More than half the thugs were on the floor: unconscious, bleeding, shot by their own people, or still recovering from various dirty tricks. Most of them wouldn’t be taking any more interest in proceedings for a while, and the rest were too busy cursing their fellows for being such lousy shots. Russell could still be heard screaming orders and abuse, almost incandescent with rage. I never knew he had it in him. Bullet-holes had pock-marked the first-floor wall, and all my frosted glass was gone. The gun smoke was slowly clearing, but there was still only intermittent light from outside. It occurred to me that I shouldn’t be able to see all this as clearly as I did ... And then I pushed the thought aside, as some of the thugs reloaded their guns and started cautiously up the stairs towards me, driven on by Russell’s screeching voice.
I could feel Excalibur on my back, a fierce and dangerous presence, nagging at me like an aching tooth, demanding to be drawn and used. The sword would have made short work of the thugs, guns or no; but I didn’t want to draw it. I didn’t need a legendary sword to see off a few bad guys with delusions of adequacy. I was John Taylor, no longer trying to be normal.
I took a flashbang out of my coat-pocket, primed it, and tossed it lightly down the stairs. I counted off five, then turned my head away and squeezed my eyes shut. The flashbang detonated, filling the stairs with unbearably bright light. The thugs screamed like little girls as the fierce-light-blasted eyes adjusted to the gloom, and they fired blindly ahead of them, peppering the stairs and the walls but not coming anywhere near me. I waited till they stopped firing, then strolled casually back down the stairs, snatching the guns out of their hands and hitting them here and there with vicious intent. One by one, I kicked their unconscious bodies down the stairs and threw their guns after them. I’ve never cared for the things. One lone thug remained, at the foot of the stairs. He’d managed to avoid the worst of the flashbang, and the pepper, and had his gun trained on me. He looked seriously spooked, though; his hand was trembling, and his eyes were almost painfully wide as he watched me descend the stairs towards him. I’d taken down his entire gang, and I wasn’t even breathing hard.
I gave him my best unnerving smile. “Tell you what: you run away now, terribly quickly, and I won’t do horrible and upsetting things to your person.”
His hand was seriously trembling by then. Sweat was running down his face. I let my smile widen a little, and he made a low, whining noise.
“Boo!” I said, and he turned and ran for his life. Potentially sensible young man, I thought.
I went back into my old office. Russell made a small, horrified sound in the back of his throat as he saw me. He backed away, and I went after him. He kept retreating until he slammed up against the barred window and realised he had nowhere else to go. All the colour had gone out of his face, but his wide eyes were still sharp and mean and calculating. If I was stupid enough to turn my back on him, he’d stick a knife in it. I stopped in the middle of the room and considered him thoughtfully.
“How do you like being the big man, Russell?” I said. “Making loans to desperate people, at two thousand per cent interest, then sending round the leg-breakers when they can’t keep up with the payments? Taking your cut from all the drugs and the working girls and the protection rackets? Leeching money from all the small people, like you used to be? You were never interested in any of that, back in the day.”
“Never had any money, back in the day, Mr. Taylor.” His voice was flat and collected, wary rather than frightened. “I’m a whole new man, with a whole new life. I don’t need you to protect me any more. And you’re out of tricks.”
“You think so?” I said.
“Of course; or you wouldn’t be standing there talking to me. Talk all you like. I’ve put in a call. There’ll be more of my people here any minute.”
I took his gun out of my pocket and offered it to him. He gaped at me for a moment, then snatched it from my hand and pointed it at me. As his finger tightened on the trigger, I took all the bullets out of his gun and let them fall from my open hand onto the floor, jumping and rattling noisily. Russell made a high, whining noise, and pulled the trigger anyway. When nothing happened, he threw the gun onto the floor and looked at me haughtily.
“I know you, Mr. Taylor. You might have learned a few tricks, but you haven’t changed. You won’t kill an unarmed man.”
I looked at him thoughtfully. Russell would never stop coming after me all the time I was in London Proper. He wouldn’t stop until he was dead, or I was. Unless I did something about him. The sword on my back wanted me to kill him, to execute him. My hand rose to the invisible hilt behind my shoulder, then I pulled it back again. I was not an executioner. And all that fighting, all the action stuff, diving into danger with a smile on my face and letting the chips fall where they may—that wasn’t me. I have more sense. The sword had been influencing me. And it stopped there. I’d deal with Russell in my own way.
I strode briskly forward, grabbed him firmly by one ear, and dragged him out of my old office, down the stairs, back through the lobby, and out onto the street. I then stripped him naked, quickly and efficiently, and left him hanging upside down from the nearest lamp-post. Tied firmly by one ankle with a handy piece of cord from my coat-pocket. Russell struggled weakly, but there was no way he’d be able to work himself loose. He flopped upside down before me, his skin already grey from the cold, his mouth working weakly.
“I’ve thrown things back that looked less disgusting than you, Russell,” I said. “And you really do have a remarkably small willy. Which explains a lot. Let’s see who’ll work for you now, after this. Even the most basic thugs draw the line somewhere. Good-bye, Russell. If I should see you again ... I’ll think of something even worse to do to you.”
Enough nostalgia, I thought, walking off down the street. Time to find the London Knights.
FOUR
A Knight to Remember
The late evening was darkening into night as I hit Oxford Street, and I was starting to feel more at home. I could feel that little extra bounce in my step as I headed for a Door that was only there when it felt like it. The street was packed with people coming and going, shop lights blazed, and neon glared, but it all seemed somehow faded and subdued compared to the Nightside. The moon in the sky looked small and far away, and the stars were only stars. As though the real world couldn’t be bothered to put on a decent show.
Oxford Street had changed a lot in the years I’d been away. Lots of rebuilding and general cleaning up, tearing down the older and dodgier enterprises to replace them with safer and more comfortable brands and franchises. All the local colour was gone, and much of the character, and cold camera eyes watched every little thing you did. Though the messenger boys darting in and out of traffic and pedestrians on their stripped-down cycles were just as obnoxious.
After living so long in the Nightside, the real world seemed like a foreign place, where even the most obvious and everyday things seemed subtly different. To start with, no-one paid me any attention. I really wasn’t used to that. At first I quite liked just walking along, amongst people who didn’t have a clue as to who and what I was. Who didn’t stare or point, or turn and run. But I soon got tired of that when no-one gave way for me, or stepped aside to let me pass, and even jostled me when I didn’t get out of their way fast enough. How dare they treat me like everyone else? Didn’t they know who I was? Well, no ... That was the point. I had to smile, and even tried being polite and courteous for a while, if only to see what it felt like.
When I got to the Green Door, it wasn’t there. A bleak expanse of yellowing wall separated two perfectly respectable businesses, with no trace of any door or opening, or indeed anything to suggest there was anything special about the wall. Except, this was perhaps the only stretch of wall in London not covered with graffiti, posters, or dried streams of urine. I raised my Sight and studied the wall closely, and still couldn’t See the damned Door. I could See rough markings in dried troll blood, from some Scissorboys
gang marking its territory, and a reptiloid alien hidden behind a human mask as it strode briskly past me, but the wall remained stubbornly a wall. The Green Door that provided the only entrance point to the London Knights’ headquarters remained thoroughly hidden. Which meant ... really powerful protections.
I knew the bloody thing was there because I’d once tracked a man all the way to it, back when I was being an ordinary private eye. I thought I had him run to ground and cornered until he said a Word I’d never heard outside the Nightside, and the Green Door appeared before him. He hurried through it, and the Door vanished before I could reach it. And I ... turned round and went home because I was determined not to get involved in cases of the weird and uncanny any more.
I heard later that the Knights executed the guy. Because he wasn’t worthy of their sanctuary.
But things were different now. I wasn’t afraid to use my gift any more. I reached deep inside me, concentrating, and my inner eye, my private eye, slowly opened ... and there was the Green Door, right before me. It could hide from my Sight but not from my gift. My sole inheritance from my Biblical Myth mother. The Door itself looked stubbornly real and ordinary: flat green paint over featureless wood, with no handle, no bell, not even a knocker or a keyhole. It was, in fact, a Door that suggested very firmly that either you knew how to get in, or you had no business even trying.
I tested the Green Door with my gift, searching out its secrets, and it didn’t take me long to discover the magical mechanisms that operated it. Very old, very simple, and very well protected. My gift could find them but not reach them. Which was frustrating. So I gave the Door a good kick on general principles, hurt my toe, and walked round in little circles for a while. I glared at the Green Door and seriously considered carving chunks out of it with Excalibur. However, since I’d come all this way to ask the London Knights a favour, open assault on their property probably wasn’t the best first impression I could be making. So, when everything else fails, try diplomacy. I put away my gift, dropped my Sight, and addressed the blank street wall in calm, civilised, and very polite tones. While studiously ignoring those passersby who wondered why I was talking to myself.
“Hello, London Knights. I’m John Taylor. From the Nightside. I need to talk to you concerning something that’s a lot more in your line of work than mine. If it helps, Julien Advent vouches for me. If it doesn’t, I never met the man. Look, this really is something you want to know about. It’s Arthurian as all hell, and the words deep shit and approaching fan should be taken into consideration.”
Still nothing. Arrogant bunch of pricks. I was considering the soothing properties of giving the wall another good hard kick when, almost without realising it, my hand rose and took a firm hold on the invisible hilt rising behind my shoulder. And the moment my bare flesh made contact with the ancient bone ... old, old words came to me.
“I bear Excalibur, the Sword of Morning, the Hand of Albion. In the name of the Lady who has granted me her power, and in the name of the man who last wielded it, the once-and-future King, I demand audience with the last defenders of Camelot.”
And the Green Door was suddenly there before me, very real and very solid, as though it always had been there and always would. I took my hand away from Excalibur’s hilt, and the Green Door opened slowly before me, retreating silently and not at all invitingly—revealing only an impenetrable darkness beyond. I took a deep breath, held my chin up, and walked right into it. Never let them think they’ve got you cowed, or they’ll walk right over you. The darkness swallowed me up, cold and limitless, and I barely had time to wonder whether I’d made a terrible mistake when a blast of light dispelled the darkness, and just like that I was standing in the entrance hall to a medieval castle.
Which was pretty much what I’d been expecting. The London Knights are firmly steeped in tradition. I looked cautiously about me. There was no-one round to greet me, or any signs of human habitation at all. Only great towering walls of a rich creamy white stone, spotlessly clean, without any trace of decoration. The whole place could have been built the day before. Every separate stone in the massive walls had been set so tightly and so perfectly together that no mortar was needed. And that takes real skill and expert measurement.
I appeared to have the whole great open space to myself. No-one there, and not even any windows or arrow slits through which I could be observed. I took a quick look behind me, but of course the Green Door was gone, replaced by a blank and very real wall. There was an open archway straight ahead of me, in the far wall. Silence filled the entrance hall, so complete I could hear my own breathing. A silence that seemed pointedly judgemental. I had no doubt I was being watched. So I stuck my hands in my coat-pockets, slouched, adopted a jaunty air, and strolled towards the open archway as though I had all the time in the world.
The sound of my footsteps hardly seemed to travel at all, not even a hint of an echo, as though the sheer massive size of the hall were soaking up the sound.
It took me a while to cross the long hall, and by the time I got to the archway it was filled with a heavy iron portcullis. I was pretty sure it hadn’t been there when I started walking, and I was pissed off enough to take this new snub personally. I glared at the portcullis.
“Lift this bloody thing right now. Or I’ll show you all a really nasty trick my mother taught me.”
There was a pause, then the iron portcullis rose silently before me, without any sound of straining mechanisms. I love it when a bluff comes together. I stuck my nose in the air and strode haughtily through the narrow stone tunnel into another great hall. The same creamy white stone as before, but richly adorned with hanging tapestries and colourful pennants, in sharp vivid shades of crimson, emerald, and gold. Huge silver crucifixes were mounted on the walls, between magnificent stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the lives of the Saints. The flooring was polished marble, with huge mosaics presenting scenes from the past—of knights in their armour, clashing armies, blood and mud and the fight for a dream.
I felt a very real lightening of the spirit, a feeling of calm and burdens lifted; the light was crystal clear, and even the air tasted fair. I relaxed a little, despite myself. I’d seen more impressive places in the Nightside, but not many. As medieval castles went, this one went all the way. But I still couldn’t help noting that the splendid crystal-and-diamond chandeliers at each end of the hall contained electric light bulbs rather than the usual massed candles. I stopped to study them for a moment, and when I looked down again, there were a dozen knights in full armour standing before me.
I hadn’t heard them come in. In fact, given the sheer weight of the armour they were wearing, I should have heard them approaching half a mile away. Clearly, I was meant to be impressed, so I nodded casually, as though I’d seen it all before, and much better done. My first thought was how ... practical, and functional, the suits of armour looked. They weren’t ceremonial, or works of art, or even symbols; this was battle armour, designed to keep its wearer alive in even the most dangerous of situations. Gleaming steel, from head to foot; expertly fashioned, and completely unadorned. No engraving or ornamentation, not even a coloured tabard over the torso to add a touch of colour. Steel helmets covered their entire heads, with only a Y-shaped slots for the eyes and mouths.
For a moment, I was reminded of the knight in dark armour I’d seen on the station platform, back in the Nightside. The nightmare armour that stood in utter opposition to the forces of chivalry before me.
The knights were still staring silently at me. I wondered whether there was some special password I was supposed to use; I still remembered the Word my quarry had used to get in all those years ago. But considering what had happened to him, I didn’t think I’d use it. The knights were trying to impress and/or intimidate me, but they really should have known better. If there was one thing that anyone should know about me, it’s that I don’t do impressed or intimidated. I considered drawing Excalibur and doing something dramatically destructive with it;
but that might make me seem weak, in their eyes. And it seemed to me that the castle would be a very bad place in which to appear weak.
So I struck a casual pose and smiled easily at the knights, as though they were on parade in front of me. “Hi. I’m John Taylor.”
“Oh, we know who you are,” said an amused voice from within one of the steel helms. “Your reputation spreads a lot further than this.”
The knight speaking took off his helmet and tucked it casually under his arm. He had a fresh, cheerful face, with short-cropped blond hair and very blue eyes. The warmth in his smile gave every appearance of being genuine. He had the open, easy kind of charm you tend not to see a lot of in the Nightside. An honest, straightforward agent of the Good; exactly like the London Knights were supposed to be. I was immediately suspicious, but I gave him my best open smile in return.
“Hi!” said the knight, stepping forward and extending a mailed glove for me to shake. I grasped it firmly, and he gave it a good solid shake, like a young clergyman who played rugby on the side. “I’m Sir Gareth. Welcome to Castle Inconnu. I see you’ve noticed the electric lighting. We are a part of the twenty-first century, you know. We have central heating, indoor plumbing, cable, and broadband. We’re traditionalists, not barbarians. Sorry we had to give you a bit of a hard time getting in, but we live in dangerous times. You of all people should know that. You’re one of the people who makes these times dangerous. And you really should have known better than to drop the Victorian Adventurer’s name. He’s been persona non grata round here for years. But ... you say you have Excalibur. And you knew the old Words ... So here we are. Despite your really quite appalling reputation.”
“Are you by any chance suggesting that I’m not worthy to bear Excalibur?” I said carefully.