Faerie Knight 166

166 - The Battle of Lutetia III: Loray the Archer

Throwing men at a daemon is like throwing dry wood on the fire.

• The Life and Times of Legionary Titus Nasica

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17th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297

At Lady Clarisant’s words, Henry drew an arrow and fitted it to the string of his black Iebara-wood longbow.  A few moons ago, if someone had told him that he’d be facing down a daemon, he would have called them a drunk, or dismissed them as a fool.  But somehow, since leaving the village that first time with the young lord, he’d had to follow his friends into one scrape after another.  Honestly, compared to Forneus in Basilea, he was a bit relieved to only be fighting a human-sized monster, instead of a giant serpent.  Henry supposed the fact he could think that was a testament to just how ludicrous his life had become.

The monster was cagey, more like hunting a predator, such as a wolf that had gotten a taste for cattle, than any kind of prey animal.  It was smart enough to wait until the king had moved off with his Exarchs, leaving Lady Claire unprotected, before it came at them.  Diving against the backdrop of the dark, starry sky, the daemon was hard to see, and it was only Henry’s own instincts as a hunter and an archer that gave him enough warning to act.

For just a moment, the breeze stilled.  It was a good moment to take a shot.

“Shields!” Henry shouted.  Ettie and Yaél had planned for this, and gotten their hands on a pair of kite shields just for the moment now at hand.  The night before, the squire had even scrounged up enough black paint to sketch out a rough Iebara tree, the sigil of Sir Trist, and of his father before him.  Now, the two women picked the shields up from where they’d been left lying flat on the ground.  Lady Claire, in the meanwhile, had slipped down out of her saddle, and the three huddled together, kite shields raised.  

With a solid thump, the first arrow hit.

“Damned thing went halfway through,” Yaél exclaimed, but Henry was already lining up his own shot, before the wind rose again.  He led the daemon’s flight, exhaled, and loosed.  A shaft of black Iebara wood, one of only six he’d managed to recover from the corpse of the leviathan at Basilea, arced out into the darkness.  He knew he’d hit when the monster screamed.

A moment later, one of her leathery bat wings pierced through, the daemon archer Loray tumbled past them, rolling over the bare earth and the trampled, dead grass until she finally came to a halt against the wheel of a supply wagon.  The soldiers who hadn’t already given them a wide berth pulled back now in fear as the monster rose, tossed back her wild mane of dark hair, and reached her left hand over to yank the black shaft out of the wound with a feral hiss.

“There you are,” Lady Claire taunted from behind the shields.  “It’s good to see you brought down to our level, Loray.  I’m told you threatened my husband with what you would do to me.”

Loray’s beautiful face twisted in a snarl, and she reached down to pick up her bow from the ground, where she’d lost it in her fall.  “Oh yes,” she hissed.  “I promised that man of yours that I would collect you, and use you until you died of exhaustion.  He won’t be able to watch, with his eyes gone, but I think hearing your screams will be sufficient to break his heart anyway.”

“On her!” Dame Etoile called out to Yaél, lunging forward with the kite shield on her left arm and an arming sword for her right.  Her charge was not enough to knock the daemon over, but the shield did get in the way of Loray’s attempt to raise her bow, and left her off balance for the squire’s follow up.  Yaél came in on the other side, to Ettie’s left, and swiped down with an overhand strike from above.

“Swords like that can’t hurt me, girl,” Loray taunted, raising a forearm wrapped in a leather archer’s bracer to catch the descending sword.

“Wasn’t aiming for you, ya ha’penny slag,” Yaél shot back.  Henry couldn’t see the squire’s face from where he hung back, the second arrow nocked on his bowstring, but he could imagine her smile.  The arming sword hadn’t cut the daemon itself, so far as he could see, but it had come down right on her quiver, chopping half of her arrows into useless pieces of broken wood.

Loray was as strong as any daemon, however, and she thrust back against Yaél’s sword with a mighty heave that sent the squire flying ten feet back, as if she’d been kicked by a horse.  The motion left Loray’s chest exposed, with her right arm flung out wide, and Henry loosed for the second time.  The daemon archer staggered back, a black shaft fletched with goose feathers embedded half its length into the center of her chest.  If daemons’ hearts had been like those of mortal men, it would have killed her; as it was, the wound leaked black ichor.

With a swipe of the claws on her left hand, the daemon scored Dame Etoille’s armor with a horrid screech.  If the knight hadn’t jumped back to create distance, Henry feared it could have been much worse.  He drew another arrow, leaving only three in the quiver, watching as Ettie blocked with her shield and cut with her arming sword.  They only needed to hold until the Exarchs got there.

It was clear for anyone to see that Ettie was skilled with a blade - Henry had seen her fight himself, first on the ride to Rocher de la Garde, and then later at Basilea.  She was strong, too, stronger than Henry himself, with shoulders as wide as any man’s.  But now, Ettie was facing a daemon.

Loray got her clawed fingers wrapped around the upper rim of the kite shield, and yanked.  Dame Etoile stumbled, dragged off balance before she could release the shield.  The daemon broke the piece of wood in half, snapping it in her hands as easily as a young boy would snap a branch for the fire, and thew it aside, leaving Ettie with only a short arming sword in her right hand, and the sheathed blade at her waist that she couldn’t draw yet.  Not until she had an opening, or she would miss her chance.

Against a monster with claws on each hand, it was a disadvantage.  Etoile warded off a swipe from the right, only for a slash from Loray’s left hand to drag down through links of chainmail over the knight’s arm, sending broken rings of steel flying in every direction, and drawing blood.

“You’re dead,” the daemon taunted the knight with a vicious grin.  Loray took a step back while Ettie shook off the wound.  Fifteen feet away, Yaél shook her head and lifted herself onto her hands and knees, reaching about on the ground to find her own blade in the darkness.

“I’ve had worse than this,” Etoile said, wrapping both hands around the hilt of her blade and raising it into high guard.

“Have you?”  Loray raised her hand and closed the clawed fingers into a fist.  “Have you read your stupid little Codex, Knight?  Did Marius write of my power there?  A foolish little man, but I imagine he knew.”

Etoile cried out, dropped her sword, and clutched her right arm with her left hand.  “What-”

“Gangrene,” Lady Clarisant said, striding forward.  “Marius said you caused the wounds from your arrows to become gangrenous.”

“That book is riddled with errors,” Loray taunted.  “Marius learned all he could, but in the end, he was only a man.  I don’t need arrows to make her arm rot off.”

“Henry,” Clarisant called, and he loosed his arrow.  Without even looking to see whether or not it hit, he ran over to Etoile and caught her as she fell.  Her teeth were already chattering with fever, her eyes dilated.  Henry had to drag her back over the packed earth; with the weight of her armor, he wasn’t strong enough to easily lift her.

“You were foolish to rely on mortal protectors,” Loray chided, and Henry got a glimpse of the daemon stalking toward Lady Clarisant as he finally laid Etoile down on the ground.  The wound on her arm already reeked, like a days-old cut gone bad.  Henry fumbled at the buckles of her vambraces and pauldrons, ripping the pieces of armor off as quickly as he could, and then drew his keen hunting knife.  The mail was already broken and torn, and he was able to rip it away, but the padded gambeson he had to cut.

“Get away from her,” Yaél shouted, having found her blade and scrambled to her feet.  Henry risked another look up, and saw the two women facing down a daemon alone.  I’m sorry Trist, he couldn’t help but think to himself.  I can’t save them all.  Where are the damned Exarchs?

He yanked Etoile’s right arm out to the side, perpendicular to her body, and there was a great roar building in his ears that made it hard to hear anything.  “Hold your arm out straight,” he shouted down to her, grabbing her sword and lifting it high.  Ettie’s helm had tumbled off, somewhere along the way, or perhaps she’d ripped it free with her left hand when he hadn’t been looking.  Now, her blonde hair, which had been tightly braided and wrapped beneath her helm, was a mess, with tendrils escaping in every direction.

“Do it, Henry,” Etoile said, and closed her eyes.

With a scream, Henry brought his sword down on her arm, chopping the limb like firewood, above the wound and just below the shoulder.  The woman lying on the ground beneath him wailed and jerked, and he reached down with his left hand to pull the arm free.  Please, don’t let it need a second swing, he begged the Angelus.  With a yank, the arm came loose, and he threw the stinking thing aside.

  A great crash came from the city below, down in the valley, but Henry ignored it.  He pulled his belt free, and wrapped the leather as tight as he could around Etoile’s stump.  She cried out again, but he didn’t let it stop him.  A wound like that could bleed a man out in minutes.

“I need you, Trist,” he muttered.  But Trist wasn’t here, and there would be no healing by faerie magic this time.  If he had a torch, Henry thought, he could try to cauterize the wound.  He went to set her down to go find one, but Etoile clutched at his arm with her left hand when he tried.

“Henry,” she said, eyes glassy with fever.  “”Henry, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Henry said, pulling her into his lap and cradling her head against his chest.

“There is,” Etoile said.  “Should have done it differently.  Said it differently.  It wasn’t ever a joke, and I didn’t… didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.  I really do care for you.”

“I know,” Henry said, finally admitting it to himself.  “I know, Ettie.”

“I was scared,” she admitted, closing her eyes and turning her face into him.  “Know I’m not… beautiful like other women.  Not delicate.”

“You’re brave and strong,” Henry told her.  “You’ve faced down two daemons now.  When the battle’s over, I’ll make you a good stew to help you get your strength back.”

“The sword,” Ettie said, and Henry looked down at the hilt of ice jutting from the sheathe at her belt.  During the sea-voyage south, Etoile had neatly wrapped the grip with leather.  “You need to use it for me.  Keep our oath to the winter queen.”

“You’re not going to die,” Henry lied.  “We don’t need the sword.”  

“Take it,” Etoile urged him.  “Don’t make me an oathbreaker.”

With a strangled sob, Henry wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the sword and ripped it free from the sheath.