Chapter 699: Negotiating Terms
Sir Carwyn Belvin stared at the flat tailed demon in disbelief as his mind struggled to catch up to everything that was happening. Glancing in the direction of his men, he found that many of them held broken shields and bled from wounds to their legs and arms, but none of them seemed to be on the edge of death.
The other flat tailed demons had moved to encircle his men and many of them held bows drawn, ready to fire the instant they received a command but two of the strange serpentine demons with their brightly colored, plumed helms had placed themselves between the flat tailed demons and his men. Was this some kind of internal discord among the demons?
"I don’t understand," Carwyn said, blinking and shaking his head as he tried to clear the fog in his mind. "I am unhorsed and disarmed. I am defeated. Why does he want to give me another chance?"
"Because he doesn’t know how disgusting and cruel you humans are," the flat tailed demon spat without bothering to translate. "Because he’s never seen one of you ’knights’ burning villages and murdering helpless pregnant women. Because he thinks you’re a ’champion’ like him, and the battle shouldn’t end just because he killed your beast. Because... because... because he hasn’t lost anything to you monsters and he thinks he’s still in the Arena in High Fen City."
The way the demon spoke, with venom and hatred in his voice and hot tears in his eyes, took Carwyn completely by surprise. More than that, he was stunned to hear a demon calling knights monsters and accusing them of...
"Your village," Carwyn said as his eyes widened in sudden understanding. "Your village was destroyed by Lord Owain and his men this summer, wasn’t it?" It was a story he’d heard just weeks ago while Lord Owain was touring Baron Hanrahan’s territory with a pair of guild masters who intended to become knights.
At the time, it had sounded like a fierce battle against devious monsters who set traps and ambushes to slaughter his men. Owain described it as purging the land of an infestation and complained that many of the demons had escaped, leaving behind only a few of the elderly and women with ’bellies full of demon spawn.’
"I, I wasn’t there!" Carwyn protested as he suddenly wondered if this attack on his village’s caravan was some kind of retribution for Owain’s summer campaign against the demons. "We, we never did anything to your village or your people," he pleaded. "We didn’t even send soldiers to help Lord Owain!"
For a moment, hope began to burn in his heart. It was feeble and flickering, sustained only by the hope that, if he could speak to this demon and convince him that this had all been a terrible misunderstanding, they might be able to walk away from all of this. Next to that feeble hope, immense gratitude swelled in his chest that he’d listened to his father and stayed home instead of joining either young lord Owain or Liam in their campaigns against the demons.
That hope, faint and feeble as it was, snuffed out like a candle flame when the demon next spoke.
"You think we don’t know that?" The flat tailed demon snarled. "If you’d been there, even if Sir Ollie was here himself, nothing would stop us from killing you! We should still kill you! But Barsali wants to give you a chance to fight like a champion. He thinks you deserve it because he thinks that human knights are like Sir Ollie. So get up! Get up and take his offer because if you don’t, then I’ll kill you myself!"