Arc 2: Crow | Chapter 1: The Owl of Strekke
The halberd slashed through the air, its barbed hook seeking my neck. I batted it aside, lunged forward, and then retreated again with half a curse bitten off as the polearm stabbed at my ankles.
“What’s the matter, Headsman?” Lord Emery Planter, the Earl of Strekke, mocked me with a contemptuous disdain only an aristo could conjure. “Not used to your victims fighting back?”
We stood in the great hall of Emery’s own castle, lit by the silver moonlight beaming through the high windows and the orange flames of chandeliers above. The Earl of Strekke had fully arrayed himself in his accoutrements of war — a suit of armor fashioned into the likeness of an owl. The “eyes” of his helm — two circular depressions of darker metal with narrow slits in the center for the eyes beneath — seemed fixed in an expression of perplexed suspicion. Steel points meant to resemble the raised ears of a horned owl crowned the intricate helm.
The armor was ridiculous — and the man wearing it was making a fool of me.
To be fair, my own armor consisted only of an archaic set of maille, spaulders and bracers the only additions to the long coat of shadowy links, and I’d barely slept in days. I’d been too busy evading the Earl’s minions.
They surrounded me even then, an array of pale, ghost-eyed faces. Many already displayed signs of rot, especially the soldiers, but some were more pristine in their reanimation. Undead guards jabbed at me with pikes and halberds when I strayed too far from the center of the hall. Men and women in the livery of servants stood beyond the uniformed guardsmen, their bloodless faces watching with the implacable stoicism of statues.
Even the Earl’s family watched, standing at the top of a short flight of steps before the throne. The Earl’s wife clutched the shoulders of her son with near skeletal hands. The boy, no older than twelve, was one of only a handful in that room still among the living. I could see him trembling beneath his dead mother’s grip even halfway across the chamber.
Just hold on. I directed the thought at him, unable to catch a breath to say the words aloud. I’ll get you out of this.
Only one other living soul dwelt in the room besides the earl, the boy, and myself. A middle aged man dressed in charcoal gray robes like a mendicant of old, a rope belt tied about his waist. He watched me tentatively, a strange light in his eyes the rest of the ghoulish congregation didn’t possess.
I didn’t have time to ponder that just then. The earl seemed to dance despite the weight of his armor with an acrobat’s grace as he and I circled one another, my opponent’s halberd tracing mocking figure eights as he goaded me to press him. I struggled just to keep myself from getting skewered, either by him or by one of the animated soldiers forming our duelist’s ring with their rotting bodies.
“Ho hoo!” The Earl laughed, shuffled forward, and then drove his weapon toward my midriff in a move that twisted his entire body. His armor, well-made, allowed a full range of unrestricted motion. My armor took the blow, metal grinding against metal with a dull shriek, but it didn’t stop me from losing my breath. I stumbled back, gasping for air.