The Knight Who Knew My Name

That night began like most others. Rain tapped steadily against the window with a flash of lightning and the sound of thunder filling the silence of the city. A small silhouette moved toward my door. I reached for my revolver out of habit and took a drag from my cigarette, not knowing if it would be my last. A soft knock came; a figure in a soaked trench coat stepped into my office. Water dripped onto the floor, already forming a puddle.

“State your business.” I said, my voice stern and cautious.

The small figure finally lowered her hood and I noted long scarlet hair as her green eyes met mine. She had a nervous gaze and was trembling - whether from the cold or something heavier I did not know.

“My name is Ruby.” She said in a soft spoken voice.

Fitting for someone with that shade of hair. I thought to myself, as I lowered my revolver onto the desk.

“What can I do for you, Miss Ruby?”

“Well, that depends. Are you the famous know-it-all detective Nathan that I’ve heard so much about?”

“You're looking at him.” I muttered, slightly disgruntled.

We talked about her older brother, Tom, who hadn’t been seen for three months. Apparently, he was some hotshot journalist investigating a scientist named Dr Russ Cooper. Dr Cooper had lost his wife and daughter to the Spanish flu recently. Ruby mentioned that Tom was last seen near a dingy sewer entrance, underneath the crossing of 63rd street and Lincoln. I leaned back in my chair, the springs grinding. Three months missing meant only three possibilities: he's dead, he’s good at hiding, or (most intriguing) someone wanted him gone.

“63rd and Lincoln…” I tapped my cigarette on the edge of my ash tray. “That housed a well known underground bar until the new mayor cracked down on it since he wasn't getting a piece of the pie. What was he doing down there?”

Ruby looked a little uneasy, wringing her hands together.

“He said Dr Cooper was moving equipment. I told him it sounded crazy.”

In this city, truth and crazy go hand in hand. I stood up to grab my leather coat, stiff and riddled with ash. Her eyes widened and filled with excitement.

“So you’ll take the case?!”

I grabbed my hat and flipped the switch off.

“I already have.”

The slick pavement and flickering lights on 63rd and Lincoln greeted me like an old friend. The sewer reeked of the obvious mixed with despair. I turned my flashlight toward the rusty entrance. Something glistened on the ground, just a few feet away. As I got closer, I recognized it as a press badge. I read the name: Tom Rearden.

“Alright, Tom,” I muttered as thunder hurled on, “Let’s find out what Cooper wanted with you.”

I followed the tunnel deeper, my flashlight cutting through the dark. The air thickened the farther I went on and the walls changed from metal piping to brick. That's when I found the door. No rust, no profanity, just clean metal hidden deep in this filth. Someone did not want this door found. I forced it open. Steam immediately surrounded me, my eyes taking a moment to adjust against white lights. Rings of metal surrounded a glowing core that was pulsing faster and faster. Paper littered the floor, covered in equations, dates, sketches, and at the center of it all, a picture of a woman and a young kid. Dr Cooper stood at the controls.

“You're late!” He exclaimed, without losing focus on what he was doing. I glared at him. “Where’s Tom Rearden?!”

Cooper grinned but there was nothing human about it.

“Tom asked too many questions…” As he walked across the lab, he tapped on a giant, fluid filled tube with someone inside it. “Tom was the last piece of the puzzle needed to energize my machine. The world has taken too much from me!” He picked up the photo, my revolver fixed on him.

“My family was taken from me and I will do what I must to get them back, no matter the cost!” He shouted, spit flying from his mouth as he reached for a lever. Before I could even pull the trigger, a bright blue lightning filled the room as I faded into unconsciousness.

When I awoke, I felt like I had been hit by a ton of bricks. No longer was I in the sewer - just mud, smoke, and the sound of men dying surrounded me.

A horn blasted through the air, followed by a “CHARGE!!!”

Steel clashed as I staggered to my feet to find that I was standing in the middle of a battlefield. Knights charged and prayers were spoken. So far, nothing too different from what I had seen in war before. The ground shook as a massive shadow descended from the clouds.

Is that a dragon? I fired my revolver out of instinct. A direct hit, but the beast just roared, fire spewing from his mouth. A sword flashed and a shield raised, deflecting the flame.

“Stand your ground!” A voice shouted. The man standing next to me had battered armor, his shield now scorched, his eyes steady and ready to kill.

“I am Sir Arryn the Admirable,” he said. “And unless you wish to die, fight.”

That was how I met the knight who knew my name.

He slew the dragon with a double edged spear where my bullet had pierced it. He brought me back to the castle and introduced me to the king. The king said that I would be under Sir Arryn’s charge. The townsfolk called me a cursed man, forgotten in time. Arryn did not care. We fought together for weeks against hordes of enemies and against fear itself. I had almost forgotten about my own troubles and my past life and felt like I was starting to belong.

One night we sat by the fire sharpening our swords and nursing our battle wounds. “Why don't you use your fireball?” Arryn asked quietly, pointing to my revolver.

“I only have 5 fireballs left and I already have an enemy I want to use them on,” I explained.

“I pity the man who dares cross paths with the likes of you.” Arryn laughed.

He suddenly seemed somber. “I always thought that one day people might say that about me.”

“Sir Arryn the Admirable doesn’t put fear into the hearts of men?” I chuckled.

Arryn then told me about his past trials and how he went from being a bastard to rising through the ranks and becoming the king's most trusted knight. He never knew his father. His mother worked at a brothel and the type of men that frequented that establishment never looked twice at the son of a brothel worker. His mother died when he was twelve years of age and the brothel keeper had no use for a scrawny boy who could hardly carry his own weight. She sold him to a dishonored knight who needed a squire to enter a tournament and regain his honor. During their adventures, the knight became like a father to him, slowly training Arryn in the ways of knighthood.

“One night I asked him how he became dishonored and lost his title.” Arryn said, staring into the flames.

He told me how the knight had lost his title by disobeying an order. The order was to burn down a brothel simply because the lord of the land was rejected by the brothel keeper for mistreating the women. The knight had gotten into a fight to protect the brothel and ended up killing the lord, but no charges were made, simply lands taken and title stripped.

“He fell in love with one of the women, although he could not recall her name, just what she looked like. Blond hair, blue eyes and a smile like the warmest spring, he told me.” Arryn smiled sadly.

“Meridah was her name. She was my mother. She died only six winters before I met the knight.”

Arryn proceeded to tell me that after years of training, they finally went to the tournament. The crowd booed as they saw the knight enter the arena.

“He was doing great on his way to reclaim his honor.” Sir Arryn continued. “But the last event was jousting, and I suspected something was wrong with the opponent’s pole. It split and lanced into the dishonored knight and he bled out. I rushed to his side holding him for his final moments. The crowd roared with laughter as he was dying. The lord of the land said to me, ‘A fitting end for someone who disobeyed me.’ I proposed to finish the tournament in the knight’s stead. The lord laughed at me, ‘Who are you to propose such foolishness to me?’ he asked me. I told him I was the knight’s son from the brothel and I took his name; I had the right to finish and reclaim his honor and be knighted.

‘Very well.’ the lord told me. ‘Let’s make this quick, I don’t want to miss supper.’

I put on the knight’s armor, which was a bit big at the time, and I fell off the horse. They all laughed at me like they laughed at my father, but I got back on. Finally I was ready for one last joust. Needless to say, my opponent lost and I showed him mercy. Although he did not deserve life, I let him keep it. For what kind of person would I be, if I had done the same as was done to my knight? You remind me a lot of him, Nathan, a lot indeed.”

I could tell this was the first time Arryn had opened up to anyone in a long time, and with a quavering voice, he called me his brother. That was when I finally opened up about my own experience with war. The trenches, the gas, the rotting, decaying bodies infested with rats. And out of nowhere, I told him the one thing I never told anyone. About the dying boy who called for his mother and for God when I was holding him trying to stop the bleeding as he looked at that blue sky with shells falling all around us as he passed.

“We called that the Great War.” I mused. “The war to end all wars. But the screams and memories are all that came from it. Some Great War…. Do you not think that is God’s way of punishing us?”

Arryn stared into the fire, “I believe that surviving only means that we still have a purpose. We have the privilege of carrying the memories of the fallen and we have their names with us for eternity. Only when we forget them are they truly gone.”

The day came when we were on one final mission to kill the mother of all dragons; to finally bring peace to the land. At first light, smoke came from the mountain, choking the air. The mother dragon struck hard, her tail crushing stone, her flames turning men into ash.

Arryn threw his spear, wounding the beast as I cut at her wings to stop her from wreaking havoc. Arryn then grabbed his sword and drove it into her side. The mother dragon shrieked and turned toward me. In that instant I knew nothing but death waited for me; there was no escape.

As if in slow motion, Arryn jumped in front of me. The dragon lifted its razor sharp claws and slashed at Arryn, there was no doubt, beyond saving.

Without hesitation, I grabbed his shield and used one of my “fireballs” to shoot the dragon through one eye and out the other, finally slaying her.

I rushed to Arryn’s side, holding onto him for what I knew would be his final moments. “Brother, just rest.”

“Do not forget your purpose, brother Nathan. You saved the lives of all these men. Be true to who you are.” He gasped, as he pointed to my chest. He smiled one last time and looked up at that big beautiful sky. Then he was gone.

As everyone feasted and celebrated our newfound peace, I walked around the field where I first met Sir Arryn. Several people congratulated me on my recent knighthood, calling me Sir Nathan the Forgotten.

I laid down in the exact spot where I woke up all those months ago. When I looked up at that starry sky, I saw a shooting star and made a wish. I wish I may, I wish I might, get the wish I wish tonight. The ground suddenly opened up and swallowed me whole, darkness surrounding me. I awoke back in the lab. Disoriented, I looked around. Ruby had opened Tom's incubator but he was laying on the floor with blood pooling around him. Dead.

“He came between me and my family!! I did what I had to do!” Dr Cooper said.

“You murdered him!” I yelled. Cooper reached for the controls again but this time I was ready. My “fireball” hit him first. He stumbled back into his device, and flesh fell away from bone until he was nothing but ash. The device then began to crumble in on itself as I turned to Ruby.

“We need to get out of here!” I shouted, picking up Tom’s body and running to the entrance. “It’s gonna blow!”

Ruby followed, tears still streaming down her pale face.

We barely escaped with our lives. Sirens filled the air. The police questioned us about what happened, but of course I kept the time travel thing to myself. I didn't need to get hauled off to the nearest looney bin. Ruby and I had a small funeral service for Tom.

Years passed and Ruby and I actually got hitched. We eventually had two boys named Arryn and Tom. One night, as Ruby was putting the boys to bed she was reading a book she had bought. It was about knights. One was named Sir Arryn and it was all about his adventures in slaying dragons with his friend and brother, a man known only as Sir Forgotten. I stood there, tears streaming down my face as Ruby comforted me.

I learned through the years that time does not heal all wounds but it does give us a chance to find a purpose and to honor the dead. And in this time, as in any, I believe that Sir Arryn, the knight that truly knew my name, would be honored with my purpose.