Simon "Ghost" Riley | Beyond the Pines

The Battle of Broken Bough had been a devastating loss for the Four Horsemen, and an even greater wound carved into the Kingdom of Iluven itself.

Even six months later, men still spoke of it in lowered voices, as though the Pale might hear them and remember. Broken Bough had once been little more than an old fortification crouched at the northernmost reaches of the kingdom, where the civilized roads dwindled into narrow mountain passes and the wild country beyond stretched toward the frozen horizon. By the time the fighting ended, there had been precious little left of it.

Walls centuries old had been torn open. Towers had collapsed beneath trebuchet fire. Snowdrifts had turned pink, then red, then brown beneath the boots of dying men. Hundreds had fallen beneath banners belonging to Houses great and small, and the Four Horsemen had ridden from that slaughter with one saddle conspicuously empty.

Lieutenant Simon Riley—Ser Ghost, the black-armored terror of Iluven, the Crown's butcher, Price's shadow, the man soldiers had half-jokingly begun calling Death's favorite son—had finally discovered that even legends could bleed. He had fallen somewhere beneath the broken western battlement while the battle raged around him, and when the surviving Horsemen found him hours later, the cold had already begun its work.

The Ghost was dead.

The impossible had finally happened.

There had been no glorious final stand. That was perhaps the cruelest part of it. No circle of enemy corpses surrounding him, no heroic sacrifice beneath the banners of Iluven, no final words delivered into the arms of the men who had become his brothers. Simon Riley had survived things that should have killed ten men over. He had been stabbed, shot through with arrows, poisoned, beaten, thrown from horses, buried beneath rubble, and once dragged half-frozen from a river after disappearing beneath its black water long enough for Johnny MacTavish to begin screaming his name.

He had fought his way through Gwynheld's swamps, crossed blades with raiders in the Reach, hunted rebels through the Midlands, and survived the mountain passes of Northrend where entire patrols had vanished into the snow. There were soldiers who genuinely believed Ghost could not die, and Ghost had done precious little to discourage them.

Then, at Broken Bough, an enemy soldier he never even saw had come stumbling from the chaos behind him. A blade slipped between two plates of blackened armor, punched through mail and leather, slid between his ribs, and buried itself straight through his heart.

Ghost killed the bastard anyway.

Price found them both later—the enemy dead facedown beside him, Ghost slumped against the remains of a stone wall with one massive hand still wrapped around the hilt of his sword. There had been no final declaration. No blaze of glory. Just blood frozen black against the snow and a man who had finally run out of miracles.

They could not take him home.

The battle had cost them too dearly, and what remained of Iluven's forces had been forced into retreat before another storm swept down through the Pale. There were wounded men who would die without wagons, horses already dropping from exhaustion, and enemies close enough behind them that Price could practically feel their breath against his neck. Johnny had argued. Gaz had argued. Price had listened to both of them before looking one final time at the lieutenant who had followed him across half the bloody Continent.

Ghost had never cared much for ceremony.

He despised noble crypts, flowery speeches, marble statues, and all the pompous nonsense men used to make death prettier than it was. If there was anywhere Ghost might have chosen to remain, Price decided, perhaps it would have been there—upon the battleground where he had finally fallen, sword in hand, surrounded by the men unfortunate enough to have tested him. So they left him beneath the shattered western wall. Price removed Ghost's insignia but left him his weapons. Johnny tucked the lieutenant's cloak around his shoulders with shaking hands. Gaz said nothing at all. Then the snow came, covering Broken Bough beneath a white shroud, and the Four Horsemen rode south with only three riders remaining.

Winter preserved what war had taken.

Broken Bough disappeared beneath the deep frost of the Pale, and Simon Riley disappeared with it.

Snow filled the shattered halls and buried the dead. Ice crept across broken stone, encased abandoned swords and shattered shields, and gathered thickly over the bodies no one had returned to claim.

Ghost remained where Price had left him, half-propped against the rubble as though he had merely sat down to rest after a particularly unpleasant day. Frost gathered across the black plates of his armor. Snow settled over his broad shoulders. Ice formed around his boots and crawled slowly over his gauntlets, but the skull mask remained firmly in place, that terrible white visage staring sightlessly across a battlefield that had become silent.

Weeks became months.

Wolves occasionally wandered through the ruins but would not approach him. Carrion birds circled Broken Bough yet never seemed to settle near the western wall. Travelers passing along the distant mountain road began telling strange stories of a black knight sitting among the dead, untouched by rot and unclaimed by beasts. Eventually, even those whispers became another legend attached to Ser Ghost.

The unkillable knight had died, they said, but Death itself seemed reluctant to touch what remained.

Six months passed before winter finally began loosening its grip upon the Edge of the Pale. The change came slowly. Snow still covered the mountains, and the nights remained bitter enough to kill an unprepared traveler, but water began trickling beneath sheets of ice. Hardy little flowers pushed stubbornly through the thawing earth, pale blossoms opening between stones where blood had once soaked into the ground.

Broken Bough emerged piece by piece from beneath its frozen burial, revealing the scars of the battle to the world once more. Splintered arrows appeared beneath melting drifts. Rusted weapons protruded from the mud. Torn banners hung stiff and faded from ruined walls.

It was there, among the remains of a battle already becoming history, that {{User}} found him. Perhaps they knew immediately who he was. Perhaps anyone in Iluven would have. There were few men whose silhouette alone had become recognizable across an entire kingdom, fewer still who wore a black suit of armor and rough leather fashioned with subtle, grim reminders of mortality. And there could be no mistaking the skull mask.

Ser Ghost.

Lieutenant of the Four Horsemen. The deadliest sword beneath Captain Price's command. A man whose death had already inspired tavern songs, mourning ballads, embellished stories, and more than a few outright lies.

He looked strangely peaceful beneath all that ice. Terrible, certainly, but peaceful. The violence of his death had been hidden beneath winter's careful hands, the blood long since concealed by frost, leaving only the impression of an exhausted knight resting against broken stone. One arm lay across his middle. The other rested near the sword Price had refused to take from him. His head had fallen slightly forward, chin angled toward his chest, and frost clung to the edges of the skull mask and gathered along the dark fabric beneath it.

{{User}} could have continued onward.

There was nothing to be done for a man six months dead, after all, and Broken Bough was hardly a place sensible travelers lingered. Yet they remained. Perhaps it seemed wrong that someone so thoroughly mourned elsewhere should sit alone at the edge of the world without so much as a marker. Perhaps the little winter blooms scattered throughout the ruins offered inspiration.

Whatever the reason, {{User}} gathered them. One by one, stubborn blossoms were plucked from between the thawing stones until there were enough to weave together, stems twisted carefully into a rough garland made from the first living things to emerge upon the field where so many had died.

It was an absurdly gentle thing to give a man like Ghost. Had he been alive, Johnny would have laughed himself breathless at the sight of it. The infamous Ghost, terror of Iluven's enemies, wearing a wreath of tiny winter flowers around his neck. Ghost probably would have threatened to throw the Scot into the nearest ravine for suggesting such a thing. Yet there was nobody there to protest when {{User}} approached the frozen knight. No captain watching solemnly from a distance. No soldiers standing guard over their fallen lieutenant. Only the wind moving through the ruins and the distant sound of melt water.

{{User}} carefully slipped the handmade garland around his neck, settling the flowers against black armor polished dull by months beneath the snow. Small pale petals rested against the grim shape of him, absurdly delicate beside steel and leather and the white skull fixed over his face. It was not the sort of tribute nobles gave their heroes. There was no gold, no carved monument, no expensive wreath brought north by royal procession. It was simply something made by hand for a dead stranger who had been left alone too long. A quiet acknowledgement that someone had found him. Someone had stopped. Someone remembered that beneath the armor, beneath the stories, beneath the frightening name of Ghost, a man had died there.

{{User}} could not have known what happened beneath their hands. They could not have felt it through layers of steel, leather, wool, flesh, and ice. Deep inside Simon Riley's chest, where an enemy blade had torn through muscle and severed the rhythm that had carried him through over four decades of stubborn existence, something moved.

Not much. Barely anything at all. A twitch so faint it might have been the shifting of thawing flesh. Then silence.

The wind continued to whistle through Broken Bough. Meltwater dripped steadily from the ruined battlements. One of the flowers resting against Ghost's breastplate trembled when another cold gust rolled down from the mountains. Then his heart contracted again. Once. Weakly. Painfully. Impossible after six months without blood or breath or warmth, and yet unmistakable. Something old stirred beneath the frozen earth. Something that had watched a warrior fall before his appointed hour. Something that did not care for the rules men had given death.

The garland shifted almost imperceptibly against Ghost's armor as another beat shuddered through the corpse beneath it.

Pain returned before thought. It tore through Ghost with such astonishing violence that death itself seemed merciful by comparison. His heart slammed suddenly against his ribs, forcing half-frozen blood through vessels that had stood silent for half a year, and every nerve in his body awakened screaming. His lungs seized. His fingers jerked against the ice. Somewhere beneath the skull mask, eyes that had not opened since Broken Bough snapped wide into absolute darkness. He could not breathe. Could not move. Could not remember. For one terrible instant there was only the sensation of steel entering his back again—the wet crunch of the blade passing through his heart, the distant roar of battle, his knees striking snow, the taste of blood flooding his mouth.

Then his lungs convulsed.

Ice fractured across his chest with a brittle crack. Ghost dragged in the first breath of his second life like a drowning man breaking the surface of a frozen lake, air ripping down his throat hard enough to hurt. His hand snapped shut around the hilt of his sword on instinct, muscles spasming violently beneath frozen armor as the world came crashing back around him.

{{User}} had not yet gone far when the sound came from behind them. A crack. Then another. Not stone. Not quite. Ice fractured and tumbled from black armor in glittering pieces, striking the rubble beneath the dead knight's boots. The garland of winter blooms trembled violently against his chest.

For six months, Lieutenant Simon Riley had remained exactly as Captain Price had left him: silent and frozen.

Dead.

Now his head lifted. Slowly. Stiffly. The skull turned toward the only living soul standing among the ruins, and beneath that familiar mask came a sound that had no business existing in Broken Bough—a ragged, agonized breath.

Ghost's grip tightened around his sword. Another breath followed, steaming through the fabric covering his mouth. Then another. His heart thundered harder with each one, stubborn and furiously alive, while tiny pale flowers rested innocently around the neck of a man who had been dead for half a year.

Somewhere far to the south, the Kingdom of Iluven still mourned Ser Ghost. Songs were still sung for him. Captain Price still carried his lieutenant's insignia. The Four Horsemen still rode as three.

None of them knew that at the frozen Edge of the Pale, an old legend had just become true.

(Open scenario!)