Knight's Shadow

by Sebastien de Castell

  The young man who’d killed him was still standing behind me. He turned to the few people nearby who weren’t occupied with the fire. ‘I . . . I did it,’ he said. ‘I killed one of the bastards.’

  My heart sank at his words and the look of pride slowly emerging on his face. It wasn’t that I pitied Sir Vezier for I didn’t: he’d been part of this attack and in all likelihood part of the massacre at Carefal. I was glad he’d saved the boy, but how many had he killed before he’d seen the madness inside the man he had followed this far? What broke my spirit was the thought of watching this young villager walk around, his chin high, believing himself a hero: he’d been ready to strike down a boy who was trying to protect an unarmed man – and not just any boy but one of their own. I wondered how his story would change after a few nights and a few beers. I wondered if the other villagers, desperate to embellish their own tales, would come to believe his.

  ‘It’s not their fault,’ a woman’s voice said from behind me. Valiana’s hair was dishevelled and she had dirt on her face and a cut on her cheek. The children she’d protected stood a little way behind her.

  ‘What isn’t their fault?’ I asked her.

  ‘They don’t know how to be like you.’

  ‘I don’t want them to be like me,’ I said. ‘I’m not some—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and knelt down next to me. She put a hand on my chest. ‘You are. Stop insisting there’s nothing special about you, Falcio. It makes the rest of us feel worthless.’

  I thought about what Dariana had tried to tell me before, and Brasti, too. Hells, probably everyone had been warning me. ‘You don’t have to get yourself killed to be like me, Valiana. In fact, I hardly ever get myself killed.’

  ‘Not for lack of trying,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not—’

  She held up a hand. ‘I know – and I’m not trying to die, I promise. But I want to make my life mean something. I want to be – I don’t know. Brave. Heroic.’ She gave me a defiant grin. ‘And you’re the only example I’ve got in this horrible world. So whether you like it or not, I’m going to live up to the name you gave me.’ She leaned forward and hugged me fiercely. ‘I’m Valiana val Mond, damn it, and I’m going to make that count.’

  I hugged her back. We must have made an odd picture, kneeling on the ground and holding each other over the body of a dead Knight. ‘Well, then, we’re probably all screwed, aren’t we,’ I said.

  The weight of everything suddenly caught up with me and the terror that had kept me going through the fight and the fire and that mad Knight ready to pull those children with him into his own hell finally overtook my need to pretend I was strong enough to endure. I felt tears dripping down my cheeks and I started to say something, but whatever it was came out as a sob.

  Saints, I’m no better than those children were on the roof, terrified out of their minds and paralysed with fear. I’d spent the last years chasing my own death and now, thanks to the neatha and the paralysis that was pulling me deeper every day, it was coming. ‘I don’t want to die,’ I said.

  *

  We slept that night in Garniol, in the beds of men and women who had died in the battle. Whether our accommodations were simple practicality or a reminder from the villagers that we had failed to save forty-three of their people, I wasn’t sure.

  I awoke with the increasingly familiar numbness and inability to move. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, or anything on my skin. My eyes wouldn’t open and the world was a boundless grey. At first it was almost a pleasant surprise – usually the morning after a battle is an endless vista of cuts and bruises and vicious aches and pains. But the neatha kept me from feeling any of those things and so for a few brief moments I experienced serenity . . . then I felt the burning inside my chest and a sense of emptiness in my lungs and all I could think was, I’m not breathing. It wasn’t that my lungs couldn’t function, but rather that whatever part of the mind that is supposed to command the lungs to take in air simply wasn’t there.

  Breathe, I told myself, though I had no idea what one did to force oneself to do so. Breathe. It seems such a simple thing, but only because we never have to think of the steps involved.

  I began to see little spots of light winking in and out of existence even though my eyes were still closed. No, I tried to shout, not today. I’m not ready. Please.

  Pressure appeared on my chest and then disappeared. Was I doing something right? Breathe. You work for me, you stupid lungs. Breathe.

  I heard a loud rasping hiss in my ears like the sound of metal being dragged across a stone floor, and an instant later I tasted air rushing into me like a flood. That sound had been my throat opening up and sucking the air into my lungs. My eyes fluttered open. Above me stood Brasti. He had both his hands on my chest.

  ‘Saints, Falcio! You suddenly stopped breathing – it was like . . . it was like your chest was trying to move, but it was stuck. I tried to push it down and up but— Are you all right?’

  I gave a faint nod and he sat down heavily on the chair next to my bed. I was surprised to see him; normally it was Kest or Valiana who tended to watch over me in the mornings.

  ‘Kest?’ I asked.

  Brasti looked a little stricken. ‘He’s here – I mean, in the village. He’s still trying to . . . Actually, I don’t know what he’s trying to do. It has something to do with that bloody red glow of his.’

  ‘Others?’ I croaked.

  ‘Valiana is out in the fields with Dari, practising swordplay, if you can believe it. I would have expected them to take a break after yesterday, but Valiana said she misgauged a Knight’s attack and took a cut on her cheek before she killed him, so now she’s got Dari trying all sorts of feints on her.’

  I was amazed that Valiana had managed to defeat a Knight on her own, especially while she was trying to protect the children. She hadn’t even mentioned it to me.

  ‘Do you want something to drink?’ Brasti asked.

  ‘Min . . . ute,’ I said, trying to make the word come out as individual syllables. ‘Few min . . . utes.’

  Brasti sat back down on the chair and picked something up from the floor. I turned my head and watched as he took a thick iron needle to the shoulder of his greatcoat. At first I thought he must be trying to repair a tear, but after a bit I saw there was no thread on his needle. He was pulling a stitch out.

  ‘Whatreyoudoin?’ I asked. Better, I thought. Like a man who’s only half drunk.

  ‘Fifteen years I’ve been wearing a greatcoat and that damn right sleeve always gets in the way of my shooting. Taking out these Gods-damned stitches is like trying to pick ore out of a piece of rock, by the way.’

  I’d never seen Brasti miss so I wondered how much of an impact that sleeve could possibly be having. What bothered me was that it felt like an act of desecration for him to tear out the stitches.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ he said. ‘I just want to take off one sleeve. The rest still gives me more than enough protection.’

  I could feel the prickling sensation that meant my arms and legs were coming back to life and took a chance at pushing myself up to a sitting position in the bed. The result was ungainly, but ultimately successful. When Brasti saw I didn’t need help, he turned his attention back to his coat sleeve.

  ‘Whyareyou—?’

  ‘I was wrong,’ he said suddenly. ‘In Carefal. I was . . . I don’t know what I was. But I took it out on you and it was wrong of me.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘No, it’s not. What you did yesterday . . .’ He shook his head. ‘When we were standing at the top of that hill I thought, “This is it. Every one of those people is going to die. The damned God of War himself could rise up from the fires of whichever hell he makes his home and all he could do is tell us we were screwed.” But you found a way, Falcio: you gave us our orders and you led us down there and against all the odds we saved most of the village.’

  It wasn’t enough, I was about to say, but he didn
’t wait for me to speak.

  ‘And even when that mad Knight was up there with those children, I couldn’t bring myself to shoot – I was just too damned scared of hitting one of the children or having the Knight fall forward and drag them all to their deaths. But you . . . you just ran up there and by the time you hit the top you had a plan.’ He stopped talking for a while, grimacing as the needle in his hands tore at the threads holding the sleeve on his coat. Finally he stopped and set the coat down on his lap and turned to face me again. ‘All these years I’ve always told myself that you and the King and all your little talks about strategy and tactics . . . I always told myself it was just shit. In the end what matters are instincts. I’ve got good instincts, Falcio, I know I have – but my instincts were all telling me to race down to the village on my horse and just kill as many Knights as I could, and if I’d done that, all those villagers would be dead now.’ He looked down at the sleeve in his lap, then said, ‘You . . . I don’t know, Falcio. I wish I could think like you.’

  ‘You could—’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘I’m not complaining, not really. I spent most of my life as a poacher before I became a magistrate and my instincts served me well for both. I’m an archer, and no matter what anyone else thinks, I know I’m as good with a bow as Kest is with a sword and you are with those clever plans of yours. I don’t begrudge you your talent.’ He smiled at last. ‘That boy, yesterday? The one who was handing me arrows? He came up to me this morning, him and seven other kids, and they had five adults with them too. Some already had bows themselves and some had picked them up from the dead and they all wanted me to show them how to shoot. Can you believe that? I asked if they wanted to go and learn the sword with Kest instead, but one of them said, “Why would I want to fight with a stupid old sword?” and the rest all agreed.’

  I smiled at that as well: Brasti’s finest hour, finally having other people agree with him that the bow is better than the sword.

  ‘I’m leaving, Falcio,’ Brasti said, setting his coat and needle aside.

  I smiled again, but I didn’t understand. I tried to push myself up. ‘We’ve got to go to Rijou, Brasti.’ I tried to annunciate clearly, though my lips and tongue still felt odd. ‘That’s where this is all headed. I don’t know why but—’

  Brasti gently pushed me back down. ‘You have to go to Rijou, Falcio, and so do Kest and Valiana and Dari – Kest is readying the horses as we speak, and I pray that whichever Gods don’t already have it in for us will help you accomplish whatever it is you set out to do there. But I’m staying here with these people. If I have just a week here in Garniol I can teach the villagers enough to help them fend off an attack.’

  ‘You . . .’ Could I really tell him not to help these people protect themselves? Of course I couldn’t. ‘All right, Brasti, stay the week, teach these people, then come to Rijou. We’ll leave word—’

  ‘No,’ Brasti said, ‘no. After I prepare them here, I’m moving on to the next village and then the next town. Hunting bows are everywhere in these parts; the people just don’t know how to use them for fighting. There’s a man here who knows how to work the forge, so I’m going to have him take the armour from those dead Knights and we’re going to melt it down and use it to make steel arrowheads – just think, Falcio: with just one suit of armour I can make enough arrowheads to take down a hundred Knights. So think of what I can do with thirty suits of armour!’

  ‘Brasti’s Law,’ I whispered.

  He nodded. ‘I know it’s not the answer – I know there’re other things that have to be done, and you’ll do them, you and Kest and Valiana. Watch out for Dari, though. She’s amazing, but she’s also fucking insane. And for Saints’ sake, if she comes to you at night don’t—’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘please don’t put that thought in my head.’

  He laughed. ‘Poor old Saint Falcio.’ Brasti tore out one more stitch from the right shoulder of his coat and pulled the sleeve off. He stood up and slipped the coat on. It looked odd, a coat missing an entire sleeve, and yet on him there was something right about it.

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ I said.

  Brasti’s expression took on a hurt quality. ‘Don’t call me that, Falcio. That’s what the King always called me. “Brasti the Bastard,” he’d say. I guess I never quite lived up to his expectations.’

  I rose unsteadily to my feet. ‘The King loved you, Brasti.’

  Brasti’s eyes held mine. ‘No, he didn’t, and it’s high time you stopped believing that. It’s time you stopped thinking the King was this all-loving father figure. He was only two years older than the rest of us. His shit stank like everyone else’s. He drank too much, he lied on any number of occasions, and it turns out he fucked half the noblewomen in the country. He was a great man, Falcio, but he was still just a man.’ He paused for a moment, then said, ‘He loved you, though, Falcio, and he admired Kest. He cared for a lot of the others too – Nile, Parrick, Quillata . . . almost everyone. But not me. To him, I was always “Brasti the Bastard” – just some poacher you insisted a King make into a Greatcoat. I can live with that, and you should too.’

  ‘Hells, Brasti, he was a complicated man.’ I waited to explain. ‘He was scrawny and awkward and trying to save the world, and you, you’re handsome and confident and—’

  ‘Stop making excuses for him, Falcio. I know he was brilliant, but what use is brilliance if you don’t ever tell anyone your plan? I know you both wanted to save the world, but I don’t know how to do that, so instead I’m going to spend what time I have left in this dungheap of a country trying to save the people in it.’

  Brasti turned away from me for a moment and picked up his saddlebags from the floor. Part of me wanted to hit him over the head with the pommel of my rapier and hope that Kest and I could convince him to change his mind, but of course he’d already talked to Kest – his tone, his bearing, the way he’d thought through all of my objections . . . he’d already said his goodbyes to everyone else.

  He turned back and gave me a rough hug. When he pulled away, he held me by the shoulders and gave me a wicked smirk. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘now I’m going to smile, and you smile, and then we’ll both close our eyes and—’

  ‘Get the hells out of here, Brasti Goodbow,’ I said, trying to keep the laughter from my eyes and the terrible sadness from my voice.

  *

  The last vestiges of the morning paralysis left me stiff and a little numb, but at least I was able to sit a horse again. Kest, Valiana, Dari and I rode slowly through Garniol, reminding ourselves that this had been a victory against whoever was trying to destroy our country. But there was still smoke in the air from the fire of the day before and the blood had yet to soak into the soil. Victory wasn’t quite as pretty as I remembered it.

  We travelled for three days along one of the narrow roads that led northeast and eventually joined one of the larger trade routes that ran from Pertine to Rijou. Dusty tracks changed to cobbled stone roads and sparse green fields gave way to orchards thick with apple trees, some more than two hundred years old. Their leaves were just beginning to change to red and gold. Like everything else about the Duchy of Rijou, the beauty of the landscape was deceptive.

  Most of the journey passed in silence. It wasn’t that we had nothing to talk about, just that we’d grown used to Brasti being the one to start our conversations, and we felt his absence keenly, each in our own separate ways. Brasti was vain and reckless and, for a Magistrate, remarkably prone to acts of petty larceny, and yet he could also be brave when the moment called for it, and he was faithful beyond measure to his friends. He might not have had the same command of the King’s Law that Kest and I shared, but his verdicts made sense to the communities involved, and held just as well as any of ours. Maybe it was because he was so focused on the people living in all those little towns and villages. You want to save the world, Falcio. I want to save the people in it. Of course, those who might oppose Brasti’s verdicts heeded them because he
was just as deadly with a bow and arrow as Kest was with a sword. In my mind I imagined him looking at me with feigned outrage. Falcio, that’s like complimenting a troubadour by saying he’s just as good at playing music as another man is at farting.

  I laughed to myself for a moment and only then realised I’d lost track of time. I let go of my horse’s reins so that I could squeeze and release my hands. My fingers were becoming a little numb – too soon, I thought as I tried to will the feeling back. Far, far too soon.

  Kest pulled up next to me. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m not going to start weeping for Brasti, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘You know it’s not.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It’s not as bad today as it was yesterday.’

  Kest stared at me like a man trying to see through a curtain.

  ‘Leave it,’ I said at last.

  We rode a while longer before I remembered to ask, ‘Did you manage to find out where the villagers got their weapons?’

  ‘No. Everyone we spoke to claimed they were family inheritances – they lied to us with remarkable confidence, given that the swords and spearheads were clearly all new-made, and by the same expert weaponsmith. They must have heard that we’d ordered the people of Carefal to turn over their weapons.’

  I slowed my horse until Valiana caught up with us. ‘Did you get anything from the children about where the weapons came from?’ I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Every time I tried talking to them, one of their parents would pull them away, and if I did manage to ask the question, the children just looked baffled. I don’t think they knew anything about the weapons.’

  Saint Dheneph-who-tricks-the-Gods! How many other villages and towns were being fed brand-new swords and spears – and what would happen to them when these mad bands of roving black-tabarded Knights found out?

  Valiana’s horse started pulling away but she hauled on its reins to keep it next to mine. ‘Falcio, why not pursue more of those Knights? Do you really want us to risk everything to save Duke Jillard?’