In the Midnight Hour

   The air is hot and thick. It clings to me like a blanket just out of the river, placed above the fire just long enough to be warm, and then draped across my shoulders. It weighs me down, making my breath hitch in my chest. But none of the villagers can see that.

   None of them should ever see that.

   The villagers must never know how my hands shake now. They must never heard the pounding of my heart as it rattles my ribs or how it thrums in my ears. They must never know the terror that flows through me as I stand, waiting for the death that flies on ragged wings toward me.

   No, what they must see is me standing in wait to save them. They must see the gleam of broken and dented armor in the sunlight—the glint of a freshly sharpened sword. The statuesque power of a knight come to save them from the horrors of the dark. It doesn’t matter that I was the only fool stupid enough to take the coin in exchange for my life, under the false pretense that more of my brothers in arms would stand with me at the gates of hell. The villagers must only see my strength, whether it is fiction or not.

  Even now, I can see the edges of the portal from where I stand alone on the bridge over its rushing white rapids, the swirling reds and oranges of the vortex spinning in an uneven arch just above the trees. I can only wonder at how many beasts have gotten through. How many will be surging toward the denizens of this little river town? How many will venture further into the wilderness instead, only to find some unwitting traveler in the dark?

   I cannot help the travelers or the adventurers who find themselves at the end of tooth and nail one day.

   I can only help the villagers behind me now.

   Behind me, those unfortunate to be born, live, and work just a few short miles from the hell portal opened are working to pack up all they have. A few villagers have already escaped, turning tail and running at the first sign of danger. They were the smart ones. The rest, who relied too heavily on the knowledge that the unsteady magic gateways cannot hold themselves open for very long and will collapse shortly after their appearance, are now too obsessed with their possessions to run away their lives.

   No matter how contrite it seems, I cannot hate them for it. Their lives are more than the hearts in their chest and the blood in their veins.

   They’re almost done, I know, nearly ready to depart, but as the swirling edge of the portal begins to falter and collapse, some part of me knows that the surge is coming. The hell portal has been open for days. Long enough that the mayor of this little backwater hovel had time enough to alert the lord and lady and send word to the knights of the realm. Long enough for those same knights, all but myself, to decline to help.

   I should have declined with the rest of my brothers. Should have told them to flee while they had a chance or face the wrath of the Hells.

   But I couldn’t.

   I never could.

   I love them too much.

   A crying mother. A scared child. A man willing to fight alongside me with not but a stick Me, the only trained soldier and noble willing to stand for them within a hundred miles against the hordes of monsters coming to maim, kill, rape, and pillage them, hopefully in that order. No, I’ve never been able to deny them. Many of my brothers-in-arms see them as little more than cattle, but I can see the men, women, and children that they are.

   They will not fall while I stand.

   I will give them time.

   Time to escape.

   Time to live.

   And I’ll pay it with my blood and my own life.

   A tell-tale purple light shimmers through the air like an oil slick along the surface of water, the last burst of magic from the collapsing portal. Part of me feels relief, knowing that the hell portal is finally closed and that anything that got through is all there will be. But the other part of me, the part that makes my hands shake harder with terror, knows that, without the portal being open, the beasts will surely venture out to seek warmth and life. With the connection to their hells broken, the denizens of the depths come for blood.

   I adjust the sword, bringing it up from the ground and bringing it to bear.

   The only blood they will taste is their own or mine.

   No one shall fall while I live.

   An unnatural silence falls over the world. The wind fails to whisper through the trees. The waves bubble softly over the river rocks, despite the torrent of the river, too afraid to be noticed in the onslaught to come. I can only hear my breath in my helmet and-

   “HURRY!” I bellow over my shoulder, “YOU MUST LEAVE NOW!”

   A cacophony of clattering wood behind me tells me that the villagers, who’d grown silent with the rest of the world, had regained themselves. I spare a glance over my shoulder and see they are just about to finish loading the wagons. They will only need a fifteen-minute head start.

   Fifteen minutes. When any given battle tends to last no more than one or two.

   Easy.

   A crashing in the trees ahead of me challenges that single thought. It is as if that single silent word, inviting the ire of the gods, drew the beasts to us. I can see from where I stand on the bridge, branches being torn asunder and trees bowing to a force beyond. Idly, it occurs to me that the creatures ought to just use the road, and I can’t help but chuckle. If they were as civilized as the rest of us, somehow, I don’t think I’d be hired to die by their hand.

   Only a moment later, bursting from the tree line, I see the first of the monstrosities. It leaps forward, tearing a sapling from the ground as it does, landing on two feet like a man before dropping onto four like the beast that it is. Its flesh is mottled red, dotted with great purple splotches that remind me of the liver spots on the old king’s head before he passed. Its body is enormous and muscled, like that of a man, if that man stood eight feet tall in life and weighed five hundred pounds. Each muscled arm and foot is adorned with slender, jagged claws, each easily approaching a foot in length. Twenty swords to my one, I marvel; I suppose it will be a fair fight, after all, I muse. Its mouth, long and bulbous like a wolf’s maw, resembles the beast in all but the length of its fangs, with each as long as my dagger and jutting out from its mandibles in awkward and crazed angles.

   The monstrosity tilts its head as it sees me, standing alone on the bridge, before its gaze ventures to the village beyond. Its maw splits into a hideous amalgamation of a smile, and I know that this is my last moment of respite. The creature’s head tilts to the sky and, much like the wolf whose maw this thing seems to have stolen, it looses a horrible cry to the heavens. The screeching roar is nothing like a wolf’s elegant mournful howl but like a screaming soul trapped inside the gut of a roaring monster.

   Which, I suppose, it is.

   Again, I adjust my stance, readying my sword for the attack to come, as four more of the beasts, each unique in their hideous visages, some smaller and some taller but all horrible to behold, join the first monster. Behind me, I hear a scream from one of the villagers, a woman who spotted the thing at the tree line, and that’s when the attack began.

   The first beast surges forward, jumping from the treeline to the hard stone of the bridge, followed by two others, a beast that resembles a hideous bipedal pig and another that reminds me of a featherless chicken. The wolf monster reaches me first, its horrible claws brought to bear faster than any knight I’d ever dueled with. My steel rings as I catch them against my blade. Another swipe, this time deflected with my shield, sends sparks flying into the river below.

   The creature is fast, yes, and terribly strong, but he is also clearly relying on those points. Relying on brute strength and power to overpower me.

   At least I am not the only fool on this bridge anymore.

   A third attack from the horrendous creature, and I allow my shield to be caught at an angle by the thing’s claws. Lifting a foot, I set myself to pivot and, with the force of the next attack, I spin in place, bringing my sword up to the level of the beast’s neck.

   I didn’t even need to put any effort into the swing. Just allow the beast to cut its own head off as I used the force of its attack against it.

   The monster’s black blood sprays across the cobbles, and its wolven head rolls wetly from its shoulders, bouncing off the bridge’s low walls and down into the rushing river below. The two creatures that followed after it barely register the death of their comrade, instead trying to use the confusion to surge by me. To reach the village beyond.

   It seems there truly are nothing but fools on this bridge.

   Still spinning from the initial attack, I bring my sword up to catch the pigman in his shoulder, and with my shield up, I slam the chunk of steel and wood into the crooked beak of the chicken demon. Each shriek cries of pain, their plan to surpass me broken in a single move. I allow myself to halt my momentum, kicking out to catch the chicken beast in the ribs while I draw my sword out and begin to hack away at the pigman. The cuts I make are sloppy and bad enough that my instructors from years prior would have made me run the length of a field in full plate for hours as punishment, but to these equally poorly trained monstrosities, the openings I leave don’t matter.

   He is meat, and I am a butcher.

   I turn from the broken and black-blood-bleeding pile of pork to my next assailant. The shield and the kick were enough to off-balance the beast, but I was too sloppy. Too lazy. It’s already ready for the attack, and the beast kicks off at me, swiping with a half dozen blades of its own. I fail to catch two of them with my sword, and they rake against my steel armor, cutting through it like a blade through a cloth.

   Hot, red blood bubbles through the rent armor. Part of me is amazed that the blow didn’t separate the limb from my body, but I have no time to marvel. I brace against the four claws that have caught my blade, twisting hard and allowing the beast’s bulk to off-balance him. It tumbles slightly. It isn’t much, but enough. My blade rises, catching it in the throat, before I tear the hunk of steel back out in a fountain of black blood, spin and bring it back down onto the back of its mottled neck.

   A second head joins the first in the river.

   With a shaking breath, I look up, trying not to focus on the searing pain in my arm, to see the treeline and the end of the bridge has filled. Hundreds of beasts of various shapes and sizes, each horrific and hellish to behold, watch me. Part of me wonders what they’re waiting for and why they didn’t help their compatriots, but another part knows perfectly why. The middlemost beast, a horrendous boar-like thing, snorts and chortles. It raises a hand, barking something out in a guttural tongue, and the true onslaught begins.

   Gods help me.

   One comes fast, and I bring it down with a clean stab. Another catches my shield, but I cut its legs out from under it. Something hits me in the head, ringing it like a bell before knocking it clean off. My sword finds the throat of another monster as it rushes forward, its fangs open and aiming for my now exposed skull. I swing. I block. I parry. I cut. I dodge. Move. Move. Parry. Block. Move. Swing. Parry. Swing.

    My world is surging bodies, sharp claws, deadly fangs, and red and black blood. I feel each blade as the beasts pierce my armor, slashing my limbs and my face and piercing my body. But I do not fall. I feel their bodies give way to the force of my skill and my sword. And none gets by me—a dozen try. But none do.

   It won’t matter soon, though.

   My gathering wounds, though nonfatal in the moment, are accumulating. I’m being pushed back, steel greaves sliding along fountains of monstrous ichor. I cannot hold my place against them. For every hundred I slay, a thousand rush forward, trying as they can to get across my bridge. They cannot ford the river, for no demon may enter the white waters, but that won’t matter shortly.

   I catch a glimpse behind me, likely the last one I’ll ever have of the village and its villagers before catastrophe. I can see that they’re moving. The wagons are rolling, and they’re beginning to leave. I just need to hold out.

   I just need to hold them here.

   “Gods, give me the strength to save them. Just one more minute,” I plead beneath my breath. The sound is raspy and broken. It bubbles from inside my chest. From inside my punctured lungs. “One more minute. Please.”

   A screech to my left tells me an attack is incoming. I’ve lost my shield somewhere in the fray, and my sword is still stuck firmly in the neck of another beast. I do the first thing that occurs to me, I swing my open fist. The gauntleted punch connects with the force of a battering ram, stopping the incoming monster cold and collapsing its face into its neck with a sickening crunch. It’s dead before it even hits the ground, which, candidly, takes a while through the surge of bodies that continues to try and reach me.

   The blade I hold feels hot, and I wince against it, but it’s no worse than the dozens of wounds that dot my body through my broken armor. I grasp it harder and twist. The head of the beast rolls off, and the black blood splashes across the burning hilt. Steam hisses from the blade, and I realize the heat is not my imagination. The blood, molten and vile as it is, seems to cool the searing blade and, inspired, I seek a fresh way to cool it down. Swinging hard again, I cleave through three of the monsters, and the spray of their vile ichor bursts into steam and gives me the relief I need to get a better grip on my blade.

   I just need a better grip.

   The blade is just too hot.

   I swing repeatedly, desperately trying to avoid letting panic overcome skill and training. The blade slices cleanly through the beasts before me as though they aren’t even there. Their blood pools over me, causing steam to burst forth in all directions as the vicious ichor finds no purchase. Fog begins to fill the air around us, tinged with the acrid stench of the hells, while the rest of the blood runs in rivers of its own down to the white waters below.

   But, with each swing, I make progress.

   With each hit, they are moved a step back.

   No matter how hard they try, the horde cannot get past me. No matter how many wounds they inflict, they cannot kill me. No matter how desperately or how fervently they seek to reach those villagers I have sworn to protect, even as they trundle away on carts too slow pulled by oxen too old.

   The beasts of the hells will never reach them.

   The villagers must never see me shake. They must never see me feel terror. And they must never see me fall. For, if I fall, hope falls with me. And hope is eternal. So I am, as well.

   I like to imagine what it is the last of the escaping men and women saw, but I will never know; as I pushed the encroaching hordes back to the treeline, back to the other side of the bridge. I’ve heard whispers of what it was like. They said they the knight with the dented armor began to glow. And then to grow. That the dented steel turned to gold, that the man turned into a mountain, and that the knight turned into a god.

   I’ll never know the truth.

   However, I know that, as the last of the beasts fell before me, where it still sat addled and confused at the base of where the hellgate once stood, I turned my blade to the earth once more, just as I had when waiting. I bent my knee, closed my eyes, and slept eternally, knowing that, only a few miles away, the cries of the helpless had been answered.