by Heath Pfaff
I reached up and unlatched my sword. Rampage shifted quickly. I could hear him spinning about, and I followed his motion, believing an attack to be inbound from his side. That movement saved my life, though not for the reason I'd anticipated. Rampage's sword slammed down in the place I'd been standing only a moment before, burying itself in the ground with the force of the blow. I fell back, bringing my massive sword to bear in front of me. I caught sight of my attackers clearly for the first time then.
Rampage stood facing me, his sword drawn, and to either side, and slightly behind me, stood two more Knights of Ethan. I recognized them as Pride and Watcher. With Rampage, the three Knights surrounding me represented the oldest and most well decorated Knights remaining, other than Ethaniel himself.
"What is this?" I demanded, my anger and sense of betrayal, making my voice more a growl than a human vocalization.
"You've destroyed us, Lowin Fenly." Rampage called, his voice equally wrought with rage. "You've brought the Knights to the edge of ruin, and cast the kingdom into a pit from which it might never crawl its way out."
"Worse," Came Watcher's voice from behind me. "You've forced us all into an exile from which we will probably never return. The Knights of Ethan, the bravest and strongest warriors of the kingdom of men, are running away in self-imposed exile. That's disgusting, and it's all your fault."
Their words stung. How close were they to the truth? How much of the kingdom's fate was my responsibility? How much of the Knights of Ethan's diminishing honor was upon my head? I had to be honest with myself. The Knights would probably have been better off without Lowin Fenly as their king. Certainly I had done them no favors over the years.
"You've been an enemy to the Knights many times. I don't believe that has changed. You're just an enemy wearing a different disguise." This time it was Pride who spoke, his face set not in an expression of anger, but one of resignation.
"Assassination? This is the way you reclaim the honor of the Knights of Ethan?" I asked, my rage barely contained behind my reason. Inside me, the Fell Beast stalked the limitations of the darkness of my mind. It could taste the conflict; sense the bitter smell of battle lying heavily upon myself and the other three Knights. It thrived on such turmoil.
"You've left us no choice." Pride spoke again. "We either act, or we lose the rest of the honor we retain. I'll not turn my back on my honor to follow a traitor, whether he wears the crown or not."
"What of those men you killed? What had they done wrong? They were serving their country, doing their duty, and you cut them down in cold blood." I gestured towards the two dead black cloaks. I didn't know their real names. I didn't even know their exact calling signs. In the darkness I couldn't be sure which two had followed me. They had died nameless. It was wrong of me, but I found myself thinking, "Please, let neither of them be Liet." No man deserved to die as they had, but the thought that it might be Liet, troubled me to no end.
"How do you plan on getting away with this?" I asked, stifling my worry for Liet, and worst, my worry for those back at the camp. How many more Knights of Ethan were in on the betrayal? What if they had someone back at camp? Would they hurt Malice to get to me? Would they see her as a threat to them? She certainly wouldn't accept my death in stride. Neither would Snow.
"You fell off a cliff while we were showing you a stock of supplies we found in the woods. Accidents happen." Watcher said, his voice unworried. If the thought of killing me was bothering him at all, he didn't show it.
"That's not a very plausible story." I replied bitterly, knowing that my words would do little dissuade the three men intent upon killing me. I did not believe they had made such a decision lightly. I, however, was not prepared to die yet. Kaylien was still waiting for me. If I died, no one would be left to go after her. Malice would have, if she'd been herself. Snow might, for my sake, but she didn't even know my daughter. Of course, the same could be said for me. I had spent so little time with the girl before losing her. I would fix that. I had to survive in order to correct that mistake.
"It's plausible enough. Few will have a problem with you disappearing." Watcher spoke again.
". . . and my guards?" I pressed.
"They followed you off the cliff. After all, that is their duty." Rampage finished.
"I won't let you kill me here." I told them flatly, raising the tip of my blade to the ready. "Who else is involved in this? How many of the others?" There were only eleven Knights. Snow, Malice, Ethaniel and I made up four of them. I knew I had not betrayed myself, of course, and I hoped those other three were not involved. Of the seven others, five of them were old blood, having been Knights for at least a hundred years. Two of them were younger than me, and one of those was not even joined with a Fell Beast. It boded ill that all three of those surrounding me were among the oldest of the Knights.
Rampage simply smiled, forgoing an answer. My heart hammered in my chest. If there were others, would they go so far as to hurt Malice and Snow? Wouldn't that ruin their cover? Though, if those two died, would Ethaniel really question what had happened to us? How much did my fate truly concern the oldest Knight?
"Are you thinking about her?" It was Watcher again. "That cunt-weapon instructor? The one whose brain is addled?" He taunted. "You don't have to worry about her. I'll take good care of her . . . real good care of her. The boys and I have been watching her for a while now. Seems she's forgotten quite a bit. You teach her how to beg yet? 'Teach her how to make a man feel good?"
"Watcher, hold your tongue." Pride snapped.
"No. I want him to know that after he's dead, I'm going to have a piece of his little bitch." Watcher snapped back, a wicked smile on his face. I felt the hackles on my back rise, yet I knew I had no hackles which to rise. My hand clenched about the hilt of my weapon, and the beast within me tore at its confines.
"Kill them!" It growled, and to my shock, I heard my voice echo the sentiment. It tore from my throat, raw and primal. "I don't want to kill you all, but I will." I said, having to force the words through my throat in a normal voice. I could not see the faces of Pride and Watcher clearly, but Rampage looked confused at my odd, and contradicting, set of outbursts.
"You think too highly of yourself, Noble. While you're bitch is writhing beneath me, I'll be sure to tell her you cried and begged for your life while I cut your throat." Watcher flashed forward, his body shifting into full speed. There was no other signal. As a group, my attackers fell upon me.
I roared my rage and let the world slow around me. The other three Knights were all skilled fighters, battle hardened and powerful. What was worse, they knew my weakness, and knew how to exploit it to their advantage.
I met Watcher first. He came in, sword leveled to deliver a killing blow. The Knights were not aiming for a prolonged battle, and were not fighting me one on one. They intended to throw me off balance and kill me as fast as possible. I couldn't allow that to happen. Watcher was not ready for the length of my blade, or the speed with which I could bring it to bear. I pulled the massive piece of metal through the air and brought it up between us in an arc that was fast, even in the slowed perception of super speed. Watcher dove aside to clear the path of my blade, but Pride and Rampage were still coming fast.
Rampage was on my right side, and Pride was on my relatively unprotected left side. I brought my sword point to the right to meet Rampage, and spun my left shoulder to meet Pride's strike. Rampage's attack was parried, and Pride's blade was knocked wide, deflected harmlessly off my shoulder. It was a risky move, for it brought the blade perilously close to my body, but I had no other defense on my left.
MORE. FASTER. KILL THEM. The beast raged inside of me, and I was swept up in the wake of its murderous intent. My heartbeat quickened in my chest, and the world slowed down even more around me. Behind the chaos of speed, and the raging of the Fell Beast, a quiet voice whispered. Be ferocious, but be thoughtful. Strike fast, but don't lose us. Ferocious. Fast. Controlled. The voice was so quiet I could barely hea
r it behind the roar of the Fell Beast welling up within me. Listening to it, though, calmed my mind.
I spun my sword, cutting low, and sweeping wide around me. Pride was forced to jump back, or lose his legs. Watcher had to halt his advance, and Rampage attempted to block the weapon. His sword could not stop the weight and power of my blow, and his blade deflected uselessly away as I struck him in his upper thigh. Blood cascaded slowly into the air, the individual droplets rising like a macabre reversed rain. I did not slow to watch them go.
Instinct took over. I charged the injured man. Rampage had no time to recover from his wound before I cleaved him nearly in half. Pride and Watcher were charging at my now exposed back, but I knew they would do that. It didn't matter. I was faster than them. I spun, shifting my momentum, a task like trying to push an entire castle wall when done at the velocities I had reached. The buffeting of the wind caused the metal of my weapon to vibrate fiercely, a sensation I could feel all the way up my arm. The bones in my arm, incredibly strong as they were, creaked with the pressure of my exertion. The only thing that kept them from exploding into fragments, was the tight wrapping of my corded muscles, taunt as steel as they strove to keep my blade on course.
Watcher tried desperately to shift his stance from attack to defense as I spun, to their eyes, impossibly fast, my sword diving to attack, but he was too committed to his own strike. His blade stayed out in front of him, but his forward momentum and the length of my own weapon were too much. He skewered himself, the length of fine steel passing through his upper chest, just below his neck. I began to tear it free even before his body had come to a stop on its fatal course. Pride was still coming, and his blade was aimed for my heart.
My arm flexed hard, drawing in the massive span of sharpened metal that was my unorthodox sword. The blade wavered in the air, bending and twisting against the forces of motion being applied to it. Watcher's body flew away. I felt something in my arm creak, and a sharp pain lanced through my forearm. I recognized the sensation of bone shattering, even if there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
My sword came up firmly between Pride and me. Metal struck metal, and Pride's attack deflected harmlessly aside. The other Knight fell back, now the only other living fighter in the clearing. The world lurched back to normal speed. Rage burned in the back of my mind, spewing forth from the darkness inside of me. The bones in my arm snapped and groaned as they grew back together.
"We weren't supposed to come to this!" Pride yelled. His deep brown hair hung long about his shoulders, limp and tired, much like the face of the man who it crowned. His limbs, Fell Beast arms and legs, were scaled, another variety of the beasts I had never personally encountered. I looked at Pride, standing across from me, miserable, tired, and worry-worn, and my anger began to burn off. He was just a man. A man pressed to his limits.
"We were honored everywhere, Noble. The Knights of Ethan, people spoke that title in awe and respect. Now look at us." Pride swung his sword in an arc, taking in the corpses, unmoving, and laying in filth, deep in an unknown portion of the wood. "This is how far we've fallen because of your choices." Pride threw his sword down.
I let my weapon point fall. "It never should have come to this, Pride. Knight should have never fought Knight."
Pride laughed, and it was a sound like a madman lost in the dark. Outlined by the moon, he was a terrifying sight to see, some mindless creature cackling into the silver light of the moon as though he might frighten it with the fervor of his outburst.
"You slew us first, Noble." He said, when his bout of laughter had finally subsided. "You came for us first. We were doing the king's work when you first began killing our brothers."
"I just did what I had to do. I did what was right. Sometimes that meant . . ." I began, but Pride cut me off.
"That meant betraying those who'd put a trust in you. Even Lucidil, who had betrayed us . . . you killed him as well. Noble," Pride spat the name I'd been given by the former king. "you are a poison to everyone and everything that trusts in you."
The words struck hard, cutting deeper than any sword could. How many people had died because of me? How many had I killed, and how many of my loved ones had suffered because of my presence? It was easy for me to see the pain I experienced, but I did not often take time to consider the pain inflicted on those around me. For all the good I had tried to do, in the end, the kingdom was left in ruins and many decent people were dead. Wisp was dead. Kaylien was lost. Kye was dead. Brutal, dead at my own hands. Liet, his humanity was stripped away from him. The list could go on and on. I had killed so many, and didn't even know all of their names.
Kaylien. I stiffened my shoulders, and set my jaw. I had done terrible things, but I could not stop. I would get my daughter back, and I would have to continue to fight until I accomplished that end. What did that make me? I had become a monster, but I knew that I could not stop.
"I'll make no more excuses. I've done terrible things, but I'm far from finished. I have business left to attend. You don't have to come along. I never asked anyone to follow me. Those who came with me have done so because they wanted to. If you don't want to follow me, then don't. Go back to being what you were before." I kept my voice calm and impassive, though I felt neither of those things.
". . . what I was before?" Pride laughed again, this time a sad, resigned sound. "We can never go back, Noble. There is no going back. It's over for me."
He exploded forward, his claws coming up to strike. The motion was so fast that I barely had time to react. I did not need long, however. I was faster than he was. The bones in my arm were mostly healed, even if they still needed time to firm up entirely. They were repaired well enough to accomplish what was necessary. I snapped my sword up, ripping it through the air before me. Pride didn't even flinch as the blade tore through his body. His form shattered in the darkness, the two separate, but still moving pieces, rolling away into the forest at my back. I stood alone in the clearing. The woods were silent, but for the dance of the wind through skeletal trees, and the slow, steady drip of blood from my sword to the ground.
Drip.
I had murdered them all. Three more names to add to the list of those I'd struck down with my own sword. I could fool myself and call them evil, and perhaps they had contained their own evils, I thought, remembering Watcher's terrible threats, but in the end they were just men. We were all evil . . . men. We lived as we felt we had to, and did the things that we deemed necessary to continue our existence from day to day.
Drip.
They had believed that killing me would allow the Knights of Ethan to return to a state of honor and prosperity. They had believed that by ending my life, the kingdom would be a better place. Who was I to say that they were wrong? Certainly many others had felt much the same. They had fought and died for what they believed in. They were my enemies, but they were no less noble for that.
Drip.
I bent down and cleaned my sword point on the edge of Rampage's cloak. The fabric was destroyed, not salvageable. Perhaps it was a disservice to him to do so, but I needed to clean my weapon. I didn't want it to rust. I still had a long way to travel with that blade, I knew. The sword clean, I replaced it in my scabbard.
I moved to Watcher's body. I unfastened his cloak from his broken form before removing my own garment, and throwing it over him. The shifting fabric was still intact. My sword strike had only slightly damaged the garment. It could be stitched. I threw the cloak about my shoulders, and felt as though I were being swallowed up in familiarity. It was a ghoulish thing to do, robbing the dead, but I was tired of the blue cloak of a king.
After redressing myself, I went to the bodies of the two fallen black cloaks. I didn't recognize their faces. I breathed a bitter sigh of relief. At least Liet was still alive. I had no right to find solace in that information, but I did, just the same. I should have known their names, or at least their Black Patch Brigade designations, but I did not. It was not generally necessary to refer to them in
dividually, and it was only when directly ordering them to do something outside of their normal duties that their full names were needed. I stepped away from their bodies.
I would leave them all unburied. I didn't have the equipment to do a proper job, nor did I have the time.
I looked to the sky to reorient myself, and began the trip back to camp. I moved at a run. There was a persistent pressure in my chest as I moved, and I felt a cold line of dampness running down my face. I reached up with my only hand and wiped at the stubborn moisture falling from my eyes. That cold wind, I told myself, always made the eyes water.
Camp waited for me. I feared that I would get there and find that my betrayal had been complete. I feared that I would find Malice and Snow killed, and the other Knights rallying together to dispatch the rest of the black cloaks. What would I do then? I knew I would kill them. At least, I would try. It would be smarter to run, but I couldn't do that if they'd killed Snow and Malice. I would have to avenge those two. I would kill all those who betrayed me, all of those who hurt the ones I loved. It was empty, but it was all I had.
KILL THEM ALL. The words echoed through my body, and I had to fight back the Fell Beast that welled up inside me. I didn't really know what I would find when I got back to camp. It was too early to jump to conclusions. I needed to remain calm, remain Lowin Fenly. Snow and Malice had to be alright. They had to be.
The forest flew by around me, a continuous gray-blue blur under the light of the moon. I charged back into camp, my hand resting on the hilt of my sword even as I came to a stop amidst the horde of sleeping figures. The camp was still. Malice was lying where I'd left her. I ran to her side, my eyes looking for the telltale signs of breathing. Her chest rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
