I need not have said anything, they ran on their own. The guards forgot themselves and broke formation to wallow in cowardice; the men lighting up fires broke into the fastest sprint that their cold extremities would have allowed; the archers dropped their bows and arched backwards away from the forest; the lords who would sit on the back of a poor horse now ran like ferrets on foot after the horses themselves had them ferreted out of their backs in ferocious terror.

Life is a race, and oh boy, what an example justifying that statement this was.

The Bloody Knight threw the halberd through the air, which spun wildly, scything through the crowds. It would hit one of the trees at the end, or stick out of the muddying ground, and then it would vanish. Dissipate. Like drops of water on a hot pan. And lo! The halberd was back in the hands of the Bloody Knight again! It would just appear, like it was made out of nothing. Mist forming as a weapon in his hands. And it would cut flesh of those unfortunate enough to fall in its path as if the flesh were nothing. It cut through the barrels of tar and oil. Even steel. And supply wagons. And camps. And … I think you get I’m saying.

The Lord Teliel stood behind men wearing thick robes of white, who instead stood behind men with burnished steel plates and helmets, who also stood behind an array of large, thick steel kite shields propped up by their points digging into the snow. Which stood behind a nimble young woman dragging an unconscious old ranger by the lapels of his thick woollen coat. Of course, they all stood behind yours truly.

“Feeling very brave, Teliel?” said I.

“Madman!” Teliel cried. “Get out of the way, or die!”

“You give me no other choice.” What did he think? I would stand my ground and fight?

I moved aside to help the little woman, lifting the old man’s legs, taking him to the safety of the trees.

Some fools attacked the Bloody Knight. Soldiers in full plate, glowing brightly, charged with magic by one of those white robed mages using one of those little medallions glowing with white flame. They shot at him a jet of brilliant white fire, but even before it could reach the Knight, he threw the halberd and whipped out his brilliant Zweihander and slashed at it.

All fire vanished. The rushing soldiers’ armour shattered open and the magi found themselves a limb or two short.

“What!” cried I. “Is this really the forest path you wish to die on? Make a run for it!”

“Shut up, madman!” Teliel cried. He was cowering behind his line. “FIGHT!” He screamed, intermittently.

Even the girl holding the Old Man’s head on the tree trunk tugged my curtain and motioned to me by putting her index finger on her lips.

“Hah, it takes a madman to know a madman,” I winked at the girl. “And, I will just call you stupid, you son of a rather pleasant woman, driven into idiocy by your over inflated ego.”

“You”, Teliel cried, “watch your mouth or—"

A thud and creak sounded as another supply wagon was cut into perfect quarters, by the rippling axe.

“Or what? Fight me, with your scared bodyguards?” I asked. “Are you sure? Half of them are running already.”

They really were.

Teliel couldn’t answer, as his line of defence had already stepped far back, their feet marching backwards, for me to even bother listening above the loud screams and shouts and bangs and thuds all around. His mages didn’t even attack: they were aching to run, every one of them eager to be rid of his tomfoolery.

I was rather pleased at his. But the girl beside me tugged at the hems of my curtain again, and looked at me with concerned eyes.

“Do you not feel fear?” she asked me.

“Fear?!” I cried. “Of what? Of a bumbling prince?”

“No, the monster,” she said. “The bloody knight. I can barely stand with my knees straight. It’s just—” She stared at it just as an arc of its whirling axe hit the tree that was sheltering us. Right in front of her. Without the magic forest, we’d have been all dust. The trunk shook, and the axe puffed away into mist.

“We’re all going to die,” she whimpered.

“Why, yes! You are absolutely right! Such is the burden of being mortal. We must all die. Why not under the axe of a mythical beast. How marvellous! Beats passing away in a bed hooked up with tubes, looking like Davy Jones.”

Everything went quiet. Awkward silence filled the air, and the postures of the soldiers behind us were uncertain. Then, a quiet cheer went up. I wondered what it was, and walked right out to the middle of the clearing.

The Bloody Knight was back in his original form. The grass around him was visibly scarred even in the moonlight, and the snow around him was all but gone; little rivulets ran down in narrow melting gullies through to the edge of the clearing. But from all across rang subdued yet hopeful cheers of joy.

The Bloody Knight was walking back.

“No! NO!” I cried. “Is that it? Is that all the famed monster of the forest can do?”

Everyone stopped. Thankfully, the Bloody Knight did as well.

“Where do you think you are going? You’re going to spring up from the forest and just throw your axe around and leave?” The Bloody Knight gave no response, but turned its head towards me. Then, resumed its walk back.

“No, wait!” I shouted. I had to jog right towards him to put my point across. “You didn’t even hit the right ones! This is not justice. You hit every person other than the mastermind!” I furiously pointed towards Teliel. “That’s the target; hit him!”

The Bloody Knight didn’t even stop.

“Listen, you blood encrusted witless idiot, you hit the wrong people. If a rock hits you, will you punch the rock or the person who threw it?”

This time, he did stop and looked back. Apart from the gauntlets it was quite a gory picture. The rest of his body seemed to be made of boiling blood. Even through that, his eyes pierced me – two sharp pinpricks of crimson shining through the roiling red liquid that was its head.

But it gave up again, and turned to go.

“You are the most unscariest monster imaginable,” cried I. “Children laugh at you; mothers feel ashamed when it comes to using your name to scare children to their beds. You are a brainless git, for you have blood where there should have been wits! Ghouls laugh at you in graveyards, and you should be put up in malls for Christmas decorations.”

He didn’t respond.

“More people have run from the sight of a wet black pussycat. I have felt more fear smelling a pair of unwashed socks. I have seen rabbits scarier than you. Your name is written in bold letters on the first page of the National Book of Jokes. You have a penny stock in the scare department of Monsters Inc.! Your roar is a laughter track on Friends, and your father smelt of elderberries!”

Only now did the bloody monster utter a roar. An irate roar.

It went, and I quote:

ROOOOOOAAAAAARRRGGHHHHRRRRR

Like the deep rumble of a thunderclap ripping up distant boulders upon mountains which then tumbled down to cause the noisiest noise ears can hear. That, or he sounded like how you imagine a blue whale might sound when it hears it lost its life savings in the stock market.

“ROOOOAR right back to you, motherfucker!” I screamed. “HAH! I laugh at your general vibrations! Your brain is just blood filled with seagull faeces. You are a waste of haemoglobin. Vampires would look at you, and turn vegetarian. Now come back and finish what you had begun. Have a bloody fight, unless your spine cannot even match that of Jabba the Hut!”

Its arm contracted and sprung out like a jackhammer, hitting me square in the chest. Perhaps, the Jabba the Hut was taking a step too far. I was thrown back at an incredible speed, making an uncountable number of turns through the air, hitting every little bloody ridge on that rather flat looking clearing. I felt a little sweaty, I must admit. It grew abruptly hot inside of that curtain. I came to rest, sprawled out with a nice crack of my neck, on the side-turned axle of an ex-wagon, covered in the blood that was part of the body of the Knight.

Yuck.

The roar of the Bloody Knight echoed to a low grumble, sounding like a medium sized bonfire on a chilly starry night.

I got up, tried to dust off my curtain, but realized the bloody thing had burnt off! It took me a moment to realize that the bloody wagon itself had been set on fire by all that hot blood. Ah! That bloody ass! So, that’s what it was— a bundle of heat, trapped inside that blood, which was not blood at all. Did this all bloody matter? Yes. Nothing really matters to Freddie, but this bloody matters to me! I sucked up the heat, and got my blood boiled in cold anger.

What had the crow said? Something about axis and points, and imagination, and— I simply grow bored even thinking about it, much less writing. But, yes, I just imagined the heat disappearing, and the blood that still clung to my body, like an unpleasant raspberry jelly, froze and cracked and dropped off.

They say that reality is stranger than fiction, but sometimes in the times of unreasonable reality, a reasonable imagination does fare better.

There were gasps that now ran through the thirty odd people still without brains, standing there in smouldering ruin of the clearing.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” I told them. “Please wait here to make the Bloody Knight’s job a little easier. Why don’t you all stand in line, so that he could pop you off one by one?”

They all stared at me. Well, to be fair, I was completely naked.

“Oh, sod off, you sorry lead-lumps of brains. Get a fucking move on! Let’s go, let’s go! Run for your lives!”

First, they ran. Then, they ran faster. Why had they ever stopped?

To my utter disappointment, Teliel suddenly grew brains, and also ran. Well, he will be dealt with the hand of justice in another turn. But, for now, he folded.

The pot of our little poker game now lay squarely in between the Bloody Knight and I.

He stood there, whirling the axe in one hand, the Zweihander in the other. The moonlight fell from above, casting a shadow in his face.

I looked up at the moon, shining in bluish-white, free from the scattering of the horizon, right up at the zenith. Giving light when it should have been dark: an anomaly. A feature, not a bug. I couldn’t help but imagine the complete opposite of this situation. The sun heading to noon, two clothed living men twirling their pistols, and dry land in between them, in the middle of a town. Versus its reflection, quite the like the moon of course: two naked dead men, in between nowhere, with wet ground all around, with snow on the branches of the trees not yet burnt, and only one of them even having weapons.

Was it midnight yet?