The Lady's Blessing
by Duncan Hall
They call Lady Sabine “The Black Widow
of Betone” because she has lost so many husbands to the sands; but in Shyish, everyone
knows death. Eobard’s mother told him
that the desert kings have a saying; “Show me one more reliable than death, and
I will lie at their doorstep”. Something
might have been lost in translation, but she said that it meant if you can find
someone to trust, hold onto them forever.
And so when Duke Eobard met Lady Sabine, they were wed not long after.
Now Eobard
waited in the desert for his new wife’s trader friends to arrive. She had been sparse with the details, but
demanded that he take a full ten-strong lance of his house knights with him to
“be safe. The deathrattles have been
bold of late.” She was quite a worrier
his Sabine. With his Lady’s blessing,
surely no harm would befall them. But
who would deny a widow her worries?
His knights chatted quietly behind
him. They watched the traders’ faded
black banner move closer across the blowing sands. He counted about twenty riders on
horseback. Their fluttering black banner
and robes made an elegant silhouette against the blood red of the setting sun. As they approached the ruins where he had
made his camp, he hailed them with an exaggerated wave, but they made no form
of reply. Maybe the strange foreigners
didn’t hold to the same traditions as those of Betone. Though still, it was odd that they should pay
no heed.
“Paulo, Florence, please go welcome
our guests,” he commanded with a smile. The
two mounted their thoroughbred warhorses and rode off to greet the trading
party.
Eobard felt a soft hand on his face. He turned, startled. His mind raced searching for an
explanation. How was this possible? His beloved stood behind him. She should have been miles away, safe in
their manor, yet here she was. And her
hand; her hand was chill on his cheek where it should have been warm. Unable to speak, he searched her face for a
sign, an explanation, but she offered none.
The soft caress of her hand turned into a firm grip, unbefitting for a
Lady. She turned his head back to the
desert; back to the black riders.
He
watched in a trance. His knights Paulo
and Florence reached the black riders, but the riders showed no signs of
slowing. Paulo and Florence looked at one
another and drew their swords. They
turned nervously to flank the riders and guide them into camp. Paulo tapped his shield with his sword to
signal distress. These riders were not
who they appeared to be. As they neared,
Eobard inspected their livery, searching for any sign of their origin. They wore black tabards and dirty clothes
torn from age. As the cloth moved with
the breeze, he could see flashes of what appeared to be bone beneath the tears.
“What is
this?” Eobard asked, trembling. He felt
a sinking despair. He tried to shift, to
move, but her unnatural grip on him was overpowering.
“I need
more knights for my honor guard,” she whispered into his ear. “You were a promising lover, but will make a
better lieutenant.” She pushed her
fingernails up against his hauberk.
There was a grating sound as they pushed through the finest mail money
could buy. He felt her cold fingers
puncture his flesh and crack through his ribcage.
His
eight remaining knights, alerted by Paulo’s signal, scrambled into their
saddles. Disordered and unprepared for
an attack, they lowered their lances and made their charge. While the knights screamed curses and battle
cries as they charged, the score of black riders made no sound. Wood splintered against bone and flesh. Eobard
watched as Sir Florence fell upon the riders from the flank with her
sword. She smashed apart a skeleton
rider’s arm bones and splintered its skull, but the rider continued undeterred. Her comrades fell around her. Eobard stared on unable to act.
Lady
Sabine’s grip on her husband became a push, leverage to rip his heart, still
beating, from his chest. She sank her
pearly fangs into it and drank deep.
Then, raising it above her head, she began to chant in an ancient
tongue. Her words conjured swirling
mists of dark magic to the battlefield, decaying everything they touched, until
everything was still and silent. The
flesh sloughed away from Eobard’s bones.
His knights lay dead on the ground.
“Arise,
my minions.”
The clean,
white skeleton that was once Sir Florence climbed onto her undead steed. Duke Eobard stood and turned his dead gaze to
his new master. None spoke, but they
obeyed.
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