Knight and Shadow

by Flint Maxwell

  “What came over you back there?” Swan asked.

  It was the first they’d spoken since the vampires let them be.

  “What?”

  “With the vampires.”

  Isaac winked. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

  “Don’t bullshit.”

  A smile spread on Isaac’s face. “I guess I didn’t want to die, and I remembered I had the garlic in my bag—”

  “How’d you even know about that? The garlic? Are you a secret vampire hunter or something?”

  Isaac laughed. “I wish…actually, I don’t wish that. But I read it in a book a long time ago.”

  “Books. You sound like my sister.”

  “Thanks, I guess?” Isaac said.

  Swan walked past him and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re welcome. Now come on, we’re close.”

  They mounted the horses again and rode hard nearly the entire day, heading for the Infected Lands and Low Town.

  And hopefully, Ansen Kane.

  Chapter 22

  The Crowd

  Over the days that Ansen Kane was locked up in the sheriff’s office, waiting for his justice to be doled out, the few hundred citizens of Low Town had a widespread change of heart.

  If not because they feared Jensen Watts, the new sheriff in town, then by way of the propaganda he and his posse fed them about Kane. About his treachery, his deceit, his murderous ways.

  Though there was a couple dozen townsfolk who truly believed Kane to be innocent of any wrongdoing, they were in the minority, and would not speak up, lest they be hanged along with the gun knight.

  The tides were not in Ansen Kane’s favor.

  So when Watts came in with three armed guards to extract him from his cell, his hope was all but extinguished.

  Kane’s injuries were far too great. He couldn’t lift his right arm higher than his waist, and his spine was swollen and bruised to the point he couldn’t lie down. This resulted in him getting hardly any sleep. No meals or water had come since the incident the day before, and he was starving and nearly dead of dehydration.

  Kane felt like he was in a haze, like he had already passed; for what it was worth, he could’ve.

  But a gun knight is a special kind of person. It takes a lot to break one, and Kane was no exception. Though he was close to breaking, he hadn’t yet. Didn’t intend to, either.

  The cell door opened with a rusty groan. There stood Watts and his armed guards, only one of them reanimated. What had happened to the other reanimated soldiers, Kane didn’t know, nor care much either. He had killed two, and his guess was that the others had just rotted to dust, the dark magic finally wearing off.

  “The time has come, Kane,” Watts said. “Your reckoning.”

  Kane mustered up a grin.

  It wasn’t easy, but judging by the flare of anger in Watts’s eyes, it had been worth it. Then he saw the gun hanging from Watts’s belt, opposite the beat-up pistol he normally carried.

  Kane’s revolver looked like it belonged on the fat sheriff’s waist as much as a priceless painting belonged in a pigsty.

  The grin Kane had mustered up vanished, and a burning, rippling anger ignited through his veins. Had he not been biding his time and saving his energy, waiting for the perfect moment to make his move, he would’ve lunged at the man and, at the very least, torn his nose off with his teeth.

  “Get him out of there,” Watts said, snapping his fingers.

  The two normal guards, men Kane recognized, came in and grabbed him roughly, pulling him out of the cell.

  “Try anything,” Watts continued, “and I’ll put a bullet below your belt. You’re dead anyway. No need to suffer more.”

  Kane couldn’t try anything. Not yet, at least. Now wasn’t the time…and, for the first instance in his life, he didn’t know if he had the strength to try anything.

  They tied his hands at the wrists, making sure the knot was extremely tight and painful, but Kane had known far worse pain. Then, with a guard gripping each of his arms and the third dead one shambling in front of him, Watts at his back, they guided him out onto the dusty street.

  The sun was still up, but it was on its way down, pink in the sky above.

  A great crowd had gathered in front of the Proudpost, which was closed. No lights, no piano music drifting from inside.

  Kane held his head high, staring back at the people. Most of them were liquored up, sloppy, but there were a few who looked scared and worried.

  A gallows had been constructed in the middle of the street. Two large wooden pillars connected by a crossbeam. A noose swung lazily in the breeze; below the it was a single stool. There was no platform with a trapdoor, just the stool and the rope, which meant that Ansen Kane wouldn’t have his neck broken by a sudden drop. No, he would choke, slowly and painfully, while the drunk crowd watched him and cheered.

  The spectators parted down the middle. A few people threw their bottles in Kane’s direction. Glass exploded near his bare feet, and he stepped on the shards without much pain. Again, he had known far worse. Others threw rotten fruits and vegetables—rotten, because any crop grown near the Infected Lands was born rotten, like most of its inhabitants. They pelted him, and the soggy skins exploded against his dirty, stinking clothes.

  “Dead man walking,” said one of the guards. “Dead man walking!” His name was Bill and he was a son of a bitch on the run for murder, though no one besides Kane knew that, nor did they care. Murder and rape and thievery was all right, but if you betrayed the crown and the ghost of Zoroth, you were lower than scum in the eyes of some of Low Town’s population.

  A stab in Kane’s back jolted him forward. It was Watts, prodding him with the barrel of his rifle.

  “Get up on the stool, traitor.”

  Kane looked back at the plump, red-faced sheriff. His swollen lips raised in a snarl.

  He was backed into a corner, no way out.

  But Stark had told him if one was ever going to die, like Kane was now, then it was best to die honorably, not go out screaming and crying and begging for mercy.

  He climbed up.

  The stool wobbled beneath his weight, and more than once, he thought he was going to pitch over and actually break his neck—and wouldn’t that be a way to go out in front of all these people who had come for a hanging? No suffering, just snap, and then the darkness.

  But the stool held. He wasn’t much in the weight department, anyway; heavy enough to strangle when the stool would be kicked out from beneath him, but not heavy enough to splinter the legs of the thing, like Watts was.

  Watts grabbed the noose. “Bend down,” he said roughly.

  Ansen barely heard him, for the crowd was too loud. Looking to the west, he saw that the sun’s topmost curve was visible. Time was running out.

  Kane bent down and donned this new twine necklace. Watts pulled the noose tight enough for the rope to bite into Kane’s neck. It felt like it was already choking him. Then Kane stood up straight, and he felt a little better—as good as one with a noose around his neck could possibly feel.

  Watts turned toward the crowd. They all silenced as they looked upon him.

  “Before you,” he boomed, “stands a traitor. A man who has done evil things, things beyond our comprehension. We are not perfect ourselves, this I know personally, yes.” The heads in the crowd bobbed in agreement, sheepishly, as one. “But this man, this man we knew as Noah Crowne, whose real name is Ansen Kane, is the living embodiment of treachery, deceit, and sin. What did the Great Creator die for? Our sins. But not even the Creator could save this fellow. As long as he inhales and exhales, he poisons the air, taints our minds, and preys on our souls. Thirty years ago, our good king was murdered. Thirty years ago, his son was left without a father, his wife widowed. Thirty years ago, this man was behind the bullet that killed Zoroth. But that is only one of his many great sins.”

  The crowd booed and hissed. More vegetables and fruits sailed through the air, splattering ag
ainst Kane’s face and middle. Rotten juices fell down his brow and his cheeks, stung his eyes, and his balance atop the stool wavered. He saw faces among the crowd that he had never seen the likes of before. The lowest of the low had come crawling out from under their rocks to see a hanging.

  “Now, friends, calm, please. Calm. Tonight, we avenge all those he killed, all those he hurt, all those families he tore apart. Tonight, we watch Ansen Kane, supreme traitor of the crown, suffer.”

  The crowd burst into raucous applause, and their noise carried far on the wind, to the outskirts of Low Town, where Swan and Isaac Bleake galloped on their horses.

  “We cannot bring the great king back from the dead, as much as we wish we could,” Watts continued, “but we can send the prince, our current king, Kane’s head. Though it won’t bring his father back, maybe, just maybe, it’ll ease his suffering a little to see his father’s murderer brought to justice. To see the last gun knight in the ground with the rest of the Order.”

  Another eruption of applause.

  “So, if we do not have any objections to the execution of this cretin, I ask Ansen Kane if he has any last words he would like to offer.” The sheriff turned to him. “Do you, Kane?”

  Speaking was difficult, his lips felt five times bigger than they should, and his tongue ached from when he’d bitten through it the day before, but he turned toward Watts, the rope tugging and burning against the flesh of his neck.

  “You know, Watts, you’re full of shit.”

  Watts frowned, and then smiled wide. “Wonderful last words. Now, let us be done with this nasty business and get on with the ritual of death—”

  “Wait!” a voice from the crowd shouted.

  The others began murmuring, looking for the source of the new voice. Kane looked out, but it was dark still, the few lit torches, having been moved just below him, were nearly blinding.

  “I object! I object!” the same voice called out.

  Kane didn’t have to see the face to know whom the voice belonged to. He knew it well. This voice was of Wallace, the Proudpost’s sole owner and bartender.

  Watts shook his head. From low in his throat came a grumbling growl that Kane heard, like thunder rolling over the Infected Lands.

  “He’s no criminal,” Wallace said.

  The bartender was wearing his usual smock and bow tie. His face was its usual ruddy. His eyes, though, were wide, which was different than the sleepy look he always wore. But Kane understood why the man was always sleepy; he had never seen him anywhere else in town besides behind the bar of the Proudpost. It was odd seeing him outside of his element even now.

  “Wallace, don’t,” Kane choked out. “Go back. Let him do it.”

  Wallace held up a hand. His wide eyes stared at Watts.

  “He is no criminal here,” Wallace insisted, “that is, besides defending himself from a few blood-hungry bounty hunters. On top of that, he let the youngest one go! What he has done in his past is the past. The crown has no jurisdiction this side of the world.” He looked around the crowd accusingly. “Which is exactly why you are all here, correct?”

  “No!” someone shouted.

  “Kill him!”

  “Hang the bastard!”

  Wallace ignored these remarks. “At the very least, Kane deserves a proper trial. Is that not one of our basic rights?”

  Watts stepped forward. He stared at Wallace and smiled his terrible smile.

  The urge to tell the bartender to run for his life came over Kane, but he couldn’t muster the strength to do it. The rope was too tight. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

  Of Wallace, Watts spoke two simple words to the crowd.

  “Kill him.”

  The crowd listened at once. Wallace spun around, but before he made the full turn, a man speared him to the ground. Others closed in on him: men, women, and even a few older children. They used their fists, raised them high above their heads and brought them crashing down all over Wallace’s body. They kicked and spat on him. Clawed his eyes out; pulled what was left of his graying hair. Their cheering was startlingly loud, but it was no match for Wallace’s screams.

  Pretty soon, Kane heard squelching. He saw the growing pool of blood, drunk up by the dirt road. Splatters of red dotted the crowd’s faces. Their eyes were crazy, and their teeth were bared. They were like animals in heat, only they wanted blood instead of intercourse.

  “Enough!” Watts’s voice boomed, and like trained animals, the crowd dispersed from around Wallace’s body.

  Kane tried to close his eyes when he looked upon the damage done to him, but he couldn’t. It was too great and shocking.

  Wallace’s face had been bashed into a bloody pulp. One of his eyes had come free of its socket and dangled down by his ear, an ear leaking a steady stream of red and pink, possibly brains. His teeth, not all there to begin with, were jagged yellow shards around his swollen gums. Someone had stabbed him in the middle over and over again, until he leaked and soaked his white apron a deathly coral color. Another person had slit his throat, and now there was a crimson smile running across his neck, below his twisted lips.

  Wallace was dead.

  Kane’s heart sank with the man’s loss. He was the only person in all of town who had been brave enough to speak up and defend him, as stupid as that might’ve proven.

  Regardless, two versus hundreds had been reduced to one versus hundreds. The odds were not in Kane’s favor, but he’d battled worse. Not exactly while being this injured and with a rope around his neck, sure, but life wasn’t always peachy.

  “All right,” Watts said. “Any other objections?”

  The crowd, hungry for more blood, stilled.

  “Good. Now let’s hang this son of a bitch!”

  Another eruption of cheers and applause. This time, they clapped with blood smeared across their palms.

  Chapter 23

  The Wave

  “Did you hear that?” Isaac asked Swan. He pulled Lightning’s reins.

  Swan stopped abruptly behind him.

  “The cheers?” she replied.

  They were on a rock bluff looking out at Low Town, which was just a small collection of dreary wooden buildings that comprised the main street, and a few hovels on the outskirts like specks beneath the distant Teeth. There were probably more buildings, but the wind from the Infected Lands farther west kicked up a screen of dust in the distance, obscuring anything else they might’ve seen.

  “No…” Isaac waited half a heartbeat.

  He had heard the cheers, as well as seen the flickering flames in the distant crowd. He judged that he and his companion were perhaps a two-minute ride from that crowd. Maybe less, if they pushed their mounts hard.

  He heard the sound again. It was like the gust of wind that usually blew before a terrible thunderstorm came crashing down upon the land. But then the scent of decay reached him, strong on the air. He turned and saw the great darkness, sweeping toward them like death.

  “Move!” he shouted.

  Shadow creatures stormed through the rocks at their backs, as many as three dozen, perhaps more. Isaac grabbed Swan’s arm and pulled her off her horse.

  Their mounts remained standing, but the two fighters fell to the rocks, bones and armor clattering hard. They were partially hidden by an outlying boulder on the bluff. Isaac eased his head up and peered over the edge.

  The black shapes didn’t stop. They poured into the town proper like rabid bats out of a cave.

  Swan shuddered against Isaac; he shuddered too. Being in the vicinity of the shadow creatures brought something deeper than a chill among them. They felt as if they were on the cusp of death.

  Isaac cursed under his breath. “They’re coming for Kane. They have to be. Somehow, Goroth and the crown found out he was here.”

  Swan stood, pushed her shoulders back, and straightened her spine. “Then let’s go kill them all before they do.”

  Chapter 24

  Streets of Blood and Shadow

&n
bsp; As Isaac and Swan hid from the shadows coming down through the rocks bordering Low Town, Watts riled up the crowd once more. The scent of death was in the air, and the people were craving more of it.

  Watts turned toward Ansen and looked him in the eyes with glee. The new sheriff possessed the eyes of a man who would bet his life on victory.

  “Ansen Kane, traitor of the crown, I sentence you to death by hanging!”

  He kicked the stool out from beneath Kane.

  Kane’s neck bore all of his body weight, slowly strangling him. The crowd went abnormally silent as they strained to hear Kane’s choking sounds of death. He felt his eyes bulging from their sockets, felt all the blood building up in his head as if it would explode. On the horizon, like the waning sun and the evil come from the east in the form of shadow creatures, Ansen Kane saw his own death.

  No, he told himself as he flexed the cords and tendons in his neck, trying to prolong his life just a little longer. No.

  And no was right. He, Ansen Kane, was a gun knight, a protector of Aendvar, a keeper of peace and harmony by way of dealing in death. He would not go out this way. Strung up in front of two hundred slobbering baboons, anticipation in their glassy eyes and drool in the corners of their mouths as they craved death.

  No.

  As the rope bit deeper and deeper into his flesh, he writhed, bringing his knees up to his chest. A strangled cry escaped from between his clenched teeth as his abdominal muscles ripped and shredded with the movement. Then he rocked forward. The pain was as immediate and intense as a bullet wound.

  “Hey! Stop that!” Watts shouted. “Stop him!” He aimed his rifle at Kane, but Kane ignored him.

  He was too focused on what he had to do to survive.

  His hands, shackled behind his back, slipped under his bottom and legs. Straining with immense pain, he reached up and grabbed the taut rope with his fingers—some of them undoubtedly broken and swollen beyond recognition. This eased a bit of the tension. Not much, but enough for him to take a deep breath. The stars across the field of his vision, and the blackness of death that had been encroaching on him waned slightly. He could see clearer.