by Adam Wallace
Pete was about to respond when more horses rode up to the house. This was a regular get-together. The riders wore the colours of Bandragon. Pete feared the news was not going to improve. Molloy broke free from the guard and ran with Tahnee to the riders.
‘What is it?’ Tahnee asked, fearing something had happened to her dad. ‘Why are you here?’
‘The town is under attack,’ the rider replied. ‘Those who are not dead and yet not alive are invading Bandragon. They are knights, but their actions belie this.’
Tahnee and Molloy gasped. They turned to Pete.
‘We have to go,’ Tahnee said. Molloy was already on his horse, sword drawn. Tahnee continued.
‘Sorry Pete, but we have to go and help. We have to see if Dad’s okay.’
Pete nodded. He didn’t want them to leave, but he knew they had no choice. He wanted to help them too, but knew he had no choice.
Tahnee turned to the rider who had spoken.
‘The town? My dad?’ she asked.
‘The town stands firm,’ the rider said. ‘But we know not for how long. Your father was at the front line. He would have it no other way.’
‘Then we ride,’ cried Molloy. ‘We ride and we take out those sons of witches! Seeya, Sweet!’
Tahnee turned and hugged Pete tight before jumping onto her horse. She cried out a battle cry and her horse leapt forward, leaving behind nothing but dust swirling in the air. Pete stared after them. His head was spinning. The high of seeing his great friends, the low of being exiled, and now this. The guard turned back to Pete McGee.
‘Now you must also leave,’ he said.
Pete nodded. He turned to his mum and hugged her tight, trying to ignore her tears lest they set him off crying as well.
‘I shall return, fair maiden,’ he said, his voice catching in his throat. ‘I shall not leave you for long.’
‘You must do what is right, Sir Pete,’ Mrs McGee replied. ‘You will do what you know is right.’
And that was that. Pete was allowed to fill his pack with clothes and supplies, and then he had to leave. Sir Mountable was given the option of returning to his house to gather anything he may need aside from what he carried in his pack, but he refused.
‘I have the boy,’ he said. ‘He is all I need.’
Then they mounted their horses, and they rode away from the home Pete had lived in his entire life. He wondered if it would be the same when he returned.
The Black Knights ran to their horses, Bandragon behind them. The battle had not gone well. Blood dripped from their mouths, but not all of it was from their victims. Three of the knights had had their arms chopped off, and carried them as they ran. The people of Bandragon had fought well, and although they had lost many, the town had stood firm, as it had done for so long.
The Black Knights mounted their horses and rode away from Bandragon. They had gathered one thing from their attack. They had gathered information on the whereabouts of the Wilderene Flower. Not all those in Bandragon had kept their silence. One man had spoken, on the threat of having his brains eaten, of Pete McGee and where the flower was kept. His brains were eaten anyway, so he should have kept his mouth shut, but by then it was too late.
The knights rode for the hometown of Pete McGee. They didn’t even bother repairing their injuries. They knew they would heal quickly, and they also knew that along with their already gruesome appearance, their battle wounds made them even more fearsome. Soon the Wilderene Flower would be theirs.
Well, well, well. It seems things are heading for a climax. The knights are after the flower. Pete McGee and Sir Mountable have been booted out of their homes. Pete’s friends have returned to Bandragon to see what damage has been caused by the invaders. It’s all happening! So my questions now are these:
How will the Black Knights be stopped?
Will they get the flower?
Will they eat Mrs McGee’s brains?
Will they ever take a bath and stop smelling so bad?
What will Pete McGee do?
Where will he stay?
Won’t anyone think of the children?
So many questions, and they will all be answered in good time, because there aren’t many pages left for you to read. So read like the wind … except not like the wind because that would blow the pages and make it really hard to read. So read really fast but really, really gently.
ete McGee and Sir Mountable sat in the field they had been training in before their banishment. It had been three weeks since Pete had seen his mother, and he missed her terribly. He missed Marloynne and Ashlyn too, but aside from his quest to get the Wilderene Flower, this was the longest he and his mother had been apart.
He was not allowed to do any formal training, although he didn’t know who would be watching him anyway. Sir Mountable got around this by making Pete ride Lightning without holding on, using his crossbow to catch their meals.
He put Pete through exercise routines, hanging things up a tree and forcing Pete to climb up to reach them, or handing his squire heavy logs to carry. He even made him do push-ups (which aren’t easy on one arm. Seriously. Try one. Bet you can’t do it!).
He taught Pete how to lay traps for animals.
He would flare up and get angry, yelling about something stupid like a drop of water being spilt, and then he would leap on Pete, or attempt to strike him, forcing the boy to defend himself. It was all a charade, of course, to allow them to do full combat training.
And they would talk. Sir Mountable would question Pete on fighting techniques and on the history of the knights. He talked about how to prepare for battle. He made Pete elaborate again and again on why it was he wanted to be a knight, and why it was that his actions would always be more important than the title and what others thought.
Although all the knowledge felt useless to Pete in terms of actual training, he enjoyed his time with Sir Mountable immensely. The low of being exiled had actually brought him and the knight closer together, and Pete felt stronger and fitter than ever before. He even looked like he may have been carved out of a slightly bigger rock. Sir Mountable had also changed. He was a different man to the one Pete had first met (that’s right, the drunken slob), and his wisdom and depth of thought seemed to know no bounds.
Sir Mountable, too, was impressed. The boy had come on in giant strides in his training, but there was more. Aside from all the rubbish he had spoken about wanting to be called a knight and caring what everyone else thought of him, Sir Mountable could tell Pete had more to him than that. His actions were instinctively selfless.
Sir Mountable was also impressed with the boy’s thoughts. Pete analysed things, thought about them, and would respond only when he had considered his answer carefully. He was not rash anymore, as he had been when they had first met. He was becoming a fine man.
The hardest thing was that Pete did, in fact, remind Sir Mountable of another boy, from another time, one who was lost to him forever but who would never really be gone. The knight would banish such thoughts when they arose, but it was hard. It was so hard to forget when you have cared so deeply.
Sir Charge was not impressed. The Black Knights were lost. In fact, they had gotten lost three times.
This was a shock to Sir Pryse, who had thought they were on the right track.
Sir Myse had also presumed that they were headed the right way.
Sir Kewlar was hungry, as they hadn’t passed through a town for days. He prodded at his pudgy stomach, one finger squelching right through the outer skin. He groaned. His rotund shape was almost oval now.
Every time they went a certain way, Sir Kemspect would want to discuss the route first, just to make sure it would be the correct choice.
Sir Fing didn’t really mind what happened. He enjoyed catching some rays, lying on his horse as it trotted along.
Sir Lee was not surprised at all that they kept going the wrong way. He was only surprised it took them so long to realise it, and that they didn’t apologise to him for all the
se delays. He was especially angry with Sir Tification who had, every single time, said that the route chosen was definitely the correct one.
Sir Lee started trying to pick fights with the other knights, but only Sir Jiccal was interested. It had been weeks since he had been able to practise any medicine, and he was happy to do it on himself if he lost the fight.
Sir Vyvor was the only one not unhappy with the delay. It gave him a little more time to work out how he would get rid of the other knights so they could not cause more death and destruction. He took the drink Sir Plyer offered him and drank it deeply. Goat’s blood. It made him a little weaker than the others who feasted on human blood and brains, but he was strong enough.
Sir Charge stopped his horse and turned to face the others.
‘This is truly thy last chance, Sir Myse. What direction do we take?’
Sir Myse hesitated. He thought carefully and it seemed to him that they should take the road to the left. So that was what he suggested. Sir Charge turned his attention to Sir Tification, raising one mouldy eyebrow. Sir Tification nodded.
‘He doth be correct. This time for sure.’
Sir Charge grunted and rode his horse down the road to the left. The others followed, Sir Plus feeling like the extra knight tacked on the end as usual.
Larson Smithers stood on top of the hill again, watching Pete McGee riding his horse and chasing a rabbit. He wished he could catch McGee in formal training, just so he could dob him in. It had been a bonus seeing him that other time, a total fluke really. He had just been going for a walk when he had happened upon the training session. He had run straight to his dad, the head of the guards, and had told him everything. After that, Smithers knew that if McGee was caught training now, surely he would be banished forever.
Smithers had targeted Pete as a victim early on, when he had been wanting to make an impression on others. Having one arm had made Pete an easy target, and when Smithers had gotten a laugh for picking on Pete that first time, he just kept on with it. It became second nature. He searched for ways to pick on Pete, and he searched for reasons to dislike him.
He had said all that stuff about Pete being dangerous, and that was true to a certain extent, but it wasn’t the whole story. It was also that Pete had qualities that he, Smithers, wanted. Smithers was scared, in a way, of Pete being a better knight than him, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen.
People also liked Pete without him having to threaten or scare them into it. AAAGGGHHH! He just hated McGee and his stupid one arm and getting the Wilderene Flower and being good at stuff and being so determined all the time and everyone liking him and trying so hard to …
The thoughts stopped as he caught a whiff of something in the air. Not something pleasant like strawberry pie, but something disgusting like rotting flesh mixed with horse poo mixed with six-week-old eggs mixed with four-day-old garlic breath. It was awful. He held his hand to his nose and turned around. His heart didn’t quite stop when he saw what he saw, but it thought about it, and then sped up to about two hundred beats a minute.
There were twelve horses, if you could call them that. They were half-flesh, half-bones. Their black teeth grinned at him. That was bad enough, but the riders were even worse. At first glance they looked like knights. Their armour was black and so, Larson Smithers could tell immediately, were their souls. Even though they wore armour, bones stuck out at all angles. Bits of flesh hung from the steel. Most of them wore no helmets so their faces were exposed, and they weren’t the prettiest flowers in the bunch. The lead knight rode up to him.
‘You.’ The voice chilled Smithers to his bones. ‘Where is the Wilderene Flower?’
Smithers thought fast. He knew McGee had retrieved and used the flower, but he didn’t know if he had then given it to the King, or kept it at home, planted it … he had no idea. All he knew was that if he was to survive he had to dob someone else in and get these creatures away from him. So he pointed with a trembling finger to the field where Pete McGee now stood by his horse, talking to Sir Mountable.
‘They know,’ he said, his voice trembling almost as much as his finger. ‘They know. Ask them. I have to go and … do something else. Anything. I have to go now. Ask them. They know.’
So much for honour and valour.
Smithers was basically moving before he finished the sentence and now he ran, not looking back, expecting with every step he took to feel the hot breath of death on his neck. But he felt nothing, so he kept running and he didn’t stop until he had locked himself in his room and hidden under his bed.
The zombie knights looked down at the field. They did not fear anyone, although for some reason unknown to them they hesitated before advancing. Once on the move though, any hesitation disappeared. Sir Charge grinned. Soon the flower would be his, and he and his ten knights would be invincible. Yes. Ten. Once he had the flower, Sir Vyvor’s luck would not be needed.
ete McGee and Sir Mountable, like Larson Smithers had done, smelt the Black Knights approaching before they saw them. They had been discussing the differences and similarities between a sword-fighting and an archery battle when the aroma touched their nostrils.
‘Oh man, what is that smell? Sir Mountable, did you have beans again last night?’ Pete asked jokingly.
He did not get the response he anticipated. Instead, Sir Mountable stared straight past him. Pete spun around and saw knights on horses riding down the hill towards them. He groaned.
‘No. Oh no. We’re done for. They’ve found us. They know we’ve been doing sneaky training. I won’t ever see Mum again at this rate.’
Sir Mountable laid a hand on his shoulder.
‘Be positive, boy. We are not done for yet.’
They stood side-by-side as the zombie knights approached. It was only as they neared that Pete and Sir Mountable realised they were not knights of the King. This made Pete, if not Sir Mountable, extremely relieved. He went up to the lead rider, looking at him but not really seeing him, and leant against the horse, patting the knight on his side.
‘Oh man. It is so good to see you. You aren’t with the King, right? Of course you aren’t. So good to see you.’
His thoughts changed a little when he moved away from the horse and saw he had bits of flesh stuck to his side and his hand. He gave a cry and flicked it away, and then looked properly at the knight he had spoken to. It was not a pretty sight. Sir Charge’s patience was also in short supply.
‘Where is the flower?’ he asked. ‘Tell me now or thou shalt pay the price.’
‘Flower?’ Pete asked, honestly confused. Sir Charge drew his sword and touched it to the young man’s throat.
‘The Wilderene Flower. Thou doth know of its whereabouts. Divulge them now.’
Pete’s mind raced. He couldn’t tell them where the flower was, because that would lead them straight to his mum. And he certainly didn’t want to make up something to get someone else into trouble either. He didn’t like lying, but he had to protect his mother.
‘I know not what thou speaketh of,’ he said. ‘This flower? Could thee describe it?’
The point of the blade pressed a little more firmly against his throat. Pete gulped. Sir Charge grinned.
‘We shall not hesitate to kill you, boy. Sir Kewlar hungers for your brain, small as it may be. Speak of the flower now.’
Before there was an answer the sword was knocked away. Pete backed off a couple of steps, gasping. Sir Mountable stood, sword drawn, helmet on, ready for battle. The zombie knights dismounted in a flash, eager for blood. Sir Vyvor took the horses and led them to one side of the field. He wanted none of this uneven battle.
‘Retreat, Black Knight,’ Sir Mountable said in his deep, raspy voice. ‘Leave the boy. I alone know the whereabouts of the Wilderene Flower, and I shall not divulge this knowledge to one as evil as yourself.’
‘Then it shall be cut out of you,’ Sir Charge said before attacking with a roar, sword swinging above his head. Before he could do anything with it though
, an arrow embedded itself in his eye socket, pushing the eye back into his head. Sir Pete McGee stood, crossbow drawn and reloaded, ready to fire again.
Sir Charge roared and pulled out the arrow, his eyeball stuck on the end of it. Pete watched in horror as the zombie took the eyeball off the arrow, licked it clean, and stuck it back in his head. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Pete holstered his crossbow and drew the dagger Sir Loinsteak had given him on his journey as a twelve-year-old. The dagger glowed, fitting perfectly as always into its owner’s grip. Suddenly it swung his arm around and chopped off the hand of Sir Pryse, who had been making a sneaky attack from behind. Sir Pryse cried out in horror as his hand, still holding his sword, flew into a bush. Pete smiled. The dagger would still seek out his enemies. The battle was afoot.
And what a battle. It was eleven versus two, but the two had heart. They could not kill the zombie knights, only slow them, and so slow them they did. Swords stabbed through hearts. Arrows were fired. Legs were chopped off. Arms were chopped off. Heads were chopped off. Stabbing. Slicing. Nothing. None of them would die … again. More than once.
Sir Mountable shocked Pete. He had speed for an old man, and skills he had not shown before. They fought side-by-side, and they fought back-to-back, repelling all that the zombies could throw at them.
Pete was struck time and again, but he would not fall. At one stage his dagger was knocked from his hand, and he resorted to punching one of the zombies in the face. Unfortunately the face was a mess of mush, and it grossed Pete out more than having any impact on the knight. Pete withdrew his hand and flicked the goo at the zombie knight, who simply ate it. It was disgusting, and Pete was thrown off guard, allowing himself to be grabbed from behind. He struggled, but he was held fast. His dagger lay on the ground. He closed his eyes, ready for the final blow.
