Chapter Text
Chapter 1
A Hymn for a Dying Knight
The cold nips at my limbs. It’s a temperamental feeling. My legs are numb and heavy from the snowfall. The snow is trying to pull me down to my grave. Six feet under is not where I plan to end; I must keep moving. My sword seems to grow heavier with each step, my armor feels like it's rusted, and my helmet presses against my skull. Irritating. Heavy. But I must carry on.
Warm blood keeps spilling out on my numb hand. The air around me smells of iron; I can almost taste the blood. The slit in my armor has become a cascade for the red ichor that pools out of my body. It hurts to breathe; the cold air feels like it's refusing to fill my lungs. My head swims, my vision is tunneling.
I stumble to a nearby tree to rest for a second. I lean on it for support; my whole body is shaking with pain. The bark feels coarse like sandpaper; it, too, seems to be barely surviving. My knees buckle, sending me tumbling into the snow. I try to push myself up, but pain sears into my side; it is almost blinding. I refuse to take Death’s hand into mine and let him guide me to wherever the dead souls go.
I refuse…
I must continue. I try to push myself up again. But pain shoots up my side, and I let out a cry of agony. I clench my teeth and grab onto the torso of the tree and hoist myself up. My legs weakly support my body. Hopefully, they won't fail me again.
My whole body throbs; walking is gonna be twice as laborious now. I regret letting myself receive the gift of rest. Now rest is all I will desire. I must ignore the pain. I pull off my helmet and drop it onto the ground. I have no use for it right now; the helmet makes me feel claustrophobic anyway. I reach for my gloves; they should be in the larp pouch that's on my belt. I took them off earlier because I did not want them to soak in the blood from my wound. I open the pouch only to find a huge tear in the bottom. All my coins and my gloves are gone…
How did this even happen? I bet the tear was created when I was impaled… I have no time for this, I must keep going. I’m afraid of too much blood loss, so I need to close up my wound somehow before I get going. I pull my knife and the larp pouch off my belt. And I begin to cut away at what's left of the pouch. Once I’m done, I lay out the strips of cloth on the snow. Then I slowly take off the cuirass.
“It is a laborious task to take off the cuirass by oneself. It usually requires assistance.”
The words echo through my head from a time when I was a squire. I recall being assigned to an old banneret. He was a strange man. A sudden bolt of pain in my side brings me back to the present. Just one more move to get the cuirass off. I pause to take a shaky breath, prepping myself for more pain. I quickly pull it over my head. I wince as pain sears my side. Well, I got the cuirass off… I lay it on the snow next to the strips of cloth. Now looking at the strips, I think they are too short to wrap around my body. That's a problem… Blood drips from my side, painting the snow with gore–my side is bleeding again.
The smell of iron returns stronger than before. I start to panic.
“Panic leads to irrational thinking, it is the worst thing for a knig-”
Shut up, shut up, shut up. I don't need him to haunt me from the grave. My head spins with adrenaline and panic. I grab a strip of cloth, I ball it up, then I shove it into the wound. I don't know what to think of the feeling of flesh. The wound feels soft, tender, and wet. It is also warm and squirms with movement. It is a grotesque feeling.
Blood coats my fingers and the snow. I pull my fingers out of the wound, the warm blood sticks to my hand like it's trying to pull me back in. I take a handful of snow and shove it in the wound with the cloth. That should stop me from bleeding out. My hands are shaking, and my legs feel weak. Breathing heavy, I lean on the side of the tree. The smell of blood keeps wafting up to my nose. My mouth fills with saliva, and I feel bile rise into my throat. I doubled over as my stomach lurched. My nose and throat burn with acid. I gasp for breath, only to lose it as my insides try to escape out of my mouth again. Undignified sounds spill out. All I could smell and taste was vomit now.
I gagged again, but there was nothing left except an acidic taste and shaking breaths. I kicked some snow over the pile of vomit. I hate strong smells. My cuirass is still lying in the snow beside me. The metal is probably going to be freezing by now. I reach for it and slip back into it. It feels cool to the touch; maybe the cold metal will distract me from the pain. I take one more look back at the mess I made. “Sorry,” it seemed to come out of my mouth automatically. A shiver ran down my spine. That was Brandr’s word.
“Say sorry, say it again, mean it this time, useless boy.”
He used to demand sorry when I ‘acted out’. In reality, I often forgot his ‘rules’. A gust of wind blew through the branches of the trees, and the forest was laughing, laughing at me. I clench my fists in rage, “Quit it, won't you!” The forest draws a sharp silence at my anger. Then I hear it- A voice. Not words. A breath, a breath I knew too well. The soft, disappointed exhale my mentor always gave when I wasn't enough. A soft “No” escapes my lips. “You’re dead, you’re not-” The forest bellowed again. Longer. Lower. Not quite human. I need to get out of here. I pushed myself past the trees. Anywhere, just get me away. But the forest didn’t follow. It watched.
〜
By the time the sky turned black, I had lost feeling in my hands. I finally managed to pull together a few fallen branches, more damp than dry. I scraped my knife against a piece of flint I found nearby. My luck seems to be turning around. The flame sputtered, catching, then glowing weakly. The fire was small, a trembling thing. Just like me. I curled close to it, arms cinched around my knees. The warmth wasn’t much, but it kept the shaking down.
The forest around me was a wall of pitch-black trunks and leaves. Nothing moved. Not even the wind. I felt like I was being watched. I told myself I was imagining it, but deep down, a little voice told me that I was wrong. Something shifted in the dark beyond the fire’s reach. A twig snapped near the treeline. A shape formed between the trees. I snapped my head up. At first, I thought it was just a pair of red embers glowing in the shadows from the fire. Too high off the ground to be embers. Too still. They watched me. I tried to shake off the feeling, but curiosity led me to keep staring. The embers blinked—two glowing eyes. My heart slammed into my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t look away. The fire popped sharply, and in an instant, the eyes vanished. Gone. No sound. No movement. Like they were never there at all, I stared into the dark long after, the fire crackling a little too softly now. I wasn’t alone anymore. I don't know if that terrified me…
…or comforted me.