Knight and Shadow

by Flint Maxwell

  Kane’s face remained impassive. His fingers continued to hover over the revolver beneath his coat.

  “Then again, what do I know of honor? I’m just here for the gold. Nothing will stop me from getting it, either,” Cliff said.

  “I know not of what you speak, bounty hunter,” Kane said. “My name is Noah Crowne. I’m a ranch hand down Martyr Road. Ask around town, they will vouch for me.”

  Cliff laughed. “Ask around town? These invalids are so high on radiation, they wouldn’t know their mouths from their assholes.” He leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “When you’re in chains, tethered to the back of my horse, my men and I are going to set fire to this shit-stain of a town…after we rape the women and string up the children, of course. Gotta have some fun, right? Again, Kane, what do men like us know about honor?”

  For the first time since the bounty hunters stepped inside of the Proudpost, Ansen Kane’s icy demeanor threatened to break. He could feel his upper lip rising in a snarl.

  Control, he told himself. Control.

  “I knew of a Noah Crowne once,” the old man said. “He shot his wife right in front of their kid daughter. When the sheriff took her in, she was covered in her momma’s blood. You ain’t him, is ya?”

  Kane turned to face the old man.

  The old man was smiling. Most of his teeth were rotted or long gone, a mouth made up of dark purple gums.

  “No, I ain’t him. I’m the guy who shoots the guy who shot his wife in front of his kid.”

  In one quick movement, Kane gripped the butt of his revolver, pulled it free of the holster, cocked the hammer back, and squeezed the trigger. To the old man, it was all a dark blur. Then the bullet hit him in the forehead, exploding his skull in a rain of bone and brain, and he saw no more.

  Across from Kane, Cliff Whitaker pulled his own weapon free, but he was not as fast as the gun knight. Kane aimed at him, again cocked the hammer back, and pulled the trigger. Cliff Whitaker screamed.

  The second shot from the sacred weapon blew his mandible away and burrowed into the soft pink flesh of the bounty hunter’s throat. The scream ended, its haunting echo hanging heavy in the air, like death.

  Kane’s blood boiled with the kill. It had been too long since he’d felt that power in the palm of his hand. He wanted to savor it, but there was still more work to be done.

  He stood up from the booth and whirled on the kid, who was near the bar, the unconscious Wallace at his feet. He dipped for the gun on his belt, and Kane shot it out of his hands. A great spark of metal against metal ate up the shadows of the room as the kid cried out in pain, grabbing his gun hand. Blood poured from a cut in his palm, running down the length of his arm and pooling on the bartop.

  Perhaps the gun knight had softened as he entered middle age; perhaps it had been too long since he faced any adversity at all. Regardless, he found it hard to pull the trigger on the fourth shot, hard to finish the job.

  Tears fell from the kid’s eyes. His face had gone the color of the moon; he looked close to vomiting.

  He is just a kid after all, Kane thought, not experienced in pain. Let this be a lesson to him. Prove you’re capable of at least some good.

  He looked at the kid with his flinty eyes, the same stare that had been hard enough to topple a kingdom.

  “Go,” he said. “Get the hell out of here.”

  The kid gawked at him, his eyes now as bloodshot and red as the old man’s had been.

  Kane raised his voice. “I said go!”

  The kid shuddered, gave Ansen Kane a wide berth, tripped over a chair, and ran out from the Proudpost into the night’s brewing storm beyond.

  The gun knight just stood there. The dozen remaining patrons looked at him with an odd mixture of fear and amazement in their eyes. When had they last seen a revolver such as this or a man worthy enough to wield one?

  The answer: Never.

  The Knights of the Gun were all but gone, disbanded and destroyed when King Zoroth was corrupted by the Unfathomable, and Aendvar Point burned. Long gone were the men and women who possessed the skills of Truth. Burned at the stake, executed in cold blood, lost in battle.

  Ansen Kane’s heart felt heavy when he thought of them, when he thought of those times.

  The bloodlust was on its way down. Now came the realization that the list of those he’d slain had grown two names longer.

  He turned to the table, looked over at the bounty hunter known as Cliff Whitaker. He noted the dripping gore from a chin that was no longer there, the bloody teeth in his lap, and the singed upper lip with cold indifference, and then he took the man’s ale and downed it in two gulps.

  Donny stood by the piano, but when Kane approached him, he dropped onto the bench as if all the strength had gone out in his legs. Kane could feel the drops of his enemies’ blood congealing on his face, and understood why Donny looked him over as if he were from the Undervoid, and not just a lost man who had failed the quest given to him by Stark.

  Kane swallowed these feelings down. Feelings, he had been taught long ago, were the death of a just man, and justice was all Ansen Kane aimed for.

  He dug into the pocket of his pants and brought out two coppers and a silver piece. He flipped the coins to the piano player, the weak light burning from sconces on the walls shimmering on the metal.

  Donny caught the pieces with grace, his long, slender fingers working on their own accord, much like they did when it came to the ivory keys.

  “When Wallace wakes up, make sure you give him that.”

  Donny nodded, a fearful look in his eyes.

  “And if the sheriff asks, this was self defense,” Kane said. “I’m moving on, anyway, so he doesn’t need to bother with me.”

  “Self defense, right,” Donny replied, nodding vigorously. “But w-what’s the coin for?”

  Ansen Kane looked around the bar at his handiwork, at the bleeding corpses, the overturned table, and the fallen chairs.

  “The mess.”

  Chapter 2

  Bleake Farm

  Across the continent, a couple thousand miles away from where Ansen Kane lived his once secret life as Noah Crowne, a mother and her son of seventeen years worked tirelessly on a modest piece of land.

  The air was warm despite the sun having gone down. Isaac Bleake tended to the cows in the barn while his mother picked fresh apples from the orchard out back. Tonight she would make apple pie, and Isaac looked forward to that, but what he looked forward to the most was the fulfillment of the promise his mother had made him last night. She had promised that, after the day’s work, they would celebrate Isaac’s seventeenth birthday.

  Before Isaac was born, in the old capital, among the Knights of the Gun, the seventeenth year of a boy’s life signified his transition into manhood. Isaac’s mother was from the old capital. She had told him about those ways, mainly on evenings when she’d had too much wine, but Isaac mostly got his information about the Knights in his books. He had even daydreamed about what it would’ve been like to be one on occasion as he tinkered away at some mundane farm task, like milking the cow or cleaning the stables.

  “From boy to man, Carmen,” Isaac said to the cow. “Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

  Carmen the cow mooed happily in reply. He patted her.

  “Good girl, that’s a good girl.”

  Then Isaac got up from the crate he was sitting on and took the pail of milk out of the barn and around to where the storage tank sat.

  He wondered what his mother had gotten him for his birthday. He had read in his history book how, in the days of the Long Ago, people were gifted on these occasions. Just for being born. He couldn’t believe it. But Isaac also knew that he and his mother weren’t rolling in coins. They would sell enough in the city to get through the winter and perhaps even into spring, but that was all—just enough. No extra funds for gifts. Food and warmth always came first.

  Isaac understood, though he wouldn’t deny how his hopes had slightly been raised. After a
ll, he had become a man. Officially.

  He remembered the trepidation and reluctance on his mother’s face when he had asked for a gun of his own, and he couldn’t begin to imagine what her face would look like if he ever had the chance to unwrap a present containing one, or when he stood up and shouted with joy.

  His mother had been against guns for as long as he could remember. She kept a couple in the house, of course; out here in the wilderness, it was necessary. Bears and wolves and transmutes often found their way onto the property, especially around harvest time, and then there were the travelers she had talked so much about, the bandits and undesirables who would slit your throat over a piece of stale bread. But Isaac had never seen one of them near the farm, not this far from Track City.

  The few times he’d accompanied his mother into the city, however, he had seen many undesirables. Most of them were disfigured in some way—extra limbs, missing fingers, swollen skulls, hairless, and always rail thin. A blade would do nothing against them if they decided to attack.

  Isaac wanted to learn to shoot. He wanted to learn how to protect his mother and himself, like a man should.

  Like the Knights.

  A weapon worthy of a gun knight. That was what he wanted.

  * * *

  The sky had darkened.

  Isaac and his mother had shared a dinner of bread and homemade noodles.

  Now the apple pie sat in the middle of the table, steaming, its wonderful scent filling Isaac’s nostrils.

  Cora Bleake wore a checkered shirt and a pair of dark jeans. She was skinny, but her arms and legs were corded with tight muscle from years of farm work. Her skin was tanned dark, her face was lined from the sun and, unbeknownst to Isaac, from the stress before he was born, which felt so long ago that it might as well have been another lifetime.

  From her pocket, she pulled out a slender candle.

  “This is another old tradition,” she said.

  Isaac watched as she planted the candle in the middle of the apple pie. She then took a match and lit the wick.

  “Happy birthday to you, my dear. Now make a wish.”

  “Make a wish?” he repeated, confused.

  “Yes, but don’t tell me what it is, or it won’t come true.”

  “There’s nothing I want to wish for,” Isaac said. “I have everything.”

  “Isaac, you are such a good boy, but there’s always something to wish for.”

  He glared at his mother.

  “A good man,” she corrected. “My little man.”

  “Yuck, Mom! Quit that!”

  “C’mon, there’s got to be something you want, something for you to wish for.”

  Isaac shook his head. He watched as the wax dripped from the candle and settled atop the pie.

  “Well…there’s one thing,” he said finally.

  It had been a few weeks since he’d mentioned the gun to his mother; he doubted she remembered.

  “Don’t tell,” she said. “Wish for it. Close your eyes.”

  Isaac grinned, feeling heat in his cheeks. “This isn’t a manly thing, Mom.”

  “Oh yes it is. Everyone performed this sacred ritual in the Long Ago: men, women, and children. It’s good luck.”

  “Luck?”

  His mother nodded. “Yes, luck.”

  Rolling his eyes before closing them, he blew the candle out.

  His mother clapped. “Remember, don’t tell me.”

  He didn’t tell her. But he didn’t wish for the gun he so coveted, because, in the grand scheme of things, that was unimportant. What he wished for was his and his mother’s good health and a good harvest. Perhaps that was cheating when it came to wishes, but he thought if there was a genie out there that granted them, that it would understand.

  If not, oh well.

  They ate the pie, and since it was his birthday and he was hungry, Isaac devoured half of it himself.

  He offered to clean up the dishes, but Mom refused.

  “You do enough work around here, Isaac. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but I am so grateful for all the help you’ve given me. Ever since you were a little boy,” she held her hand up at her waist to indicate the height he once was, “you were out there in the fields, helping me pick fruit and dig and plant and—”

  Her voice choked up, and her eyes watered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Mom, don’t turn on the waterworks.” He stood up from the table. He was no longer at her waist. He was a man and he was a good six inches taller than she was. Instead of him laying his head on her shoulder or breast when they embraced each other, it was her who laid hers on his.

  “You’re such a good boy, Isaac.”

  “Man,” he corrected with a grin.

  After the emotions were over and the birthday blast seemingly had ended, his mother raised a finger. She removed the dishtowel from over her shoulder with the other hand.

  “I got you a present. It’s nothing special, but I think you’ll like it.”

  “Mom, we can’t afford—”

  “Nonsense, nonsense. Go out into the den and wait for me.”

  He did, sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the room. For some reason, he felt nervous. It was like being in the classroom. There was a time, one he longed to forget, sitting in Professor Silas’s class, the stern old man scratching unreadable writing—important dates in history, equations, numbers, and theorems proved from long dead people. Isaac had sat there among the students who’d come from richer families, who had enough money to live within walking distance of the academy. He took their jibes, their spitballs, their punches on the shoulder, their kicks in the back, all because he wanted to learn.

  “You can learn, and one day you won’t have to break your back digging in a field. One day, you can hire someone else to do it for you,” his mother had said.

  “But I like farming,” he’d told her.

  In truth, it was all he knew. He enjoyed his books, his own learning, but he enjoyed doing it at his own pace, without an old man dictating what he did and didn’t learn, without the other students bullying him.

  The distant memory of schooling faded.

  He twiddled his thumbs while his mother rustled around in her bedroom. He noticed what he was doing and frowned. Twiddling his thumbs was a boy trick; he was a man now, he shouldn’t be nervous.

  His mother stepped out of the room, the wooden floorboards creaking. She held her arms behind her back.

  “Are you ready for your surprise? It’s not much…but I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  “Whatever it is, Ma, just take it back, get a refund. We can’t afford it.”

  Smiling, his mom walked closer.

  “Lucky for you, I didn’t buy it recently. And the man I bought it from is probably long dead, gone to the Mist.”

  Isaac started feeling excited.

  She didn’t buy it, which means she already owns it, which means it’s something in this house, and I know everything in this house, every nook and cranny, every fork and spatula…which means it’s gotta be—

  She handed him the slender box. It was maybe three feet in length. Over it was wrapping paper.

  As soon as his hands closed over the box and he felt the weight, he knew what it was, and his face lit up bright.

  “Mom, you’ve gotta be kidding me!”

  “Open it up. See for yourself.”

  She took a seat in the chair opposite his rocker. She grinned wide, and with this grin, she looked decades younger, like she’d never seen a plow or a hoe, like the sun and constant stress hadn’t turned her skin to leather.

  His heart beat madly as he looked down at the package. Then, uncontrollably, he ripped at it like a rabid animal would a fresh carcass. The paper was shredded into confetti.

  Before him, he held a long, brown box. It was taped on each side. He didn’t bother breaking that tape, instead opting to just rip the top off.

  Nestled in the box was a rifle, what Ma called a squirrel shoote
r, meant to put down vermin that got into the crops, vermin like rabbit, squirrel, and groundhog. It was by no means the type of gun that Grand Knight Stark, the leader of the gun knights, had wielded during the Battle of Draynar, but it was still a gun, and Isaac had to start somewhere, didn’t he?

  His lips parted, and he looked like a fish out of water; not only had Ma given him the squirrel shooter, but she had also polished it up to the point that it looked brand new. The steel shone, the wood stock sparkled.

  Isaac took it out of the box, ran his fingers along the barrel.

  “Mom, are you—”

  “Yes, I’m sure. You are a man, aren’t you? It’s high time you learned the way of the gun.”

  “Can I go shoot it?” he asked after a long moment of studying the weapon that he had seen many times before. “Tonight?”

  “I’d really rather wait until tomorrow morning—”

  “But what about the work?”

  Ma held up her hands in defense. “Let me finish, Isaac. I’d rather wait until tomorrow morning, but tomorrow isn’t your birthday and we do have a full day’s work ahead of us, so…”

  “You’ll let me!” Isaac jumped out of the rocker so fast, the chair banged against the wall behind him. “You really mean it?”

  Mom smiled. “I don’t see any harm in it. We can go out and shoot a couple cans and bottles. For now, at least. Maybe one day, you’ll get out in the woods and do some hunting for me. We don’t have enough meat on our table, and a man needs meat to build muscle.”

  “Yes! I’d love to!”

  “Well, then, let’s do—” Mom began, but a sound from outside reached the homestead.

  Carmen, the cow, was mooing.

  Isaac looked toward the window. Through the curtain, he could just make out the shape of the barn.