The Red Haired Knight Ch 12

The Red-Haired Knight 12

The Prosperous Valley Attacks!

Winter. No one fights in winter. Armies prepare. Fix weapons, train levies. Fatten horses...and men. In spring one can move again.

This winter, not fully ready, with a rag-tag levy to replace the losses of battle, disease, boredom and desertion, the army that fought for the Witch Warrior moved...into the Wild Lands and stormed the next valley. A week's march away...in the summer...it was a cold, wet slog through the mud, snow, rain, and ice of this changeable winter.

The few defenders of Apple Valley were caught unprepared. Not a warlike people and their men folk in despair after the defeat last summer. There was little resistance. The Prosperous Valley quartered their men with the sullen but fatalistic folk of the Apple Valley.

Rumors of demon wolves. Scouts. Scouts for the Prosperous Valley! Ridiculous.

But a day's march in front of the army, comfortable in the Apple Valley homes, was Julian. A mad smile on his face. In his element, the wind, the snow, the sleet. The adventure. Being with the wolves. Not HIS wolves. Not the Lady's wolves. Just roaming.

But the wolves served his purpose, but not under his or any other human's will. They sniffed the edges of the next Valley. The Wild Folk had nothing to interest the wolves, no livestock, no domesticated fowl. But Goose Valley!!!

Malle's enemies, the Lords of the High Country, cautious as always, waited. Aggressiveness on the part of the enemy, could provide an opportunity. Still, the Witch Warriors' move into Apple Valley was well advised. They had one less possible logistical hub to supply their warriors, if or when they moved on Prosperous Valley.

Julian would not risk the cream of Prosperous Valley's army being exposed. Quietly, after the Apple Valley was secured, the best troops, the Guardsmen and the Cavalry returned to the Homeland. Apple Valley reverted to an outpost, a sacrificial outer defense. The detachment that garrisoned it were the rabble, the thieves, the rascals, the undisciplined and the untrained. The expendable.

As such they were a plague on the residents of Apple Valley. Plunder, rape, and murder were common. The good officers were with the 'elite' of the army. A few veteran guardsmen were there to stiffen the rabble. They had the whole winter...Julian prayed, to make something useful of this gang of cutthroats, he would not deign to call 'military.'

Julian preferred the company of wolves, but duty forced him to oversee the chaos in Apple Valley. He held court every day to defuse the anger of the subjects, who had become subjects of the Witch Warrior, from boiling over to open rebellion.

In response to the epidemic of rape, soldiery were being poisoned. This led to retaliation, indiscriminate retaliation. Whole households, burned in their homes for suspected poisoning, turned out to be spoiled rye.

Julian did not have to like the people who had tried, oh yes, their leaders had tried, but they had followed to steal Prosperous Valley from its rightful leadership. As though the heavens would curse a land because it was ruled by one who lacked testicles.

Julian would ask for inconvertible proof, any transgression against the prohibition of rape would also soon lack testicles. These new 'eunuchs' were kept together with the most brutal of them as their leader. As he had seen, indeed, as he had recommended in other armies, these would be the forlorn hope battalion. They would live only to serve the Lady and the Valley to be expended in the most dangerous of missions.

As spring approached, the wolves disappeared. They found new hunting grounds and would no longer terrorize the Goose Valley. Julian's eunuchs were healed and meaner than ever. The word spread over the Wild Lands to Goose Valley that these 'Human Wolves' were far crueler than their four-footed predecessors. They had been punished for abusing the Valley that was occupied by the Lady. But her enemies were fair targets for the exercise of their perverted pleasures. Julian hoped this terror would prevent the Goose Valley from aiding the Lords of the High Ground.

He knew they would move in the spring, or rather he hoped. Keeping the Prosperous Valley on a war footing was expensive and taxing the Lady's patience. From one who was devoid of bloodlust, she had become consumed with the need for consummation in battle.

Julian cautioned patience. The Lady's Valley did not have the resources to take the battle to the Lords of the High Ground. Even taking Goose Valley as easy as that might be, would leave a supply line that would take weeks for supply carts to reach the front lines.

All depended on a decisive battle, where the peasants trained over the winter could be called up to swell the numbers of the Lady's loyalists. The High-country Lords could not match these numbers, not even with the mercenaries they could afford.

If they waited, the Lady might be goaded into a rash attack that would favor them on their mountainous terrain or an ambush in the wild lands.

Julian knew that the Lady depended on the Wise Woman Ecna, who even now was securing the far reaches of the valley scouting out the Wild Western Mountains that were washed by the Wide Sea.

Ecna had never met Julian, not in the conventional sense. When he was with the Wolves, that was the best-- his mind was clear, the natural pathways open. In settlements, or with many people, the pathways were clouded, the meaning of messages unclear.

He never asked anything. But it was clear to all who loved the Lady, that her enemies were relentless. The Witch Warrior could not rule the Prosperous Valley. It was anathema.

So, while Julian looked to the east, Ecna looked west from her lands to the Wild Western Mountains, to the fabled sea beyond, which no Valley dweller had ever spied, or if they had, never returned to tell of it.

The Western Mountains were full of mystery. Ecna would not call them Wild because for most valley folk, 'wild' was a negative adjective. Dangerous, yes, but danger thrilled her. Mysterious, yes, her mind thrived on exploring the mysterious.

There were people, or at least beings that were human-like, some also said beast-like. They stayed in their fog-bound crags and glades. The Valley folk experienced no depredation of crops or livestock from whatever or whoever resided in the Western Mountains.

Bold souls from the Valley who ventured there, could not speak of what they saw...literally...what they saw gnawed at their minds, but they could form no words to explain. Those few who ventured there that were literate, likewise, could not take pen to paper, their hands froze, the ink spilled, and the paper ruined.

After a time, the haunted look left their eyes. But those who returned, served as a caution to others.

The threat remained. Could the Lords of the High Ground, those wizards, poets, warriors of the East, somehow subvert these beings to their will? It was a long shot, but this was the vulnerable edge of the valley: few settlements, few people, and fewer armed men.

Ecna took the unsaid challenge from Julian and put his mind at rest-- she would go there as if to hunt the wild boar at the far end of the valley. If her hunt took her into the mountains and if she, Ecna the Wise, Ecna the strong willed, Ecna the Witch, could not fathom the lay of the land and the creatures that inhabited therein, then it was unlikely that the Wizards of the East at great distance, though with powers equal to hers, could do any mischief.

She merely wanted to explore the nature of the land and the beings, not change them to do her will. If these beings proved weak-minded, they might be a danger if influenced by magicians.

These things were not in her books, not even the foulest of Devil Texts.

Ecna prepared...a deep cleansing of all her interior spaces and a thorough bathing in ice-cold pools. As a simple, bland diet for days-- no wine, no stimulants. Her clothing was washed and aired. Hung for days in the boughs of fragrant evergreens. Her weapons were stripped of all oil, boiled clean; they may rust, but would carry no unnatural scent.

She wore no jewelry, nothing to shine. Her robes were muted, dark, soft to be silent. She wore long skirts, so her legs were free, her nether parts open to cooling, refreshing breezes. Her heavy breasts supported by a soft but tight bodice. Her body would be in balance, her hair bound and hooded. She would eat only what could be killed in the mountains and drink only mountain water she could purify with her skills.

Her feet were tough and did not need to be shod. Her connection to the new ground was necessary, feeling the earth beneath her telling what had passed there. What manner of beast defecated there. She would smell the taste of the mountains and her mind would roam alerting her of danger or opportunities at a distance.

The land rose gradually from the valley floor. First, a wide expanse of upland meadows, populated by sheep and goat, shepherds and goatherds. Ecna passed by them unseen. It was a small use of her powers and did not diminish her.

The meadows grew less lush as the slopes grew steeper, and boulders became more numerous. Groves of evergreens dotted the landscape.

The trees became denser, though the undergrowth was minimal...there was grazing under the trees, but not the sheep and goats of the Valley Folk.

Highland deer, Ecna guessed. Though she had not seen any. They sensed her invisibility and that ironically spooked them. They sensed a being moving but could see no being. A scentless invisible being!!!

She knew of hunters that sang in the belief that the game was wary of stealthy creatures. And these were successful hunters, though much cursed by their companions who valued the hunting tradition of stealth and camouflage.

She willed away the invisibility and chanced humming a ribald tune.

Her long seeing eye saw the approach of a beast long before her natural eye. Her nose picked up its scent before she could hear its hoofs in the decaying leaves of the forest, for in the gullies between the evergreen groves were clusters of oak, the mast thick underfoot.

There! A boar, or a boar-like creature, formed differently than any boar she had seen or slain. On all fours like a natural boar, but with longer legs and a slimmer body...a heavily muscled and hairy chest with narrow and naked hind quarters. Because of its long legs, it needed to kneel to root in the mast. Its head was as the fiercest boar, with ten-inch tusks and gleaming golden eyes.

Ecna readied her spear and yet knew it was not needed. There was an aura of strength and fearlessness about this animal. And a raw maleness that made her quiver.

A beast, but not a beast? Ecna laid down her spear...and removed her clothing...she knelt naked on the acorns, as a sow in heat...the boar saw her as such. He sniffed around her and aroused. Placed his front hooves on her back, yet Ecna experienced no sharp hooves, but caressing hands.

She was more than ready for his maleness. A swift penetration and dozens of rapid thrusts and he spent within her as she collapsed in ecstasy.

Many thanks to my editor kenjisato. All sex with beasts in this story depicts fantastical creations of my own imagination and not real animals.

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