MSF: The Beloved Student and the Dog Knight

The Beloved Student was traveling by long and lonesome road when they happened upon a man clad in rags and lying in a ditch. Moved with compassion, the Beloved Student went to offer him the cloak from their shoulders, only for the man to spring up and away from their hand, spitting and snarling as an angry dog.

Startled, the Beloved Student drew back and exclaimed:

"What are you - a man who lives as a beast, or a beast that wears the guise of a man?"

"A reminder," the man growled in the voice like woodsmoke and firewater. As he emerged from the shade of the ditch to the light of the road, he picked up a sword from the dirt at his feet and brandished it as if it were a revelation: its tip was broken off; its edge was chipped and blunted; a great crack ran down its length; its corroded blade was caked in blood and dirt and the filth of men's bowels.

"Behold, my trade."

This sign the Student recognized, and they said:

"Ah! You are a kapalika, then."

"As good a name as any," the beggar said as he hung the sword from a loop of his fraying rope belt. "What do they say of me and my brethren, back in the green and peaceful lands?"

"That a kapalika might fight a thousand men alone and unclad and emerge victorious."

"Ah." The beggar crouched down and began writing something in the dirt. "Whoever told you that is either a liar or an idiot."

"Do you mean to say that you killed ten thousand?"

"I mean to say that I have no reason to count anything beyond what my fingers might provide. I am a slaughterer of men, ought I keep score like a boy playing kickball? Whether I killed a thousand or ten thousand or merely ten is of no difference to me."

"Oh."

The beggar stood back up, his knees cracking. He scuffed out what he had drawn with his tattered sandal.

[What he drew in the dirt is a matter of intense scholarly debate - ed.]

"I can see the question on your face. Best get it over with."

"While I recognize your trade, I do not know what reminder you make of yourself."

At this the beggar barked once in what was not unlike laughter, and phlegm caught in his throat so that he spat it into the dust before speaking further.

"You have gone out into the world to teach the ways of compassion and the paths of peace. I have gone out to preach the Sword Law to those who have forgotten its precepts."

"What is this Sword Law, that men so easily forget it?"

"The principle act of power is this: to shove a sharp piece of metal in the guts of another man. Dominion is made and sustained through mastery of the application of death and the manufacture of corpses. Kings and princes will name it glory and honor and duty, they will say it is a matter of law, of rights, of faith and of necessity. They will name it a thousand beautiful names, hide its gaping and maggoty wounds with silken robes, shower it in perfumes to mask the abattoir stench, drown its ghosts in wine, raise banners in honor and sing hymns of praise...but Sword Law does not change. It is the blade itself. Those princes and kings will wave from their palanquins and pavilions and think all costs justified. They have rejected the manudûn and chosen to live by the sword; Thus they shall die not as men die, comfortable in the house of their kin, but as disciples of the sword die. I am the reminder of true Sword Law, and thus I butcher men without sparing them the dignity I grant the rats that are my supper."

"Your law is a brutal and wretched thing," said the Beloved Student.

"Would you consider the killing of men to be anything else? Come now. But it is good that you are disgusted. Your soul remains intact. You need not be worried: My sword is for the humbling of hypocrites - the innocents learning by your side have nothing to fear from me." He grinned, revealing crooked and blackened teeth. "So long as they remember."

"I do not think you would be easy to forget."

"And yet, men so often do." He reached to an inner pocket of his dirt-caked robe and withdrew a small stoppered gourd from within. He removed the cork and there was the burning smell of gâzolin. He downed the mouthful, hissed with an intake of breath, and tossed the empty gourd aside.

"I will give you a proverb, in remembrance of this meeting: there is no mastery of the sword. It will destroy all you hold dear should you take to its teachings, and then it will destroy you. Do not think as kings and imbeciles do, that you are immune to the blade because you know the proper forms of its use. Hate the sword if you must have anything to do with it; it will still destroy you, but perhaps it might not become your master."

Silence reigned for a time, for the beggar had nothing more to say and the Beloved Student had no response. But they recovered their words and as the beggar made move to leave they said:

"A last question, sir. Who shall I say sent this message?"

The beggar smiled again, wider and more horrible than before. His gums bled.

"Tell them you heard it from a wild dog along the road. A jackal or dhole would do nicely."

And so the beggar walked past the Beloved Student, north on the road. When he had gone a stone's throw and a half, he turned and called back:

"A word to the wise, be it you or another: if you are to continue south, do so by a different road. This one has become difficult to pass."

With that the beggar staggered off the road and up the western hill, until at last he was out of sight. The Beloved Student watched him go before turning around northward and retracing their path back to the last crossroads.

Not far along that same road, a parasang or so south from that meeting place, crows gathered council in great black clouds. They settled upon the fields like a dew, alighting on new-formed hills of meat piled high and left to rot. Armor glistened under crusted gore, and banners hung limp beneath the burning sun.

** Notes**

[1] I'm not even reading Kill Six Billion Demons at the moment, I have no idea what the current arc is about other than Maya is involved.

[2] Dog Knights started as expys of Maya, but they've since accumulated traits of Sufi sword-saints (thanks Ènziramire!) and aghori.

[3] The Beloved Student's main appeal as a character and as a saint of the Painted Ones is their persistant gormlessness. They are naive, unaware, unimaginative, lacking in focus, and altogether somewhat of a dunce. They are the living embodiment of "bless their heart". But, the thinking goes, if this dunderhead can ascend the mountain, then the way is possible to anyone. To this end they feature often in comedic stories, and very often those geared towards children, and are always played off of someone more worldly and experienced - usually their teacher Jizo, but this is not the only encounter they will have with a Dog Knight.

[4] Dog Knights appear occasionally in the oral corpus, though they are rarely ever named - if they are, they will be called Jackal or Dhole or Hound or Hyena or Thylacine or something of that nature. This leads to them forming a sort of gestalt character, where every Dog Knight is treated as an aspect of a single, continuous personage. One might say that a Dog Knight appeared or the Dog Knight appeared and there is no real difference.

[5] Dog Knights, as evidenced in this story and in stories like it, inhabit the role of the of an opposite to the Painted Ones - not as opponents, but as a separate dharma entirely [aside] I can't think of a better way to describe this at the moment, we are brushing up agaist some rather obtuse in-universe philosophical and spiritual principles and I don't have a word of my own creation on-hand to describe "one of multiple simultaneous methodologies of achieving an enlightened spiritual state", so dharma it will remain for the time being. [/aside]

[6] Painted Ones are MSF's boddhisatva-analogues (hardly even subtle ones, the most prominent of them is name Jizo) We'll get more of them in the future: All you need to know now is that the name comes from the usage of body paints as a signifier of their role. There's also some definite influence from Sonchin in Hellboy/BPRD. You can consider the Dog Knights to be the left-hand to the Painted Ones' right, but the way that is typically framed in the world of MSF is more cooprative than combative.

[7] Some of the traditions that use the hand-path schema have upwards of a dozen of them - imagine a statue of Lu with the Hindu deity multiple-arm thing going on, each implement or hand sign representative of a different magical tradition. But again this is an in-universe way of looking at things. Everything is canon, especially the parts that contradict.