Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Hollow Knight ❯ One-Shot

The Hollow Knight

Fires burned brightly in the distance, flickering as bodies moved around them. The small party approached cautiously; the country was troubled and even a dozen well-armed travelers might fall prey to brigands or patrolling soldiers. The road was rutted and muddy and their horses weary, but their hearts gladdened when they saw the standard of the Grail fluttering above the camp. Soon they would be among friends and comrades.

The party’s leader, a grizzled old knight clad in brigandine with a cloak pulled tight around her against the autumn winds, scarce had time to dismount and order her squire to see to the horses before strong hands pulled her into a shouting mob. ‘Old One-Eye! Welcome back! Take a seat and have a pint. Bet they don’t brew stuff like this across the Channel, do they? Thought you were dead, frozen in some icy cave. Heard you were broiled alive by a dragon. Eaten by the kraken. Best tale said she’d become Queen of the Dwarves!’

Through the greetings and jeers, Sir Mag was half-led, half-pushed to a stool by a fire. Her former squire Sir Michelle, now wearing a commander’s cloak, brought two brimming tankards and the squire behind her carried another chair. Mag smiled after her first draught and said, ‘Now I know I’m home. The cider of Avalon can almost match the mead of Asgard. You didn’t drag barrels of this all the way from Avalon just for me, did you?’

‘No, Sir Magdalene. Her Majesty’s camp lies on the ridge and we expect battle soon. Please, tell us of your journey here and your deeds abroad.’

‘Always a formal one, aren’t you?’ Mag drank as she spoke, pausing now and then to pick out familiar faces in the crowd. ‘There’s not much to tell. The commanders on the Channel have disbanded their armies and I saw nothing on the road. As for the Continent and elsewhere, I’ll tell one tale tonight and no more. I’ve ridden far on bad roads and these old bones need their rest.’

‘One tale? Then tell us of the Grail, how you found it, and why you did not return with it.’ Mike took the empty tankard from Mag and sent her squire for more cider.

‘The Grail? Ha! That’s no tale for a camp. I’ll tell it in some great hall, with a fire roaring and a feast on the table. As for the rest, it was prophesied that it would not enter this island by English hands, and there was fame to win by errantry in the far north.’ Almost absently, Mag tugged at her eyepatch. She had lost that eye in a quarrel with the late King Edgar shortly before her dubbing, a quarrel neither party ever spoke of afterwards. ‘Well. I will tell of one of my adventures in old Israel in my quest for the Grail. A Grail the old man said. “The greatest tales cast many shadows, and are bound to no one form. The Grail was many things to many peoples.”’ Mag’s voice trailed off and she stared into the fire for a few minutes before draining her tankard and beginning her tale. Her voice was different now as she retraced her memories and cast them into words.





‘We were three days out of Tiberias, a little port on the Sea of Galilee, heading southwest for ruins I’d heard were related to the Grail. The guides said the land had once been fertile before the Plague, but it’s been a waste of sand and glass for well nigh two centuries now. On that day, we were nearing the waystation of Cafred– ‘Cloven Stone’ my translator rendered it– the only water on that road for many days.

‘Roads in that waste are no more than rows of stone pillars set in double rows with enough space between for a laden camel to pass. Near noon, we sighted Cafred on the horizon, a black mountain rising from the sand. Soon I saw that it was split in two, with a narrow passage between the two halves. The old man said it was hollow, with a sweet spring feeding a pool on one side. The guides proposed to rest there until nightfall and continue by moonlight.

‘When we drew within bowshot, I saw a blue man standing athwart the road. Nearer still, I saw he was clad all in steel, from head to foot, like a knight in the old drawings. The sword was near as tall as the man, and he held it with the point in the sand. His armour showed neither rust nor stain, though it was scarred by sand and wind. The old man swore, and I saw him fumble with his bill– I call it a bill, but he insisted it was a gando or some Cathayan word. I said to him, “This foe is mine. I will not have it said a knight of Avalon was protected like a damosel unarmed and witless.”

‘I dismounted and approached. The Blue Knight stood silent until I declared myself a knight of Avalon on quest for the Grail and asked permission to water at Cafred. Then he raised his sword as if it weighed no more than a feather and stood in grim defiance. I saluted him with Mule’s Kick and our duel began.’ Sir Mag paused here to refresh herself with a draught of beer and patted her iron-hafted warhammer leaning on her thigh. Its heavy head and cruel spike had left its mark on foes and monsters on three continents and it seemed content to rest.

‘The Blue Knight advanced quickly, but seemed halt of one leg. I led him away from the camels and guides and soon found one of the road stones at my back. I dodged his first blow and later saw that it had cut off a corner as cleanly as if it had been flesh. I struck him in the chest, a blow as strong as any I had ever landed, but it did no more than make him stagger back a step.

‘Now I backed towards the caves, thinking the broken ground would be to my advantage. Stones great and small were strewn over the sand before the passage, along with the bones of men and beasts that had reached water too late. My foe pursued in his swift, halting way, and stumbled on a stone. In an instant, I dashed forward and drove the Mule’s spike into his helm. The spike caught and pulled the helm from his body when I tried to free it.

‘The knight rose and raised his sword again. There was no blood flowing from his wound, nor did I see a head within the helm. Now he swung with blind fury, catching me on the left shoulder. My mail turned the blow, but I feared the bone was broken. From my knees, I struck once more with the spike, this time at his chest. Sparks flew from the wound and I shivered as if struck by a lightning spell.

‘I woke in the dark beneath the mountain with the camel drivers around me, fearful of returning without their patron. My hands were burned, but the old man had bandaged them well. I found him sitting in the sun opening what remained of the Blue Knight with the strange tools he kept in his pack. Inside the chest I saw many rods and coloured strings, and green boards streaked with copper. When I asked what it had been, he said, “A relic, a thing that has outlived its time. The art of making such things perished here in the Plague, or soon after, though some remnants may persist beyond the seas or beneath the rising sun.”

‘That’s the end of that tale, and no more tonight. These old bones need their rest, and I can’t sit up half the night talking.’

‘A good tale, Sir Mag,’ Sir Michelle said. ‘If your other adventures were half so wonderful, they are well worthy of a bard’s telling.’

‘Thank you, Mike. Maybe one day my son will set his mother’s deeds to music and never know who she was. Enough. I must be weary to speak of him.’ Mag rose to her feet and shouted for her squire. ‘Alex! Where’d you pitch our tents?’