A Hard Day's Knight n-11

by Simon R. Green

  “The elves have come to the Nightside. They’re out there right now, killing people, while you’re having a party. And these are not the elves you remember so fondly, Arthur. They’re hunting and butchering people for the sport of it.”

  “Then we must stop them,” Arthur said immediately. “Kill them all for daring to war on Mankind. And to send whoever may be behind this invasion a very definite message. It’s always best to negotiate from a position of strength and vindictiveness. Kae, are your London Knights ready for battle?”

  “Always,” said Kae. “Simply say the word, Sire.”

  “The word is given, my brother. If the elves want war, we shall show them what war really is.”

  “But I have to get back to Castle Inconnu, to raise my army,” said Kae. “And we don’t have time to go by any of the usual routes.”

  Everyone looked at me.

  “The Portable Timeslip won’t take us past all the protections you’ve put in place,” I said. “Which means, we’re going to have to ask a certain someone for help. A certain individual with a great many Doors ...”

  “Oh bloody hell,” said Suzie. “Not the Doormouse again.”

  Arthur gave me a hard look. “Am I to understand we have to beg assistance from a mouse?”

  “He’s a very nice mouse,” I said.

  Kae was already grinning broadly. “Oh, I think you’re going to like this one, Arthur.”

  * * *

  The Portable Timeslip took all of us to the Doormouse’s excellent establishment. Alex stayed behind, to lock up and barricade the bar against any passing elves who might decide they had a bit of a thirst on. The rest of us appeared right outside the shop, and Arthur looked round interestedly. He’d never seen the Nightside itself before. Half the street-lights had been smashed, and a few dead bodies lay here and there; but otherwise, it was pretty quiet. Many of the shops were closed and boarded up, but the neon lights still blazed brightly. It could have been just another Saturday night. Arthur sniffed.

  “A bit gaudy, for my tastes.” He looked round sharply as a whole building at the end of the street exploded. His hand went to Excalibur on his hip.

  “Let’s get the army first,” I said quickly. “And, let’s get inside before anyone sees us.”

  “I do not run from the enemy,” Arthur said sharply.

  “You do if they outnumber you thousands to one,” said Kae.

  “Oh well, in that case,” said Arthur. “Good to see you stayed awake during some of my strategy classes, Kae.”

  “You were a rotten teacher, Arthur. Rotten. And I really hated those snap tests.”

  “They were good for you.”

  “So is cod-liver oil.”

  “Do they still use that?”

  I glared them both into silence, then led the way into the shop. It hadn’t changed. The Doormouse came bustling cheerfully forward again, doing up the front of his white coat and checking that his pens were lined up in the proper order in his top pocket. Then he saw Suzie and me and stopped dead in his tracks. He made the sign of the extremely cross and started to say something really cutting; but then he saw King Arthur and Kae in their armour, and ran out of breath. His large brown eyes grew even larger, his back straightened, his long whiskers twitched excitedly ... and then he charged forward and threw himself into Arthur’s arms. The Doormouse hugged him tightly and rubbed his furry face against Arthur’s.

  “It’s you! It’s really you! You’ve come back, you’ve come back! We’ve been waiting so long for your return, Your Majesty! I mean, I’m just an old hippy in a mouse body, but I’ve read every book about you I could find. And seen all the films! Welcome back, King Arthur!”

  The Doormouse pressed his fuzzy face against Arthur’s breast-plate and looked up at him adoringly. Arthur clung to what was left of his dignity.

  “Does anyone happen to know whether this mouse I’m holding is male or female?”

  The Doormouse let go immediately and scurried backwards to bow repeatedly. “Sorry! Sorry! Got carried away there, a bit. Sometimes I can’t help feeling I’d have been better off as a badger. They handle their emotions so much more properly. King Arthur, what brings you to my humble establishment? Everything I have is yours! Except you can’t actually take anything with you, of course. The Doors don’t move. As such. Am I babbling? It feels like I’m babbling, and that big scary woman is growling at me again.”

  “Do you, by any chance, happen to have a Door that will transport us inside Castle Inconnu?” I said.

  “Oh poo,” said the Doormouse, his whiskers drooping. “Someone told you.”

  “It’s hard to keep a secret in the Nightside,” I said. “Though actually I was guessing. Jerusalem Stark had to get those elves into the castle somehow, and your Doors seemed the safest bet.”

  The Doormouse sighed. “Knew that one would come back to bite me on my furry arse. In my defence, he did pay me an awful lot of money.”

  Kae glared at the Doormouse. “You created a secret backdoor into Castle Inconnu?”

  “I build Doors for people,” the Doormouse said quickly. “What use they put them to is none of my business. I’m only a craftsman. Craftsmouse.”

  “You’re about to be a dead craftsmouse,” said Kae. “You’ll make an excellent rug for my office.”

  “No, Kae,” said Arthur. “He has agreed to help us. Haven’t you, Sir Mouse?”

  Kae was still glaring. “Where’s the Door?”

  “In the display area, of course. My Doors are always here. I make them, and people make use of them, but they never leave my shop. Far too dangerous. I do have scruples, you know, even if you can’t see them past all the fur.”

  “And when were you intending to inform the London Knights that you possessed a secret backdoor into their Castle?” said Kae.

  “I’m almost sure I would have got round to it,” said the Doormouse. “Eventually.”

  “Okay, that’s it,” said Kae. “It’s rug time.”

  “Take it easy,” I said to Kae. “You can’t expect morality from a mouse.”

  “Well quite,” said the Doormouse. “That’s why I became one.”

  “Take us to the Door,” I said.

  The Doormouse bobbed his head quickly, to all of us, and several times to King Arthur, then scurried away into the deeper recesses of his shop. The Doors were still standing there, in their ranks, waiting to be used. I kept an eye out for one particular Door I’d seen earlier and stopped before it. The others stopped with me. The Doormouse came hurrying back to see what we were all looking at. It was a Door like all the others, except for the brass combination lock in its centre.

  “This is the Door that leads to alternate Earths,” I said. “All the different histories, all the ways the Earth might have gone. Can it really open onto any possible Earth, Doormouse?”

  “Oh yes. You just have to enter the right co-ordinates. Of course, many of the more extreme iterations are completely uninhabitable, but ... What kind of Earth did you have in mind?”

  “A completely empty Earth,” I said. “An Earth where sentient life never did develop, in any form. A living breathing Earth, where only the beasts and the birds flourished.”

  “Of course,” said King Arthur. “I see where you’re going. An excellent solution for a very tricky problem.”

  The Doormouse produced an impressively large book from somewhere about his person and flipped rapidly through the pages with his furry paws, muttering querulously to himself. He finally stopped at one particular page, ran a fuzzy finger down a long list of entries, then squeaked happily. He made the book disappear and advanced on the Door, muttering a bunch of numbers under his breath, before spinning the brass combination lock back and forth with practiced dexterity, then flinging the Door open with a triumphant flourish.

  Beyond the Door, endless grasslands stretched away under a perfect blue sky, with no sign of civilisation or cultivation anywhere. A gentle breeze wafted through the Door, smelling of every sunny day we eve
r dreamed of. I could hear birds singing, and the far-away sounds of animals on the move. But otherwise, it was a very quiet, very peaceful world. We all crowded together, peering through the open Door.

  “So peaceful,” said King Arthur. “Like Eden itself, before the Fall, untouched by human hand.”

  “What better place for the elves?” I said. “What better place for a new start?”

  “If they’ll take it,” said Suzie. “They don’t think like we do or value the things we do. They’re not human.”

  “They want the Earth,” said Arthur. “And this is an Earth. Only without all those irritating humans to get in the way. They’ll take it.”

  “But if they don’t?” said Kae.

  Arthur looked suddenly tired. “You heard Merlin. If the elves cannot be made to see sense ... then raise the Armies of Man and lead them against the elves, until one or other of us is gone forever. I would prefer to avoid that if I can.”

  “But would the elves prefer to avoid it?” said Kae. “There is a part of them that has always loved war.”

  “They love survival more,” Arthur said shortly.

  He gestured sharply to the Doormouse, who quickly shut the Door and spun the brass lock. He looked at King Arthur.

  “I can’t recall anyone ever wanting to visit that Earth before. Calm and quiet and peaceful aren’t the kind of things people usually look for in the Nightside.”

  “Their loss,” said Arthur. “Understand me, Sir Mouse; no-one is to have access to this Door until I return. Is that clear?”

  The Doormouse bobbed his head in a perfect frenzy of agreement. “Of course, Your Majesty, of course. I’ll put an OUT OF ORDER sign on it. Shall we now proceed to the Castle Inconnu Door? We’re almost there, and the other large armoured gentleman is growling at me.”

  “Don’t scare the mouse, Kae,” said Arthur. “That’s my job.”

  We finally came to the Door, and the Doormouse opened it. Kae led the way through because it was his castle, after all. We appeared in a fairly unremarkable side corridor, with no-one round, and the Door slammed shut behind us and disappeared. Kae growled something under his breath, then led us quickly to the nearest communication point. Which turned out to be a simple office, filled with computers. Arthur was fascinated with all the technology and bumbled around, having a good look and touching things he shouldn’t, while Kae put out a general alert, ordering everyone to appear in the Main Hall, right then, no exceptions. Sir Roland appeared, on the run, and stuck his head through the door. His eyebrows practically jumped off his head when Kae introduced him to King Arthur, and he was down on both armoured knees in a moment, bowing his head to the returned King.

  “Up, up, my good friend,” Arthur said easily. “You are my knights, sworn to serve my cause and my dream. I should kneel to you, for keeping it alive all these centuries.”

  Sir Roland clambered quickly to his feet again and glared at Kae. “Would it have killed you to have given us a little advance warning? We could have prepared a proper welcome!”

  “Such things can wait,” said Arthur. “The elves have brought war to the Nightside, and we are going to ride forth and teach them a lesson in manners. Lead the way to the Main Hall, Sir Roland. I would have words with the London Knights.”

  Sir Roland bobbed his head quickly in a way that reminded me irresistibly of the Doormouse, and led us all to the Main Hall of Castle Inconnu. He was clearly bursting with questions he wanted to put to King Arthur, but Kae kept him busy with questions about the readiness of the knights to go to battle at such short notice. Sir Roland was still answering questions when we got to the hall. Suzie and I brought up the rear. I was starting to feel left out, as though having delivered Excalibur, my part in the story was over. It was Arthur’s story now, and Suzie and I were bit players. Except, the story wasn’t over yet, and I didn’t think Arthur was going to find things as easy as he thought. He was going to fight elves in the Nightside; and neither the elves nor the Nightside was anything like what he remembered of them.

  Arthur might have dreamed England’s history; but the Nightside has always been outside history.

  When we finally hurried into the Main Hall, it seemed like everyone in the Castle was already there, waiting for us. The knights in their armour, arrayed in solid shining ranks, along with all the other people who made the castle run, and their families. Because no-one wanted to miss this. The Main Hall was packed from wall to wall, with women and small children peering in through the open doorways because there wasn’t room for them. When King Arthur stepped up onto the empty platform at the end of the hall, a great roar went up from everyone. They cheered and shouted, they slammed their hands together and stamped their feet on the floor, all of them grinning so hard it must have hurt their faces. The King had returned, something they had dreamed of all their lives but never really believed would happen in their lifetimes. The knights drew their swords and thrust them into the air, again and again. And still the cheering went on, as though it would never stop.

  King Arthur stood at the front of the platform, looking out over the crowd, nodding in approval at the ranks of armoured knights. Kae stood at his side, smiling proudly at his brother, gesturing for quiet so the King could speak. Suzie and I stood at the back. This wasn’t our moment.

  “Want me to fire my shotgun into the ceiling?” Suzie said innocently into my ear. “That should quiet them down.”

  “Better not,” I said. “It might be misinterpreted.”

  King Arthur thrust one hand up, and immediately all the sound stopped as though someone had thrown a switch. The whole hall fell silent, to hear what he had to say. King Arthur lowered his hand and nodded solemnly.

  “It’s good to be back,” he said. “But I’m not here to bask in your adulation. Later, maybe. For now, there is work to be done. An army of elves has gone to war against Humanity, in the Nightside, indulging in their love of brigandry and slaughter. This cannot be allowed. They must be stopped. I ride out. Who rides with me?”

  Everyone there roared approval and agreement, and the knights thrust their swords into the air again. No-one questioned him. He was King Arthur, and they were his. And as simply as that, the London Knights went to war.

  Sir Roland happily took over the logistics of getting so many people ready for action, while Arthur and Kae discussed how best to get their army to the Nightside. I saw a chance to be useful again. If only because I didn’t like the idea of a whole army of men in armour on the loose in the Nightside. I wanted to be sure everyone understood that only the elves were the enemy. King Arthur immediately saw what I was getting at, but I kept my eyes on Kae. Arthur might be King, but Kae was Grand Master of the London Knights. And the knights and the Nightside have never been on the best of terms. We had so little in common.

  “My knights will behave themselves,” Kae said flatly. “We’re there to save people from the elves, not trample everyone underfoot indiscriminately. Any one of my people steps out of line, I’ll have his balls.”

  “All right,” I said. “How are you planning to get your knights into the Nightside? You’ll never get all your horses through the Underground stations, and there’s a limit to how many I can transport through my watch.”

  I stopped because Kae was looking at me in a very superior way.

  “We have our own dimensional doorways, Mr. Taylor. For when we ride to war on other worlds, in other dimensions. They won’t work anywhere on Earth because that’s Drood territory. But the Nightside isn’t on Earth, technically, so we can be there in moments.”

  “If you can enter the Nightside anytime you choose,” I said slowly, “why haven’t you?”

  “I told you,” said Kae. “We deal with bigger issues. We fight our wars across all Space and Time, to protect Humanity from the Forces that threaten it. We’re not here to spank people because they misbehave. We’re only getting involved now because of the elves, and because Arthur wants it. Personally, I could watch the whole Nightside burn to the ground
and not shed a single tear. Nasty little place.”

  “Kae!” Arthur said immediately. “My knights have always defended those in need, wherever they may be! Or have you only kept alive those parts of my dream that suited you?”

  “Sorry, Arthur. But this is the Nightside we’re talking about ...”

  “It’s the elves,” Arthur said flatly. “Nothing else matters.”

  “Of course, Arthur. You’re right, as always.”

  “You are talking about our home, Kae,” said Suzie, and something in her voice drew Arthur’s and Kae’s attention immediately. I’ve always admired the way Suzie can become very dangerous, very quickly, often without even having to raise her voice. She gave Kae her best cold glare, and he stood very still as she addressed him in her cool, calm, and really quite deadly tone. “The Nightside is necessary. It serves a purpose, for those of us who can’t all be perfect. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. And, I want to make it very clear that I don’t have any patience for To save the village we had to destroy it tactics. The knights go in, they kick the crap out of the elves, then they get the hell out. Or I will take it very personally. Is that clear?”

  “You can’t speak to the King like that!” said Kae, honestly shocked.

  “Kae,” said Arthur, and Kae immediately shut up again. Arthur smiled on Suzie. “There can’t be much wrong with the Nightside these days if it can produce warriors like you and John Taylor. We ride out to rescue your people as well as punish the elves. Will you walk with me and discuss the best tactics to use in the Nightside? You know the situation better than any of us.”