A Hard Day's Knight (17 page)

Calling myself an idiot every step of the way.

The moment I drew Excalibur, everything changed. Its golden glow leapt forth, illuminating the entire hall; and both sides sent up a great cry, as though its very existence validated their being there. The elves all turned to look in my direction and surged forward, aimed right at me. They were singing now, a sweetly inhuman sound that hurt my ears. The London Knights moved quickly to stop them, putting their steel and themselves between the elves and Excalibur, and the man who bore it. And I moved forward, swinging the great golden blade before me as though it were weightless, an unfamiliar exhilaration filling my heart. I might never be a knight, but I had met both Merlin and Arthur, and at that moment it felt like I had both their blessings.

An elf reared up before me in shimmering silver armour, his blade glowing bright as the sun. I cut him down with a single stroke, Excalibur shearing through his enchanted armour as though it weren’t even there. The blade sank deep into his chest. I jerked it out again, and golden blood flew on the air. The elf fell away, and I moved on. I didn’t have skill or grace; Excalibur was unstoppable. I stabbed and hacked and cut, and elves died at my hand, and it felt good, so good. I was grinning broadly now, shouting and laughing as I cut my way through the elves, like a gardener through tall weeds.

That wasn’t like me, and I knew it even then, but I wasn’t in charge any more. The sword was. It knew what it was doing; I was only along for the ride. I swung the sword with a speed and a skill that weren’t mine, killing elves. Excalibur was in its element, come home again, to do what it was made to do.

I ran an elf through, the sword punching through his breast-plate and out his back. Golden blood streamed down the armour, but the elf didn’t even cry out. He stood his ground and tried to force himself forward, along the blade, so he could get his hands on me. I stared impassively into his contorted face and hauled the sword out of his body in one brutal movement. He cried out then, and I cut his exposed throat. And then I continued the movement, spinning round to block the attack of an elf moving in on my blind side. I hadn’t known he was there, but the sword had. The new elf stabbed at me, but I blocked his blade with Excalibur, and the glowing elven sword shattered into a dozen pieces. And while the elf hesitated, startled, I cut him down and moved on to my next victim. I wasn’t even breathing hard.

And then I stopped, and looked round me, because suddenly there were no more elves. They were all dead, lying scattered and still across the wide and bloody marble floor. The London Knights sent up a great cry of triumph, punching the air with their raised blood-stained blades, then they turned to me and cried out their praises. I nodded. It didn’t feel like I’d done anything. I looked round for Sir Gareth; but he was already racing through the archway and back down the corridor, idly flicking drops of golden blood from his blade. I went after him. He was thinking of the women and children hidden in the Redoubt; and so was I.

I caught up with him more easily this time. Excalibur was providing me with all the strength and speed I needed. He shot me a quick grin. An enchanted blade had opened up a long groove along the armour over his left ribs, and blood had trickled down the gleaming steel. But his eyes were bright, and his smile was infectious. He laughed at the expression on my face.

“Is it not a glorious thing, to be a knight in armour and strike down your enemies? To punish the guilty with your own hands, to be brave and strong and know that everything you do matters? This is what it is, John, to be a London Knight!”

“You speak for yourself,” I said. “Trust me; I am not warrior material. It’s only the sword that’s keeping me going.”

“Excalibur couldn’t bring it out of you if it wasn’t there to begin with. A reluctant hero is still a hero, my friend.”

I was still trying to come up with an answer to that when we burst into the Hall of Forgotten Beasts. An elven sorcerer was standing at the far end, clad in sweeping crimson silks. He smiled easily at us, as though we were guests arrived just in time for dinner, then he made one sweeping gesture with a pale long-fingered hand, and every trophied head mounted on the walls opened its mouth and cried out in pain and rage.

They weren’t alive; but they were awake and aware, and they knew what had been done to them. They rolled their eyes and snapped their mouths, and strained against the mounting boards that held them to the walls. Great cracks appeared in the stonework round each head, the old stone splitting apart as though some unimaginable weight and pressure had been set against the other side of the wall. And then the heads surged forward, and the rest of their bodies crashed through the stone after them. They were complete again, all the great lost beasts of history and legend, and each and every one of them had revenge and retribution on their minds. They were long and sleek, huge and powerful, swift and deadly; and they only had eyes for Sir Gareth and me. Hundreds of enraged beasts and one really big, really pissed-off dragon.

“Oh shit,” I said.

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Sir Gareth. “Do you think it would help if I explained we’re much more into conservation these days?”

“You go ahead and try. I plan on running. Try and keep up.”

“Love to join you, John, but unfortunately the way to the inner chambers, and the Redoubt, lies at the other end of this hall.”

“Oh shit.”

“Couldn’t agree more. So, forward into battle it is. Try and keep up.”

Sir Gareth strode forward, sword at the ready, not intimidated in the least by the odds against him. I stayed right where I was. Excalibur seemed almost to leap in my hand, pulling me forward and urging me on, but I rejected its call and put the sword away. Courage is all very well, but sometimes all it can get you is a glorious death. I know overwhelming odds when I see them. I’ve faced them before. And I know from experience that you don’t beat them by meeting them head-on. You win by thinking outside the box, and by blatant cheating.

I still couldn’t find it in myself to see these long-dead creatures as a threat. They were the victims here. They hadn’t asked to be killed and mounted on a wall, then brought back again by a sorcerer’s spell. Poor bastards. So I raised my gift, and used it to find the magic the elf sorcerer had used to haul them back into this world. It turned out to be a series of silver threads, trailing back from the head of every animal to the sorcerer’s upraised hand. So many puppets on magical strings. Elves have always preferred to let others do their dirty work and not give a damn about the pawns they use. And so it was the easiest thing in the world for me to sever all the threads in a moment and set the beasts free.

The elf sorcerer cried out in shock and pain, and the psychic backlash from the ruptured spell sent him staggering backwards, clutching at his head. All the undead beasts in the hall dropped to their knees and crashed to the floor, released from their new existence and the undead bodies they never asked for. Finally dead, at last. For with my gift and my Sight raised, I Saw the ghosts of hundreds of ancient beasts rise up, freed at last, and turn away from the world to face a new bright light that called to them. One by one they moved away in a direction I could sense, but not See, leaving the Hall of Forgotten Beasts forever. Going home, at last. Bound to this place no longer.

The Questing Beast was the last to go. It turned its noble head to look at me, with huge, kind eyes. And then it bowed its great head to me briefly before hobbling off after all the others.

Sir Gareth looked about him, his sword drooping unheeded in his hand. He looked at me. “John, did you do this? What did you do?”

I could have told him about the original hunters of his order, who had not only mounted the heads of their kills as trophies but also bound the beasts’ spirits to those heads, as a sign of ownership ... but I didn’t. The sins of the past should stay in the past. I smiled at Sir Gareth.

“Sometimes,” I said, “try a little tenderness.”

“The reports were right,” he said. “You are weird. And someone’s going to have to clean up all these dead animals, but it isn’t going to be me. Come on; we have an elf sorcerer to deal with.”

The elf was still leaning heavily against the wall at the end of the hall, trying to get his thoughts back together. Having a major working interrupted is never a good idea. He didn’t look up till Sir Gareth and I had almost pushed our way through the piled-up bodies; and then he forced himself upright and glared at both of us. But, being an elf, he still had to strike a dramatic pose before he could throw a spell, and while he was busy doing that, Sir Gareth threw his sword at him. The gleaming steel blade flashed through the intervening space and slammed into the elf’s thigh, pinning him to the stone wall. The elf didn’t cry out. He grabbed at the sword with both hands and tried to pull it out.

He didn’t have a hope in hell of shifting the blade before we got to him. The blade had gone right through the meat of his upper thigh and sunk deep into the stone wall behind him. Golden blood streamed down his leg, and pooled on the floor. The elf was still tugging stubbornly at the blade when we got to him. He sneered at us, opened his mouth to say something, and Sir Gareth cut his throat with a knife. I had to step quickly aside to avoid getting soaked. Sir Gareth jerked the sword out of the dead elf’s leg with one hard tug. The body slumped forward, and Sir Gareth stepped aside to let it fall. I glared at him.

“You didn’t have to kill him! He was helpless!”

“He was an elf and a sorcerer,” Sir Gareth said mildly. “He could have cursed us both with just a Word.”

“He was in no condition to work magic. He could have been useful. He could have answered questions.”

“What questions?” said Sir Gareth, fastidiously shaking golden blood off his sword blade. “We know why they’re here and who let them in, and we know what they want. You over-complicate things, John.”

“It’s the principle of the thing!”

“Wait. You’ve got principles? We’ll have to update your file.”

“You know nothing about me,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

We came at last to the Main Hall, hundreds of feet long and half as wide, packed from end to end with a great surging mass of fighting men and elves. I never knew there were so many London Knights. The whole place was a battle-field, with two great armies hammering at each other with not one ounce of mercy or quarter. Neither side was interested in simply winning; this was a fight to the death. To the last death. The clash of weapons meeting, the shouts of triumph and the screams of the dying, made a sound loud enough to fill my head. It was like watching two great herds of deer slamming their antlers together in a blind fury. Sir Gareth might talk of honour and glory in battle; all I saw was butchery.

Elven spells blasted through the air, or detonated in the crush of bodies, but mostly there was only room for one-on-one combat, man against elf, cold steel versus enchanted blades, one implacable force slamming up against another. But one figure stood out for me, walking untouched amidst the chaos, ignored by the elves, disdained by the knights. Jerusalem Stark, looking every bit as haunted and driven as he had in the portrait gallery, striding purposefully through the battle-field as though it weren’t there. And perhaps for him, it wasn’t. He didn’t care about any of it. He was looking right at me, coming straight for me, for what I had that he wanted. I met his gaze across the crowded hall and drew Excalibur. His step didn’t even hesitate as he saw the blade’s golden light. He kept on coming, and I went forward to meet him. Not for glory, or even for justice, but because some things just need to be done.

I plunged into the battle with Sir Gareth at my side, but Stark and I only had eyes for each other. If an elf got in my way, or a knight got in his, we both cut them down and kept going. Our speed increased as we drew nearer, until finally we were running through the crowd, opening up a way through the crush through sheer force of will. Until, finally, we slammed together, swords hammering against each other, driven with all our strength and all our fury. His blade didn’t shatter when Excalibur met it, but he couldn’t meet my attack either. I pressed forward, beating his sword aside with Excalibur, and he fell back, step by controlled step. I kept hammering away at him, and he kept retreating, but I couldn’t force my way past his defence. I rained blow after blow on him, and he parried and turned and let himself be driven back, on his own terms. The London Knights had trained him well. Against the most powerful sword in the world, he was holding his own. He couldn’t stand against Excalibur for long, and both of us knew it, but he only had to get lucky once.

I did try my very best to kill him, there in that hall, but he was an amazing swordsman and a canny warrior. Excalibur made me a great fighter, but he already was one. I had power, but he had experience. I could drive him back, but I couldn’t reach him. And even as I was fighting, striking at him with all my strength and Excalibur’s speed, I still couldn’t help noticing something else. Something that quickly seemed more important than striking down one sad, embittered soul. So I stepped suddenly forward, slammed his sword aside, and shoved two extended fingers into his eyes. He cried out and fell backwards, lashing blindly back and forth with his sword, as tears streamed down his cheeks from screwed-shut eyes. He really should have worn a helmet.

I left him staggering blindly, and went to see what was happening in the middle of the hall. Some elves tried to stop me, and Excalibur cut them down with almost contemptuous ease. Ahead of me, surrounded by protective rings of heavily armed elves, kept separate from the main battle, three elf sorcerers were killing one of their own. He stood tall and proud as they cut him to pieces, not raising one pale hand to defend himself. Golden blood flooded down his naked, mutilated body, until he couldn’t stand any more, and collapsed. The sorcerers crowded in round him as he hit the floor, tearing him limb from limb, carving him up like a side of beef. And then they took the pieces, and began to build something with them.