The Forever Knight

THE STORY

My father was the kind of man who never taught me anything. This is not because he abandoned me when I was young, or because he worked in the foundry each day until his face was sooty black. It is simply because he showed no interest in me, not even enough to strike me. Most men have strong memories of their fathers, even if they were tyrants. My father was a ghost, no more memorable than a day when nothing happens.

Without a father’s love, a man might still become many things. I have seen people pray to all manner of gods, and I have seen genuine magic, but I don’t account my fortune to anything of heaven. I’ve learned to place faith only in myself. It was merely good luck that plucked me from the streets as a boy. I grew up in the house of a king and became a man there, with the king’s own son for a brother. You could say I didn’t deserve any of this, and you’d be right. But in those years I endured jealous stares.

Then, one day before I knew it, I was no longer a bastard. I was a knight, one of Liiria’s Royal Chargers. They say that our gifts are the things we are best at, and if that is so then killing is my gift. My real home, I discovered, was the battlefield, and I proudly carried the standard of my king to war; to make our country great only to see it fall. In my lifetime I’ve spilled much blood, but I have paid for these sins dearly. All the things I touch seem to wither just for being close to me. To be honest, I think I’m owed some solace now. In some parts of the world I am called a legend, a hero, a traitor, a myth. But the only thing I want to be is forgotten.

I remember a story from when I was a boy, about a knight who spent his whole life protecting his city from a monster that lived in the hills. Every year, when the monster came to find a maiden, the knight would ride out from the city and fight the beast, and every year he would win his battle and send the monster back to the hills. Then, one year when the knight was very old, a little boy asked him why he never killed the monster and wouldn’t that make much more sense, instead of having to fight the monster every year.

The next day, the knight rode out to the monster’s lair and killed it while it slept. When the city people heard the news, they rejoiced. The little boy asked the knight if he was happy now.

“No,” the knight told the boy. “Now I have no reason to live.”

For years I wondered what the story meant. Now, I think I understand.

My father told me that story. So perhaps he taught me something after all.