Bucho recognised the Ojantani as a Shape Knight from the silhouette. He didn’t recognise the knight, but he didn’t expect to; their organization was loose enough that there was no way Bucho could know everyone.
Still, when Bucho peered at the Ojantani’s armor, he was expected to see some familiar lineage in the pieces. Students tended to honor their mentors in the shaping of their armor, and retrievable armor of fallen knights often went to their closest brethren to wear in memorial. The Ojantani’s armor was stylistically coherent only in the wear on every element and the care taken to ensure the scuffs didn’t turn to cracks.
“Turn back,” the Ojantani said, planting his giant axe on the ground. “The final train rests within these caves, and only death lies down this path.”
Bucho shook his head minutely at Marn’s glance; another day, without a group of civilians to protect, he might agree to help this knight. Today, they had a more pressing duty. Marn nodded, then said, “Thanks for the warning! We don’t want to get in the train’s way. We’re just passing through.”
The Ojantani harrumphed. “No other in the world has any hope of surviving the train’s domain. All other Shape Knights have perished; I am the last, and slaying this train is my ultimate duty.”
Bucho felt the words like a punch in his gut. The armor encasing him—there was no better way to carry it—was nothing but wet paper in the face of the Ojantani’s words. He shook his head again, hand out to quell not Marn but the people they protected. “The Heartland is ever-changing,” Bucho said, as quietly as he could. “Do not debate this with him.”
Marn was debating with the Ojantani—the Last Knight; he never gave another name—about passage, though. Bucho listened with half an ear. The rest of him was focused on trying to sort out his feelings about not being seen as a Shape Knight.
He’d told Marn, the last almost-safe night in Blackwick, that he’d been thinking about hanging up his armor. That he’d retire from this life soon. That he’d find something else to be. Bucho didn’t know what yet, but he didn’t need to, and Marn didn’t press. Then the Carnival had come, and Bucho’s armor had meant something again; it let him be guardian to Marn’s guide as they took people away from chaos and towards a place of relative stability.
But he’d still been a Shape Knight for years upon years, and a good one, and having someone not recognise that at all—
Well, it did something inside him, twisted him up and made his chest ache. Bucho wasn’t good with words when it came to emotions like that. Maybe Marn could help him sort it out, once she bargained her way through the Last Knight’s bulwark.
“Bucho can help too,” Marn said, catching his attention. “He’s an experienced scout. Handy in a fight, too, if we happen across some other beastie in the tunnels.”
Bucho quickly replayed the last few exchanges. Finding a safe route around the train. Camping for a few days until they were sure of the path. Sharing food and water, the most basic way of saying they were here in good faith. “Of course,” Bucho said, and didn’t think too much about the way his experience with train-sign specifically wasn’t important here. That, too, was part of the unsettling shifts in his gut. Freeing, maybe. Confusing, certainly. Not something he had time to contemplate, either way.
The Ojantani studied him, eyes hidden beneath his helm. For a moment, Bucho thought the Last Knight would notice something familiar in his armor, recognise the material it was made out of, see the crest of the Shape Knights worked into his belt buckle. But then the moment passed, and the heavy tension in the air lightened, and the Last Knight said, “Very well.”
Marn turned and clapped her hands briskly, calling everyone’s attention as she directed them to set up camp.
Bucho followed along, but his gaze kept returning to the Last Knight, silent and implacable, the refined essence of what a Shape Knight could be.
“I don’t know what to make of him,” Bucho said, one night as they rested. The Last Knight kept watch, unsleeping, and Bucho didn’t know if he envied that ability or feared the necessity which had led to it.
Marn hummed thoughtfully as her fingers stroked steadily through his hair. “Do you need to know?”
Bucho shrugged, as best he was able to when lying on the ground with his head in Marn’s lap. “It would be easier if I did.”
“Lots of things would make life easier.” Marn’s blunt fingernails scraped against his scalp, more soothing than her words. Bucho closed his eyes and breathed out in time with her motion. “Can’t always have those things, though.” A hesitation, not in her body but her voice. “What’s bothering you about him, Bucho?”
Everything, in some ways, but that wasn’t helpful. Bucho sighed. “He’s from another time, it sounds like, and that’s—” Marn’s hands kept moving, steady and sure as the Shape, as Bucho tried to work out what to say. “Is this a warning about the future?” he asked, finally. “Or is it just another present that could have been? Are we walking out of this into the same world we left? How can we know?”
Marn laughed. The soft sound broke the cave’s dark tension, and Bucho felt the twist in his gut ease. “Can’t say I took you for the philosophical type,” Marn said, teasing. Then, more seriously, “Can’t rightly say, can we? Not until we make our way through this.”
Bucho made a face, and Marn smoothed out the wrinkles until his expression was calm again. Bucho opened his eyes to smile up at her upside-down face. “Is it so easy to wait for answers?”
“No,” Marn said, rueful. “It’s the worst.”
Bucho laughed, and it echoed enough that the Last Knight turned to them and some of the sleeping people stirred in their blankets. Bucho reached up and took Marn’s hand in his. She was so deceptively small for the strength she possessed, both in her body and her heart. “Thank you,” he said.
She squeezed his hand tight. “Of course,” she said. “Gotta help my friends.”
When they left, Bucho could hear the sounds of battle echoing behind them. He lingered, listening, trying to piece together the shape of the fight.
They were evenly matched, he thought, from the clang of steel and the roar of engines, but—
What was a Shape Knight without a train to fight? Did the Last Knight even want to win? What would he do, if he stood upon the final train’s still and silent form in victory?
Bucho shook his head and turned forward, marching away from that question. He was not the Last Knight. Trains were not the whole of the world, and there were other ways to save people from the Heartland’s dangers.
They were walking towards one of those places right now. Bucho kept his eyes on Marn. She was finding her certainty once more in their journey to the Telluricist Union. Maybe he could find a new meaning for his life there as well.