WARNING: This chapter is where Reuben begins his transformation from good knight into deliciously evil knight ;-) So there might be some goings-on that some people would consider extreme or improper. You have been warned...

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Reuben's face twitched in a way that made Ayla feel cold inside. It was just there for a moment: a strange expression that she could not place, but that nevertheless frightened her.

And then she realized why she thought it frightening: because it was an expression she had never really seen on Reuben's face before. Pain.

"He must have been getting desperate," Reuben murmured. "Love makes you do desperate things. It is the only way I can explain what happened next."

Ayla heard a strange noise. When she looked towards Reuben's hand she saw he was holding the metal mug so hard his fingers had made dents in it.

"I heard a snap," he said, tonelessly, "and the next thing I knew, I was falling. For a moment I thought my horse had collapsed. Now I know what it was, of course. The Duke had cut my saddle girth—just enough so it would tear the rest of the way during the joust. The last thing I remember was one of the wooden poles of the stands rushing towards me, then there was nothing but blackness. Blackness and pain, endless, infernal pain."

Not appearing to be aware of the motion, he reached up to his forehead and touched the scimitar-shaped scar there. Ayla had always wondered where it came from. Now, the realization trickled over her like ice-cold water.

She couldn't even imagine what it must have been like. She had seen Sir Isenbard gallop often enough, had been on the back of a horse herself often enough, to know how fast one could get if one really pushed it. An accident at such speed must be horrendous.

Still...

It wasn't enough to explain the haunted look on Reuben's face.

"What happened to me after that I have no idea," he continued, his eyes lost in distant darkness. "I didn't feel how they carried me out of the lists, or what was being done to try and heal my wounds. I only saw, heard and felt the flames of pain, scorching away my flesh until there was nothing left of me but a ragged skeleton. I could see my own hands of bone, burning in the dark. Death and fire and devastation—that was all I was."

"That does it!" Burchard's voice was hoarse. "That's proof! The devil claimed him with hellfire! Theoderich, get Linhart and a dozen men in here. I want this abomination in chains and ready for execution by sunset. Do we have enough wood for a pyre?"

Theoderich, Reuben and Ayla all ignored him.

"I lay in the dark for the Devil knows how long. Hours? Days? What did it matter? I screamed and screamed in agony, saw monsters and demons mixed in with strange shapes and bright lights perform a dazzling dance that only I, in my torment, could see. I was sure I had died and gone to hell. And then, suddenly, the pain ceased."

He put such an emphasis on hose last words that Ayla felt obliged to ask: "S-someone was helping you? Healing you?"

Reuben shook his head, looking at her strangely—as if she were a thousand miles away, and he could never reach her.

"No. Don't you understand, Ayla? All pain ceased. Everything. The agony of my wounds, the ache in my bones, my headache, even the itch in my big toe I hadn't even noticed until it disappeared—everything was gone from one moment to the next. There was calm. Serenity. Heavenly peace."

He laughed a bitter laugh that sent a shiver down Ayla's back.

"I still don't know what happened, what kind f mysterious power touched me that day. Was it a devil? An angel?"

His lips twitched in a humorless smile as if he thought the latter unlikely.

"All I know is, when I opened my eyes, I saw blood oozing out of a wound in my side—and I didn't feel a thing. I felt fine. The splintered end of the Duke's lance was still sticking out of the wound, and I felt fine. I sprang to my feet."

As if feeling the need to emulate his words he rose, every muscle in his powerful body tensed to braking point. Ayla watched him uncoil, fighting the urge to take a step back. The dark energy rolling off him was so intense she could almost taste it.

"I stood, as if there had never been anything wrong with me. I didn't understand what was happening, but I rejoiced in it. Obviously, I had been granted God's favor."

Spreading his arms, he stared up at the ceiling, a manic glint in his gray eyes. "Who but God had the power to restore someone to life and health who should be lying in his grave? And the Lord had taken my pain away. I was the new Lazarus. No, for a moment I was more than Lazarus: I was God's chosen."

If his first laugh had been bitter, this one was like vinegar. It racked his body, and several of the lashes on his back that had already begun to scab over broke open again, releasing a small stream of blood.

He didn't even notice. Suddenly, his laugh broke off, and he shook his head.

"What a fool I was back then. What an incredibly naïve fool."

His eyes went out of focus once more. Ayla knew that look by now: he was seeing another time and place. He was seeing the past.

"Oh, I was so overjoyed to be God's chosen... I saw it as a sign that I had lived my life as a knight should. I was the new Sir Galahad, blessed with a miracle every bit as great as the Holy Grail. I wanted to share this miracle with my friends, with my love, Salvatrice—but none of them were there, around my sickbed. I went looking for them."

His teeth ground together.

"I didn't have far to go. Just a few tents away I found evidence that it had not been God's mercy at work here, but, if anything, the Devil's mockery. In that tent I found my friends, busy arguing about who would get the biggest share."

"The biggest share?" Ayla asked, frowning. "Of what?"

"Of my belongings, of course!" It was a hiss that escaped through clenched teeth. Ayla backed away, slightly frightened by the look on Reuben's face, which was unlike anything she had seen before.

"My body wasn't even cold yet, and my 'friends' were already squabbling about who would get the biggest share! Foremost among them the fair Salvatrice. She was most vocal in her expressions of love, maintaining that she, as the one who suffered the most under my demise, was entitled to the biggest share. Most of all she wanted the piece of the lance that had pierced my side. She thought that given the dramatic manner of my death, it would 'fetch a good price as a curiosity'."

Ayla felt sick inside. Right then and there, she didn't feel a twinge of jealousy. The hatred that burned in Reuben's eyes when he spoke of Salvatrice left no doubt how he really felt about her now. There was no need for jealousy. For pity, maybe, if Reuben crossed paths with her ever again.

Slowly, Reuben's jaw unclenched, and the diabolical smile that Ayla knew so well spread over his features. Only now Ayla knew where that devilish expression, that seemed to mock all good in the world, came from.

"It was at that moment that the first of my dear friends saw me, standing in the entrance of the tent, the bloody fragment of the lance still buried in my side. I remember it exactly. It was my priest—the one who took my confession, preached modesty and restraint to me, and was now there to lay claim to my possessions."

Reuben breathed in, then out, slowly, as if savoring the smell of fear on the air. "I have rarely seen something so satisfying as the expression on the good father's face when he laid eyes on me. He pointed at me, his arm shaking like a reed, and then made the sign of the cross."

Reuben laughed again, that laugh that seemed to come directly from the bottommost depth of hell, and Ayla couldn't help it: she took another step back. She wasn't the only one, either. Burchard's hand had vanished under his tunic, no doubt once more clutching the cross concealed there, and Theoderich was looking as if he seriously regretted his oath of loyalty to a certain red knight.

There was brutality in Reuben's laugh. Brutality, and anger, and pain—long buried, now unearthed again and burning afresh.

"They heard the priest, and all of them turned to see me standing in the entrance: six foot seven inches of bloody mess, with a cut across my head the size of Brandenburg and the tip of the Duke's lance jutting from my side. Salvatrice nearly fainted on the spot—but she was too frightened even for that. They must have thought I was a wraith, returned from the dead to drag them to hell—and I certainly didn't do anything to discourage that idea."

His eyes closed in relish.

"I let them have it. The things I threw at them... I don't even know where the words came from. Curses I had never heard before in my life, threats, vile prophecies, promises of soul-rending torture. I moved through their ranks, cutting them down not with sword or spear, but with words. Black words."

Slowly raising his right hand, he stared down at the dried blood splattered all over it. Ayla hadn't thought to remove it before he began his story. Now she wished she had.

"I went to the priest," he said, his voice dropping to ominous depths. "He stumbled back, wanted to get away, but I didn't let him. I grabbed his hand with hands that were just as bloody as mine are now, and pressed it into my side just under my wound, until it was covered in blood. Then I leaned forward and hissed into his ear 'This is my blood!'—the words I had heard him utter so often, and with so much false devotion. I moved his hand up until it was jammed into my bare, open, bleeding wound and growled 'This is my flesh!'"

Reuben's right hand clenched into a tight fist, causing flocks of dried blood to flutter towards the ground. Ayla could see veins and tendons standing out all over his arm. "He fainted on the spot."

Right then and there, Ayla sympathized with the priest. She felt like doing the same. Blasphemy was one thing, but this... This went beyond human.

"I went to one after the other. Not one of them dared to touch me, or look me in the eye. But neither did they find the courage to run. Maybe because they knew that if they had exposed their backs to me, I would have struck them down where they stood. One after the other I made them touch me, made them scream, made them fear life more than death, made them beg for the end!"

In a lightning-fast movement, Reuben's clenched fist shot out and grabbed the metal cup he had drunk from. His fingers contracted, and the cup crumpled, bending in on itself until it was nothing more than a twisted ball of metal.

"The tent was pitched on the tournament grounds, right in front of the Royal Palace, so it didn't take long for the King's Watch to hear the screams and come running. But when the guards saw me, not one of them dared to approach, let alone touch me. Most of them simply turned tail and ran back to where they had come from. A few stayed, rooted to the spot, unable to move. I didn't really care. They were nothing but worms beneath my feet, and not the worms I wished to trample right then and there. You cannot imagine the rush of power that was coursing through me, the knowledge that I was invulnerable, and that those who had wronged me would rue the day they had been born. I continued my work, uninterrupted."

His fist unclenched, and the twisted clump of metal that had been a cup once fell onto the stone floor with a clatter.

"Lastly, I came to Salvatrice. She didn't faint, didn't even beg. She just looked up at me with those great, dark eyes of hers. Yet now I could see the treachery behind the beauty. It was a mystery to me how I could have missed it before. The devil was dancing in her eyes. Still, I didn't make her touch me."

Ayla swallowed. Her throat was so dry she could hardly speak, but she tried anyway.

"Did... did you have mercy on her? Because you loved her?"

"Mercy?" Reuben turned to look at her, the look in his eyes making her shudder. "That's not what I would call it. I ripped the tip of the Duke's lance from my side, grabbed her hand, and made her take it. There was blood and torn bits of flesh all over her."

"That's... that's horrible."

"Is it?" He raised an eyebrow. "If it's so horrible, why do you have a smile on your face that looks distinctly pleased?"

"I do not!" Ayla said, flushing.

"Oh yes, you do."

"My facial expressions are none of your business! What did you say to her? To your Salvatrice?"

Reuben's eyes narrowed.

"She was never my Salvatrice. I've told you that before. And trust me, from the way she was looking at me, standing there covered in gore, with a bloody piece of a lance in her hands, she never wanted to be. I told her 'I believe you wanted this, Milady? Take it, with my best wishes. If you ever dare to sell it, Satan will come for you, and drag you down to the darkest cell in the fourth circle of hell.'"

"A-and then?" she asked with bated breath.

"Then?" He smirked, and there was a hint of the light smirk of former days in it. "Then I passed out."

"You what?"

"I might not have felt the pain, but when you pull a lance from an open wound, you can't really help it beeding rather excessively. I'm not immune to that. Unfortunately, I didn't think about that little fact before presenting the Lady Salvatrice with the plug that was keeping my blood inside my body."

He snorted. "In about two seconds, a waterfall of blood was gushing down my side and I was on my ass. It was a rather disheartening experience for someone who just realized his own invulnerability."

"I'd like to have seen that," Burchard commented from his corner of the room.

"Ha! I bet you would. Though there really wasn't that much to see. I just lay there, staring up and wondering why there suddenly were so many stars on the tent roof. Then, darkness swooped in."

His face darkened, as if his words had power over his features.

"When I woke up, I was in the dungeon."

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Greetings, Milords and Ladies!

Today I have a special question for you. As you will have heard, I will soon start posting some of my stories on a platform called Radish, where readers willing to support me with a few cents per chapter can get at chapters early, and I can also deliver exclusive extra content :)

My question now is - should I upload the 'Special Edition' part of 'The Robber Knight' on this platform? Are there any among you who haven't been able to get the paperback / ebook, or simply prefer reading in an app?

Waiting for your feedback,

Your medieval scribbler

Sir Rob