Chapter 959: Sybyll Stalks Her Prey (Part One)
The sounds of armored boots on stone echoed through the eerily empty corridors of Hanrahan keep as Sybyll stalked toward the great hall. Her footsteps rang off the cold stone walls of corridors that should have been bustling with servants replacing spent torches, or carrying messages to the important guests of the evening’s feast, but instead she found only abandoned hallways lit by guttering torches that no one had tended for hours, likely since she first rang the warning bell to herald her arrival.
Twice she glimpsed the hem of a servant’s dress or the edge of a kitchen boy’s tunic disappearing around distant corners as the keep’s staff fled from the approaching Crimson Knight. Doors slammed shut in the distance, followed by the scraping of furniture being dragged across floors as terrified servants barricaded themselves into storage rooms and pantries.
The great hall where, just a few hours ago, the wealthiest and most influential people in town had gathered to welcome their ’salvation’ from the demon raids, lay just ahead, and not even the ceremonial guard who should have been waiting outside the hall, ready to announce the arrival of distinguished guests, were present to bar her way.
It was far from the homecoming she wanted, and it had been like this ever since she shattered the heavy oak and wrought iron gates of the nearly century-old fortress. The people were afraid of the ’demon’ at their gates when the person they should have feared all this time was the lord sitting on a throne above them and consigning them to lives of poverty and misery so he could fill his treasury.
Now that Sybyll had reached the heart of Ian Hanrahan’s corruption, in the home that had once been her father’s seat of power, she could see all the places where the pretender-baron had spent lavishly on his own comforts even while his town fell into squalor and disrepair around him. Luxurious tapestries covered many of the walls, and she’d spotted at least two paintings or statues depicting Ian Hanrahan’s ’heroic’ figure in his youth just between the entrance to the keep and the great hall.
That spending had almost extended to the keep’s defenders as well. There had been a sizable contingent of soldiers protecting the keep’s outer gate, and Sybyll had spent more time than she would have liked subduing them.
It would have been easier if her miserly cousin had bothered to issue his men reasonable armor, she thought. Then she wouldn’t have to work as hard to restrain herself to avoid killing the common soldiers who were too frightened of failing her cousin to flee, even when they had no chance of defeating her.
As is, several of those guardsmen had still suffered heavy injuries in the scuffle, some of which would haunt them for the rest of their days if they weren’t able to receive healing from Lady Heila or one of the miracle workers of the Church.
"I owe that horned lass too much already," Sybyll muttered, shaking her head as she thought of the diminutive witch whom Lady Ashlynn had insisted she take on for this battle. Originally, Sybyll had asked Sir Ollie to join her. As Sir Thane’s first student, she wanted the excuse to spend some time with the latest knight to learn from her mentor, and she was intrigued by the idea of fighting side by side with a witch-knight.
Lady Ashlynn had other plans, however, and she insisted that it was necessary to send her most experienced witch as a counter for anything Loman might do, as well as providing the most capable healer she had to care for the injured among her own forces.
Sybyll didn’t know how capable of a healer Sir Ollie was, but what she’d seen so far from Heila was more than enough to prove that Lady Ashlynn had made the right decision. From saving Jalal to healing the wounded in the west gate plaza, she’d more than proven her capabilities.
Now, when Sybyll caught sight of the diminutive witch dancing on snow flurries through the air to reach Loman and put a stop to his rain of destruction, Sybyll had no doubts that she would prove every bit as capable of handling the Lothian lord as she had been with everything else.
While there was a part of her heart that yearned to tear Loman Lothian limb from limb for what he had done, the time that it had taken her to come this far helped her to cool her head enough to leave capturing the young priest entirely to Heila. The Lothian lord was important, and she wanted to see him suffer for what he had done, but Sybyll had her own goal tonight and Loman would only distract her from that.
When she reached to doors of the great hall, her hand struck out with inhuman speed and force, slapping into the wrought iron plate that held the door’s heavy knocker with the intention of shattering the beam on the other side of the door that she was certain had been put in place by the soldiers who abandoned their ceremonial post outside the doors.
-CRACK-
The sound of splintering wood filled the air, but surprisingly, the doors held. There had been a subtle sound of scraping, however, accompanied by the sound of toppling chairs and crashing platters that made her realize that even the arrogant and wealthy guests of Ian Hanrahan’s last banquet had enough sense to barricade themselves into the great hall instead of simply relying on the soldiers out front to stop her.
Dame Sybyll smiled as she raised her great axe with both hands, the darksteel blade gleaming in the torchlight, and swung it in a single, wide, devastating strike that ran parallel to the ground at the height of her chest. The axe tore through the thick iron plate like parchment as the impossibly keen edge of the darksteel axe parted wood, iron, and whatever lay beyond with equal ease.
-BOOM!- -CRACK!-
The impact sent a thunderous sound echoing through the entire keep as the hastily assembled barricade exploded inward. The doors burst from their hinges, taking chunks of the stone doorframe with them as they tumbled end over end down the length of the hall. Tables and benches that had been braced against the doors went flying, scattering debris across the assembled guests as heavy oak furniture crashed among them like the splinters of stone that had showered the defenders on the wall when the Tuscans unleashed their iron sling bullets at the walls.
Here and there, a startled guest cried out in pain as they were struck by a random piece of wood, stone, or scrap of iron, and one woman at the high table fainted dead away when a massive dining table, easily large enough to seat a dozen people, sailed clear to the back of the hall before smashing into the far wall with enough force to crack the ancient stones.
-CRASH-
The noise of the flying table falling to the ground shook the startled occupants of the great hall out of their stupor, freeing them from a moment of paralysis as many heads swiveled toward the hall’s wide entryway. There, standing amidst the shattered ruins of the thick wooden doors and their improvised barricade, they found a nightmare torn straight from the pages of storybooks their mothers had read to them as children.
The Crimson Knight stalked through the doorway with a heavy -CHINK- -CHINK- sound of her armor shifting as she walked. Across her shoulders rested the haft of a wicked headsman’s axe that was still wet with the blood of the men the axe had torn apart as easily as a woodsman would split dry kindling.
And in the place where her face should be, the faceplate of her helm displayed only the twisted visage of a grinning skull with sharpened, vampiric fangs ready to drink their blood.