Bloodline Awakened: Rise Of The Nameless Knight

The Squad Nobody Wanted

Lucan's squad had four members, and every one of them looked at Ryn as though he'd been assigned by mistake.

"Ash is a Null," said Ser Tobias Reen, a scarred veteran with a sour mouth, as they saddled horses in the gray dawn. "A Null with a crate lid. I don't care how many gravehounds he burned."

"Nobody asked you to care, Tobias," Lucan said.

"Someone should."

"Then someone can do it quietly."

Ilsa, the squad's mage, gave Ryn a small, nervous smile. She had the Common-rank's pale blue glow around her fingertips and the haunted look of someone who'd been told too often she wasn't good enough. Beside her, Wick, a lanky archer barely seventeen, was too busy fussing with his bowstring to notice anyone.

*They are afraid,* Vaelthor observed. *You can smell it on them. Fear that has been taught.*

"I know the smell," Ryn murmured.

Lucan swung into his saddle. "Hollowfen has gone silent. Four days now, no smoke, no traders, no word. The Spire sent a message that the matter requires 'further assessment.'"

"Meaning they're too frightened to go," Tobias muttered.

"Meaning we go." Lucan turned his horse. "Ride."

Hollowfen sat in a marsh valley under a sky the color of old bruises. No dogs barked. No chimneys smoked. A single scarecrow stood at the village gate, and as the squad rode closer, Wick's voice cracked.

"That's not a scarecrow."

It wasn't. It was a man, strung up by his wrists with his head hanging forward, and when Lucan dismounted and lifted his chin, they saw that his eyes were sewn shut with black thread.

"By the gods," Ilsa whispered.

"Nobody touch him," Lucan said, and his voice was very steady. "Formation. Slow."

They crept through the main street. Doors hung open. Cooking pots sat cold on windowsills. And in the center of the village, on a ring of blackened stones, a figure in gray robes knelt with his back to them, murmuring.

Around him, standing in neat rows like soldiers on parade, were the villagers. Forty, maybe fifty. Men, women, children. All with their eyes sewn shut. All swaying gently, in unison.

"Stop," Lucan called. "In the king's name."

The robed man turned his head. He was thin and pale, with eyes that glittered like wet slate, and he smiled as though a guest had come to dinner.

"Ah. The knights. I'd been wondering when someone would be brave enough." He rose lazily. "Or foolish enough. I'm never sure which."

"Release them," Lucan said.

"Oh, I couldn't. They're doing so much *good.*" He flicked his fingers, and fifty bodies took a single synchronized step forward. "Do you know how many I can bind at once, knight? Do you know what the Spire's best wards can hold against fifty puppets?"

"Ilsa," Lucan said softly. "Ward."

"I—yes. Yes, ser." Ilsa's hands shook as blue light spread across the squad. The wizard glanced at it, tilted his head, and almost kindly flicked one finger.

The ward shattered like glass.

Ilsa screamed and fell to her knees, clutching her head. The villagers lunged.

"Fall back!" Tobias roared, cutting down the first puppet—and then stopping, horrified, as the body he'd struck cried out in a child's voice.

"Don't kill them!" Lucan shouted. "They're alive!"

"Then how in the Nine Hells do we stop them?"

*Ryn,* Vaelthor said, low and swift. *The thread. Burn the thread, not the flesh.*

"I know," Ryn whispered.

*Quiet, now. Small. Only what is needed.*

He slipped away from the fray, ducking behind a half-collapsed well, and pressed his palm to the stones. Gold crawled beneath his skin like a slow tide, and he called it, careful, careful, careful, until a thread of living flame uncoiled from his fingers and slid across the wet earth like a snake.

It touched the first villager's ankle. The black sorcery wrapped around her flared once and burned away, leaving the girl untouched. She collapsed, gasping.

Then the next. And the next. A web of gold fire spread through the street, finding every cursed thread, unknotting every binding, while the wizard stared in slowly dawning horror.

"What is that?" he hissed. "That isn't mana. That isn't anything."

"Ash!" Lucan's voice rang across the square. "What are you doing?"

Ryn rose from behind the well, his hand still glowing faintly, and for a single breath he forgot to hide it.

"Saving them, ser."

"With what?"

"With whatever works."

The wizard shrieked and flung a bolt of black lightning. Ryn didn't dodge. He caught the curse in his bare hand, and it sank into the gold and vanished, like a candle flame swallowed by a furnace.

Silence rippled across the square.

"Impossible," the wizard breathed. "No one can eat a death-curse. Not unless—" His eyes went wide. "The old blood. The old—"

"I'm sorry," Ryn said, and he meant it. "But I can't let you finish that sentence."

He crossed the distance in three strides. The wizard threw up a ward, a layered, shimmering thing that would have stopped any mage in Aldermere, and Ryn's flame walked through it like a hot knife through wax. One strike, one clean burn, and the wizard fell to his knees, his black power dissolving into ash.

"Who sent you?" Ryn demanded, low.

The wizard laughed, wet and cracked. "The Hollow King sends his regards. And his warning. He knows the blood has woken. He's already coming for—"

His body crumbled mid-sentence.

By dusk, the villagers were free, weeping and bewildered, held in the arms of the squad. Ilsa sat on a barrel with a blanket around her shoulders, and Wick was gently teaching a small boy to string a toy bow. Even Tobias had gone quiet, kneeling by an old woman and murmuring something that made her laugh through her tears.

Ryn sat apart on the edge of the well, staring at his hands.

"They're asking who saved them," Lucan said, coming up beside him.

"Tell them it was the squad."

"That would be a lie."

"It would be a kindness." Ryn didn't look up. "A Null who burns a death-curse out of the air is a problem. A squad that fought bravely is a story."

Lucan was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had lost its edge. "I trained my whole life for this, Ash. Every master told me my bloodline made me better than the men beside me. And today I stood in a square and watched a farmhand with a Null's record do what the Spire's finest couldn't."

"Ser—"

"I'm not asking what you are." Lucan raised a hand. "I'm asking for something simpler. When the time comes, will you stand with us, or against us?"

Ryn finally met his eyes. In them he saw no hatred, only a young man very tired of being lied to by his own world.

"With you," Ryn said. "Always, as long as you stay worth standing with."

Lucan huffed, almost a laugh. "That's the most honest threat I've ever received." He rose and offered his hand. "Then I saw nothing today, Ash. Remember that. Nothing at all."

Ryn clasped it. "Thank you, Lucan."

"Ser Lucan."

"Thank you, Ser Lucan."

"Better."

As the knight walked away, Ryn leaned back against the cold stone, exhausted. Then something caught his eye in the treeline: a flicker of silver, a shape too graceful to be human, gone before he could focus.

*Elves,* Vaelthor murmured. *Watching. They have recognized the mark.*

Ryn rose slowly. At the base of the nearest tree, quivering in the bark, stood a single silver-fletched arrow. A scrap of pale parchment was wound around its shaft.

He unrolled it with unsteady hands. The script was flowing and strange, but the old dragon translated in his mind, soft as a prayer.

*We see you, Dragon-born. Come to the Silverwood, and we will kneel.*