THE FINAL BATTLE

The knight awoke slowly as the dim dawning light shone through the stained glass window, illuminating the stark bare stone room in greens and reds and blues. His head ached. He stood unsteadily; a sudden wave of vertigo swept across him and he put out a hand to keep his balance. The interconnected rings of his mail armour rang softly as he straightened up and moved his arms and legs experimentally. Yes, everything still worked.

Another day, another day of battle against the Ghost King, always inconclusive, always with a sense of disappointment, of missed opportunity. But perhaps today would be different and he could rest from his labours. He had lost track of the time he had been engaged in this vain pursuit. Months? Years? And always, stalemate; a feeling of pointlessness took his heart and he would have wept had he been able to. But he was the last of his Order, once so proud and powerful. He thought back to the day he was accepted into their ranks – he had never thought he would be eligible – just a young man from a minor noble family. He had made friends and looked to the senior knights with almost worship. But they were all gone - disease, age, and death – mostly death – at the hands of the minions of the Ghost King. The paladins of his Order had always been few, too few to oppose such overwhelming force, and one by one they had been killed – in battle, or betrayed, or by poison from the hand of a trusted servant - until he was alone.

But the enemy’s forces had suffered too. Now the final enemy – the Ghost King himself – was all that remained. But the enemy was powerful, and had at his command magics that mere strength and skill could not overcome. The knight had battled against him day after day for so long now; retreating at the end of each encounter to rest, draw breath and to try to create a new tactic that might, finally, result in the final defeat of the hated enemy. But each time the Evil One had found new means of defence, new spells that baffled the knight, and set each new tactic at naught.

Would today be different? He hoped so. He wanted to rest, to sleep easy, to have peace. He was tired, tired of the continual conflict, tired of the hopes of the world resting on his shoulders. Because if the Ghost King had even a few days’ respite, he would use it to cast spells which would create and summon from the nether regions more troops to conquer the world the knight had sworn to defend.

The knight picked up his helmet and carefully placed in on his head. It did not fit as well as it had when he first started this conflict – it was looser, and he had needed to increase the padding so it was tight on his head and would not move and block his vision. He girded his sword at his side, picked up his shield, and with a sigh of resignation walked to the door and down the narrow stone corridor toward the vast, heavily defended gate of the fortress. He was alone.

He looked to the North – there across a vast chasm was the Ghost King’s fortress, tall, dark, brooding, shrouded in mist and smoke. A long narrow stone bridge led across the yawning gap and he raised his head defiantly, his resolve strengthened. Perhaps today would be the day of victory – or of final defeat. He stepped upon the bridge and the Enemy was aware of him. A wall of flame erupted across the narrow bridge, the red-orange flames coruscating into the sky, black smoke wreathing it. But he ignored the flames – he had seen them before; a simple and paltry illusion. As he stepped through the blazing inferno the flames surrounded him, but he felt no heat, breathed no smoke. The illusion vanished as suddenly as it had come.

Without warning a huge wyvern appeared from the sky, stooping toward him, fangs bared, screaming shrilly, its tail waving sinuously from side to side. He raised his shield as the beast extended its claws, razor-sharp talons extended, ready to rip and tear. Then he laughed – another illusion, even less believable than the last. The beast grew thin, transparent at his scorn, and vanished.

But when he was halfway across the thin stone span, a storm of black cloud and driving wind arose. This was no illusion – the Ghost King was a weather-master, and could summon up storm and tempest at will. The knight felt the claws of the wind pulling at him, trying to drag him from his precarious stance on the bridge, to cast him into the rocky depths below, into the poisoned river which sluggishly flowed at the bottom of the chasm. He fell to his knees and crawled, holding tight to the uneven stones of the bridge. The wind tugged at his shield, which he had slung over his back when the wyvern disappeared, threatening to pull him away from his perch. But he continued, inch by inch, battling the gusts and eddies that pulled at him, this way and that, until finally he reached the relative safety of the other side of the bridge.

He stood and raised his head, taking his shield from his back and drawing his sword. ‘Come out, coward!’ he cried. ‘Come and face me!’

In response a giant ball of fire shot at him from a tower of the dark fortress. He raised his shield and the fireball splashed against it. The shield was of adamant sheathed in iron – proof against such a weapon.

‘Is that the best you can do?’ he laughed. ‘Come. Face me. Your weapons have failed. Let us settle this once and for all.’

But only silence came from the fortress. Its dark towers and massive, forbidding walls seemed to sneer at him, the last of his Order, one man against the dark magic of the most powerful lord in the world. For a moment he questioned himself. What could one man do against such evil puissance? But then he smiled. If he was alone, bereft of comrades, so was the Ghost King. All his henchmen, all his evil beasts and minions were gone, killed by the knight and his comrades over many years of conflict. All the enemy had left was himself - his own strength and his magical powers. And the knight had survived against everything the enemy had been able to throw at him. He sensed that his opponent was as tired of the conflict as he was himself, perhaps just as anxious to finally end it – victory or defeat, it no longer mattered which.

And suddenly a deafening sound from the fortress, and the tall, impenetrable gates, never defeated by any foe, began to open. A dark figure emerged – tall, sinister, menacing, covered in black armour. His helmet was a dark mask of metal, formed into the likeness of a ravening wolf; he carried a huge battle-axe, a halberd rather – a wicked spearhead, and a vicious blade behind the axe-head. The figure lifted the weapon, and for a moment the knight felt fear and doubt. But he gripped his sword and hefted his shield. The Ghost King had more weapons than the physical, and fear was the greatest of them. But it was only another weapon. The knight had felt fear before and bested it. He would not succumb to such a falsehood now. Let the enemy try, he would not succeed. If the knight were to be defeated, it would be from a real weapon of steel and iron, not an illusory one of mere deception.

He advanced toward the enemy. ‘So!’ he cried. ‘At last you appear, instead of cowering behind others, or trying to conquer by tricks and deception. At last you face me, who have hidden behind the walls of your fortress and never had the courage to confront me in your true form!’

‘You would not know my true form if you saw it, fool! I can assume any form I choose. Now is my time, and you will rue the day you had the temerity to oppose me. I will not kill you, you will not know the peace of death. You will know torment, eternal torment, in my deepest dungeons. I will laugh as you suffer; I will take pleasure in your pain – for years, for time without measure.’

‘Brave words from one who till now has been too cowardly to face me. First you must defeat me. And little by little over the years you have lost power, lost territory, until all you have left is this fortress and yourself. You will die, and the world will be rid of a great evil.’

A shrill scream came from the dark figure, a scream that echoed with all the sounds of the damned souls in hell. He rushed forward and swung the halberd, striking with the axe-blade. But the knight raised his shield, catching its edge under the shaft of the weapon so the sharp axe was powerless to do him harm. He swung his own weapon, catching the top of the enemy’s black helmet with a heavy blow that would have killed a lesser man. But the Ghost King was merely shaken, and stood back, momentarily stunned. He gathered his force and stabbed with the spear-blade. It pierced the shield and the enemy twisted the halberd and pulled at the shield. The leather straps in the knight’s hand broke and it was pulled out of his grasp.

But for a moment the enemy was encumbered by the shield pierced by his own weapon. He stepped back and the knight swung and swung again, battering at head and arm and body. The enemy seemed dazed, dropping his weapon, raising his hands to cover his head.

‘I yield!’ he cried. ‘I have lost, finally, after all this time, I have been defeated. Do with me as you will.’ He removed his helmet and revealed a face of grief and despair.

And to the knight’s astonishment it seemed that his enemy wept. And he found himself, for the first time in all his life, feeling sympathy for this being for whom he had only ever felt hate and fear. He extended his hand to raise his enemy, gripping his wrist to pull him to his feet.

But faster than a snake the Ghost King stabbed, with a dagger he had kept concealed, the blade piercing the iron rings of the knight’s armour, reaching hard into his chest. The knight recoiled and fell to the ground.

‘Fool!’ cried the Ghost King. ‘Weakling! You will never be as strong as I! You believe men are good, and that is your weakness. You will die slowly – but not before I have had my pleasure of tormenting you – weeks, months. I will take good care of you and you will plead for death to release you, and I will refuse.’

But the knight rose to his feet, and with his mailed fist he punched his enemy in the face. The Ghost King fell backward, and his hand closed around the shaft of the fallen halberd. He stabbed viciously at the knight. But his blow went astray, and the knight, furious at the betrayal, devoid of pity, struck off his enemy’s head. A great sigh went up, and the demon king seemed to shrink. All that was left was a body, like that of other men. No longer dreadful, no longer inspiring fear. He left it lying there, turned and walked slowly back over the bridge to his own domain.

He entered the gate, walked slowly down the corridor to the room with the stained glass windows, and lay down as he had been before.

‘Fool,’ he said to himself. ‘You never understood.’

A man appeared – robed, old beyond imagining, a white beard nearly reaching the floor.

‘He is dead,’ said the knight. ‘It is over. Now give me peace.’

The old man raised his arms, hands extended. ‘You have done all that was asked of you,’ he said. ‘I release you from the spell.’

The knight sighed and closed his eyes. ‘At last. After three hundred years I can rest.’

The old necromancer watched. A tear trickled down his cheek. ‘I am sorry I did this to you, my son. But you were the last. Now you can find peace.’

And slowly, gently, the flesh withdrew from the knight’s face, his eyes shrunk into their sockets, until all that could be seen was a skull. The iron mail rings of his armour turned to rust and dissolved into a brown powder as they fell. All that was left was a skeleton lying on the stone tomb. The old man turned and walked from the crypt.