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“Eyes open, son.”
Alastair nods tightly; and as usual, he does exactly as instructed, back straight and gaze sharp.
Gawain isn’t aware of how wise his choice is, putting Alastair as a guard and lookout. He can’t know- no one can, or does- that Alastair’s senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, even touch are far more acute than theirs. Alastair is not human, but as a young adult and newly minted Knight he has become adept at pretending to be.
He doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter, really.
Alastair keeps his back to the village and instead scans the fields, the brush, the tree-line beyond, because anyone trying to escape or attack will run to or from these locations. He will have time to alert the others in the event of an attack, and is more than capable of running down anyone who tries to escape.
Behind him, the authorities are searching door to door. The constable has been reliably informed that a coven has taken up roots in the village, and that they are responsible for the deaths of a handful of children. Not shocking: Sir Perceval had told him of gruesome scenes from ritual rooms, little bodies ripped open and placed on altars to call upon dark magic greater than their own.
“Horrific,” Alastair had said.
Perceval had nodded grimly. “Make no mistake, there are witches who engage in a lighter sort of magic, but far too many are seduced by the power promised by the dark arts. Once the change has been made, it is almost impossible to go back.”
This, Alastair considers, is a much more moderate version of what his father has told him: The Chancellor has made no distinction between witches and the particular magicks that they practice. Whether it is because he did not think to, or because he simply does not care, Alastair cannot be certain.
Witches are considered half-breeds, after all, and the Order is not meant to show mercy to them, regardless of the forms they take.
Alastair swallows, adjusts his collar a little. It is May, and it is a little too warm.
The shouts of the authorities and the ransacking of houses sets in as an unsettling background to Alastair’s watch; citizens have been instructed to stay in their homes until they receive a knock on their door, and so the village is absent of any other noises, save for the odd cluck of a chicken or moo of a cow.
As the sounds grow closer, as they come nearer to the houses near Alastair’s watch, he starts to hear the protests of homeowners as the constable and his men pull at sheets, push dishes and pots to the ground, and generally handle their homes a little too roughly. Don’t fight, Alastair thinks, remembering the rough face of the constable and the eagerness he’d had to start kicking in doors. There is only so much we Knights are able to do. He’ll still be here when you’re gone.
Krrk.
Alastair’s head whips to the left.
He doubts himself for a moment, wondering if maybe he’s just hearing the sounds of a house being turned inside out, maybe some of the constable’s men trampling through someone’s yard. But then he realizes that the sound is far too close to be that, and immediately hones in on a clump of shrub not so far away from the village limits. There are several dotted in the open space between the village and the forest, and Alastair has been watching them carefully.
He paces over slowly, silently. He crouches down swiftly, and then shoots out a hand to push the branches away-
Alastair is met with a face, and jumps back in surprise as it gasps.
She can’t be much that much younger than him, maybe sixteen or seventeen. The two children at her side are much younger, maybe seven or eight years-old (far too old to be hers, they must be siblings). They are all on their hands and knees, curled beneath the shrub’s cover, and they’re staring at him with wide, horrified eyes.
For a moment, Alastair is struck dumb in his shock.
This girl, these children, they have to be witches- or at least tangentially associated with them, enough so to feel threatened by the raid. He should be calling out, reporting them, letting the powers that be determine if they are a threat or not.
He should call out, right now.
“Please,” The girl whispers, curls of dark blonde hair brushing against the dirt as she shifted. “Please, let us go. They’ll kill us.”
She’s a witch.
She has to be.
That, or some other element that would cause her to come into conflict with the law.
“Please,” she begs again, and Alastair realizes that she has an arm around both of the children, clutching them tight to her sides. He does not think that the Order would do anything unsavory to children so young.
But he can’t be certain of the constable and his men, or the village that has attributed the missing children to witches.
Alastair takes a long breath in, and then heaves it out. Does it again, and then looks over his shoulder towards the houses. The authorities are not quite here yet, but they will be soon. He looks back to the girl, and makes a split-second decision:
“Move quickly and carefully. If you’re spotted by someone other than me, there’s nothing I can do.”
The girl nods. She gets the children up, looks around, and then hurries them off to another clump of bushes halfway to the forest. Alastair hears no shouts of alarm from the village, so he assumes that they go unseen. He resumes his position by the path, folds his arms behind his back, and keeps his eyes straight ahead. After a time, he sees a flash of movement at the edge of the forest, and then nothing.
He sighs. They’re gone.
Alastair’s stomach rolls as the houses continue to be searched behind him. Has he made a bad call? What if those children were somehow involved with the missing children? What if they weren’t children at all, and instead witches using magic to disguise themselves as something smaller and weaker and more innocent than they were? What if Alastair has been tricked, and has now let a trio of dangerous witches escape?
“Stop! God, you’re breaking everything!”
“Shut up!”
Alastair glances over his shoulder, swallows thickly.
Maybe better to be safe than sorry.
He has no memory of his life before the Chancellor took him in and called him his son. Alastair does not remember his own natal parents, though he assumes that they must have been Lycans. He doesn’t know if his father is aware of what they were, or if it would have made a difference in whether he’d taken Alastair for his own.
Alastair would like to think it wouldn’t, but he can’t be sure.
Just be more careful next time, he tells himself, shifting in place as the house nearest to him has its door thrown open and its inhabitants forced out for the search. Just think it through next time.
And if he’s lucky, the Order- and his father- will never know.
-End