Duren stands in the street watching the white ash fall around him, plunging the world into silence. He stands tall and lithe, rocking back on feet that are long practised at standing, at running. He is very practised at running. He wears a long tattered cloak to keep the ash off and it covers most of him but his long sword can still be seen poking out below it.

The soldiers of Lord Carhen make no noise in the ash but he sees them. They wear fierce helmets, carved in the likeness of demons and monsters to terrify their enemies. To terrify little boys like him. He was not terrified anymore. He was done with running.

The white ash met the red blood of the soldiers and Duren paced lightly along the street. More of them would come and he’d best be ready. He had never lost before, but there was always a first time.

He found their house, the house of Messer’s Road, the only house still inhabited on Messer’s Road. No one called it that anymore though, not after the ash came, now it was the silent street, and he was the Ash Knight, the Knight of Silence. The Terror of Lower Raharus.

He walked in.

Inside was his childhood friend Roony who’d never had much of a stomach for fighting, Duren had always had to protect him from the soldiers and others like them. But Roony was smart, much smarter than Duren and he’d found the last member of their band. Yawl, ancient and wrinkled up like crumpled sheets Yawl sat in the corner and dozed. He had trained Duren with the sword when they’d found him and they’d never had to run from soldiers again.

“How many?” Roony asked, looking through some papers with a quill. It was barely a quill, more a stick which Roony constantly complained about. He much preferred the finer things in life.

“Twelve,” Duren said quietly, he did most things quietly.

Roony raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Are you injured? Are you...”

Duren shook his head.

“Twelve... that’s a lot.”

Duren nodded. It was a lot, part of him was ecstatic that he could face so many of the dread soldiers, but he had buried that part deep. Deep under the ash.

“What helmets did they wear? Any important lords or captains?” Roony was all business again.

Duren took out the masks from his cloak, all the helmets were designed the same way to have interchangeable masks. Yawl often pined for the days when the soldiers were required to make their own helmets. Alas, with the war on there was little time for that now.

He gave the masks to Roony who looked through them and marked them off on his lists. Keeping track of what they had done, what Duren had done. Duren didn’t know why he did that, the ash didn’t care about Roony’s lists so neither did he.

He went to his room.

Outside Raharus, the Deepwood burned.

It was late at night when the visitor came to the house on Messer’s Road and spoke to Roony. They spoke quietly but in the silence of night and ashfall Duren still heard them. He rose from his bed and descended the stairs but by the time he got there the visitor was gone.

He looked questioningly at Roony who was tidying his papers.

“Don’t worry, he wasn’t a soldier?” Roony said, muttering something about a nice binder to keep his papers in.

Duren kept his questioning face.

Roony sighed. “He was a messenger, from Lord Sturken.”

Duren’s ears picked up at that. Sturken was the lord besieging the city, the reason all the houses were ruined and abandoned.

“It was difficult but I managed to contact him a few days ago- no no need to thank me. It turns out all sorts of people are interested in hiring the Knight of Ash.”

Hiring. Duren turned the word over in his head. He’d never been hired before, he’d never had a reason to be.

“Of course they’d be willing to pay handsomely for someone as renowned as you and we could finally move out of this ruined house- yes yes I know you like it here. But I for one could do with somewhere less dangerous, somewhere beautiful you know- yes the ash is beautiful I know I know, but somewhere... colourful. With all this money I could buy any place I’d like, I could be a lord. A little one, but still a lord.”

Roony grinned up at him and Duren smiled softly back. “How’d that be eh? The Little Lord of Silence and his Knight, the Knight of Ash. We could go places, we could be people Duren, taste those finer things in life. What do you say?”

Duren nodded, there wasn’t much he wanted anymore, there wasn’t much left for ash. But part of him still wanted his friend to be happy, that was all he had after all.

The next day the messenger came to see Duren and seemed to find him scary and unsettling, as if long silences weren’t the preferred method of communication among most people. Luckily Roony was there to ease things over and keep him comfortable, Roony was an expert in comfort and the lack of it they had around here.

There was no money changing hands, apparently the sums involved were too big to be performed with actual money. Instead there was paper signed in different places, each piece of paper promising more than the last. The messenger produced a quill much fancier than any Roony had ever been able to acquire and he spent several minutes saying so as they used it. Duren signed everything that was put in front of him. He would betray his city to Lord Sturken and help fight the soldiers who had always bullied him and Roony throughout their lives. He would serve in the Grand Uprising and see the feeble king cast down. He was ready to sign something about being a squire so as to progress to knighthood by the proper channels but Roony stopped him.

“Duren is already a knight. The Ash Knight, the Knight of Silence.”

“Yes but he hasn’t been properly knighted,” the messenger claimed.

“Yawl knighted him,” Roony pointed to the old man scrunched up in the corner. Duren knew that was a lie but he did not speak, the ash saw no need to speak.

The messenger talked to Yawl who assured him he’d been a knight in the army and that he’d knighted Duren in the Silent Street itself. It was all a lie and Duren felt faint stirrings of worry deep within him. But the stirrings were too deep for him to care, most of his feelings were like that now.

With all the papers signed the messenger left. Apparently he snuck over the walls at night without the guards ever seeing him. For the three of them escaping the city looked to be a lot harder. They ruled the Silent Street but there were many streets between it and freedom and the great wall. But Roony wasn’t bothered, he claimed they weren’t going to be sneaking out. They were going to be walking out after the city was taken, and it would be taken very soon he assured them. Duren trusted him, he was his oldest friend. The deep deep worries didn’t trust him but they were ignored, buried beneath the ash.

The soldiers came at the street from both sides this time, determined to root out the infestation within their city so they could focus on the actual siege. They weren’t so fortunate. In the thin street they could only approach in single file so Duren only ever fought a maximum of two at once, and two at once was trivial for him. He danced through the white ash, his sword finding the hearts of his enemies while theirs found nothing but air. Two by two they came and two by two they fell until the street was full of bodies and his sword was full of blood. He looked up at the ash falling down on his face, he didn’t feel tired, he didn’t feel worn, he could barely feel his heart pumping in his chest even after all that fighting. But he felt strong. He felt strength pouring down from the sky to cover him up. To smother him until there was nothing of him left. Only power.

Suffering devastating losses from the Silent Street the forces of Raharus were no match for Lord Sturken’s final push. His forces swarmed over the walls and streets, many falling to the defenders but many more making it over. Lord Carhen hid himself in his walls while around him his city burned and his people surrendered. Eventually his castle was taken, what few defenders that were left proved unable to hold it and he was taken outside and executed as the ash rained down.

Lord Sturken addressed the crowds and declared a great victory for him and Lord Farro, the leader of the Grand Uprising. Duren, Roony and Yawl were welcomed into the castle to meet and mingle with the victors. Roony soon disappeared and Duren felt quite out of place away from his street and his house. Many soldiers and knights congratulated him, they had heard of him out in the country, terrorising the city from within. Many claimed that without his constant battle in the streets to wear Lord Carhen down they never would have won. Somewhere he felt glory and achievement but mostly he just felt confused. Where was the ash in this castle? Where was his strength?

Roony introduced him and Yawl to some other knights who had changed sides during the battle with Roony’s help. They had once been soldiers under Lord Carhen, soldiers who had feared the Ash Knight, but now they were together under Lord Sturken and were glad to meet the legend face to face. Duren shook hands and nodded greetings but seeing their monstrous helmets held under their arms still shook the little boy inside of him, hidden safely under the ash.

There was a feast and a party which Roony insisted they attend. Duren went at first but after an hour of Roony praising everything as being the finest he’d ever experienced he decided to leave. He wandered the battlements, among the ash and looked off into the distance. He couldn’t see far but he could imagine the distant kingdoms and battlefields. Soon he would be riding off to fight in one of those battlefields against the weak king. Soon he would be riding away from the burning Deepwood and away from the ash.

Maybe he shouldn’t have signed all those papers.

Sure enough the next day he was off. They claimed he needed a horse to be a knight so he went into the burning Deepwood and found one. He didn’t even try riding any of the ones they gave him, regular animals didn’t like him anymore.

They rode all day, thundering across the countryside away from Raharus, away from his ash. His strength began to fade, his power slowly disappeared and the little boy squashed down within him, began to awaken. He felt fear, the worry he’d had about Roony, the fear of strange places, and the terror that he felt to be leaving his home, all built up together. But he’d signed the paper, he took his orders from Lord Sturken now. So he rode.

The battle was furious, it was nothing like the elegant dances he’d performed back in the Silent Street. There was no ash to muffle sounds here and there were so many sounds. Horses shrieked and screamed and men cried over them. The ground thundered with hoofbeats and footbeats and the dust rose up. There was so much dust.

Coughing and choking Duren and his horse found a warrior in black armour. Armour adorned with strange black flaps. The warrior was tearing his way through their ranks so Duren rode to meet him and called on all the strength he had left. He had lost so much being so far from his ash but he was still strong, still so very strong.

He danced around the warrior, cutting and slicing, knocking the flaps from his armour and driving devastating blows into it. Blows that would have torn through any of the soldiers back in the Silent Street, but these blows did nothing to him. The warrior kept going, his armour seemingly impregnable. Every blow bouncing off, sending painful jolts up Duren’s arm. It was a long time since he’d felt pain.

He brought his horse around, bouncing lightly around the flailing warrior and his furious horse. Then he calmed himself as Yawl had taught him, he remembered his dances in the Silent Street. This was not the same, but for a true warrior that would never matter. He hoped some day to be a true warrior. His sword hit the thin visor in an impossible swing, neatly sliding into the one part of the armour with no protection. He expected it to slide right through, sink in and kill this invincible knight, but it didn’t. It stuck, and his dance came to an abrupt end. The sword twisted out of his hands and then fell from the helmet onto the ground. The black knight roared in victory and swung down at Duren who looked up at him defenseless. He crashed to the dust and bled, and all the ash in the world couldn’t cover up his pain.

Roony shuffled his papers and smiled at the new recruit.

“You’ll be well-taken care of,” he said. “I run a respectable establishment, only the finest mercenaries.”

The recruit nodded and signed his name where he was told to then hurried off. Roony leaned back in his plush velvet chair and sighed happily. He wasn’t a lord yet but he’d get there, he had all the soldiers from Raharus he’d managed to convince to change sides, he had all his old connections with the street urchins, and he had Duren, the Knight of Silence. How hard could it be?

A messenger came with a grim face and told him what had happened to his oldest friend. He dismissed the messenger and muttered angrily to himself. So it had happened? Duren had finally lost. He supposed there was always a first time. He poured himself some brandy, the finest he’d been able to acquire. It would be harder without Duren but he knew it made little difference. The ruins of Raharus were crawling with veterans and vagabonds desperately searching for employment. He sipped his brandy, he did so enjoy the finer things in life.