The Last Paladin

THE WASTELANDS

(created by Thomas Denmark, Morgan Gray and John Wick)

1 ~ The Last Paladin

It begins in a tavern, and a stranger, coming in from the rain. It’s the mean kind of cold outside, the kind of cold that bows your bones and makes them ache. The stranger shakes the wet off his steaming cloak and looks at the faces that surround him. Their eyes are as frozen as the drowned earth outside. Their lips haven’t smiled, haven’t kissed, haven’t laughed for years. He knows these faces; saw them in the last town he stumbled across.

He looks to the man of the house. “Hot wine,” the stranger says. Rain drips from his beard, streaks of blond hiding between the gray whiskers.

“Let’s see your money,” says the wide-chested man behind the bar.

The stranger reaches under his cloak and the wide-chested man catches a glimpse of something. He thinks, What is that he has under that cloak?

The stranger pulls out a bundle of thick parchment, colored with inks made from a dwarven printing press. He unfolds one of them, as big as a man’s hand, and shows the wide-chested man.

“Dwarven or Haffun? Dwarven is no good.” “Haffun.”

“I’ll heat it up for you.”

The stranger grabs a chair and pulls it toward the fire. He takes off his gloves and holds his hands as close as he can. A moment later, he’s pulling off his boots. They hit the floor with wet flops.

A little boy, no older than ten, steps close. “What’s your name?” he asks with the voice little boys use. His father, a man who has forgotten everything about how to be a little boy, pulls his son back by the hood of his jacket. The boy’s body and head move in different directions, his chin hitting his chest, then snapping all the way back.

“You know better!” his father says. “Sit down and eat your food. Keep your mouth shut.”

The stranger looks at the little boy from under his hood and smiles. He pushes the hood back just a touch. “My name is Tal Tander,” he says. “And I’m no spook. No spectre. No foul luck wraith here to curse anyone. I’m just very tired and very wet and I’d like a sip of hot wine and a warm bed for the night. That’s all.”

When he finishes, the room fades back into silence. The only sound is the dwarven clock, ticking away on the mantle above the fire. Tal looks at it. Almost midnight. No wonder they’re so frightened, he says to himself.

The clink of a cup on the wooden table behind him tells him his wine is ready. He smiles before he turns and scoops up the cup. It’s hot under his fingers – especially since they’re almost frozen from the night outside – but he holds on tight. The calluses on his fingers keep the heat at bay. The wine goes down good. A little later, hot soup does the same. The vegetables are fresh and the meat is a blessing. “The last time I had soup, it was full of gristle,” he says to the wide-chested man. “This is good soup.”

The wide-chested man smiles. “The wife made it,” he says.

“Is the haffun enough to cover this fine meal and a bed?”

“More than enough. You could spend a month, if you liked.”

Tal shakes his head. “I won’t need to be here that long.”

The wide-chested man’s smile is as big as his breast. “Who are you, stranger? You’ve something under that cloak. What is it?”

Tal’s smile changes. He pushes aside the heavy cloak and pulls out what hides there. When the wide-chested man sees it, his face loses all its color. The little boy who was so curious to learn his name makes the same sound a cat makes when you kick it. His father’s sound is the same.

Tal takes the thing and holds it the way his teacher taught him. The wide-chested man almost stumbles on his own feet as he backs up. “You can’t – I mean – that’s illegal to have here. You can’t&”

“Play it?” Tal asks, running his fingers along the strings. The music fills the room and three people almost scream. Only the figure in the back doesn’t move. Tal’s been watching him. He’s not quite sure what to make of him yet.

“You’re a bard,” the father says, spittle escaping his lips.

“Yes,” Tal says. “I’m a bard.”

“You can’t play that here,” the wide-chested man says. “The shadows will hear. They’ll come.”

Tal changes his right hand and plays another chord. “And what if they do?”

“They’ll kill you!” the father shouts.

“Better to live for the truth than die for a lie,” Tal says. The father covers his son’s ears.

“They’ll kill us for listening!” the wide-chested man says.

A different chord this time. The people in the tavern nearly scream.

“The shadows have you,” Tal says. He speaks entirely to himself. “This is a dead town. The shadows ate its soul long ago.”

That’s when he starts playing the song. The first song his teacher taught him, long ago, before the shadows won the war. He sings the song, written when the world wasn’t cloaked in darkness. He fingers the chords that were old before the God of Justice met his end of a poisoned blade held by the Dark One. He sings words that were written when the world was still young and men believed good would always hold evil in check.

Back when men were ruled by their foolishness, not their fear.

The wide-chested man reaches back behind the bar to a thick rope and pulls with all his girth. Outside and above, a heavy bell rings. Tal doesn’t move. He continues singing his song, despite the bell ringing in the rain. He knows in a moment or two, the shadows will come and take him away. They will smash his teacher’s gift and tear out his tongue for singing songs. He’s a wanted man, after all. Ten thousand haffuns for his capture. Dead or alive.

All for singing outlaw songs and telling outlaw stories. Songs of what the world once was, and stories of how it could be again.

He’s almost finished with the second stanza when the door bursts open. Tal doesn’t run. He’s tired of running. Been running for twenty years now, ever since They murdered the world.

They move more like animals than men. In truth, they are no longer men. The shadow seed is in their throats, and it pulses and moans.

Tal looks up at one of them, his eyes catching the black bulge in its throat, the tendrils of the seed reaching down into its heart.

“I miss the dwarves,” Tal says. “Don’t you?”

The shadow doesn’t reply. The only sound it makes is the heavy, labored breathing they all make, as if the stuff inside them would burst out if the skin got old and weak. But shadows don’t get old and weak, they’re just shadows. It draws its long, curved sword. The steel makes a slick, slow sound as it comes free of its sheath. It doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t make any expression at all. Tal smiles. He laughs. He looks away from the shadow, back to the boy who asked his name.

“Dying for the truth is better than living for a lie,” he says. Just before the blade falls and &

& just before the blade falls and a hand catches it from behind. The hand moves as fast as they do, writhing itself between the shadow’s wrist and arm. Lifting up high, the hand slips behind the shadow’s neck, grabs tight, and uses its own arm to break the shadow’s neck. It falls to the ground and black ooze spills from its eyes and mouth and ears and nose, covering the floor with liquid sickness, sliding along the floor.

The two other shadows pounce forward. The figure side-steps one, ducks, and slams his fist into the groin of the second. It stumbles to a stop, buckles and drops to the floor.

The first shadow hisses as its fingers turn into talons. The figure stands and throws its cloak aside. A long, wide blade tastes the night air, light shimmering down its blade. Tal looks and sees the light is not reflecting from the fire. It is a white light. A holy light. A pure light. The shadow whispers between its bladed teeth, and stunned silence follows. Then, slowly& softly& the word moves through the room, from mouth to mouth, echoing on every set of lips. Even Tal cannot resist the lure of speaking word out loud. The first time in twenty years.

Paladin.

The shadow leaps. The paladin’s blade slices, sending the shadow’s ear into the fire. The fire hisses and spits from the foul taste of its food. The shadow curses. The paladin says nothing. His hood has fallen free from his face, showing the smooth bald head and black skin. His eyes are just as black, the whites of his eyes shining against the dark skin, his teeth gleaming in the dim light.

The shadow lets its wings spread, not that Tal can see wings, it’s something you feel, a cold chill on the back of your neck, a tightening in your shoulders, a squeeze on your heart. That is a shadow’s wings. They spread out and touch the corners of the room. The paladin says nothing, only grips his sword and charges. Before it’s too late. The talons and teeth make wounds in his flesh, injecting their venom. He makes no sound. The blade slices and the shadow screams. It rends at his skin, but he makes no sound. The blade slices a wing and arm from its body and the shadow screams. The blade twists in his hands and the head flies from its body. The shadow screams no more.

The last shadow gets to its feet. It races toward the door. The paladin’s fist finds its face and it skids across the floor, stopping just at Tal’s feet. There’s a flash and a boom when the paladin’s fist hits the shadow. The smell of a storm fills the room and smoke pours from the shadow’s bleeding, burning face. Skin peels back, revealing blackened bone and gnashing teeth.

Tal looks at the paladin and sees him with the eyes little boys use. He’s as tall as the sky, as big as a mountain, as terrible as thunder and as beautiful as a rainbow. His skin is the color of haffun chocolates. The tattoos shine with the light of the moon.

Tal smiles and looks back at the burning, bleeding face of the shadow. It had been too long. Tal forgot the tattoos. The paladin lifts the shadow to its feet with his hands as big as hammers, covered in tattoos of the Old Tongue. Tal’s teacher taught him the Old Tongue. He knows the words burned into the paladin’s hands. One is Truth. The other is Justice.

The hand that is Truth reaches forward and squeezes the shadow’s head. It screams. It begs for mercy.

Tal knows you could search forever, and never find a paladin with a Mercy tattoo.

Crunch.

The shadow joins its dead friends on the floor. The paladin stands still for a moment. The glow of his tattoos fade. He shivers. Takes a deep breath.

From behind the bar, the wide-chested man still has his hands on the bell. It stopped ringing a long time ago. Words fumble from his lips.

“I thought the shadows killed&” He doesn’t get any further than that.

The paladin walks to the bar and picks up a napkin. He wipes his hands clean of the blood. Then, he looks at the wide-chested man.

“They did kill us all. You never saw me.”

The wide-chested man nods. The paladin turns back to Tal. “Are you going to finish your song?”

Tal looks down at his lyre, sitting in his lap. “I don’t think I remember where I stopped.”

The paladin nods and walks to the back of the inn. He picks up a travel pack and steps up to the wide-chested man. “If you burn them, they will burn clean. No sign of them. Even the black will fade. Do it quickly and they’ll never know any better.”

Then, he turns to the bard. “Give him your money.”

“How much?”

“All of it.”

Tal doesn’t ask questions. He hands over every haffun and coin he has. The paladin takes him by the collar and ushers him toward the door. He opens it up to the wind and the rain, but then, he pauses, turns and looks at the boy and his father.

“What did you tell them?” he asks the bard.

“Dying for the truth is better than&”

“& living for a lie.” The paladin nods, then looks back at the boy.

“Fighting is better than dying.”

And, swift as a shadow, they’re gone.