Knightfall: Book Four of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

“Halar!” he bellowed, and it rolled through the forest, climbed the hills, washed up against distant mountains and rolled back like the tide.

  Mary, hiding behind a tree to shield herself from the burning light, let out a sigh of relief.

  “I think he wants you,” she said.

  “No kidding?” I asked, heavy on the sarcasm. I didn’t want anything to do with him.

  “He did call you by name.”

  “Yeah. Give me a minute.”

  I glanced up the night sky.

  I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to say? I asked.

  Uh, now you mention it, yes.

  What am I dealing with, here?

  Remember the time the Church summoned the Lord of the Hunt to hunt you down?

  Vividly.

  That was an avatar. A real one. This is, too. Only this time…

  …this time, I guessed, they’re able to summon the avatar of their own deity, rather than bargain for another one?

  Yeah, pretty much. Last time, the Lord of Light was mostly eaten by the Devourer-demon, who then masqueraded as the deity to suck up the power from his worshippers. This time, there’s an actual energy-entity capable of answering! There were six living members of the Hand over there. They knew they were dying, and they martyred themselves to summon the Lord of Light, or whatever is now filling his old shoes.

  Wonderful. Think they’d be doing this if they weren’t dying from the curse of the Demon King?

  Technically, it’s your curse, since—

  I get it, I get it. So they’re dying and they decide to be martyrs in the hope it’ll result in my destruction.

  Pretty much, yeah.

  Well, do something!

  I can’t! That’s an avatar!

  Then explain, dammit! You keep saying “avatar” like it should tell me something!

  Grr. All right. An avatar is a flesh-and-blood body. What you’ve got over there is a bunch of flesh taken from the priests, rearranged and reorganized by the Lord of Light. The radiation damage, diseases, whatever—it’s fixed. It’s defragmented and optimized. Physically, he’s stronger than a mortal man, faster, has keener senses, all the usual stuff, but not beyond the limits of human flesh.

  Oh, I replied, relieved. I thought this would be a problem.

  And, of course, it’s filled with the divine power of the Lord of Light, making it the equivalent of a demigod. Hercules, maybe, or Gilgamesh.

  Damn! I knew it sounded too good!

  Just like you can’t be touched, he can’t, either! He’s considered a direct extension of the god, so directly affecting him is forbidden. Tianna can’t blast him with flame and the Storm King—Father Sky—can’t smite him with lightning.

  But I can cut him in two and burn the halves?

  I don’t know. Can you?

  I had a rather profane remark about that, but I’m not going to repeat it here.

  Do you have any advice, at least? I demanded.

  He’s an energy-state being occupying a physical form. Don’t bother with magic attacks; he’ll deflect or absorb them. And don’t try to eat him. At best, you’ll wind up back on the energy plane and I’m not sure how we’ll cope with the two of us here at the same time. More likely he’ll jump inside you, and we both know that won’t end well.

  I see he’s marching this way, I observed. I take it, from his approach and attitude, that he can and will try to kill me?

  I’d say so. While I can’t touch him, you avatar types can beat on each other all you like.

  How nice. Can you, I don’t know, juice me up in some way?

  It’s allowed, since you’re my de-facto avatar. Remember, though: the manifestation over there has a direct pipeline to the Lord of Light. You’re just a vampire with a history of divine contact. I’ll do what I can to even the odds, but you’re not my creation. We don’t have the same link. And, even after the showy, power-wasting expenditure to shape an avatar, he still has much greater power reserves than I do.

  Great. No matter how I look at this, it’s a bad deal. Is there any reason I can’t turn around and run?

  No, he replied, sounding thoughtful. No, not really. It might be worth it to avoid a coin-flip confrontation. But he’s a little like you in that he’s a physical entity. He isn’t going to dissipate; he’ll have to be killed, sooner or later. Do you want to face him now or do you want him to gather a much larger following, first?

  I hate you.

  No, you don’t, but I understand the impulse.

  “I’m not liking this,” I told Mary.

  “Me, either. He’s coming closer. The burning feeling is getting worse, like being in the sun the day after a sunburn.”

  “You can’t stay here. Get on Bronze and run for it.” I sighed heavily. “I’m going to face this thing.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve still got all my defensive spells up from the run through the troops. It’s either face it now or wait until it mobilizes a whole lot of bliss-addicted followers for a holy war the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Crusades—or Arrakis.”

  “Curse you and your divine immunity,” she said, but she said it as she leaped on Bronze. I slid off, made sure Mary was aboard properly, and Bronze carried her away. I drew Firebrand and it lit up like a blowtorch. The flames were a mix of red and orange, with a nimbus of darkness playing about the edges.

  Uh, Boss? This feels—

  Hush, replied my energy-state ally. I’m concentrating.

  I wasn’t talking to you, Firebrand replied, testily.

  “Yes, Firebrand. He’s helping. We’re gonna need it.”

  Just checking. It’s weird, though. I can hear you, and I know there are two of you, but you sound the same. It’s hard to distinguish which is which.

  “I understand.”

  Are we sure we want to do this?

  “No. But I think it’s the least bad of our present choices.”

  “Demon of the void!” the Lord of Light bellowed. He started running toward me. He was faster than I expected. He charged straight at me, shield ahead, mace held high, ready to slam into me and whip that fist-shaped thing down on my head.

  I concentrated, extending tendrils down through my feet, expanding my time sense. His approach was direct, brutal, frontal. I leveled Firebrand at his head and waited, forcing him to momentarily hide his eyes as he deflected Firebrand with his shield. As he did so, I sidestepped, flicking around his left side like a shadow as he tried to plow into me—or where I used to be. He staggered slightly when his shield met no resistance.

  While he skidded to a halt, I leaped forward, Firebrand held high in a two-handed grip. He whipped around more quickly than I expected, raising his shield as I brought Firebrand down like a fiery bolt from the heavens. Firebrand struck the shield, denting it from top to bottom like putting a crease in it. The blaze of light and heat from the impact seared everything within a hundred feet, igniting loose litter in a ring of small fires and raising steam from every damp spot. The ringing scream of metal was a visible distortion in the air. The Lord of Light went to one knee under the impact, but his shield…

  …held.

  Well, I reflected, that can’t be good.

  He swept Firebrand aside, following it with a roundhouse swing of his fist-shaped mace. I didn’t like the look of the mace. It reminded me of the Hunter’s spear, the first time I saw it. It—like the physical embodiment of the Lord of Light—was a blazing thing to my vision, less of a material object and more like solidified energy. Even worse, I had anticipated cleaving the shield, the arm holding it, and the being behind it into a pair of smoking halves. It seemed like a reasonable expectation, really. I was in no way prepared for a counterattack. The mace hit me, hit me hard, and hit me like Heaven’s delivery truck.

  It reminded me of a lady magi sending me through a garage, only this time it was a physical impact, not merely a sudden addition of momentum. The blow landed on my left side, crushed in the armor, lifted me off my feet—all fiv
e-hundred-plus pounds of me—and sent me tumbling through the air to crash into a tree. I hit it on a rising slant, broke several branches and the top off the tree, and continued into another tree. As I broke through more branches, the second tree slowed me enough to let gravity take control of my trajectory.

  I fell to the ground, trying to roll to my feet. My armor cracked and splintered a bit, much like my ribs on that side. Bones were already realigning and sticking together as I turned to face the approaching glow.

  He was on me in a moment—much faster than a mortal man. I took full advantage of my mobility-enhancing spells—traction, inertia, the works—and decided I was somewhat faster and more maneuverable, but, to judge by his initial blow, he was definitely the stronger.

  I ducked under his swing, not wishing to depart the surface of the world again, and thrust upward with Firebrand. I got in past his shield—which, I noticed with some concern, was now no longer dented in the slightest—skewering him low on his right side, angled up, maybe into a lung, bloodying his white robes. He staggered back and I leaped to my feet barely in time to dodge a blow from his mace. Tougher than a mortal man, too.

  The mace missed me, but hit a tree. The tree trunk shattered all around the head of the mace and cracked both up into the treetop and down into the roots. It made a terrible creaking, groaning sound as it toppled.

  I elected to let it come down without me under it. I’m not sure what the other guy did, but he seemed not to care too much about turning a hundred years of growth into matchsticks. Ah, well. I’m guilty of tunnel-vision, myself, when focused on killing someone.

  He bashed through the branches and came after me. I ducked and dodged, parrying lightly on occasion, while looking for an opening. Firebrand expressed some displeasure at being used against a bashing weapon.

  Just try not to meet it head-on, all right?

  Deflect, not block. Got it.

  As we fought, I backed away. That shield and mace combination was a devastating one, especially in the hands of someone who knew how to use it. He kept marching forward, hiding behind that shield of his, while swinging his mace like a wrecking ball. Anything the mace hit suffered for it. Trees took glancing blows all right—they would shake like a baby’s rattle, shedding leaves and deadwood, with a mace-shaped gouge taken out of their surface. They didn’t take direct hits too well. Trunks of old-growth forest giants shattered as though dynamited.

  I stayed off the road, in the trees. The footing made it awkward, but I had a free hand whenever I wanted one. He had a big shield to contend with, which made the terrain worse for him than for me. I took advantage of it, too. Every time he slipped, every time he had to squeeze sideways, there was my opening. He parried a couple of times, knocking Firebrand aside as I attacked, but his skill with a heavy mace was less than mine with a sword. Maybe it was the difference in the types of weapons; maces and swords use very different fighting styles. I scored on him, again and again, piercing legs and chest more than once. He grunted, sometimes roared in pain, but he shrugged off the wounds.

  They kept healing. Quickly. Very quickly. His regeneration was every bit as quick as mine, maybe quicker. Even his robe repaired itself, right down to the bloodstains. Most unfair. I began to wonder how long it would take to wear him down. If the Lord of Light was pumping energy into his avatar, could I force him to use up so much it became impractical? Or was this even a material concern for him? Would it take hours or centuries? I didn’t have centuries, and I started to think in terms of killing strokes rather than accumulated wounds.

  Of course, all good things must come to an end, and so must all advantages of terrain. We had already blasted a sizable circle of tumbled lumber in our little dance. I hit him several times in the process, for all the good it did. But I finally put a foot wrong, failed to catch myself, and staggered backward over some roots to land hard. It didn’t do any damage to me or my armor, but it was a really bad time to be lying down on the job.

  He was on me in an instant, shield held low, mace coming up and over and down at me like a comet. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop it, but my reflexes caused me to sweep Firebrand at his legs—and ring off the edge of his shield—while I raised my left arm to block the mace.

  Even as I did so, I felt the movement, the rippling, the change. My cloak flicked itself up my arm, clinging to it, forming itself into a shield in less than the blink of an eye. The mace rang off the sudden circle of darkness. I’m not sure who looked more surprised, him or me.

  That settles it. I’m keeping it.

  I swept the mace aside with my new shield as I sat up and swung Firebrand backhand in a sharp arc, around the edge of his shield, aiming for a leg. He half-leaped, half-stepped back out of the swing. I rolled to the side to use another tree for cover as I sprang to my feet. He was around the tree-trunk and swinging, a blow that rang off my shield again—but I didn’t go flying anywhere, this time. The blow should have hammered me back against a tree-trunk much as a wrecking ball would.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  He showed more caution after that. We circled each other, looking for openings, trading blows and disengaging. Sword-and-shield isn’t my preferred mode of fighting. I’m fond of a two-handed parry-attack style, or a one-handed style leaning more toward the saber or epee. On the other hand, I usually face opponents who aren’t able to take a hit too well and whose attacks I can routinely regenerate. This might be a trifle different. I thought back to the time Raeth and Bouger and I were on the road. We covered a lot of ground with sword-and-shield, but it was a long time ago…

  He attacked. The mace struck the circle of darkness while Firebrand tried to take a bite out of the edge of his shield. We hacked and blocked for several seconds, circling each other, slashing, bashing, and blocking, before separating again. By then I was intact again, whether from my own regeneration or from quasi-divine energies I’m not sure. The notches Firebrand took out of his shield closed up just as quickly. My armor’s repair enchantment wasn’t quite up to those standards; it was still cracked and crumpled along one side.

  This could be a problem.

  We engaged again, testing each other, trying to find a weakness. As we circled, he smiled through his beard.

  “Creature of chaos, you are no true avatar. When you fall, you will return to the void.”

  “I’m watching for banana peels.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot,” I replied, amping up to superhuman speed. He was definitely stronger than I was, but could he keep up with a full-throttle vampire moving at the speed of dark? The world slowed down around me and I started moving more carefully, more deliberately.

  When he came in close again, I went for him. The speed of light is awfully fast, but the dark is always there ahead of it and comes right back in behind it. Even light doesn’t break the dark barrier. It can’t escape the event horizon of a black hole, either. And yet dark goes everywhere.

  I didn’t get in a good hit. He was faster than I thought. Was he matching me, somehow? Was there a law of conservation of avatars? I thought I could spin around him like a stripper around a pole, but I was wrong.

  We wound up moving past each other, shields ringing as they came together and we traded blows. He bashed in my faceplate and I scored a shallow cut along his back. His wound closed up almost as quickly as I made it. Even his clothes healed. Disgusting. I tore away the remains of my faceplate to keep it from distracting me as we circled each other. We searched for openings, warily, while the world around us moved in slow motion. A disturbed leaf hung in the air, only now starting to tumble in the sudden gusts of wind produced by our movements.

  “Why do you resist?” he asked, sounding oh-so-reasonable. “Is it not the fate of men to die?”

  “Eventually. It’s also their right to resist,” I replied, striking suddenly, only to be blocked and counterattacked.

  “These pitiful creations have no rights,” he snapped, as we backed away
from the exchange. He leveled his mace at me. “You delude yourself to think otherwise!”

  He may sound persuasive, but he’s got no patience, Boss.

  I noticed.

  Motes of light coalesced out of the air, gathering into the fist-shaped head of the mace. It seemed to be reaching critical mass. I ducked behind my shield.

  On the far side of my shield, silent, blinding hell broke loose. If someone snagged all the lights from a stadium and stacked them on the road, it might have been a close comparison. There was no heat, no thunder, no crackling surges of energy, only several seconds of white light like a slow-motion nuclear flash.

  The light vanished, leaving only his aura and a bit of moonlight. He looked nonplused, and his brightness, his aura, seemed less intense. Did his attack drain some of his resources? Energy-state beings are finite beings, simulata, not actual gods. If I could annoy him into spending power like that repeatedly, it might be possible to wear him down.

  I glanced down at the front of my shield. I caught a glimpse of something… odd. It seemed almost as though my shield was a hole, a dark one, and in the far distance was a spark of light speeding rapidly away. Then it was gone and my cloak-shield-whatever was only a shield again.

  He advanced and I skipped backward, mindful of my footing. He didn’t seem to care about the ground—possibly a divine gift, and a most unfair one. Then again, I have how many vampiric powers? Not to mention a slew of spells for all sorts of combat-related advantages. But an inability to accidentally fall over things is beyond even my power.

  I backed onto the road and prepared to engage him again. As he approached, I kicked out, sending a corpse skidding into his feet. He wasn’t immune to being deliberately tripped, at least. His balance broke for a moment and I attacked. He blocked with his shield and swung his mace to parry, but I fooled him by swinging short and thrusting for his right leg. I connected well, spearing it almost completely through, twisting the blade and recovering before he could bring that mace around to kill me. Firebrand left a sizzling wound behind and I would have pressed my advantage, but his shield unexpectedly flared with light, blazing like the face of the sun, blinding me. I swung wildly and leaped backward, out of range, hoping his leg wound would keep him off me.