Simon Green - A Hard Day's Knight

“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.