The Last Knight

Chapter 3: Swords in the Street

Cole sat alone at his small corner table swirling the whiskey in his glass in an almost trancelike state. He was convincing himself that he’d do something soon. He’d say something, or take action…soon but not yet. He was just waiting for the right time, as he seemed to always be doing, but it had yet to arrive, as it always was.

“You’re a damned whore so what’s the problem bitch?”

Cole wanted to kill that man. He didn’t know his name but he knew the “whore” he was talking to and he had come to like her. She was smart…well smarter than the rest. She was indeed a brothel worker but that was no reason to condemn her to a life of degradation. Even "whores" could be dignified. Candice was one such woman.

“I’m sorry sir but if you ain’t got the coin you don’t get the purse. Catch my drift?”

“Bitch says you ain’t got the curd to stuff er eh Jordy?”

The man sitting next to the drunken companion slurred out in between grasping a handful of Candice’s well toned ass….Cole had noted them both. He wanted to kill them both…but he’d wait…just a little longer. He was well past his days of murdering and interfering in other people's business….or so he kept telling himself.

“Bitch ought to know who we are then eh Grim? May haps we teach her a thing or two about us Hungin Brothers?”

“And how good brother.”

“Sorry gents I don’t do doubles. Especially doubles without coin.”

“Oh but miss we gots the coin…on tab you see. We’re real respected like in these parts, so’s it’s on the house as it were.”

“I don’t do house jobs.”

That’s when Cole heard the hit, Candice’s grunt of breath as the wind was knocked from her.

The more drunken one, if you could tell, Grim, had hit her square in the gut. She tried to inhale and that’s when the second hit came from Jordy, the one who’d been trying to buy her. A harsh uppercut to the jaw that sent her sprawling onto the floor, her perfect face marred with broken teeth and bloody nose.

Cole wanted to move, wanted to kill as old instincts demanded, as the knife was drawn from Grim’s belt. A savage tool with many a death to its name if the greased and well polished shine had anything to say, which it always did in Cole’s line of work.

Cole gripped his glass as he heard the scream cut short…Candice’s last scream as Grim Hungin slid his well honed knife across her silky throat. Cole tensed, but made no move. This was not his fight…not even his realm. The damage was done already so there was no use defending the honor of the dead. He'd waited too long.

“You bastards!”

The voice was young and Cole couldn’t help but turn to face it. A young boy, perhaps fifteen if that, was at the door with a knife of his own in hand.

“You die in the name of the law!”

The bar was already silent from Candice’s untimely demise, and all eyes fixed on the young boy with eyes of steel as Grim cleaned his knife on his jeans and him and brother Jordy turned to stare down their young confrontation.

“Yerr here dis one eh Jordy? Thinks he’s a knight of old er somtin yar reckon?”

“Eh what’s got into yer head boy? Ein’t no law left there ain’t.”

“There is…and always will be.”

Cole couldn’t help but smile. The boy was small and would die without a doubt but his eyes held. They were the eyes of a knight…back when such things existed…back when Cole had a “true name”…but such days were gone.

Cole anticipated the boy's death as the two brothers advanced. Though the men were drunk and sloppy, their knives were well cared for in the way that shows they'd been used all too often...this noble and irritatingly strong youth would die…and still Cole didn’t act.

It happened in a flash which only a seasoned fighter and killer like Cole would be able to notice but there was a …change in the boy within seconds. His eyes, which were blue steal turned a vicious red and then all hell broke loose on the Hungin brothers.

They moved with practiced movements, but these movements seemed as if in slow motion compared to the boy’s own killer strides. The two brothers thought to push the boy to the wall and assumedly corner and kill him, but the boy had thought far past such notions. He struck before their hands could even flinch in defense, gliding through them with perfect ease as he gave a quick thrust to the groin of both which was followed by a backhanded slice to the neck. Both men fell simultaneously without so much as a cough. It had been perfect execution….such as the like Cole would have delivered in another life perhaps.

The bar patrons gaped in silence and awe. The two men sat on their knees for but a moment before falling noiselessly to the floor, blood flowing from crotch and neck. Cole couldn’t help but smile, then frown. The boy’s eyes had turned to him and suddenly the world lost its useless haze in which Cole lived in and moved to an all too real moment. Why was the boy now staring at him with those dangerous eyes? Had he recognized him?

“I’ll be outside “serr”.”

…and there it was “serr”. It seems the choice had been taken from him. He’d kill the boy and whoever was the one who’d sent him. That could not be delayed. He drank his whiskey. The taste was smooth and he realized he might need more in a few moments. In a husked voice he asked for a bottle.

“It’s on the house if you keep that one away.”

The bartender was old and had a worried look in his eyes. He was used to death, that was assured, but he’d just had two patrons and a working girl die in his establishment…not good for business.

“He won’t be back…and neither will I. The bottle if it pleases you serr?”

Fuck! Old habits die hard he supposed. Bottle in hand he walked outside to face a boy with the knife and he felt the weight of his once legendary sword at his hip more than ever. He would draw to kill the lad…then he would leave. The world was large and there was always another place to sink into obscurity…into peace.

​The night air outside the bar was thick and indifferent, a sharp contrast to the hot copper stink of fresh blood mixed with whiskey and ale Cole had left behind on the floorboards. He popped the cork on the bartender's bottle with his thumb, taking a long, punishing drag of the whiskey. It burned, but it didn't burn away the phantom weight of the hungry sword hanging at his hip.

​He had spent years trying to sink into the cracks of the world, searching for a quiet obscurity. No matter how many times he told himself he was past his murdering and interfering days, something always drew him back in....and after the killing was done he'd pretend that this time would be the last.... and here he was again.

"What a fool I am" he thought to himself.

​He scanned the shadows of the alley and saw the boy was there, standing with the stillness of a coiled spring. The knife was still in his hand, though it no longer dripped. Just moments ago, Cole had watched those blue steel eyes shift to a vicious red before the boy tore through Grim and Jordy Hungin with terrifying, fluid precision.

​The boy hadn't just killed two men; he had done it with the practiced vengeance of the old ways...and then he had looked right at Cole and called him serr.

​Cole took another breath, letting the whiskey settle in his gut. He had walked out here with a simple, cold intention: he would draw, he would kill the lad, and then he would leave to find the man who'd sent the boy after him. Someone knew he was here and that someone needed to disappear before he left, but as the boy stepped out of the deeper shadows, the moonlight catching the edge of his blade, Cole felt the old instincts grinding against his current fatigue.

​"You're bleeding, boy," Cole said, his voice a low, gravelly hum that barely carried over the distant sounds of the city.

​The boy didn't look down at his side. He didn't so much as flinch.

​"It's not mine, serr," the boy said.

​His voice was entirely wrong for the aftermath of a butchery. It lacked the ragged, adrenaline-soaked breath of a killer who had just survived a life-or-death struggle. It was eerily steady. Hollowed out.

​Cole narrowed his eyes, the warm burn of the whiskey acting as a temporary anchor against the creeping cold of the alley. He stared at the kid, really looking at him this time. The boy was standing perfectly still, but it wasn't the stillness of a disciplined soldier. It was the rigid, vibrating tension of a puppet strung too tight. There was a faint, rhythmic twitch at the corner of the boy's jaw.

​Cole’s thumb traced the cork of the bottle. A rider, he thought, the realization settling over him like a heavy shroud. He’s got something magical whispering in his skull.

​That explained the unnatural fluid motion in the bar. It explained the red flash in the blue steel eyes. The boy wasn't just a prodigy with a blade; he was a vessel, sharing his nervous system with something ancient and hungry.

​"If it's not yours," Cole said, his voice dropping into a register that felt more like a physical vibration in the chest than a sound, "then you're sloppy. And sloppy gets you dead before your beard grows in."

​The boy’s head tilted, just a fraction of an inch, like a dog listening to a frequency just out of human range. When he looked back up at Cole, the moonlight caught his eyes. For a split second, the blue shattered, replaced by that vicious, pulsing red. It wasn't a reflection. It was something looking out from behind the glass.

​"I didn't come here to die, serr," the boy said, his voice layering slightly, as if two throats were speaking the same words in perfect, terrible unison. He took a single, measured step forward. "I was sent to find the Knight."

​Cole let out a long, slow breath. The world he had tried to bury was clawing its way out of the dirt. He dropped the whiskey bottle and it shattered on the cobblestones, the amber liquid pooling like liquid gold in the dirt.

​His hand moved, resting casually, inevitably, on the heavy iron pommel at his hip.

​"You found a drunk," Cole said. "The Knight is dead."

​The amber pool of spilled whiskey had barely seeped into the dirt when the boy tilted his head again. The terrible, layered voice didn't argue and it didn't call Cole a liar.

"If you're no Knight...then you won't last long."

​The boy raised his left hand—the one not holding the bloody knife and extended his index finger, staring at it as if it belonged to a stranger.

​Snap.

​The bone broke with a wet, heavy crack.

​The boy’s face remained a blank, vibrating mask. Not a gasp. Not a flinch. The red behind his eyes flared, burning away the human blue entirely, leaving twin coals burning in the dark.

​"The meat lies," the layered voice whispered, the sound scraping against the damp brick of the alley. "But the iron remembers."

​Cole’s grip tightened on his pommel. The leather wrapped around the hilt groaned under the sudden, crushing pressure of his fist.

​The boy took another step forward, his broken finger dangling at a grotesque, impossible angle. He didn't point the ruined digit at Cole's face or his chest. He pointed it directly at the heavy, scarred scabbard at Cole's hip.

​"Gramor is weeping in the dark, serr," the boy said, the human half of his voice finally beginning to crack under the strain of the entity riding his vocal cords. "The threads are rotting. We need the iron."

​Gramor....so they know it's name.

​The name hit Cole like a physical blow to the sternum. Knowing him was one thing but to know the name of his sword was like a ghost reaching out from a grave he had spent lifetimes trying to pave over. The warm, numbing blanket of the whiskey vanished, replaced instantly by the freezing, absolute clarity of a man who suddenly realizes he is already at war.

​He didn't draw the sword. Not yet. Drawing it meant acknowledging the name and that kind of attention meant the quiet years were dead for good.

​"Who is riding you, boy?" Cole asked. The gravel in his voice was gone, replaced by a terrifying, hollow calm. "Give me a name, or I take your head off and let the monster crawl out of your neck."

​The boy smiled. It was a jagged, horrifying expression, pulling the skin of his face too tight.

​"I am the echo of the blue," the thing inside the boy hissed. "I am a thread pulled from the Spider's web."

​The wind in the alley seemed to die, choking on the sudden, oppressive weight radiating from the space between the two of them.

​"The Spider," Cole repeated, the word tasting like ash. It could be a coincidence or the boy looking to see if Cole would reveal more....but Cole wasn't much for coincidences.

​He stared at the boy’s broken, dangling finger, then up to the burning red coals in the kid's skull. The thing inside, maybe a corrupt Fairy, maybe a wraith or gimtaker, but whatever was inside was straining the meat, pushing the boy's nervous system to the absolute brink. A thin trickle of dark blood began to leak from the boy's left nostril.

​"If you know the name Gramor...then you know it does not weep," Cole said, his voice dropping into a deadly, rhythmic cadence, "it hungers...would you toss aside this young flesh so foolishly?"

​The thing wearing the boy let out a sound that might have been a laugh, had it not sounded like grinding stones.

​"The boy is just soil," the layered voice hissed, the red eyes flaring violently. "he is the anchor holding in the deep water. He dug too far, Knight and now the Hound's blood owns him. I will not stay trapped in this rot. We need the iron to sever the tether."

​Cole closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. Hound's blood? He had heard of such a thing long ago...some sickness that turned men into monsters. If the boy had fallen to that, then there might not be anything inside but a magic infection, and that could not be negotiated with. That had to be cleansed before it spread.

​Cole’s hand stopped resting on the pommel. He gripped it.

​"I told myself I was done cutting," Cole whispered to the dark.

​He drew the sword.

​It didn't make the clean, heroic schling sound of a bard's tale. It sounded like a crypt dragging open. The blade was dark, heavy, and marred with ancient, unreadable grooves. The moment the iron cleared the leather scabbard, the ambient noise of the city—the distant dogs, the drunken shouts, the hum of the lanterns—simply vanished. The air pressure in the alley dropped so fast it popped the ears.

​The entity inside the boy recoiled. The unnatural stillness shattered. The boy’s body convulsed, his hands coming up to clutch his temples as the sheer frequency of the ancient iron disrupted the poison's hold.

​"I'm sorry lad," Cole said, stepping over the shattered glass of his whiskey bottle, the massive blade hanging at his side, "but it seems there will be no salvation for you or cutting of tethers...only the end of the line."

​The boy opened his mouth to scream, but the red light behind his eyes suddenly flickered, panicked and unstable. The iron was too loud. The connection was breaking.

​The ancient iron didn’t hum; it devoured.

​As Cole held the blade down by his side, the sheer density of the metal began to rip the magical current from the air. Whatever corruption was riding the boy shrieked—a sound that didn't vibrate the eardrums but scraped violently against the inside of Cole's skull.

​The red coals behind the boy’s eyes flickered, panicked and dying, as the iron seemed to drink the air dry.

​"NO!" the layered voice tore out of the boy's throat, but the human vocal cords were giving way. "THE NODE! HE IS AT THE NODE! HE IS—"

​The connection snapped.

​It was as if a string holding up a marionette had been cut by shears. The boy didn't stumble; he simply crashed into the cobblestones. As his head hit the dirt, a thick, viscous fluid—black in the moonlight, smelling of ozone and rotting copper—purged violently from his nose and ears. Was this the "Hound's blood" that had been using his body as a battery? If so it seems the old the iron had short-circuited the charge.

​The suffocating silence of the alley shattered. The ambient noise of the city rushed back in with dizzying speed—a dog barking two streets over, the distant crash of a door being slammed, the wailing of the wind.

​Cole stared down at the crumpled form. The boy was convulsing slightly, gasping for air, then, the shock wore off, and the human pain registered. The kid curled into a fetal position, clutching his shattered, dangling finger against his chest, and began to sob. It wasn't the scream of a supernatural killer; it was the high, terrified wail of a child who had just woken up in a nightmare.

​Cole looked at the heavy, dark blade in his hand. He felt the familiar, terrible gravity of it pulling at his shoulder. He slid the iron back into the scarred leather scabbard knowing he would have to quench its hunger somehow soon.

​He walked over to the boy and crouched down, his boots crunching on the glass of the broken whiskey bottle. He grabbed the kid by the collar of his blood-soaked tunic and hauled him up until they were eye to eye. The boy’s eyes were entirely human now—wide, blue, and leaking tears through the black sludge smeared across his face.

​"P-please," the boy stammered, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. "I don't... I don't know why I'm here. I was asleep. I was just asleep in the hayward and—"

​"Quiet," Cole rumbled, not unkindly, but with a force that demanded obedience. "You're empty now. Whatever it was, blood or rider is gone, but it left quite the stain on you."

​Cole pulled a small, relatively clean rag from his belt and tossed it onto the boy's chest.

​"Wipe your face. If the city guard sees that black blood on you, they'll burn you as a plague-bearer before the sun comes up." Cole stood, his shadow swallowing the boy. "Before whatever it was inside you died, you screamed a word, 'The Node' ...does that mean anything to you?"

​The boy scrambled back against the brick wall, pressing the rag to his bleeding nose, shaking his head frantically. "No! No, serr. Please, I just want to go home."

​Cole looked past the kid, out toward the mouth of the alley where the city streets bled out into the great, dark expanse of the plains.

​The Node...Hound's Blood,,,Gramor. All old words. All dangerous words. All were remnants from a time few remembered and even fewer had lived to see. Whoever sent this boy knew a little too much for comfort.

​"Do you remember who sent you boy?" Cole said softly. He reached down and picked up the bloody knife the boy had dropped. He wiped it on his pant leg and flipped it, catching it by the blade, offering the hilt to the trembling boy. "You killed three men in that tavern and whatever that Rider was used your hands to do it. The law doesn't care about fairies and magic and Hound's blood, they only care about the blood spilt on the street."

​The boy stared at the knife, horrified.

​"You have two choices," Cole said, his voice flat, devoid of the pity he was trying to bury. "You run to the docks, steal a skiff, and disappear...or you walk with me into the dark and show me the one who sent you and we find out what that thing was that used you....your call."

​The boy didn’t take the knife. He stared at the hilt as if it were a coiled viper, his hands shaking so violently he could barely keep the bloody rag pressed to his leaking nose.

​Cole didn't press the issue. He flipped the blade smoothly, sheathed it in his own belt, and grabbed the boy by the scruff of his tunic. He hoisted the kid to his feet. The boy’s legs were like wet reeds, barely able to support his own weight, but Cole kept a firm, unyielding grip on his shoulder.

​"Walk," Cole commanded, his voice a low rumble.

​They moved out of the alley, leaving the shattered glass and the hot copper scent of the tavern behind. Cole kept them to the shadows, avoiding the main thoroughfares where the city guard's lanterns cut through the fog. The capital was a sprawling beast of stone and wood, indifferent to the blood spilled in its gutters.

​The boy stumbled twice in the first three blocks. He was panting, his breaths shallow and ragged, clutching his broken finger to his chest. He was in shock. The adrenaline of the entity that had hijacked his nervous system had burned away, leaving a hollowed-out, exhausted shell.

​"What's your name, kid?" Cole asked, not slowing his massive, ground-eating stride.

​"E-Elian," the boy choked out, tripping over a loose cobblestone.

​"Listen to me, Elian," Cole said, his eyes scanning the rooftops and the dark intersections ahead. "The thing that was in your head... it burned you out. It used your body to keep the connection open. You're going to feel cold. You're going to feel like you're starving. If you stop moving, your heart is going to forget how to beat."

​Elian let out a pathetic, terrified whimper, but his pace quickened slightly. Fear was a crude fuel, but it worked.

​They reached the southern gate just as the bells of the High Keep began to toll the midnight hour. The gates were closed, heavy iron and thick oak, but Cole didn't lead them to the main thoroughfare. He knew the cracks in this city. He had spent years finding them and besides, they were going further into the underbelly not into the light. Someone would have answers.

​He dragged Elian down a narrow, sloping embankment that smelled of rotting fish and stagnant water—the runoff from the tannery district. At the bottom, hidden behind a grate rusted through by decades of neglect, was a smuggler’s crawl.

​Cole ripped the grate free with a sharp, brutal pull that made the muscles in his back groan. He shoved Elian into the dark opening.

​"Crawl. Don't stop until you smell oil and blood."

​Elian didn't argue. He scrambled into the muck, his broken hand tucked tight against his ribs. Cole followed, the massive, ancient iron sword at his hip scraping heavily against the stone tunnel walls. The sheer physical reality of the tunnel—the damp, the cold, the claustrophobia—was a stark, sobering contrast to the terrifying, expansive magic that had possessed the alley.

​The crawl through the tunnel was long and dark and cramped and made Cole uncomfortable and claustrophobic. He was no stranger to crawling through dark holes but he hated tight spaces...not enough room to maneuver or draw his blade.

As a small light pierced through a gap from above Cole grabbed the sole of Elian's boot. "Go up, kid. This is our stop."

They climbed up and lifted the small cover and suddenly were in the slum district of the city. Blood, oil, sewage and decay were hot in the air as they both rose. Cole told the boy to stay in place as he scanned the area and decided their course.

With the big man occupied Pat, or Elian as he'd lied to the Knight, could feel himself relax for a moment.

​"Did you really have to break the finger, Pate?"

​Sybil’s voice dropped into his mind like a warm, exasperated sigh, completely shattering the dread of the moment.

​Pate carefully cradled his left hand against his chest, gritting his teeth as the adrenaline finally wore off and the actual pain of the snapped bone registered.

​"It sold the bit, Poppy!" Pate shot back in his head, scrambling to his feet and wiping the remaining black sludge from his nose with his sleeve. "Did you see his face? He was going to cut my head off in that alley! I had to give him a show."

​In his mind's eye, Sybil materialized. She wasn't weeping in the dark, trapped in a corrupted network. She was lounging against the metaphysical architecture of his brain, wearing a breathtakingly scandalous gown made of what looked like woven shadow, her red eyes rolling in absolute disdain.

​"The black goo sold the bit, you idiot," Sybil scolded, though he could hear the distinct tremor of a suppressed laugh in her voice. "Nobody questions the black goo trick. You bite the charcoal capsule, you shake a little, I give you a nosebleed and some "red eyes" and boom—demonic possession. But no, you had to go method. You had to snap the bone."

​"You told me he had an ancient, magic-eating sword! I panicked! You saw how he reacted to that damn script of yours," Pate argued internally, crouched in place as he watched Cole's massive, brooding silhouette scan and pace the alleyways. "By the way, where did you even get all that nonsense I was yelling? The Node? Hound's blood? Gramor...was that the sword's name?"

​"I don't know...I heard some of it before and I swear I heard part of it muttered in the tavern before you started stabbing people," Sybil replied breezily, examining her perfectly manicured nails. "Sounded sufficiently apocalyptic. The 'weeping in the dark' line was my own touch, though. I thought it was rather poetic."

​"It was a bit much," Pate noted. He knew she was lying and wasn't telling him everything. She never told him everything.

​"He bought it," Sybil countered. "He sheathed the iron, didn't he? Now we have the biggest, meanest killer in the realm escorting us right out of Master Vik's territory, completely for free. I told you my plans are always better. He's going to search out Vik and do our work for us."

​Pate allowed himself a tiny, invisible smirk in the dark. His finger throbbed like hell, he tasted copper and charcoal, and he was freezing, but Sybil was right. They had played the legendary Knight of the realm like a cheap fiddle.

​"This way and keep up, Elian," Cole’s gravelly voice drifted back on the wind, heavy with the weight of a tragic destiny. "The dark is full of teeth."

​Pate hastily wiped the smirk off his face and let his shoulders slump back into a posture of traumatized victimhood.

​"Y-yes, serr," Pate called out, his voice cracking perfectly. "Right behind you, serr."

"You should be grateful...after all had you just listened to me you wouldn't even be hurt." Sybil said in a sassy scolding tone as she leaned forward in his mind, her cleavage accentuated.

"Well you could show me how magical you really are and heal me..."

She made a pouty face and disappeared from his minds eye.

Pate let out a sigh of relief and followed behind the Knight. The last thing he wanted was Sybil crowding his thoughts when he was this close to whatever kind of crazy magical weapon the man was carrying.