Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

Dismissed, Conan Doyle turned to Ceridwen. "Shall we go, then, Lady?" he asked, and he held out his hand for hers.

"It seems I have no choice." She turned away from him and led the way back along the path toward the King's Gate.

The cleaver wasn't going to do Squire a damn bit of good.

In a fraction of a second a hundred bits of memory and realization came together in Squire's mind. He stood in the foyer of Conan Doyle's enormous, elegant home and stared at Morrigan. It had been a very, very long time since he had seen her last, but even that had not been nearly long enough. There wasn't a word in any language nasty enough to describe this bitch. She was sexy as hell if you were into that Goth look, not to mention chicks with claws instead of ordinary fingernails. But in his entire existence he had never met anyone who could make him feel so small with just a glance. He was a hobgoblin, and his kind was small enough as it was. Morrigan might be a queen of the Fey with all of the cruelty in her heart that her people were capable of, but she had none of their nobility, none of their honor. She was a sour, charmless, vicious cunt.

And he had used those precise words to describe her, to her face, the last time they had met.

Now she stood just inside the door, not far from the portrait of Conan Doyle's son that hung on the wall, with a pair of sunglasses dangling from one finger and a smile that could have sliced him open. Her eyes gleamed red and her nails, teeth, and spiked hair all seemed sharper than he remembered.

"Oh, yes," Morrigan hissed, running her tongue across her upper lip. "I remember you, hobgoblin."

Squire felt his knees turn to jelly. He offered a flickering smile that died instantly. He glanced at the Night People carrying Sanguedolce's amber sarcophagus like a bunch of ugly fucking pall bearers.

"Crap."

He turned and ran back the way he'd come, cleaver at his side. Hobgoblins were faster on their feet than most people presumed at first glance, but that was not saying very much. There was a limit to how swift anyone could be with legs that short. The veins at his temples pulsed and his boots shook the floor. Behind him Morrigan released a stream of derisive laughter and Squire could hear the grunting of the Corca Duibhne as they gave chase. Some of them were barefoot and their claws clicked and scraped on the wood floor.

"Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch," Squire whispered under his breath as he ran, knuckles white where he gripped the cleaver in his hand.

He was going to have to leave the house. Conan Doyle's house. The mage's own wards had not held Morrigan out and there was no way that Squire himself could defend the place. Conan Doyle was going to be more than a little upset, but somehow Squire had the feeling that paintings and antiques and even a little breaking-and-entering were the least of Conan Doyle's concerns at the moment. The big question was going to be what Morrigan was up to. Squire couldn't answer that question right now. He had other obligations.

The first was to survive.

The second was to do his job.

Barreling into the kitchen he leaped over a dead Corca Duibhne. There was a grunt of triumph behind him and he felt claws snag the back of his shirt. Squire spun and buried the cleaver in the creature's chest. It squealed and dark blood sprayed from the wound. The blade stayed buried in its flesh as it backpedaled, slapping at the cleaver as though it were a wasp instead of a cutting tool. For several, precious seconds, it prevented the others of its kind from reaching him.

Squire dove across the kitchen, toward the sink. He grabbed the handles of the two small doors under the sink and yanked them open. Even with what light there was in the kitchen the patch of shadow was deep and black. He ducked his head inside the cabinet and his shoulders were too broad to fit.

"Shit," he whispered, glancing back.

The Corca Duibhne had thrown their injured brother to the ground and were trampling over him. Even as he looked, Squire saw one of them stomp on the cleaver buried in the creature's chest, driving it deeper. Putrid blood ran in rivulets across the floor. The nearest one laughed as it spotted him.

"Where do you think you go, now, ugly turnip?"

Squire sneered. This guy was calling him ugly?

And then he pushed. His bones popped out of their joints, his arms folding in upon his body, and he drove himself inside the cabinet and into the patch of shadows within. One of them snagged at his foot and he kicked its claws away and with one last, solid plant of his boot on the interior of the cabinet, thrust himself into the shadows.

The shadow-paths opened before him. He could feel them, sense each walkway around him. His eyes were open but there was no color, only levels of its absence. Squire felt at home here, much more so than he ever did in the other world. This was where he belonged. He was not small here, not ugly or freakish. He was not a monster. Here in the shadows he was agile, graceful, and strong.

There was no time for him to pause and reflect now upon Morrigan's attack and what it might mean. There was time only to move, to walk the shadows. He had survived. Now it was on to his second priority.

The darkness rushed past him, caressed him, as Squire hurried along the shadow-path to his first stop. He could feel Conan Doyle's house around him, navigated by instinctual awareness of the ways in which the real world entwined with the shadow world. Moments after he had disappeared inside the kitchen cabinet he reappeared inside another, much larger enclosure on the second floor of the house.

The weapons closet.

Hobgoblins could see better in the dark. Squire looked around and felt a surge of grim pleasure as he surveyed the swords and daggers, the bows and battleaxes, the maces and morningstars, and the more arcane weapons, his favorite bits and bobbles. Poison dueling pistols. Ectoplasm garrotes.

Beyond the doors of the weapons closet, which allowed only a sliver of light to enter, he could hear the thumping of the Corca Duibhne's incursion. Glass shattered and doors slammed. Morrigan must have been aware that he was a shadow-walker, but still they were searching for him, or trying to find out if anyone else was in the house. There were animal growls that went along with the Night People's movements through the house, but Squire was no longer listening. He was in a hurry now.

He began with his favorites, unbreakable blades and enchanted arrows, others that he had relied on over the ages. As quietly as he was able, Squire filled his arms with weapons and slipped back into darkness, stepped into the shadow-paths, and made his way into Conan Doyle's garage. Nothing was darker than the trunk of the limousine.

Emerging inside the trunk, he paused to listen but heard neither grunts nor footfalls nor clattering of vandalism that would have accompanied the Night People into the garage. Still he was careful to be quiet as he laid the first stash of weapons down at the back of the spacious trunk.

Then he went back.

Quiet. Careful. Swift.

Squire made jaunt after jaunt from weapons closet to trunk, slipping along the shadow paths and retrieving blades and poisons and blunts. He was many things to Arthur Conan Doyle — valet and chauffeur and confidante — but the most vital part of his service was as armorer

… as squire. It was his duty to care for the weapons, to supply them when needed, to see that Conan Doyle and his comrades were never unarmed. It would have been simple for him to escape the house, to leave Morrigan behind, but he was not going to leave the weapons.

On his seventh trip into the weapons closet, he heard voices.

Squire froze with his hand upon the grip of a scimitar whose blade was engraved with ancient symbols even Conan Doyle didn't understand. He quieted himself, holding his breath, and he listened. They were speaking Danaaini, the language of the Fey. One of the voices belonged to Morrigan and the other, a male voice, to another of her kind.