Knight and Shadow

by Flint Maxwell

  The battle was over, the town was dead, and Ansen Kane was still alive.

  Chapter 26

  Help

  For as tough as the woman looked while slaying the last of the reanimated townspeople, she nearly cried when she saw the boy lying in front of Kane.

  He had no energy left, he was beyond drained, but he went to the boy who may have sacrificed his life just so Kane could live.

  Another good soul left dead in your wake, Kane, his mind spoke. How many more will you kill?

  But the boy stirred. His eyes fluttered and opened just slightly.

  In a weak voice, he asked, “Is it over? Did we w-win?”

  Kane nodded.

  The woman scooped the boy up in her arms. “Isaac?”

  “Swan?” he answered, even weaker than before.

  “I’m here, okay? I’m here. We’re going to get you help.”

  The boy named Isaac closed his eyes. Kane watched as the wound on his arm fizzled and more of his skin burned away.

  “What do we do?” the woman asked him.

  She was covered in blood and dust, as if she’d ridden a long way. Kane could smell the miles on her.

  “He’s been sliced by a shadow creature. I am afraid there’s not much we can do. At least not here.”

  “Where, then?”

  Kane’s mind felt thick; he couldn’t think straight.

  “Where?” the woman demanded, jerking forward and causing the boy’s eyes to open, exposing his bloodshot whites.

  “I know a place,” Kane said. “It’s not far.”

  “Great,” Swan said. “Help me.”

  “The ride will be a treacherous one. And I am not saying we will make it before the boy loses his mind or dies,” Kane told her. He stood up, knees and back cracking like gunshots. Not to mention I’m on the cusp of death myself. “Do you have a horse I can use?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  She held the boy in both of her bloodstained, armored arms. He was unconscious, his head lolling, and he looked worse than he did just seconds before.

  “Go get the horses,” Kane said. “I’ll look after the boy. Save your energy for now. You’ll need it where we’re going.”

  Swan set Isaac down gently in front of Kane and left. Kane swiped his hand across his own brow and the skin came back red. When did that happen? he wondered.

  The boy lay before Kane like a sack of bones. Already, he could see the poison from the shadow creature’s claw working through Isaac’s system. His skin had paled and thinned like old parchment. Dark veins ran through his eyelids, ripples of poison.

  Kane looked at the boy’s face. Who are you?

  Could it be Cora’s son? Could it really be?

  But no. She was gone, dead like the rest of the gun knights.

  Stark’s voice spoke in his head now. You aren’t dead, though, are you, Kane? Not yet, at least. But you were hiding. Perhaps, when the Order disbanded, she went into hiding herself. Perhaps she faked her death for protection.

  “Then why didn’t she find me?” Kane spoke aloud, and the boy stirred at the sound of his voice.

  Swan came back, leading two horses, whose faces and eyes were wild from the scent of blood. They were beautiful steeds, the finest horses he had seen in Aendvar Point. They must’ve come from a city far away, where there was still life and morals.

  “You’ll have to lift him up,” Kane told her.

  He almost added, ‘And me too, if you don’t mind,’ but didn’t, because talking expended too much energy, and energy was exactly what he didn’t have at the moment.

  Swan lifted Isaac up and set him in the saddle. The boy leaned forward, still unconscious, against the dark horse’s mane. The other horse was white and shimmering, out of place in this town of death and chaos and dark magic.

  Kane stood, and his feet and legs almost betrayed him. He wobbled over to where the other revolver lay, picked it up, dusted it off on his ruined shirt, and stuck it through his waistband. He had never been one to dual-wield revolvers. It wasn’t that he did not possess the skill; it was that, at the time, he had lacked the confidence. He also felt that owning two guns, especially two revolvers, would be, in some odd way, a betrayal to the weapon bestowed on him when he’d earned his title.

  But things had changed.

  Once he had the other gun, he reloaded his own—a force of habit—then slowly climbed atop the white gelding. He stroked the horse’s mane. The horse received Kane quite well, hardly noticing that he was on his back at all.

  Kane grabbed the reins and leaned forward. His eyes felt very heavy. The pain that took hold of most of his body was tremendous and he could feel his body slowly numbing, trying to compensate.

  “Where are we going?” the woman asked. She held the boy by the back of his shirt so he wouldn’t fall off her mare.

  “West. Toward the Infected Lands.”

  Chapter 27

  The Coming Storm

  They rode as fast as they could, which was not fast, all things considered. On the outskirts, Kane began to smell the storm brewing. Having been in Low Town for three years, and dealing with the storms sporadically, he knew they were unpredictable. The cloud of poison rain would hang low in the sky, and it could burst as soon as you looked upon it, or it could hang there for days, keeping everyone—man and beast—sheltered from it.

  They passed Kane’s hovel. Here, he told the woman to keep going, said that he would catch up.

  “There’s no time,” she argued.

  “I know, but where we’re going is dangerous. Considering that neither the boy nor I can swing a sword at the moment, I’ll need ammunition for these guns. It’s much easier to pull a trigger when you’re hurt than it is to use a sword. Trust me. Keep heading west. I won’t be a minute.”

  And he wasn’t. Swan rode on.

  He walked into the hovel. It was the same as it was when he had been taken by Watts however many days ago—in Kane’s mind, his incarceration would remain one long and painful blur for as long as he lived. The coffee pot hung over the fireplace, the cup and spoon stood on the table in the corner, his bed was not made, and the place smelled of his sweat. He didn’t linger. Mostly, his legs would not let him. If he remained standing too long, his calves felt as if they would crumble to dust.

  He bent down and searched under his bed. There, beneath a loose piece of wood, lay his stash of ammunition: about sixty shells, gun oil, gunpowder, and his cleaning tools. He grabbed them all with a weak hand and threw them in a rough-looking bag. On the table lay his wide-brimmed hat. He took it and set it atop his head. Then he hobbled out of his Low Town home for the last time.

  He caught up to Swan easily, thanks to the gelding, and they went on toward the Infected Lands. Kane pushed the horse as fast as he was able to without passing out from the pain, and the woman followed.

  Through the desert they went. There was no trail; these lands were not well traveled, if at all.

  A crippled tree stood on the horizon, and Kane marked that as his goal, though deep in his psyche, the tree reminded him of his abandoned quest, and the pain in his body grew worse.

  He ignored it, only thinking The tree, the tree, the tree.

  If they could reach it before they heard the first rumble of thunder, all would be fine, they could keep going without problem for a few more miles, and then he would make another goal. Perhaps the boy would be all right. Perhaps they would reach the healer before the poison in Isaac’s blood completely took hold.

  Halfway to the stunted tree, the sky crackled with a booming thunder that shook Kane to his sore bones. Even the horse felt it. It stopped and whinnied, frightened.

  Kane scanned the dark horizon. His eyes were like a hawk’s, he could see farther than most. Before the tree and to the right was a mesa of red rock. Focusing, he saw an opening, a cave. He shouted over the rippling thunder to Swan.

  “See that?”

  She nodded, her face twisted with worry.

  “You ride there as
fast as you can! You don’t wait for me! I’ll get there in due time, understood?”

  “But what about Isaac?”

  “Just go! The storm is gonna break any minute now.”

  On cue, a stroke of lightning came down in a blur near the distant tree. Fire lit up the night, and white smoke obscured the jagged branches.

  “If the rain hits us,” Kane told her, “we’ll get sick for days, our skin will burn off, and we won’t have a chance in hell to save the boy. Now ride!”

  His voice was like the thunder, and the woman argued no more. She put her head down, leaned over the boy’s body protectively, and rode.

  Kane followed after her, the horse he was on trying to keep pace, but the gun knight kept holding back on the reins because the rough bumping and trundling caused too much pain in his ribs and back. He was close to the point of going unconscious, and if that happened, he knew he could fall from the saddle and break his neck, and the end of the journey—the end of his life—would come sooner than he expected.

  How bitter would it be to avoid death at the hands of the crazed sheriff, the shadow creatures, and the reanimated only to fall off my horse and die? he asked himself, and mustered up an even bitterer smile.

  The storm cloud hung lower. The air rippled with the tang of electricity and acrid radiation.

  Kane sped the horse onward. Soon, his sharp eyes could no longer see Swan and the boy in the distance, and that was a weight off his chest. They had made it to the mesa. She was no imbecile; she would find the cave and take shelter.

  Thunder boomed, and the horse rose on his hind legs. Kane nearly lost his balance and had to move quickly to grab the pommel with his hurt left hand before he was pitched backward. The pain, so intense, caused him to scream, but the sound was lost amongst the raging air pressures above.

  The horse settled. Kane stroked his mane and whispered words of encouragement to him, and soon they were on the move again.

  With nearly each galloping step, the sky threatened to break. Kane had no choice but to ease up his pull on the reins and allow the horse to speed toward the mesa.

  He arrived perhaps five minutes later, mere seconds before the storm broke and began to further poison the earth. Agonizing pain ripped through him as he reached his goal, and he would’ve fallen off the horse if the woman had not been there to ease him down.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She put an arm under his and helped him into the cave, which was bigger than his hovel. Then she led the white horse inside with them.

  The air brought chills to Kane’s flesh. It was even cooler inside.

  Outside, the storm raged; rock above them was pelted with poisonous drops, and wind smelling of sickness whistled.

  The ground shook with thunder.

  Kane leaned forward, patting the ground in the darkness. He found deadwood and began stacking it for a fire. Swan helped.

  The boy lay between them, breathing raggedly.

  Once the fire was lit and burning, Kane started feeling better—not much, but a bit.

  “He nearly died for you,” Swan said finally. She was looking at Kane. The shadows on her face gave her the appearance of a corpse. “I don’t know why, he doesn’t even know you. If it were me, I wouldn’t have done that.” She paused. “He has a good heart.”

  “I know,” Kane replied. “I can see it.”

  Across the fire, the horses huddled together, lying prone, ears twitching with the steady tap-tap-tap of falling rain and hail.

  To Kane, it sounded like the worst storm in over a year.

  “We won’t let him die,” he told Swan.

  She was quiet for a while after that. When she finally spoke, she asked a question Kane was not prepared to answer.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  As he thought of a response, Kane pressed his swollen tongue against the roof of his mouth. His mind whirled with the ghosts of his past: his training in Aendvar Point, winning his gun and his right to be a knight, his first and only love—Cora, Cora, my sweet Cora—and the raising of the Undervoid, the Mad King Zoroth’s reign of terror, the fall of the crown, the eradication of the Order, his exile, his quest for the Tree of Truth, and, of course, his failure.

  Always his failure.

  No, he thought as he looked upon the dying boy painted orange by the light of the fire, I will fail no longer.

  And then he answered the woman.

  “Me? I am no one.”

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  Afterword

  I want to give a huge thank you to Carmen, my cover designer (not the cow in this book, though that cow is pretty cool). She worked tirelessly in perfecting the design, and had to put up with my constant nitpicking and complaining, all while keeping her calm. I think the cover looks pretty damn good myself. I also want to thank Jen, my editor, for calling me out on all my bullshit. Without her, I’d look a lot more dumber—or stupider? I don’t know. She doesn’t edit these afterwords. Oh, well.

  Now I’ll talk about the book you’ve just read.

  This is probably obvious, especially if you’re a fan of Stephen King, but if not, I’ll tell you: Knight and Shadow was inspired by his wonderful Dark Tower series, which follows the gunslinger Roland Deschain and his ka-tet’s adventures through Mid-World. If you haven’t checked that series out, you really, really should. King’s well-known for horror, and often pigeonholed into that genre, but he does so much more than horror. The Dark Tower has its scary moments, don’t get me wrong, but it really is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I’ve gone through the series a few times now, and book two, The Drawing of the Three is right up there in my favorite books of all time.

  So I wanted to write my own version of a gunslinger. I also wanted to build my own fantasy world. But I didn’t want to stray too far from common tropes in the genre, because they are all what we know and love—especially me (Lord of the Rings Extended Edition marathon, anyone?).

  Anyway, I won’t keep you waiting too long on the next installment. What will happen to Ansen Kane, Isaac, and Swan? Will the darkness claim the lane of Aendvar for good, or will our heroes prevail?

  Like most of my books, I have no idea what happens until I start writing.

  But I’ll find out. You better believe it, friend.

  F. M.

  March 20, 2019

  About the Author

  Flint Maxwell lives in Ohio, where the skies are always gray and the sports teams are consistently disappointing (not so much lately). He loves Star Wars, basketball, Stephen King novels, and almost anything horror. You can probably find him hanging out with one (or all) of his five household pets when he’s not writing, reading, or watching movies.

  Get in touch with Flint on Facebook

  Also by Flint Maxwell

  Jack Zombie Series

  Dead Haven (Book 1)

  Dead Hope (Book 2)

  Dead Nation (Book 3)

  Dead Coast (Book 4)

  Dead End (Book 5)

  Dead Lost (Book 6)

  Dead Judgment (Book 7)

  Dead Last (Book 8)

  Fright Squad Series

  Fright Squad: A Comedic-Horror Adventure

  Fright Squad 2: The Monster Games

  Fright Squad 3: Night of the Slasher

  Taken World Series

  Ravaged (Book #1)

  Darkness (Book #2)

  Decimated (Book #3)

  Beneath (Book #4)

  The Midwest Magic Chronicles

  The Midwest Witch (Book #1)

  The Midwest Wanderer (Book #2)

  The Midwest Whisperer (Book #3)

  The Midwest War (Book #4)

 
Something Dark: Horror Stories

  Let Us Out

  The Bitter Cold: Five Chilling Tales of Winter Horror