Maiev Shadowsong's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Maiev Shadowsong read the death report at the top of her fortress stairs and knew her order was too small. One Legion fugitive had already broken loose in the valley below. A demon, freed from the vaults she had sworn to keep. She had built this owl-crowned bastion to hold a full company of Watchers. Right now she had eleven, and half were still learning to hold a glaive. A scout had brought the report an hour ago. A woodcutter torn apart near the river. Claw marks on the trees. The fugitive was hunting, and it would kill again by dark. Maiev did the math on the stone landing. Eleven Watchers could not sweep the whole valley in time. If she split them, the demon would slaughter each pair alone. If she kept them together, they would search one hillside while it fed on another. Every plan she ran ended with more dead farmers. She went down to the beast pens instead. Her moonsaber rose when she entered. He was dark grey, built like a battering ram, his shoulders plated in fitted steel. He had tracked fugitives with her across three ranges. He pressed his broad head against her palm and waited. Maiev did not need eleven Watchers if she had one nose that never lost a scent. "We go alone," she told him. "The others stay and guard the walls." She rode out with the woodcutter's torn cloak knotted to her saddle. The moonsaber took the scent from it and pulled hard toward the river. His pace ate the ground. Maiev leaned low and let him choose the path. He followed the trail past the mangled trees, through a marsh, up a bare ridge. The sun dropped. Then his ears flattened and he stopped, growling low. The demon crouched over a fresh kill in the hollow below. A second woodcutter. Maiev had come too late to save him, but soon enough to end the hunt. She slid from the saddle. The demon heard the moonsaber's snarl and turned. Maiev threw her glaive before it could charge. The blade opened its chest. The moonsaber hit it an instant later and bore it down. Maiev landed on its back and drove her second blade through its skull. It stopped moving. She knelt in the wet grass, breathing hard. One fugitive dead. One farmer dead too, because she had reached him too slow. Maiev cleaned her blades and stared at the cooling body. She had won because of a beast, not an order. That truth settled cold in her chest. Back at the bastion, a second scout waited at the gate. Three more fugitives had broken from the northern vaults while she chased this one south. They had scattered in three directions. One saber could follow one trail. She would need many more Watchers, and she would need them now.