Prompt: A wounded knight asks for healing from a witch.
tags: flash fiction, heroic Azuras
The sound of battle had echoed through the glade for most of the afternoon, and only in the silence that followed did the evening mist gather the courage to slip from the forest’s edge. It curled around the knight’s sabatons and lapped at the dead underfoot, the low gray fog the only burial these blackguards would receive.
Above their shattered bodies, the knight stood victorious, if barely. Her face was pale and drawn, and all that remained of her rowan shield were splinters strapped to her forearm. The sword that slipped from her blood-slick hand was a ruined, desolate thing, and as it clattered noisily to the ground, the ravens around her cried out and rose into the air, furious that their feast had been disturbed.
But in their descent they drew together, until they had coalesced into a figure of ebon feather and raven bone. The Westmorland had come to collect her due.
“You made fine work of these brigands,” the witch laughed, offering her cloying congratulations. “The stuff of legend—alone, one against forty. They will sing your praises for years to come.”
“That’s not true,” the rowan knight gasped, her breathing growing difficult.
“What isn’t?” the witch queried, prickling at the correction.
“That I was alone.” She raised a shaking gauntlet; the eyes of the corpse she gestured toward had been scratched out by raven talons, and its mouth was filled with a plume of feathers.
“The work of carrion, nothing more,” the witch said, coolly.
“And that one?” Beside it, another body smoked, the steam of evaporating ice rising from frozen armor.
“Well—”
“You most certainly interfered in this battle. In contravention of the arrangement we had, I might add.”
The Westmorland’s eyes sparkled at some dark delight. “How inconvenient for us. Whatever will you do about it?”
“Well… thank you, I guess.” The knight let out a weak laugh, feebly gesturing to her bloody, broken armor. “You didn’t exactly save my life, but you did help me. So thank you. And thank you for not, you know, tricking me.”
The witch hesitated. “You’re… welcome.”
The knight coughed now, bloody spittle on her wan lips. “Alright, I’m ready. Sealed with a kiss, we wrote this: my lifeblood, for the blood of the forty criminals. It is finished, and so am I.”
“Yes. But…” The witch let her pregnant pause fill the glade, and when she resumed, her voice was like warm honey. “… but surely there are still feats of bravery to be accomplished, other enemies to fell. There is time yet for more arrangements.”
“Could you—” the knight started, and then fell to one knee; the witch was there, lifting her up, eagerly listening. “—there’s a little outcropping, over yonder. Can you help me to it? I’d like to watch the sun set from there.”
The Westmorland looked down at her charge, incredulous. “That’s it? That’s what you want? Don’t you want to live?”
“I certainly don’t want to die,” came the reply, “but I knew what I agreed to.” The knight caught the witch’s eye as she was lowered to the rock, the last orange rays of sun falling on them both. “I’m not scared, you know. It’s rare that someone like me gets to choose the time and place.”
“Someone like you,” the witch said, more to herself than the knight. And then: “You asked me for a final favor, so here is my final price: another kiss to seal this deal, a blessing to carry you into the next part of your life.”
And then the knight was alone. The witch had tasted of lilac, a nice mask to the tang of blood, and the warmth of the setting sun was bleeding into her cooling flesh. As ends went, it was a good one.
In the first brush of night, fireflies floated into the glade, and the knight’s breathing slowed, finally at peace.
And then she cracked open one eye, then the other.
“Gods dammit,” the rowan knight said, rising hale and sound. “She did trick me!”
Thanks to the quarantine, I’ve been trying to do more flash fiction stories based on suggestions from my supporters on Patreon. My long-time stalwart Zyzzyva provided a prompt inspired by The Witch of the Westmorland, a song made famous by the Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers. The song is beautiful, and also an Extremely Devi story: a noble knight, wounded in battle, seeks out the help of the only person that can heal him, a witch of the wilds.
(It must be acknowledged that somehow my story is quite chaste compared to the actual song, which involves the witch who is a centaur healing the knight with sex.)