Fall of Knight Read Free

Lailoken’s condition, apparently thinking that it wasn’t of all that much consequence. He stepped back and walked over to the unicorn. He prodded the beast’s body with the toe of his boot, then kicked it more forcefully. The unicorn didn’t move.
    “It’s smaller than I expected,” he proclaimed, which surprised Lailoken since the beast looked large enough to ride. Then, managing to set aside his disappointment, he declared, “Come. Let’s take it home, to the banquet hall.”
    “Father…” Lailoken managed to say, as a couple of the hunters helped him to his feet.
    The warlord turned and stared at him. “What?”
    Are you proud of me? I finally killed something for you. Did I do well? Will you speak my name with love? Do you have anything to say to me? Are you finally satisfied, you bloody bastard, you…
    “Nothing. It…is nothing, father.”
    “Good,” said the warlord, and he marched stiffly away while his beaters and huntsmen and aides began to tie the unicorn, just above its hooves, so that it was dangling from a long pole suspended at either end upon the shoulders of burly men.
    “Good hunt, sir,” one of the hunters said. Another patted him on the shoulder in a gesture that would have been unthinkably familiar for Lailoken’s father but was acceptable to the young man.
    “Let me take that for you, young lord,” said one of the spearbearers, and he reached for the spear that Lailoken was holding.
    Lailoken instantly pulled the spear away from the bearer, and his face twisted in anger. “You do not touch this,” he said. “No one touches it.”
    The spearbearer immediately stepped back, raising both his hands in a palm-forward gesture indicating that he was not looking for trouble. “Yes, young lord. I mean, no, young lord. Whatever you say, young lord. I was merely doing what I thought I was supposed to do.”
    Allowing himself to calm after his initial, slightly crazed reaction, Lailoken simply nodded, and said, “Yes. Yes, of course. I can…sympathize. We all do what we are supposed to do…and let the gods sort out the rest.”
     
    A S THE FULL moon, like a great unblinking eye, rose in the night sky, there was massive celebration in the warlord’s banquet hall. The warlord sat on his throne, basking in the reflected glory of his hunters. To hear the story as it was being told and retold, it had been the warlord himself who had struck the fatal blow to the great horned creature. It had merely stumbled through the woods, fighting the inevitable, and collapsed dead right at Lailoken’s feet.
    Still, there were women draping themselves over Lailoken as he reclined against an assortment of pillows beneath him. Only the warlord was upon a chair, upraised so that his servants would bring food to him. Everyone else was seated on pillows scattered upon the floor around the low-slung table.
    The main course, naturally, had yet to be brought out. Lailoken made distant, disinterested small talk with the women, courtesans all, jockeying for attention of the warlord’s son. The reason was obvious: to gain something for themselves. Riches. Title. Position. Lailoken would be a superb acquisition for an ambitious young woman, and he knew that all too well. Consequently, he trusted none of them and despised them all. Nevertheless, out of a sense of courtesy that his father would no doubt have found absurd, he tried to put on a positive face and tolerate them.
    “What was it like?” one of them chirped.
    The question caught his attention. “What was what like?”
    “Killing the beast. Killing the unicorn.” The other women were wide-eyed as the one doing the asking leaned forward, hanging on Lailoken’s shoulder. “What was it like?” she inquired.
    He couldn’t even bring himself to look at her, fearing that he would lose his temper and strangle her so that no further stupid questions could emerge from her throat. “It was like murdering the better part of myself,” he said.
    “Ooooo,”