Spellbound | A Knight's Tragedy

Spellbound

"Remove this spell at once!" The man yelled to the witch. "I demand of you!"

The witch, withered and old, giggled in the corner. A fire burnt on coals, the orange flames bouncing off the gray walls of the cave to provide a nuisance of light. She was tied with chains, bolted down to the rock walls and fastened well. The man's head was dripping with blood, his long brown hair soaked from the rain that poured outside. Thunder slashed the night sky. The man wielded a silver sword in one hand, his other shook from a mixture of exhaustion and frostbite, as he made the voyage to the witches cave in the dead of winter.

The man pleaded for the spell to be lifted, but all the witch did was laugh. Her evil smile spread eagerly across her wretched, wrinkled face and she laughed some more. No matter what the man did, the witch would only laugh.

He grew irate and lurched towards the witch. He raised his sword and yelled, but as he limped towards her, he tripped over a rock that protruded from the earth and fell atop his own blade. The silver metal slid through his gut and blood puttered out of his mouth, and the witch laughed some more.

Down on his luck, a man sat in a tavern with a mug full of ale. The weather was nice outside, but his sorrows tied him to the chair like a prisoner in chains. A well known local, at least to the tavern in which he drank every day, Sir John The Third, was a descendent of wealth and fortune. Growing up in Montrose, he was used to a life where anything was at his disposal. Fruits like grapes, while rare to the average peasant, were often a mid-afternoon snack for John during his adolescence. Although pleasurable, John's childhood came and went fast, and at the age of sixteen his father had enlisted him into the King's royal army to continue a long line of Knight's the bloodline boasted.

It was hard for John to accept his new fate, one as a soldier fighting tooth and nail like a grub. To go from a life of plenty, where his biggest worry was chapped feet after swimming all day with his brothers, to life in the royal army did not come easy. In fact, it had a large impact on John's self-respect, as much of the training for the royal army involved rigorous, and more often than not, demeaning exercises. One time, John laid face down in mud while his fellow Knights in training stampeded over him, one after the other, their leather boots stomping him deeper into the ground. The exercise was to teach young soldiers how to maintain consciousness while in a possible overwhelming trampede of your own soldiers during a battle, but all John could think about was the mud being shoved down his throat with each step. Some of his fellow soldiers, friends he made throughout training, would lighten their step as they ran atop him. Others, however, would make sure they bore a heavy foot as they brought their full weight down upon his backside, smashing him into the mud with vigor.

John often wondered why a man of his stature, coming from a home of military royalty, needed to be put through such a test of rigor. When he asked his father, the answer was often broad and something along the lines of a test of character, and how all knights have to go through it. Yet, around him John noticed his peers were mostly peasants from poor families. Towards the end of his training, John built comradery with his fellow Knights-to-be, even the ones who stepped with a heavy foot on his back years prior. He matured as a man, and after three years of training, he was Knighted at nineteen years old, becoming one of the youngest knights in his family's history.

John joined the royal army and was excited to serve the crown with the honor and dignity he learned from his years of training. While sitting outside the castle with his fellow Knights, a delivery boy came yelping through the town screaming of War with the neighboring clan of Wichford, a farming community that sought independence from the crown of Montrose, which they felt overbearing and carried a heavy hand during tax collection. Sir John III and his men were sent to Wichford to ease tensions, but upon their arrival they encountered a misfit army of farmers wielding pitchforks, dull wood-chopping axes, and kitchen knives. The knights, geared to the brim in metal armor and chainmail with blades of steel in their hands, marched forward towards the peasants. As their overbearing presence neared, some farmers dropped their make-shift weapons and ran. Others stayed, snarling at the Knights as they neared. Sir John looked around through his metal facemask and noticed other knights began to raise their swords. He questioned if they should attack the people, as they were just farmers and clearly stood no chance against their highly trained and technological weaponry. Sir Brandsworth, a 22-year old man that John knew from years prior in training, ordered a charge and the Knights emerged upon the misfit army of farmers. Within minutes, bodies lay strewed out across the road, including those of women and children who took up arms with their fathers. Wichford paid their taxes without question from that point on.

John struggled with the imagery etched into his brain from that moment. The bodies with arms and legs hacked off by his fellow knights were imprinted into his skull like a painting on canvas, and no matter what he did he could not rid his mind of the thought. Upon his arrival back to Montrose, John told the King of the monstrosities that occurred in Wichford, to which the King only replied with a satisfactory grunt and waved him away. Angry at the injustice, John threw his sword towards the cobble ground and marched out of the King's corridors, the bellowing of his steel blade bouncing off the ground echoed through the room as John disappeared.

Years would go by, and the story of Wichford was never told. The men who slain the farmers went on to serve in other wars and skirmishes, some surviving, others succumbing to the same fate as the farmers years ago. However, John was nowhere to be found as he had disappeared from the town of Montrose. There was rumors of his whereabouts, some said he may have fled to France for fear of persecution of desertion, when others said he may be in Wichford riddled with guilt from his misdeeds. In truth, nobody really cared much about where John was, not even his own family. When asked why they cared not about the whereabouts of their son, his father replied "That is not my son, he was an orphan boy."

In turmoil, John sought to drink his sorrows away, but with every mug of ale brought to his lips, the sorrow only grew in his mind until he became mad. One evening, John wandered into the street, a mug of ale in one hand splashing about and his steel blade in the other. "Who dares challenge me?" He yelled into the abyss, but nobody was around. "I am a Knight! Take your pick!" But nobody stepped forward. John took a swig of his ale and swung his sword throughout the air, and there was a yelp that came from his hips. Startled, he looked down and saw a young boy, about the age of six, lay dead by his feet, his neck slashed by John's sword. The boy must have been running in excitement at the notion of a Knight in his small town, like the ones he could only read about in his bedtime books. Now, he lay dead by the hand of Sir John. There were no witnesses, at least as far as John could tell, but again the image of the boy became another etch into his brain. The dead boy sat idly along with the dead farmers of Wichford in his mind each night. His sorrows now grew into madness, and as his drinking grew he began to shuffle from town to town, often being banished for challenging just about anybody to a duel. Secretly, John hoped someone would take up arms and end his suffering, but nobody dared fight a Knight.

One night, when John had woken from his slumber, he met a man outside a tavern in a town he knew not the name of. The man was dressed in black garments and had an odd complexion, and John was intrigued by him because he had not seen a man like this before. Still in a drunken state from the night before, John wandered to the man and pointed at him, asking him who he was. The man said he was a spirit sent by God to bring John home, and John laughed. The man told John that there was a witch who lived in a cave outside the town who casted a spell upon him many years ago when he was being trampled in the mud, and quickly John stopped laughing. The man promised to show John where the witch lived, all he had to do was follow him. Then, it began to rain and the downpour soaked John, but not the man. The man led John out of town and to a mountainside covered in sharp rocks. The man told John this is as far as he can go, but if John scales this mountain he will find the witch in her cave with a dimly lit fire. John, weak from years of drinking and still drunk, stumbled atop the mountain, often falling and scraping his body against the sharp rocks. As he neared the top, he could see an orange flicker from a cave, but his foot slipped and he hit his head. Blood began to pour, and John quickly grew dizzy but was adamant about slaying the witch who's spell was the root of all his troubles and misfortunes. The rain poured hard as John used all his might to reach the top of the mountain, and saw the witch.

As he laid dead upon his own sword, the witch removed herself from the chains and leaned beside him. "I never casted a spell upon you," She said, laughing. "I never knew who you were until this moment."