#237
There are so many versions of some stories.
Especially when a prospective to the title of The Pledge is
screwing with reality in Utah.
She did not know what to do. Would you? Yes, she was
frightened. Bet her life right down to her feet she was scared. Her arms were
shaking so badly they ached. This was fear on a level most people won’t ever be
faced with.
She was tired also. Her knees where holding her up only by
the fact that the wall she had backed against was holding the rest of her up,
but through the fear and the fatigue there was something else there.
She held her sword with its shinning green blade up with
both hands to try and keep them at a distance to help her not only catch her
breath but also just get a few moments to think.
Everything happened so fast when the battle broke. One
minute she was preparing to be on the training grounds of Camelot and the next
she was being hunted through the old ruins in the Mardock Forest by a group of
vampires who were part of a bigger army attacking the city.
See no army attacked Camelot. It just didn’t happen. No one
attacked Camelot itself, the outer lands yes, maybe, but not the city. This was
one of those things that did not happen in life that just should not be
happening to those living the events. At least that is the way the person
living the events think.
The vampires basically came out of nowhere, just as vampires
tend to do. She was cinching up her horse’s saddle when the first strikes of the
attack started.
Alone in the stables outside of the cities walls is where
she found herself. This is the place knights in training are required to stable
their horse but also where the first blood was drawn in this sudden war that
erupted in The Kingdom Of Merlin’s Watch as the underworld calls Camelot.
The first one to strike at her and maybe the first one to cut
the first blow of battle in the attack came from behind. From behind her and
out from the shadows in a corner of the stables hardly used because of reasons
not worth mentioning.
Her training made her turn swiftly drawing her sword when
she heard footsteps walking softly behind her but then there was no one there.
Could she have imagined it was the thought that crossed her mind first? The
training with Sir Gwain had become very intense of late and she was not
sleeping that well thinking about her Knighthood Trial; which was in a month’s
time.
But the thought of imagining footsteps was transformed into
a nothing thought when she turned back to her horse to find the animal she had
named as a child Cloud laying on the ground dead of a broken neck, though she
did not know the cause at this time. The huge in weight animal had been killed
and gently laid to the ground that made up the floor of the stable and the
thing that had done this deed was standing across from her in the stable with a
blood smeared smile on its face.
Her first thoughts when drawing her sword up into a combat
stance was how the atmosphere of the barn had grown cold. She had been told of
Vampires during her training with Merlin but never thought she would come to
see one herself. Face to face.
Merlin had told all Knights of Camelot during their
education training the story of how the vampires had been banished to a sand
land by himself, another wizard called Delta, alongside Knights of Camelot to a
place of eternal grit and fear.
The vampire in the barn with her was dressed from head to
toe in what appeared to be black bandages and from across the barn the young
knight in training could smell an odor most rancid that could only have come
from one direction.
This vampire at first stood in the very spot she first saw
him standing without any sort of movement at all. Vampires are very good at
being still, without a heartbeat to hold you back still is a natural state to
be in. But she was surprised when its first movements came in words spoken in
speech that were lined with an accent foreign to her, ‘A little pup knight of
Camelot I have here. Yes, a crusader in training. They send me out as scout to
sing them in to attack but I also find myself a snack.’
She pushed her feet and her sword forward a few inches,
‘Back to Hell with you, creature of Satan!’
The vampire stood straighter almost pride filled in the
words that came from the young knight directed towards him, ‘Oh, but sir knight
is it not one of the very sons of Satan who sits by the right side of your
King? I am just a humble pet of my master.’
‘Which Lord do you serve creature?’ she asked
‘My lord is not of Heaven nor Hell. He hates both just the same.
My lord is not one who speaks in riddles or plays games of sides. My lord and
master is eternal. He has walked with The Setting Sun and The Morning Star and
stood within the past and the future.’
She moved forward even closer to the vampire, ‘What is you
masters name so I can curse him after cutting off your head?’
‘My master is feared by the name of his birth place,
Russia.’
But as the name of the creature’s master left its bloody
lips the young knight in training began to hear screams in the night air and
found herself surrounded now by four other creatures of the night who appeared
from smoke which had drifted in through the stables side door without her
notice.
The vampires who surrounded her in a circle with the bandage
wrapped one wore not bandages but armor that shined as black as the Knights Of
The Round Tables armor shined white and in their hands they held swords that
curved like a demons tongue.
She stood with her sword still facing the smaller vampire
without much idea for how she would get out of this fight alive when charging
into the stables a familiar face came swinging sword in hand, taking off the
heads of two of the armored vampires before they could even move in speed.
It was Sir Gwain, one of the most noble of King Arthur’s
Knights and a founding member of The Round Table. He placed himself where he
could stand back to back with the young knight, ‘I thought you may need a hand
in the stables?’
Her arms seemed to almost grow stronger hearing his voice,
‘Yes, the low duties of a squire sometimes need the help of a High Knight.’
Gwain looked at her from the corner of his eye and smiled as
more armored vampires appeared in the stables from smoke that came from
nothingness.
The small vampire who had jumped up high into the hayloft
when Sir Gwain entered was now hanging by clawed feet from the loft, ‘Outnumbered
are the shiny knights of daylight.’
The battle started as the armored vampires charged the back
to back warriors. The banter was loud as the knights shouted while taking down
vampires. The knight in training having to cut off heads to vanquish the enemy
while human death wounds from Gwain’s green blade would take down the creatures
as if they were mere mortals themselves.
‘Fight on Knights Of Camelot for our army is eternal in numbers!’
shouted the small vampire from his lofty perch.
‘So is your mouth without the courage of battle worm?’
shouted back Gwain
The two warriors were getting tired and worried about what
was going on in the rest of the city as battle was heard loud from outside the
stables. As the number doubled of tongued blades flying at them Gwain was
caught with a cut across his face, a fatal blow, and he fell at the feet of his
daughter, his sword turning to plant roots and rooting itself to the ground as
his last breath passed away and it settled with the straw and dust on the
ground.
The daughter, the knight in training, had no time to grieve
because she was fighting for her life full of anger and hate already at
thoughts of friends and other family members who could be dying. As she began
to swing wild, knowing this was not a way to survive in battle she noticed that
as there were many vampires fighting her more were guarding the smaller vampire
as he watched in joy at the battle that was raging in the stables still hung
from the hayloft ceiling.
Joanshir the daughter of Sir Gwain and The Maiden Of The
Green throw her sword as hard as she could and it perched the heart of the
smaller vampire and it fell from the loft slamming to the floor with a huge
force for such a small creature. She did not have time to think of why this did
not kill this particular vampire but instead was glade her thoughts where right
as all of the other vampires in the stable turned their attention from her to
the fallen vampire in bandages.
She looked at her father for a second but could not afford a
second more. Joanshir grabbed her father’s sword, pulled it from the rooted
ground. It changed back to its green blade form as she gripped it, and she
dived out a side stable door facing The Mardock Forest and ran for the trees in
thought to gather her wits before heading back to battle and defend the city
her father loved and died for.
The Mardock Forest was a place by Merlin’s own words where
the pain of the future was polluting the past. But all the things Merlin has
said that is wise is out distanced by the things he has said that just confuse
most of The Knights Of Camelot, and though Joanshir has learned much from
Merlin she also has grown to take everything that comes from his mouth with a
grain of untrust. Most Knights think along the same as her and almost all have
taken Merlin’s words as a warning and stayed clear of the forest. All but her
father who took up the charge of protecting it from the enemies of Camelot.
Thus was his duty and that of all he trained, so she knew actually where to
head in her mad sprint away from blood hungry vampires.
Deep in the center of the forest stood very old and out of place
ruins. Out of ordinary for the place the lands the ruins sat on. Some of them
appeared normal to a person of the time to be the ruins of what once was a
small castle but other parts of the ruins where beyond understanding to the
smartest of this time and place but these things to be state were not of magic
but of our time.
As in you and me dear reader.
There were rusted husks of jeeps from The Korean War, tanks
from The Gulf War, and armaments used during the American Revolutionary War.
Joanshir also loved the forest beyond the belief of even her
father. She saw it as wonder and adventure she could touch. As a child or adult
it also felt safe but as she ran towards her former safe place she started
hearing soft running footsteps behind her.
These were the footsteps of the dead.
Jumping over a wall made of materials she had never seen
elsewhere she began crawling through a tunnel she had found when she was in her
youth and when she was smaller because she is squeezing her way through the
tunnel right now with a little difficulty.
The tunnel led to an armory her father had built up. The
armory was mostly a collection of sort for him to stare at but all fully
functional and ready for battle if needed. Jumping down from the crawl space
entrance tunnel her mind was racing. Her father used an entrance that led down
from the castle archery area.
Her father is now dead.
She quickly learned that without a torch the armory was
quite dark but the green glow from her father’s sword kept her from tripping
over anything. Above her head she could hear feet moving about and loud thuds
hitting the ground. A battle is raging above. Grabbing a small cross given to
her father by Merlin, bags of crystal stones, and a few more daggers she headed
back up the crawl space.
Emerging from the small entrance she heard silence. No
swords clashing, no armor splitting. Turning slowly she felt her heart twist
and started to speed up the beats and it pounded within her chest as she saw
the battle scene that she heard from below ground. Twelve Defender Knights dead
and standing among the noble bodies are six armored vampires. They turned at
once spotting her and started their charge forward.
Joanshir backed up. Seeing the bodies lying there may have
been the last straw for her spirit. She backed up stumbling over her own feet
and fell backwards against a left standing wall in the ruins. The armored
vampires surrounded her. She pushed her sword out and tried to catch her breath
thinking of nothing but the fact that her moment of death seemed to be
approaching.
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just don’t ever pay attention to unless it is pumping their own horn.
An Original Publication of System* Publishing,
a Tin Universe book published by System*Publishing, a
division of System*Productions, Melbourne, Florida. This book is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead or living dead, is entirely and very much
so in the coincidental.
Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2015, Brian
C. Williams, System*Productions. Tin Universe Daily, and
all related titles, characters, and elements are trademarks of System*Productions.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever. While unauthorized reproduction is sometimes
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Written by Brian C. Williams
Edited by Brian
C. Williams
Any Additional
Photography by Stainless Photography
Cover Digital Work by 74 Images
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