The Hobbled Knight

He shambled along the derelict cobblestone path, the two shadows escorting him bore the silhouette of his rusted armour, but none of its tainted odour. The twin moons, Osandor and Ralendor, were both full once every three years, and tonight their reunion turned even the most mundane surfaces into dim mirrors of their brightness, making it one long day, or Allday, as it had come to be known over the generations.

The expected cacophony from nocturnal creatures was absent this Allday, though that was always the case wherever the yearning took he and his meandering rabble. Despite the brightness of day, the world was one bleak night to him. He could see the light, of course: they all could. Theirs, however, was a beacon shining in the distance. Forever in the distance. In a world of black and white, with shades of grey filling the in-between, it was the only colour he could see. It wasn’t a vibrant colour; the veil through which his spirit peered had seen to that. Muted, as all things were.

What was more important, however, was that he could also feel it. Beckoning. Calling to him. Guiding him. It was a blue light; a cold light, and he knew without knowing how, that it was what tethered his spirit to this ramshackle body he once again inhabited.

Feed. Fight. Follow. The words reverberated to the core of his being, repeating every few seconds, urging him onward. There were fleeting moments where he felt a reprieve from their commanding insistence, when the ephemeral memories of who he once was started to tease the edge of his consciousness, but then they were gone as if they never existed, replaced with the repetitive mantra: Feed. Fight. Follow.

The rabble he lead by virtue of being a few hundred metres in front, bore the hallmarks of an unlikely assembly from all walks of life. His army, as it were, was the definition of a motley crew: farmers, merchants, soldiers, beggars, nobility, young and old. Death cared not for age nor social status, and neither, it seemed, did the one who brought them back. Although his army included people who had died of old age, none were as old as his own impossibly ancient armour — intricately designed, battered, scratched, and partially corroded. He was also the only one who bore any form of weaponry as well; an arming sword was strapped into a gripped gauntlet.

One thing they all had in common with one another was the overwhelming stench of the corruption that lingered in death. Except him. His was the ever-present scent of the petrichor that foreshadowed his arrival, like arid soil under clouds begging to burst. It was accompanied by the hint of dew-laden moss whenever the air quickly rushed to fill the void left in his wake. Perhaps that’s why the others followed him.

He made his way through an open gate, as mindlessly as he made his way through his new life, and shambled towards a gathering of people.

‘You smell nice, deary,’ said a woman approaching the end of her twilight years, oblivious to the danger she was in. His mantra had ceased, though, and his yearning started to abate. There was another light in the distance, faint and orange and warm, and it filled him with — not emptiness — that was the cold light. No. Something else. He remained unmoving as it started to grow brighter. The cold beacon, his North Star, started to diminish.

‘…girl and went digging in the forest after a storm,’ she said. She was now shuffling alongside him, but her words were so faint, they seemed to be reaching him over a vast distance.

He tried to say something to the friendly woman. He wasn’t sure how, or why, but he was trying to warn her. To tell her to gather everyone and flee. But all that left his lips was a groan.

‘…storm off with her hands in the air, all exasperated like, and me da would laugh and ask if I made any for him!’ She laughed fondly at the memory his scent triggered, and she regaled him fondly because of it. The half-visor to his battered steel helmet was down, and obscured his partially decayed face.

The cold light of the beacon grew in intensity as the new warm light dimmed. Feed. Fight. Follow. The mantra had returned. He ended his groaning as all thoughts he was starting to form were once again suppressed.

He slowed his shambling to a stop, faced her, and brought the tip of his sword up to her belly. Not as quickly as expected for someone clearly trained in its use, but quicker than she could react. Shocked, she let out a cry as his blade entered her stomach, and then the realisation set in as his teeth sunk into her cheek, and she released a blood curdling scream. It should have been thunderous to him, with how close her lips were to his ear, but all he heard was a whisper. Muted by the veil.

Pandemonium erupted in fair. The zombie horde had arrived, and descended upon the revelers too stunned or slow to react. Some foolish, or brave, townsfolk tried to fight them off, or help others under attack while others fled.

He was still feasting on the face of the wretched woman when the guards arrived. They were ill-equipped to do any real damage to a knight, let alone an undead one, but they tried all the same.

A blow came, adding yet another dent to his helmet, and dislodging his face from hers. He came away with a strip of flesh in his teeth. He released her, letting her corpse fall limply to the floor, then raised his sword to strike at one of the guards. This one was nimble, and effortlessly slapped it out of the way. Two more blows came to his head, but were deflected by his helmet. At least they knew enough to target the brains for one such as he. A third came, and he caught the blade in his gauntlet with a vice-like grip. The young guard tried to pull the blade free: once, twice, and on the third attempt, stumbled backwards and then lurched forwards onto an awaiting sword thrusting upwards, as he pushed and pulled on the blade at the right moment.

He watched the life gradually flee the eyes of his enemy — his meal — despite the other two guards ineffectively chopping at him, and battering him with their shields.

The warm light grew brighter, drawing his attention. He watched as it forced the cold light to dissipate, the mantra faded along with it. None of the other zombies seemed to take notice.

He returned his attention to his enemy, only to see the empty eyes of a young man with his hopes and his dreams still well ahead of him, staring blankly back. He slightly furrowed his brows without even realising he could, and watched two more zombies fall upon the friendly woman he was trying to talk to moments before. He ignored the two guards attacking him as he withdrew his sword from the impaled young man, and shambled over to the feasting zombies. One swing was all it took, one swing of his sword with a vigor he never remembered having, as he drove his blade into their skulls.

The guards hesitated momentarily, then resumed attacking him.

He took their blows on his armour, and tried to speak to them, but he only managed a moan. They continued to attack. Their blows, whilst ineffective against his armour, did manage to knock him around. He tried to survey the mayhem the best he could. The other zombies still hadn’t noticed the new warm light.

He pointed in the direction of the carnage with his sword, and held up an open hand in surrender.

‘Gatec’ he said, with monumental difficulty. It wasn’t what he was trying to say, but he found himself feeling impressed with the result.

The two guards squared off against him and looked at each other questioningly.

‘What’d he say?’

‘I dunno - I don’t speak zombie.’

‘Gggatec’ he said again.

‘He spoke, though? Again? Don’t they just moan?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Just kill him.’

He brought his sword down on his forearm, the clang of metal on metal drew their attention. He did it again in a sawing motion, and shook his head. Then he sliced a nearby zombie’s corpse, nodded his head, and pointed his sword at some nearby zombies feasting on a slain dog.

‘Gatec!’ he said.

‘I think he wants us to kill other zombies?’

‘I guess we can’t puncture that armour with these toothpicks they issue us with,’ he said, examining his sword. ‘I’ll take care of those, you go find Captain Garrin and see if he can get us something to crack that one open with.’

He picked up the shield of the unfortunate young guard as he watched them leave, not caring about the meaning of their final words as the cold light returned, more fierce than before. The warm light shied away from its intensity. Feed. Fight. Follow.

He dropped the shield, stared blankly at the meal he had moments ago prepared with a single thrust to the heart, and knelt down to fill his belly. He ate as he watched those detestable guards kill members of his rabble. He had no conscious thoughts towards it, he never did when the mantra was in effect, but he just knew that when he was sated here, he would fight them, he would feed on them, and he would follow his beacon’s guidance to the next meal, adding more bodies to his army as he had done countless times before.

He took another bite from the young guard’s neck when the warm light blazed brighter than anything he had seen. Its intensity briefly outlined everything in a wonderful shade of orange, suppressing the greys that made up his existence. The cold light tried its best to burn, but it was sputtering and dwindling.

He stood, discombobulated, and let the partially masticated neck muscle fall from his mouth. He didn’t register the chaos around him, all he could see, hear, feel was the dying of his beacon. It felt like it dragged on for an eternity, this gradual sputtering of the flame, doing its best to withstand the gale that bore down on it, and when it finally died out, a sharp snap rang out, and echoed to the core of his being, where the mantra reverberated.

He could at once hear everything, and nothing. He could hear the sounds of the battle: the screams of the frightened and dying, the orders yelled from guards, the terrible groans of the endless undead, but all of which were also drowned out by the snap’s echo. The pain was unbearable, as if his every nerve were set ablaze. He could remember. He could think. He could do both of those things with the vivid clarity of a fresh dream upon waking from a sleep, only to become more elusive and intangible the harder he tried to focus on it.

After what seemed like an endless torment, the pain and the noise faded, and they were replaced with a new yearning. One to follow the warm light. A new beacon with no mantra. No repetitive words. No compulsion. No. Just a single sentence. Do what you do best, sir Terryn. Protect.