A Hard Day's Knight Read online

  I shook my head; and before I could even begin to explain why, the whole crowd went apeshit all over again. They surged forward into my garden. Or non-lawn. Or whatever else you wanted to call it. I always thought of it as my first line of defence.

  One of the first things Suzie and I did when we moved in was dig up the flower garden at the front of the house and lay down a whole mess of land mines. To keep out the uninvited and ruin an investigative journalist’s day. There was a series of loud explosions as the first wave of the crowd hit the first wave of mines, and bits and pieces of people went flying in all directions. Blood splashed everywhere, and black smoke billowed across the property. There were a few brief screams, but that was mostly from those in the second wave, being forced onwards by those behind. The crowd pressed on, and that was when the invisible floating curses kicked in. There was a flare-up of fierce thaumatic energies, and when the black smoke had cleared, the first few waves of intruders had been replaced by a whole bunch of rather resentful-looking frogs. I’ve always been a traditionalist in these matters.

  Besides: the shop had had a sale on.

  “We did put up warnings,” I said to Suzie. “Didn’t we?”

  “I am almost sure I meant to,” said Suzie. “Can I start shooting people yet?”

  “They seem to be taking themselves out of the game quite thoroughly,” I said. “Oh look, here comes another wave.”

  Having used up most of the nuns and the Vikings, the braver and more sensible elements of the crowd were pressing forward, slowly and cautiously and very light-footedly. Most of them were shouting something, if only to keep their spirits up. There were still quite a lot of them.

  “John Taylor is the rightful ruler of the Nightside! Excalibur is his! Bow down to King John!”

  “Taylor’s possession of the noble blade Excalibur is blasphemy! Seize the blade from him, that it might be held in trust for King Arthur! Only we know the way to Avalon!”

  “Excalibur belongs to us! Arthur belongs to us! It is prophesised! Kill the unbelievers!”

  “Merlin is a louse!”

  “Why aren’t you dead yet?”

  The general advance sort of broke down and went sideways then, as the various elements in the crowd turned on each other, fighting tooth and nail over who represented whom. There was much bandying of Arthur’s name, and indeed which King Arthur was the most historical, or accurate, or even most representative. Arguments quickly degenerated into insults, then to hand-to-hand combat. The crowd surged this way and that, churning up the blood-soaked mud of what had once been my garden. I encouraged the general antagonism along with helpful comments like Are You Really Going to Let Him Talk to You Like That? and Look Out! He’s Sneaking Up Behind You!

  I do love a good debate.

  When the slaughter finally died down, there was a hell of a lot less of the crowd than there used to be, but the survivors were the really dangerous and determined ones. They studied Suzie and me thoughtfully and plotted together on how best to take Excalibur from me now and worry about what to do with it afterwards. And while I was considering what to do about that, another branch of the crowd, the really quiet and sneaky ones, attacked my house from the rear. And ran straight into the waiting nasty and really very efficient security devices Suzie and I had set up there, right after we finished with the garden. Invisible floating mines, shaped curses, poisoned-shrapnel hedges, and a whole bunch of Suzie’s finest incendiaries.

  Suzie and I take our privacy very seriously.

  A series of explosions filled the night, accompanied by bright flashes of light, sudden flurries of blood, a whole bunch of suddenly cut-off screams, and, finally, a severed head that came flying over the roof like a football. Everyone in the crowd stopped what they were doing to watch the head sail through the air, then they all scattered with some really quite girlish screams as the head finally plummeted down into their midst. People can get freaked out by the strangest things. I looked over what was left of my non-lawn and shook my head sadly.

  “This ... is going to take a lot of tidying up.”

  “We’ll have to get a man in,” said Suzie.

  “I had hoped the crowd was going to wipe itself out,” I said, “but a discouragingly large number have survived. Somehow.”

  “I think we’re going to have to talk to them,” said Suzie.

  “Oh God, has it come to that? Oh well, if we must.”

  I strode down the garden to confront the crowd, with Suzie striding ominously along at my side. The thinned-out crowd immediately stopped arguing and threatening each other and moved instinctively to stand closer together. Suzie has that effect on people. There was a brief period of them all trying to hide behind each other, then they turned every weapon they had on Suzie and me. I made a point of walking quite casually, as though I didn’t have a care in the world. I didn’t need to look round to know that Suzie was carrying her double-barrelled, pump-action shotgun at the ready, in a really quite distressingly casual manner. Those at the front of the crowd tried edging backwards, but those behind them were having none of it. And that was when some poor damned fools decided to launch a surprise attack from above, presumably in the hope that we might be caught off guard.

  An armoured knight came swooping down on a huge winged horse, waving a massive glowing sword. Suzie shot him right out of the saddle, and the horse kept on going, disappearing into the night. A distressingly hairy bat-winged harpy plummeted down towards me, her clawed feet thrust out before her. I waited until the very last minute, then grabbed both her ankles, swung her round, and slammed her face-first into the ground. All the fight went out of her as she lay trembling and shuddering in the churned-up mud, struggling to get some breath back into her lungs. I put her out of her misery with a good solid kick to the head. Never let it be said I don’t know how to treat a lady. The harpy decided to have a little nap, and I looked round for someone else to vent a little spleen on.

  (A part of me was already considering the fact that I never used to be that fast, and that efficient, in a fight. In fact, I usually avoid the hand-to-hand stuff because I’m crap at it. I had to wonder whether just owning the mighty Excalibur was ... upgrading me.)

  A pack of futuristic knights in space-age armour appeared suddenly over the roof, borne aloft on anti-grav backpack units. They assumed a very professional-looking formation and came swooping down with glowing energy blades held out before them. Suzie took up a comfortable stance and shot them out of the sky, one after the other. Her specially adapted ammunition blew great holes through the space-age armour and punched right through their steel helms. The futuristic knights blew apart like so many clay pigeons. Suzie didn’t miss one. Dead knights drifted slowly away across the night sky, impelled on by their sputtering anti-grav units. Some bodies had heads; some didn’t.

  I decided enough was enough. I had no problem with watching murderous religious fanatics carve each other up or come to nasty ends through invading my privacy; but after a while, even justified homicide starts wearing you down. So I stepped forward, raised my hand, and addressed the crowd.

  “I am John Taylor. And this ... is Excalibur.”

  I reached over my shoulder, took a firm grasp on the invisible hilt, and drew the sword from its sheath with one graceful movement. Immediately, the sword became visible again, the long, golden blade shining with supernatural brilliance. It drove back the night, filling my property with light bright as day. Excalibur’s presence filled the air, dominating the scene. And everyone in the crowd before me knelt and bowed their heads to Excalibur. Their respect was entirely for the sword, not the sword-bearer, but still, the sight of so many kneeling before me raised all the hackles on the back of my neck. I was in the presence of history and legend, of a sword that had shaped my country and my culture.

  “Anyone here think they can take Excalibur from me, by force?” I said finally. “I bear Excalibur because the sword chose me to do so. Now, for those of you who haven’t heard, being a bit obsessed a
t the moment; Walker is dead. I killed him. I am now the Voice of the new Authorities. So get the hell off my property, every one of you, before I use the Voice to make you do terrible things to yourselves.”

  The crowd got up off their knees and quietly dispersed. None of them felt like arguing. I put the sword away, and its light snapped off. Night fell over my non-lawn again. Suzie stood beside me, her shotgun still ostentatiously at the ready.

  “You don’t have the Voice,” she said quietly.

  “No,” I said. “But they don’t know that.”

  “They’re bound to find out. Eventually.”

  “By then, I plan to be safely distant, in London Proper.”

  My mobile phone rang. I’m still using the Twilight Zone ring tone. Some things feel right and natural. When I answered, Julien Advent was on the other end.

  “John, you’re needed. Right now. Very urgently.”

  “This really isn’t a good time, Julien,” I said. “I’m a bit busy at the moment.”

  “No, you’re not. The Authorities have a mission for you. Did I mention how urgent this is?”

  “You want to put me to work already?” I said. “Walker’s only been dead a few hours! I haven’t even officially accepted the position yet.”

  “Yes, you have, as of right now. Don’t argue with me. This is the kind of problem only Walker could deal with; and since you’ve made that impossible, it’s your duty to take over. There’s trouble at the Mammon Emporium. Someone’s threatening to blow it up with a soulbomb. And that could threaten the whole existence of the Nightside. So stop arguing with me and get here fast. While there’s still a here to get to!”

  Julien Advent, the legendary Victorian Adventurer, editor of the Night Times, and leader of the new Authorities, doesn’t often lose his temper.

  “I’m on my way,” I said. I put the phone away and smiled uncertainly at Suzie. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to put everything on hold for a while. Sweetie. Big trouble in the Nightside. Now, I really would love to stop and help you clear up all this mess, but you know how it is when duty calls.”

  She looked at me dangerously. “I do not do housework!”

  But I’d already taken out the old gold pocket-watch that used to belong to Walker. I opened the lid and activated the Portable Timeslip inside, and just like that I was off and travelling through the void, on my way to save the Nightside, one more time.

  TWO

  You’ve Either Got or You Haven’t Got Soul

  The pocket-watch locked onto Julien Advent’s location and took me straight to him. I have no idea how it does that, but I’m growing increasingly convinced that there’s something else inside the gold pocket-watch, apart from the Portable Timeslip. And one of these days I’m going to dig it out with a butter-knife. Walker did so love to keep his little secrets. I arrived in the main bar of the Adventurers Club, where heroes from all over the worlds gather, to test themselves against the challenges of the Nightside. I have never been invited to become a member.

  I spent a few moments shaking my head gently until all the bits settled back into place again. Travelling through the Portable Timeslip’s interdimensional short cut is never easy. It’s dark in there, darker than any night, and cold enough to chill the soul. There are voices in that dark, voices not in any way human, calling out to be freed, promising anything, pleading, threatening terrible things. But then, you can get that walking down any street in the Nightside. A bad trip, though, in every sense. How did Walker stand it? He always appeared out of nowhere, looking cool and calm and collected, as though he were out for a stroll. I had a strong feeling I’d arrived looking like someone who’d just been thrown out of the drunk tank.

  I shook the last of the darkness out of my head and looked round. It had been a while since I’d been allowed into the Adventurers Club bar, and I was already rehearsing how many terribly expensive drinks I could demand before I was asked to leave. The place was exhaustingly spectacular and downright lousy with luxury, and the bar itself was a work of art fashioned from gleaming mahogany and brightly polished glass and crystal. Stacked in obsessively neat rows behind the bar was every kind of booze you’ve ever dreamed of and a few that would haunt your nightmares.

  But what really caught my attention was how empty the place was. Normally, you couldn’t move for heroes and warriors and would-be legends, fighting for a place at the bar and complaining bitterly over the bartender’s inflexible rules when it came to extending credit. This time there was no crowd, no bartender; only a whole lot of silence. You could almost hear the wine aging. And half-way down the bar, Julien Advent sat perfectly poised on a tall bar-stool, drinking pink champagne. With his little finger properly extended, of course.

  Julien Advent: tall, dark, and handsome in the old style, the great Victorian Adventurer who fell through a Timeslip in the nineteenth century and emerged in the Nightside in the nineteen sixties. And didn’t appear to have aged a day since. Julien is the real deal, a real hero and a complete gentleman. He tends not to approve of me, or my methods—except when he needs me to do something no-one else can. We’re friends, sometimes despite ourselves. I walked over to him, looked briefly but longingly at the bottles behind the bar, so near and yet so far, and nodded to Julien.

  “You could offer me a drink, you know. I could be persuaded.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” he said calmly. “You don’t have time.”

  “Oh hell,” I said. “It’s one of those cases, is it? And where is everybody, anyway?”

  “Out and about,” said Julien. “Doing their best to keep a lid on things. Since Walker died, so very suddenly and unexpectedly, the news has shot round the Nightside. And a great many not-at-all-nice people have been running wild, taking advantage. Seeing what they can get away with until Walker’s replacement steps up to dispense law and justice and general beatings. That’s you, by the way. But since you weren’t immediately available, I deputised everyone in the Club and sent them out into the streets to restore order, by any means necessary, and slap down anyone who looked like getting ambitious.”

  “I would have got round to it,” I said. “I’ve been a bit ... distracted.”

  Julien studied me thoughtfully over the rim of his champagne glass. “There’s something different about you though I can’t put my finger on it.... Either way, it will have to wait. There’s trouble down at the Mammon Emporium. The biggest mall in the Nightside is in very great danger of going off bang. But first, John, I have to ask you ... Did you really have to kill Walker?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was necessary. He’d gone too far into the dark.”

  Julien clearly heard something in my voice because he put his glass down on the bar and leaned forward on his bar-stool. “I never did understand what he saw in you, or you in him. You seemed to work well enough together, when you weren’t trying to kill each other. He respected you. I know that.”

  “I respected him,” I said. “Best enemy I ever had.”

  “He was more than that.”

  “Of course. He was Walker.”

  “Well,” said Julien, “he was dying, after all, and not in a good way. I suppose you could call his death a mercy killing.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think you could call it that.”

  He waited expectantly, but I had nothing more to say. Let Walker take his secrets with him, the good and the bad. In the end, Julien nodded and picked up his glass again, which had mysteriously refilled itself with more pink champagne. One of the perks of Club membership.

  “I’ll send some of my people to collect the body.”

  “There is no body,” I said.

  Julien raised an elegant eyebrow. “Hard core, John.”

  “Where are the rest of the new Authorities?” I said. Not because I gave a damn but because I felt like changing the subject.

  “They’re ... not entirely comfortable with you yet,” said Julien. “My colleagues are currently upstairs, arguing over whether or not to accept you
as our new representative. Walker wanted you, and I recommended you, but ...”

  “Yes,” I said. “But.”

  I remembered meeting these people before, in a devastated future Nightside, where they were the last human survivors, and my devoted Enemies. Doing their best to kill me in their past before I could bring about the terrible future they were living in. Time travel can really mess with your head. Just say no.

  Julien suddenly recognised the gold pocket-watch I was still holding in my hand. “How did you get that?”

  “Walker left it to me in his will.”

  “We haven’t even found his will yet!”

  I shrugged. “Details, details ...”

  Julien sighed. “And you wonder why nobody trusts you ...”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t give a damn. However,” I said, changing the subject again by brute force, “if I’m going to work for the Authorities, shouldn’t I have an official job title? Something big and dramatic, to strike terror into the hearts of evildoers?”

  “You do have a title,” said Julien. “Walker.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t really think that was his name, did you? I don’t think anyone ever knew what his real name was, the one he used in the outside world, when he went home to his family. Henry was real enough, I think. He always looked like a Henry to me. He used it often enough, and he seemed comfortable with it. Especially with his closest friends, like the Collector, and your father. But I couldn’t even say for sure whether they ever knew his real surname. To know the true name of a thing is to have power over it, and Henry would never have allowed that. No; he was Walker, like all his predecessors in the job.”

  “Then Hadleigh Oblivion was a Walker, too?” I said, trying to get my head round the idea.

  “Before he went so thoroughly off message, and disappeared into the Deep School, in search of mysteries, and ended up the Detective Inspectre. Whatever the hell that is, and I have a horrible suspicion I’m not going to like it when I find out ... There have been any number of Walkers, down the years, representing the Authorities as their Voice in the Nightside.”