’ll demand that Bors Lothian dispatch knights and soldiers to protect his caravans."

"Ah, I see," Ignatious said as he caught on to Ashlynn’s plan. "If the Lothians send men to reinforce the Hanrahans, then Baron Dunn will demand the same treatment for his own barony. He won’t be willing to expend the lives of his own men when he can force the Lothians to expend theirs."

"Bors Lothian will never risk the lives of his own men over something as petty as this," Nyrielle interjected. "Especially not since the visit I paid him at the end of his pathetic excuse for a war," she said with a dark smile. One of the secrets to the Vale’s ability to weather wars that seemed to flare up each generation lay in her bestowal of the Kiss of the Void on the rulers of Lothian March.

She had learned the hard way that killing a Lothian Lord only resulted in a new heir ascending to the throne, sometimes with more ambitions than his predecessor. Even if she left behind nothing but children, an uncle or elder cousin would declare himself the regent, and a war of revenge would begin just a few years after the last lord died.

If, however, she stalked the current Marquis carefully during the war, waiting for a moment when he had reaped a measure of success that would allow him to back down after a declaration of some form of victory, she could drain away what ambition and thirst for conquest remained within him before delivering a series of defeats that made continuing the war look pointless.