Blackest Knights

by Phipps, C. T.

  Danesford began to laugh, his jowls jiggling.

  “That wasn’t Forseth, you fool.” He clapped his hands together. “That was me. Me, me, me.”

  “Why?” The word came out weak, a puff of air from a gut punch.

  “Because I needed the resources and your people refused to hand them over.” He laughed, joined in by Kireth and the other attending guards. “Damn sheepfuckers didn’t know their lives were mine and the grain, silver, and cattle were mine. They found out. The way you’ll find out. Your life and death are mine.”

  I lunged at him, the chains pulling me up short.

  “Take him to the post and string him up,” Danesford declared. “Make sure to use the razor wire.”

  I should have kept my hands away from the low hanging fruit, I thought. They smell the sweetest before they spoil. Kireth grinned, and that was the last I saw of the bitch who got me killed.

  “Gods damn you, and all you own.”

  They dragged me from the room, no longer laughing. This was a huge mistake, and Danesford and all his kind would discover just how bad it was. No one owned me. Not even death. I gritted my teeth as the first nail pierced my flesh and shattered my left wrist. The second went clean through, thudding into the wood. Razor wire was carefully wrapped around my arms and legs, giving me the extra support required so I would last a bit longer, die just a bit slower and in more agony. Then they propped me up and left me to rot alone under the hot sun.

  His head hung, too weak to lift. His shadow elongated on the grass below. He could have been a scarecrow set up in a field to keep crows away. Instead, he attracted a raven. The dark tormentor circled overhead, black shadow flickering across his before merging over his arm. He couldn’t feel it on the post, his body almost weightless now. He could fly away with raven in one piece rather than bit by bloody bit. Turning his head, he came eye to black eye with the raven.

  “Ffff… uck… you.”

  The raven cawed, darted forward for a good morrow kiss, tearing flesh from his lower lip. Rather than fly off, it boldly stared at him, turning its head up to swallow the chunk of flesh.

  Swollen tongue wormed out to lap the warm liquid. Very little trickled. He was a dry sponge waiting to crumble into dust. The black bird’s head twitched. Its sharp beak lunged again, pinching the spongy flesh. His tongue tried to retreat back to its dark cave, but it was weak and the bird stronger, hungry for its day’s meal. He groaned, hungry, too.

  The black bird yanked, wings flapping in his face, his tongue pinched in its beak. A hollow shriek trapped in his throat. Something tore in his mouth, the tang of blood pooling in his jaw. The bird slackened and settled on his shoulder for one final pull. He waited. Waited for it to jut its head closer. The black bird shot its beak forward and he opened his mouth wide. Teeth clamped down on its hard skull and crunched.

  The headless, black body tumbled off the wooden cross. He chewed. Torn lips broke into a final smile. He chewed and chewed, the feathers matting up his mouth, filling his throat. He tried to swallow, but no moisture remained and coughed instead. Harsh wheezing pushed a few feathers out of his mouth, sticking them to his lips. The rest remained glutted in his throat.

  In the final moments, he glared up at the sun, hanging low in the sky. It burned, and his throat burned, and his lungs burned. He thanked the raven. For his release. The raven’s head stuck in his throat was his fatal companion, his partner journeying with him to the afterlife. As he suffocated, a final realization came to mind. It was all bullshit. No matter how much he struggled, all the killing and shit he had done to bring about balance. It was all for nothing. He was alone.

  Just before his vision faded, he heard a cacophony of caws. The sky darkened, blackened by feathered ravens flying to Ursoth. Death, it seems, became him, and he Death. Everyone knows, no one owns Death.

  The Land of Rott and Cur

  By Jesse Teller

  On the third day, they turned around for the sake of the horses. The first day, their horses had sagged under the saddle. Soon the heads would not rise. The second day, Aaron’s horse fainted. It took an hour to get it back to its feet. Soon Peter’s fainted, then Jordai’s as well. On the third day, when the ragged mounts had bled out of their snouts, Peter turned them around. The Nation of Three walked them back. Slowly, over the next five days of letting the horses rest and begging them to rise again, they made it back to the border of the nation of Neather.

  As soon as the horses crossed the border and left the Land of Rott, they bucked and whinnied. Aaron heard the horses scream and watched them kick frantic, where just moments before they had been drained and barely alive. After a few fevered moments of the three boys fighting to calm the horses, Peter ordered them released, and Aaron the Marked watched his horse run mad and panicked in the other direction.

  Aaron turned back to the other side of the border. Here sat a divide, a long row of gray cobbles set in the ground that marked the nation of Neather from the nation of Eloo. On the Neather side, the grass grew vibrant and plush. The Eloo side, it was sickly and gray. The Neather trees were strong and thick as a tree should be, their leaves thick and full, their bark the deep brown of chestnuts. The withered husks that could have been trees in Eloo stood twisted and black, their leaves blood red and seemingly dry. Every branch looked brittle, every inch of bark seemed flaking skin. Peter Redfist looked at the land of Neather then back the way they had come, and he dropped to a knee and pulled his sword.

  The weapon was too large for a ten-year-old, too large for a grown human man, but Peter held it and wielded it without much effort. He drove the tip into the ground and looked at its intricately carved hilt. He spoke as if talking to the sword itself, but Aaron knew the words were directed at Jordai. Jordai was Peter’s bastay, as such, his closest councilor.

  Aaron didn’t need to hear the words spoken, just the command that would follow them. He turned his back to his king and climbed a slight rise to look out over the land of Eloo.

  “You’re gonna die in there,” Aaron heard beside him, and he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. The world seemed heavier, the air denser. He turned to the speaker and once again saw the wreck of a man it had once been.

  The specter was pasty white and naked, the hair long and unkempt, the throat slit wide to the bone and the groin had been stabbed repeatedly that what hung there was a ratted mess of flesh. The torso was coated in a thick sheen of blood. Aaron looked at his father and scowled.

  “Your precious king is going to march you back into that land, and you will fall over dead in days.”

  “When I was there I felt no ill effects,” Aaron said. His voice was low and quiet, the same voice he had always used with his father. He felt weak when he spoke and hated the fear in his voice.

  “Those horses were bleeding from the mouth in days. When your weakling of a king walks you in there, you will get a few days in, and you will feel it then, the drag of your life force dripping on the ground below you as you fight to escape. They call this nation the Land of Rott and Cur for a reason.”

  Aaron spun and ripped his dagger free of his belt. The ghost of his father pulled back horrified, and Aaron twisted the blade before his eyes.

  “Remember it?” he asked. The ghost shied away. “Was it cold when it bit into your neck, father? In the instant that your blood began to run, was the blade cold? Before the rush of your life ran free of your neck, was the blade numbing cold?”

  The ghost pulled back and drifted into wisps of tattered horror. In another breath, all signs of his father were gone. Aaron gripped the dagger he had used to murder his father and felt the blade dig into his flesh. Aaron felt almost okay.

  “We have to go back in,” Peter said.

  Aaron looked into the calm face, the cold blue eyes that spoke of his king’s cool mind, and the riot of red hair that looked so startling on the boy, and Aaron felt nothing. Nothing of trust at the sight of his leader. Nothing of love when looking at the man he had placed his life in the hands
of. Aaron felt nothing but hope, no matter how faint, for the promise made to him when he had been given to Peter.

  “You have killed your kin. Follow Peter Redfist. He will lead you back to your honor.” The possibility of honor had never rested any man of his father’s line. Aaron thought of his father’s heavy hand and conniving mind, and he reminded himself that it was about time for a little honor.

  “We need to reach Tienne. That nation will need us. But we can’t go directly there, for if we do, we enter the land of Drine. They will not tolerate us and will enslave us if they can,” Peter said. “No, it has to be Eloo, or through the Mountain and north to the sea. Even then we will have to go halfway across the continent to reach our destination, and then it will be too late.”

  Peter looked at Jordai, who nodded. “It has to be Eloo. No other way will work.”

  “It nearly killed the horses,” Aaron said. “What about us?”

  “We suffered no ill effects,” Jordai said, “save the deep dread that sank into my flesh and finally my bones when I walked there. It was not a physical dampening but a mental one, an emotional draining. If we can make it through Eloo in a short amount of time, then we will be fine. We will have to run much of the way.”

  “Then we leave tomorrow morning and run as long as our legs can take us,” Peter said.

  Aaron grinned at Jordai. It felt like an evil grin, though Aaron did what he could to taint it with mirth. “I will not grow weary first,” he said.

  Jordai Stonefist looked at him with alarm before smiling warmly back. “Wanna bet?” he said.

  Aaron saw his father’s image stalking behind Jordai, and he fought not to look.

  “My dagger for yours if I win,” Jordai said. “Yours is Bloodblade steel, far superior to my Ragoth blade.”

  “Your cape, if I win. I always wondered what it would be like to wear a big obnoxious cape like that,” Aaron snapped.

  Jordai laughed at the words and Aaron felt a lightening of his heart. No matter how he pushed Jordai away, he was always met with a smile and a laugh.

  “Then my obnoxious cape for your keen blade,” Jordai said. “Better get some sleep. Gonna be a long day for you tomorrow.”

  Peter would not hear of either of his men taking first watch. As Aaron fell to sleep, he saw the back of his king barely lit by the fire, as the boy stared out at the twisted land of Eloo. The sight of his king standing over him filled him with an odd peace he had never felt before.

  When he slept, Aaron did not dream. He did not cry out in his bedroll. He did not thrash or kick. These last few days on the road with his king and Jordai, he had slept better than he had ever slept before. But then again, his father was dead now. There would be no late-night visits. No drunken groping hand.

  Aaron’s watch was uneventful. He as well could not take his eye off the land they would venture into at dawn. Deep within the hills of that land, Aaron heard what could have been a panther roar, or a woman’s dying scream.

  When they woke and began their day, it was much like the last time they passed into Eloo. The air took on a damp earthy smell. The sun dimmed as if a great shroud had been pulled over the sky, and Aaron felt darkness draw in tight around him. Death strayed not far from him, for this was Eloo, the graveyard of the continent. The nation rented land and tomb to any dead man or woman whose family would pay the price. It was the land of Rott, goddess of decay, the land of the Cur, king of Eloo, who was said to never die and who it was rumored drank blood. The land where the dead walked, the undead schemed, and the living served. Or ran.

  Aaron felt the ground passing under him slowly. He ran only as fast as his king led him, and Peter was keeping it all in reserve. They made good time, and by the high sun, they had left the lonely fields of the borderlands and headed into the hill country Aaron had seen but a few days ago. When they came over a rise, Peter dropped to the ground, and both Aaron and Jordai followed. They crawled to the top of the high hill, and Aaron saw a long train of women in gray robes walking through the hills like a slow, gray river running through the lower ground.

  “We follow,” Peter said. “At a distance.”

  They followed the ribbon of groaning women, every now and then hearing a great cry, mournful and hollow, issue forth from the line. They moved quickly, slipping up the line, and Aaron could tell Peter wanted a look at the head of the procession. When they got there, Aaron could only gasp in horror and fascination.

  The front of the line was led by a crowd of priests Aaron knew little about. They wore gray and black masks that had been carved to look like a bloated face of death. They walked naked and covered in sores of black with seeping yellow pus that crept down their bodies bit at a time. In their hands they carried one great pole stretched between the four in back and the four in front of a large sepulcher. The carving atop the coffin was of a huge beast snarling and clawing at the lid. It boasted four heads, all frothing and foaming, snapping and howling in four directions at once. The beast’s heads seemed to shift and twist until one that looked half monkey and half snapping turtle turned its black eyes to gaze upon Aaron.

  From the creature’s maw issued a horrid scream akin to a grieving mother and a man being butchered. The line paused. Aaron and his companions dropped to the ground. Peter rolled to his back and pulled his sword. Aaron slid his sword from his back slowly and pulled his dagger free. They looked at the top and sides of the hill, waiting for any sign of seeking eyes, but soon the subtle and horrid cries of the coffin began to move forward again.

  “What do we do?” Jordai breathed.

  “We wait here. Let them pass us. The thing they are burying can sense us. We need not anger it,” Peter said. “Eat and rest. We move as soon as possible.”

  Aaron did not eat. He was training in hunger. His father had often let Aaron go for days without food, and just as often Aaron had been forced to go begging. Aaron watched Jordai and Peter eat and kept quiet. Peter watched thoughtfully as Aaron abstained of food, but he did not try to order him otherwise or convince him in a different way. He watched Aaron for a long time before Peter closed his eyes and dropped instantly to sleep.

  Aaron climbed to the top of the rise, staying low to the ground as the procession moved past. It seemed the ladies in gray were professional mourners who sobbed and clawed at themselves in their abject grief. Aaron watched the display as it moved on, unimpressed. He could smell a con. These women were giving show, and Aaron felt disgust in his gut grow.

  When the entirety of the line was past them, Peter’s eyes snapped open, and they rose. They began to run. As evening passed into night, Aaron could not help but look at the most terrifying sight he had ever seen. He looked up at the night sky of Eloo.

  No stars graced the sky at all. Jordai had decided when last, they had been here that the strange pall that fell over the air was dense enough to block out all the stars in the sky, leaving seven moons and a great void that yawned immense and hungry above them. His father was suddenly drifting beside him, and Aaron fell back a bit. He looked at his father, who gave off a slight yellow glow.

  “What does this sky make you think of, boy?” his father asked.

  Aaron felt suddenly sick to his stomach. “Makes me think of the way your skin parted with a sigh under my blade,” Aaron hissed.

  “Lie!” his father cried. The horrifying reality of the land came sudden and hard when his father’s claim echoed off the hills. Peter looked over his shoulder at Aaron.

  “Is he here?” Peter asked.

  Aaron had months ago told his king of the specter that hounded his steps. “He is, my king,” Aaron managed.

  “Tell him to leave himself in this land. It is the best he can hope for. And remind him that I will find a way to pry him from you. Tell him I give my word on that.”

  Aaron felt a bit of calm at the thought. A Redfist’s word was worth something.

  “Tell him that when he can defeat death, I will gladly run from him. Tell him until he does that, he is but a boastful bo
y unable to fight me or stop me,” Father said. The words were less hollow even than the cries of the gray ladies Aaron had heard earlier that day, and the growing strength of his father filled him with fear.

  “Peter has once bested death. He will do it again,” Aaron stated.

  “The sky, boy, what does it remind you of?” Aaron’s father snapped.

  Aaron looked up, seeing the black above him and feeling the pillow he forced his face into when his father had at him. He suddenly felt dirty and weak. “It makes me think of why you are dead.”

  “And that brings us to it, Aaron. Why you killed me,” his father said with a laugh. “It was not patriotism as you claim it was. You told your last king chief that you heard me and my friends plotting against him and that is why you killed us. You were heralded a hero as they also called you cursed. But I know that no hero’s heart lives within your foul skin. You killed me out of hate. You murdered me because you saw your chance. You are not noble. You are worthless, and you will one day find out that you are as much like your father as you fear you are.” The specter cackled.

  And Aaron growled. He ran faster and soon caught up with his comrades. They moved on through the black night lit only by the muted moons and the hope they held of being free of this land as soon as possible.

  The second night they stopped beside a stream. Peter dipped a finger in and licked it. “It is pure. Fill your flasks and drink your fill. We will not sleep tonight, but we will enjoy a warm meal. I have another day of running in me, men, what of you?”

  “At least a day,” Jordai said. “Unless Aaron is getting tired.” The boy grinned at him. “How about it, Aaron, you ready to sleep? Legs getting heavy?”

  “I could go on for days yet, Stonefist. You carry more bulk than me, and that great sword on your back will weigh you down soon. I will throw it over my shoulder if it will aid you. I know it must be a mighty burden,” Aaron said. He felt the need to grip Jordai by his throat and rip the smile off his face, but he held it all back. He shoved the contempt he felt for the Stonefist down deep, but again saw his father drift behind Jordai, staring at Aaron with a smirk.