The Child and the Knight

The Child and the Knight

By José A. Gomez

      She begged me, the girl. Begged me to tell the story one more time before the end. Her kind hands upon me, cool to the touch against the fire in my flesh rotting me slowly from the inside—the worm at the apple's once desirable core. There's not much time now, I know this very well. Soon, the curse will take me, or the dead shall find us here within our sanctuary, this little heaven carved from ancient stone, and when they do...I will fight.             But until that hour, I suppose no harm will come from going round the wheel once more, here at the world's end, in the twilight of the age. 

    The Light be praised. Shum-salah. 

How did this happen, she asked me, wondering how the world went cold and dark. But the truth is that the world had begun dying long before I was a child. As I look back in my mind, those days were full of smiles and sunsets. The fields of Amranore were golden—a jewel shining along the river Fye, as far as eye could see or crow could fly—a far horizon and a crisp win from the East; these things were blessings to my people, but to me they were eternal. Things which could never fail, shining days that would never end because…how could they? 

    I ran through the grassy hills down to the brook and back again—Cuthbert, Hal, and Lorinne, my dearest friends, we took up wooden swords and blunted staves for spears and waged our holy wars in the sun. The water of the pool refreshed our thirst, and the berries in the thicket were the perfect sweetness to our taste, and when night came we would go on and on, running, burning through the dark so long as our hearts could muster flame or dam and sire called our names. Surely, none had a childhood as pure and full of love as I, and yet, I fear I wasted that felicity. 

    The girl tugged at my tattered capes. Move on, she pleaded, for she knew the tales of all my happy times—it was not these she sought to hear, though it was precisely these for which I longed. How easy it would be to let my thoughts live in that past! To wander glories gone before and never reconcile myself to this damned present, this cursed flesh, this rusted blade. My shield has buckled, my helm has lost its grip, and all the world careens toward the toothy maw of some new demon which has supplanted death—a living hell left in the empty space that might once have been a sweet, oblivious end to the family of man. All’s come to ruin, all light must fade save this poor girl, this one last child.

    O Gods, if gods you are. Preserve thy servant one more day. That she might live and I not fail.

A shudder rips through me, I breathe again the ragged breath and taste the metal, the blood on my tongue. The time soon comes, I tell the child. There is not time enough for tales—only to sit and wait and sleep, ‘til they return who promised to return, to take you far away. But she refuses sleep, she fights the dark with all her heart and for that I must love her, even while she reviles and hits me for not meeting her demands. She cannot hurt my body, hands so tiny could never harm Artorian plate—what could? But hatred could. Betrayal could. 

     Yet, her eyes set my soul ablaze, and what few smiles she’s had to give these last days and weeks have watered these dry, rusty eyes. I stop to wonder if those smiles are spent and give in to her cries without expecting recompense.

    What happened to your friends, she asks. Where did they go, and why, Sir Galahad, are they not here?

    Because, dear girl, they did not get to live and now they do not get do die. I watch as tears roll down her cheeks, lovely and fair beneath the dirt and ash, and wipe away with a gauntleted hand. She neither recoils at the coldness of my touch nor tries to stifle back the flow—she merely feels and lets herself be felt—can I truly let the others take her away when the time comes? I swallow the question, unready for its answer and go on. Hal, Cuthbert and Lorinne’s childhood, like mine, were cut short by the spread of the curse and the arrival of warfare to our once-blessed lands. The rumors came first from Kinost, the birthplace of my mother’s kin—the whole of Westhold had been razed, neither house nor tent left standing, not a child or woman spared. 

The plague, the people said, was born there in their blood…a sickness come from rats or rotten food, a poisoned harvest. Nobody knew, and by such time nobody cared; the horrors that this plague would cause have robbed men of their very sanity—some, once driven mad by the sight of it, cast themselves down from great mountains or into chasms or the deep, for such fates were preferable to see corruption of this kind and yet live.

    She listened close, fully enraptured at my word, though I would fain not speak another. Not of this hell, not of this nightmare. We do not know from whence it came, I said, but we do know what it makes of men—a curse for both the living and the dead, my child. She was not mine, of course, for I had never had anything so good and pure as her after I tasted of war, but I called her mine nonetheless. It soothed me to do so. I asked if she were certain, if she would truly know.  She nodded, as she had times before. And waited.

 As the armies of the West drew nigh things changed in Amranore. The workers of the fields became the tower guards, our minstrels and bards became the heralds in the night. Craftsmen to armorers, builders to bladesmiths, and our bread—Artorian plate—despite being the smallest of the baronies, the mastery of our craft ensured that we remained the most cherished and beloved, and we would soon become the most feared.

 The young were trained for war, and none of us were spared. Cuthbert became an archer, Halemir a Lancer, and Lorinne and I—we were among the few to be chosen as Knights. Perhaps it was a fortitude gained from our mock battles, or speed attained in daily racing to the brook, whatever the cause the outcome was the same: our innocence was the price paid to protect our homes. So it was the golden days had come to end in night and smoke, and a constant waiting for the silent breaking of one more dawn.  

    I watched as the girl moved the hair from her face, tying it back with sooty hands, saying nothing, only waiting for the rest. 

    I might have gone on to become a merchant, like my father. I would have learned to sing as mother did, if I’d been given time—if I had known how it would soon run short—I might have begged Lorinne to have me as her husband. I had loved her, and thought I still loved her, but I no longer knew if I believed that monsters could love. 

    And did you fight them, the armies? 

 Her questions would change form but always follow the same order. I answered yes, for fight we did. We first watched them come in the morning fog, pouring over Falgren Hill like a flood, spilling into the valley below—an oceanof silver and black and gold—but not in martial ranks as we expected, no. They ran in mobs and masses, the movement of desperate and lost. Shields and spears and banners, all flailing hopeless in the wind as the army ran towards us, not for battle but for refuge. And thinking on it now, we would have gladly fought an army rather than that which came trailing behind them.

    The Dead?

    Yes, my child, the Dead.

    But how?

    I do not know.

    And why?

    We asked the same. We’d taken the rumors to be lies, of course! That those long dead had risen again from filthy graves, that the newly dead refused to die. For how could these things ever be?

    But so they were.

    Yes. So they were. The plague came first like a fever—the searing of hot coals inside the breast. The pain was inconceivable, they said, once it was fully ripe in its infection. The fever robbed them of their minds until, in agony, they either died or sought to die to find release. 

    And then they rose again?

I nodded. But not the same, you understand. They were people who are not people, sons and daughters that know neither father nor mother nor anything, save hunger and pain. There came with them a rage, a howling, and a thirst for blood—that of their friends, their brothers, wives, their children. The plague, the Burning, was all the fears of man rolled into one unholy thing and Amranore, as much Kinost, as much as Themitas, as much as Westhold and all the wide world, was powerless to stop it.

    What happened then, Gallahad?

    I said nothing.

    What happened then, she screamed. No, demanded to know. 

    I tried my best to swallow a scream, against the fire in my hands and throat. I felt my eyes grow warm, then hot, even as my tongue seemed to blister in my mouth as she just yelled and yelled and shouted the words: Speak, Knight. Speak, Knight! Speak, Knight! I command you to speak! 

 And at her command, I broke. 

    WE KILLED! WE KILLED THE SOLDIERS, KILLED THEM ALL!

    She clasped her hands over her mouth, as if surprised, but I knew it was not so. She knew what she asked for, she knew where this tale led from the beginning and for her begging I complied, for one last time to heed her desperate wanting. I told her how we fell upon them once it became clear that they would not relent. They begged for sanctuary and salvation, knowing we had no such things to give and so we fell upon them—every bit as we had trained. 

    Cuthbert and his archers, they made the sun go dark with a rain of poison arrows—and the screaming began. Then Hal and his Lancers, fierce upon their armored mounts tore forth from gilded gates, crushing bone and steel, slicing through their ranks like a fiery surgeon’s blade. And last of all came we, the Knights of Amranore—shining in the shadow, covered in our mighty plate—swords in both our hands for there were no shields for us. We are not defense, we said, we are the very judgment of Shin’ar, the cruelest strike of Volheim’s eye! We are the hammers of the gods. 

    The red-haired girl wept into her perfect hands.

    I tasted blood, I saw the fear of death take hearts of men before my face and turn their eyes to those of children once more. How I hated to recognized their gaze, for it was my own. They fell in legions, they fell by the thousands at our feet until the very rain became stained with their blood—our armor was as crimson in the failing light, a bloody band imbued with heaven’s mighty will itself. I looked down at her in the dark. We wept, my child. We wept to kill our countrymen, and more to kill our innocence. 

    For a moment, she faltered. The words croaking out of her mouth like one dying of thirst. But you had to fight them, she said. You had to kill them all. 

    Above my head, a gentle ray of white appeared amidst a scraping of rock. Far above us in the stone, the long drop illuminated, I heard the whistle of the breeze and voices, voices of people. Living voices. I wondered how long it had been since I had the voice of another besides hers and found that I could not recall. Time had long abandoned me as it had abandoned the world. 

    By Shinnar’s Light, I’ve done it. I’ve held my course. The child is saved.

    And all at once she was upon me. The tiniest of arms, wrapped tight above my shoulders, her face against the tarnished face of the helm. My eyes stared at her from the dark and found her own—light brown as honey, impossibly bright, even in the bleakness of this dungeon. Her sobs echoed softly on the walls of our cave, and I allowed myself the pleasure, no, the honor of embracing her in return. I held her tight to me and trembled. Trembled in this one last mercy, the last in all the world. A mercy sharply cut by a scream—no, a wail, a howl. The howl of the dead, shrieking in the distance, somewhere to the south of where we sat. Outside our hiding place, to be sure, but not for long.

    She asked about the sounds, growing louder now. 

    It’s time for you to go, I said, as I began to rise.

Not yet, she begged. Then, wiping her hands on the dark blue, ragged, remnants of my cape, placed her hands on either side of my helm and lifted it. For a moment, I held it fast, but catching her eye once more, I was powerless again. 

    The air itself was icy to my flesh, exposed for the first time in an age. I gulped at every breath and felt my pulse grow faster in my veins. She placed her gentle hands upon me and beheld, I know not what in my poor visage, for surely, I was the most horrid thing that she should ever look upon. I had not seen my own face in months, but the memory of it was burned into my memory, and surely by now it was far worse. My skin had lost its color, gained a greyish, sickly hue. My hair, once long and the color of a growing oak had faded and fallen, and I now resembled more the boy of Amranore—a cursed, twisting of his sight. My eyes burned, twin flames inside my skull.

    You’re not a monster, Gallahad. I will remember you, she said, promising to tell all my stories. She left a kiss upon my cheek and felt her small lip quiver at the heat. I would have died, then. I would, if given choice, had welcomed all the mountains of the cursed world to fall upon me and extinguish me—to leave the world in blessed, holy peace. But that is not my fate, it’s not what I deserve. I begged her to remember the happy parts.

    A rope dropped from above us, tapping softly against the stone as someone shouted for her to climb. There’s no time. 

    I stood and with what strength I could command held her aloft until she grasped the thick, dark, cord and cried.

    Come with us. 

    I placed my helmet, fastened it in place. I have indulged you enough, child. 

    Come with us, she replied again. 

    Leave me, child! I shouted, as the rope and she began to rise through the darkness into light. I have work to do before the setting of the sun, before my mind is lost to this unknowable curse and I left no longer Gallahad, but a sick, hungry thing that once upon a time answered to a name. Like Hal, like Cuthbert, like Lorinne. 

    All at once, I heard weeping above me, and a frenzied screaming at the gate far away in the dark to my left. The thick, wooden door thudded loudly in the shadows, straining at the hinges and the stone. This is no fortress, no mighty keep—an old storage is no place to hold off an invasion. There would be no defense here, nowhere to retreat. 

    The screaming and the pounding grew along with the quivering of the door. I gripped my one remaining sword in hand and let myself believe I felt its old strength flow into me once more, and perhaps it was. Who is to say there’s no magic left in the world? Who is to say I will not find my friends again in some outer heaven, beyond this curse, beyond the veil death? The last child is safe, for now, safe with the other children who remain, maybe to build a better world atop the bones of ours…a better world. 

    A deafening crack tore down the door, followed by a shake in the ground from where the door had fallen in the dust and splinters. I saw the legions of the dead—all ages, all sizes, and wondered if I might recognize some of them. 

    They screamed the only words I’d ever heard them scream in all this time. FLESH! BLOOD! FLESH! BLOOD!

    I shouted in return at their madness. I am Gallahad! I have kept my course! I have trod the wheel alone! and I have flesh and blood to spare. Welcome, sweet oblivion.

    The mass of living dead surged forward like a wave, and through the fire in my eyes, I saw my sword hand live again.