What follows is the final installment of The Green Knight, written for the #SwordsofStValentine event. Please enjoy.

Not All Knights Draw Swords

For the first time in a good long while, Robert Mayhawk found himself in the undesirable position of having to choose his battle. It wasn’t that there was a real question in his mind as to where he was needed most. The Breacher was one of the deadliest of the creatures born from what men called the Blight, and the one that the remaining wall guards were least equipped to deal with unaided. That the surviving Reaper had momentarily escaped into the settlement was a complication - but a Reaper was not immune to bullets. Besides, whatever else he knew about Waterbury, he knew that Ajax Clarke was there. That counted for a lot. More, certainly, than the young pathfinder realized. Of course, it would count for precious little enough if the boy got himself killed, so Mayhawk would have to get to work.

“Hillman!” he shouted across the carpet of Hunter and Reaper parts. “Your guns won’t make a dent in this thing’s hide, so don’t waste your bullets. Focus all your fire on the tendril mass and keep it disoriented for me.”

The head of the wall guards called back, “We can do that. But…where will you be?”

Mayhawk adjusted his grip on his sword. “I’m going to take it apart. Then, I’m going to make sure that other vermin doesn’t commit any mischief inside your settlement.”

As he spoke, the blade rekindled in a white glow like ethereal fire. The fire moved up the hilt of the sword and, without burning first engulfed his hand, and then coiled up his arm to the shoulder. The cold fire was mirrored in his eyes as he glowered at the behemoth from under the brim of his black hat, and his teeth were bared in a rictus that was half smile and half snarl.

“Well now, offspring of the Zarvan,” he purred, “allow me to introduce myself. I am Robert Mayhawk, though if you like you may call me ‘Bob.’ The name ‘Mayhawk’ may be familiar to your kind, although the language was different the last time I met one of you on the battlefield. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.” He lifted his glowing appendage above his head. “This is Galatine. Allow me to make you better acquainted.”
Then he sprang forward toward the Breacher.

---

Ajax sprang back, breathing heavily. The Reaper’s bulk landed a heartbeat later, supported by its remaining four legs, where he had just previously stood. The fight had been going well up to this point. He was able to stay out of range of the Reaper’s more deadly appendages, although some close calls had left a handful of scratches and shallow cuts. Ajax dismissed them - they weren’t bleeding enough to cause a problem.

Meanwhile, he had been able to draw the Blightspawn away from both the Long Hall and from Sarah, back toward the treeline. Some well-placed shots at exposed joints had relieved the creature of several of its legs, making it somewhat less nimble to boot. To top it all off, Ajax had managed to land some shots squarely in the tendril body. Smoke still curled from the several craters gouged by the incendiary rounds.

Ajax leveled his left-hand gun and squeezed off a shot in the direction of one of the remaining legs. The job would be far easier - not to mention safer - to complete if his adversary was incapable of chasing him. The bullet impacted at the joint of one of its “knees” with a satisfyingly wet crunch, followed by a sizzle as the heated round cooked the loathsome flesh from the inside out. The Reaper shrieked and staggered back in an effort to keep weight off the weakened limb, but it was simply too late for such maneuvers. There was too much mass and not enough healthy legs to spread it over. The joint gave with a sickening sort of squelch, sending the creature listing to one side.

He re-holstered the weapon and with a few taps had the chambers replenished with the detonating rounds while he watched his enemy. Were it not for the jerking motion of the remaining portion of the tendril body, he would have assumed the thing was dead. As it was, though, he kept watch, certain that there was some trickery ready to be deployed against him. The oral history of the Freehold was clear that the Blightspawn had no individual brains - or, really, any other identifiable organs worth mentioning - though the cunning they exhibited, both in groups and individually, belied the notion that they were without intelligence.

Suddenly, the Reaper was in motion again. It lurched upright, having found a distribution of weight that allowed it to remain relatively stable on its feet. That didn’t surprise Ajax. He expected that the beast would find a way to pull itself along with nothing but a single leg, so long as it was available to it. What did surprise the Freeholder was the new appendage that sprouted and grew, vine-like, from the monster’s trunk. It was at least nominally prehensile as it whipped around in a frenzy, growing longer and longer. What really concerned Ajax, however, was what was on the end of this new, tentacular menace - a bulb, roughly the size of a man’s fist, from which projected a wicked-looking stinger. Then, there was another tentacle and another. Within moments, the Reaper was at the center of a writhing mass of dozens of whipping limbs, each tipped with its own bulbous stinger.
The Reaper shot one of the things in Ajax’s approximate direction. He side-stepped the attack without effort, and the sting lodged squarely in the trunk of an oak behind him. He fired two rounds from his right-hand gun as a counterattack; the impacts severed about half a dozen of the tentacles where they emerged from the monster’s trunk. Then he looked back at the tree, and his heart dropped into his stomach. Spreading from the point of impact, an increasing number of filaments of some substance that was disconcertingly similar to the matter that comprised the Blightspawn was enveloping the tree.

He turned back just in time to dodge away from a much more precisely-aimed strike which ended up at his feet. The grass drained of color, and more filaments spread from the point of impact. He looked up at the sightless head of the Blightspawn. All of the surviving tendrils hung serenely in the air - pointed at him.
He fired.

---

Robert Mayhawk’s dominant emotion at the moment was aggravation. Dealing with the Breacher had not been optional. It was effectively un-killable with anything the settlement had short of artillery munitions, and left to its own devices would have happily flattened the entire wall and everything inside it. And that wasn’t counting the various glands that served as biological flamethrowers, acid sprayers, and nerve gas dispensers. No, Mayhawk reflected as he plunged Galatine’s glowing blade upwards into the monster’s belly and started running from its back toward the front, following the Reaper and ignoring the Breacher would have resulted in unacceptable loss of life.

That didn’t mean that there weren’t still risks. The women and children of the settlement would be congregating at the communal shelter point. However, until they were actually in the shelter, they would be easy pickings for the Reaper. Of course there were other soldiers in the settlement besides the ones in his line of sight, but they would be actively guarding the other three walls, not the center of the settlement. The only soldier that Mayhawk could count on being at hand when the Reaper appeared was the Clarke boy - and Ajax being alive was a fairly fundamental point of the entire excursion.

As he reached the front of the Blightspawn’s trunk, Mayhawk wrenched Galatine free and leapt to the right, delivering a severing blow to the foreleg before bounding clear of the collapsing bulk. The instant the Breacher hit the ground, the Freeholders’ machine gun emplacements finished the destruction of the tendril body. The creature never rose again. Mayhawk looked to Hillman to see if he needed further assistance. The head of the wall guards shook his head. All would be in hand from this point.

It wasn’t hard to figure out which direction the Reaper had gone. Limbs and treetops snapped off, showed the bearing clearly, and trampled ground plants indicated landing spots. It was, as Mayhawk suspected, a bee-line to the center of the settlement. Then came the clarion call - the sound of .45 magnum shots, one after another. He gathered himself, and with an inhumanly powerful leap, followed the path of the Reaper. With his off hand, he felt beneath his duster for the hilt of the other weapon he carried, and hoped that he wasn’t arriving too late.

---

Things were not looking promising from where Ajax stood. There were literal piles of the stinging tentacles piling up around his battlefield with the Reaper, and he had no problem blowing them off the trunk of his immobilized adversary. There were, in reality, two problems. First, the Reaper was able to regrow tentacles very quickly; and dealing with those was keeping Ajax from making any attacks on the creature’s head. Second, Ajax was running out of bullets. A pathfinder’s auto-loader was stocked with both incendiary rounds and standard rounds, evenly split across a 500-round capacity. He had tried to keep track of his usage and he was fairly confident of where he stood, but it would be…problematic, if his count turned out to be wildly off.

He leapt to his right as three more of the tentacles shot from the main mass. He returned with a shot from each gun. Six more of the appendages dropped to the ground - but new buds formed almost immediately. Trying to break the cycle, he fired a third shot at another cluster of tentacles, but leveled the fourth for the tendril mass. He scored a hit, but the time spent making the extra attack bore a cost. By the time he realized that a tentacle was laying at his feet, it had tripped him up and flung him on his back. His guns flew to either side with the force of the impact.

It was at that point, when Ajax lay on his back, winded and unarmed, that Mayhawk came barreling out of the woods. His right arm was engulfed in white flame and elongated as if it were a sword. He swung the limb in the direction of the Reaper as he reached the apex of his leap, sending an arched wave of blinding light into the beast’s body.

“You seem to have this reasonably well in hand,” the outsider remarked as he landed lightly beside Ajax and helped him to his feet. There was no hint of sarcasm in his voice, though his eyes sparkled with something approaching humor.

Ajax simply shook his head. “I would have been dead just now, had you not intervened. That’s twice in one day you’ve shown yourself to be more adept than I.”

Mayhawk clicked his tongue. The fire dissipated from his right arm, leaving him appearing as merely a man holding a sword. “I happen to have better tools, that’s all.” He glanced at the Reaper. It had not taken his blow well. Not only had the tentacles not regrown, but the tendril body had been destroyed. It was already falling apart, disintegrating.

“Actually,” he went on, “I could remedy that.”

“What are you talking about?” Ajax’s eyes shifted to Mayhawk’s sword. “It’s odd enough for a man to be running around with a…sword. Do you mean to tell me you’re carrying spares, simply to hand out?”

“About that. Do you recall when I mentioned that I had business in Waterbury?”

Ajax nodded.

“Well, that business happened to be…you. I belong to, let’s call it an organization. On occasion, we have vacancies that must be filled. I was sent to recruit you. I know what you’re thinking,” he went on, as Ajax’s face grew incredulous, “but I’m not kidding. Our head has some unique methods at his disposal for locating potential new members, and he dispatched me to find you.”

Ajax considered for a moment. “I can’t give you any kind of answer without knowing more, but that conversation should wait until we’ve dealt with these Blightspawn, should it not?”

“Oh, they’re dealt with. This fellow is the last of the raid, and you’ll deal with him soon enough. It’s funny,” Mayhawk regarded the younger man’s torn green coat and trousers with his sparkling eyes, “it’s been a very long time since I’ve worked with anyone even potentially of the caliber of a knight who went in green. The last time around - a very, very long time ago - was a bit contentious. I nearly lost my head.”

“'Knight’?” echoed Ajax, shaking his head. “Who are you? Who are you, really?”

“I told you,” Mayhawk answered patiently, “I’m called Robert Mayhawk. You can call me ‘Bob,’ if you like.”

Ajax pursed his lips. After a long pause, he nodded. “I’ll listen.”

Mayhawk smiled. “That’s all I ask.”

I hope you enjoyed this story. You may find links to all the installments of this story here, or see the individual parts at the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, & Part 4.