Chapter 1376: A true knight(5)

When Vilon opened his eyes, he was flat on his back in the mud.

His oak shield, which he had raised just in time to catch the momentum of the thrust, was nowhere to be seen. In its place, his iron-gloved fingers gripped only cold air and wet grass. His head swam violently; the world spun around him in a dizzying blur, leaving him as the only fixed point in a sea of grey and red. He could hear the soft cry of the river water....he was so close.

Get up or die.

The voice in his head sounded like his father’s, harsh, relentless, calling him a fool as tall as a pine and twice as thick in the skull.

He blinked away the dark spots, and as his vision cleared, he caught the lethal glint of the spearhead driving straight down for his exposed chest, proably to finish what it started.

He threw his body to the side, rolling through the mire. Mud and wet grass clung to his mail.

Get on your feet or die. On your feet!

Groaning through gritted teeth, he forced his trembling palms and knees into the dirt. Where in five hells was his sword? How could a knight fight without steel in his hand?

A wave of sour bile rose to his throat, threatening to choke him inside his helm. He searched the mud blindly with his right hand. Suddenly, his left eye began to burn with a blinding, searing heat. Only then did he realize something thick and warm was trailing down his cheek. He licked his lips, tasting the salty sting of it.

Blood.

His fingers scraped against something hard. There!

Through the narrow sight-slits of his visor, he caught the blurred silhouette of a man stepping around his flank.

And then came the pain.

Hot , screaming hoarse pain.

He rolled like a dying hound, and the spearhead tore free from his side, its tip glistening red with his own blood.

I am going to die here. Gods above, I am going to die.

His heart sank into a dark, bottomless pit of terror.

The spearman stood over him, pulling his weapon back to set a final, thrust aimed straight for the knight’s throat.

Survival, just survival as raw as it could been surged through Vilon’s veins. He didn’t know how he found his footing, but he refused to end here. He lunged forward from the mud, reaching out his mailed left hand to grab the wooden shaft of the spear just below the iron head.

It was a desperation move. You never grabbed a spear blade. The spearman sneered and violently twisted the shaft, demonstrating precisely why.

Vilon felt the leather of his glove tear open like a gutted fish. The blade bit deep into his palm, but he held on.

Gods, his side burned! Blood spluttered through the seams of his armor with every ragged breath, making even the act of kneeling feel like lifting a boulder.

Could he even swing?

He thought that as he made to move.

He didn’t see the path of the blade, nor the steel itself. He squeezed his one working eye shut, and when he snapped it open, his longsword was buried deep in the spearman’s unprotected thigh. The blade had sliced through flesh and vein, sinking just halfway of his edge. Even then , it was enough.

A thick, arterial fountain made a rush of crimson , Vilon would never have believed a human body could hold so much.

It spluttered down the man’s leg.

Through the deafening roar of ringing metal in his ears, Vilon registered the man’s shrieks. The spearman collapsed into the mud, clutching his spurting leg.

Vilon dragged himself to his feet, his chest heaving. The cold iron of his visor rested heavy against his bleeding cheek, making his head feel as though it were cast from lead. He wanted to strip the helm off, to throw it into the river and just breathe.

But the fight wasn’t done.

He looked down at his empty hands. He had left his sword wedged in the spearman’s thigh, and he couldn’t bring himself to bend down and retrieve it; his side threatened to tear open completely if he leaned over.

My dagger, Vilon thought frantically, his mind scrambling as he tried to remember left from right. His left arm hung useless and bloody at his side. All he had left was a miserable hunting knife tucked into his belt.

If the gods are merciful... if they possess a shred of grace... Logen will run.

He turned his head slowly, only to see a shadowy figure shrieking as it charged through the mist straight at him.

The gods were not merciful.

He met the charge head-on,praying it came true, for he could do nothing else.

Drawing his dagger with his right hand and thrusting it forward with everything he had left, was all the prayer he had in him. The narrow blade rammed through , sinking deep into the target’s chest. A sharp exhale of trapped air hissed from the attacker’s lips, followed by a soft, pathetically fragile whimper.

...a whimper?

Vilon looked down, his heart shattering into a thousand pieces.

It wasn’t Logen.

It was the boy. The green, terrified youth who had just been weeping in the grass, now staring up at him with wide, dying eyes, pinned to Vilon’s dagger.

Before Vilon could pull the blade free, a wall of iron and wool slammed into him from the side.

Logen came roaring in where the boy had failed, crashing into the wounded knight like an avalanche. The old mercenary hooked Vilon by his breast, lifted him bodily off his feet, and slammed him down into the hard, freezing earth.

"No—" was all Vilon had time to choke out before Logen crashed down upon him like a fallen oak.

Vilon’s spine cracked against a stone.He whimpered at the pain.

He felt every single drop of air leaving his lungs, leaving him gasping silently at the grey sky. For two agonizing seconds, he felt as if he were drowning.

I am dying, he thought, tears finally hot against his bleeding eye. I can’t breath. I can’t breath!

He lay pinned under the assailant’s weight, his throat locked tight. Once, twice, he tried to pull in the air. On the third frantic attempt, his lungs yielded.

Sweet, cold winter air rushed down his throat, burning like fire, but reviving him all the same.

By the time Vilon got his lungs working again, the old mercenary was already laboring above him, his face twisted into something demonic as he went scooping at his death.

Logen dropped his broadsword into the mud, drew a long dagger from his belt, and drove it down with all his weight.

Vilon yelped and cried.

The narrow steel bit straight into his chest, punching through a seam in his harness just below his neck. Pain exploded across his collarbone, hot and blinding.

"YOU OWE ME A WHORE, SER!" Logen shrieked maniacally, his four yellow teeth bared as he hauled the red blade back up. He was laughing, in a breathless cackle that sprayed bloody spit across Vilon’s visor.HIs tongue was long and dirty.

He was a monster, and like one he fought.

Terror, absolute and suffocating, seized Vilon by the throat. Weeping, his heart hammering like a trapped bird against his ribs, he struck out wildly with his right fist. He had no steel left, only his gloved hand. He smashed his gauntlet into Logen’s ugly, upturned nose once, twice, but it felt like punching a solid boulder. The impact jarred Vilon’s own arm to the socket.

Logen merely hissed. He pinned Vilon’s left shoulder into the mud with one heavy knee, raised the dagger again, and drove it down.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The point failed and succeeded in rapid, horrifying succession. It skittered off the steel, slipped into his side, tore through his shoulder. Cold iron bit into flesh, over and over, until Vilon couldn’t tell where the blade ended and his own screaming nerves began.

Panic turned his blood to ice.

He was being butchered like a pig in a pen.He was dying like a pig.

’’No....’’ he moaned weakly.Suddendly sharing what Martha had felt before he had came. Difference was there would be no knight to save him now.

But he did not regret it. He did not.

Instead he fought back.

Because Vilon’s arms were longer, he tried to reach up in sheer desperation, trying to gouge at the man’s throat, but he lacked the leverage to tear him off. So he simply battered at the madman’s face with his fist, striking again, again, again, fighting for a single inch of air, a single breather.

That only seemed to make Logen angrier. The old brute raised the dagger for a final, heavy plunge aimed straight for Vilon’s exposed throat. As the blade descended, Vilon swung his armored forearm upward with everything he had left.

CLANG.

Leather l struck steel. The dagger flew from Logen’s grip, spiraling through the freezing air to vanish into the tall grass.

Through the haze of his own blood and tears, Vilon let out a wet, breathless smile.

It died soon.

Logen roared in fury, threw his head back, and slammed his forehead straight into his face.

The heavy iron helm absorbed the brunt of the blow, leaving Vilon unharmed by the strike, but the sheer force of it pinned his head back into the mud and made his head swim.

Before Vilon could recover, Logen’s filthy, thick fingers wrapped around his throat.

Now. Now it was that he was suffocating.

Vilon thrashing became frantic, helpless. He slammed his gauntlet into the side of Logen’s head, but with only one arm free and his side torn open, the blows were weak as that of a child, glancing off the mercenary’s heavy skull as a stick would have.

Desperate, he reached up with his thumb, trying to drive it into Logen’s eye socket, but the old dog knew the trick; he jerked his head back out of reach, and laughing all the while he tightened his stranglehold until the cartilage in Vilon’s throat groaned.

The world began to dim. The dark treeline, the grey winter sky, the bloody grass,it all bled together into a murky, pulsing shadow. The roaring in his ears grew quiet, replaced by a strange, heavy stillness.

His mind began to drift, floating away from the cold iron and the agony in his side.

Owen, he thought softly. Be safe, lad. Run fast.Run from this world. Run from this pain.

Above him, Logen was grinning down through the haze, his dark, crazed eyes watching the life drain from the knight’s face.It was a horrible thing to see after death.

And right there, under the looming shadow of death, Vilon found himself , against everthing , smiling back beneath his iron.

He was terrified, yes. He was bleeding out in a ditch, killed by a dog over a denied bone on a nameless road. But as the dark closed in around the edges of his sight, a profound, unexpected warmth filled his chest.

As short and miserable as his life had been, born a bastard to a terrible man, wandering the roads in rusted mail, these last few months had been real. He had known true honor. He had protected a woman who needed him. He had known a friend in Owen.

As brief as it was, he had found his happiness. He was dying a good knight.That was all it mattered.

He smiled as his eyes closed with a final tear.

The cold winds above roared as his body went in agony, and then down to sleep.

The winds roared even harder and louder.

Why, it sounded just like the howling of wolves.....