Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

impossible, that it could never be accepted, but that only made them declare it all the more openly. A Queen must marry a King; that is the way of it. Tam, my brave young Tam, duelled with an elf who challenged the Queen over her choice, and killed him. And then that elf’s brothers killed Tam, in honour’s name. And that ... was that. Mab was never the same afterwards. She grew increasingly ... strange, even for an elf, and broke off all contact with Camelot.
    “I’ve never had much luck with women.
    “King Oberon and Queen Titania, you say ... Can’t say I recognise the names, but the only contact I had with elves after Mab’s rejection was killing enough of them to put them in their place. They had to be stamped on, hard, so I could be free to deal with human enemies. And even that went wrong. I spent so long on the move, away from Camelot, fighting my battles all over England, that my people came to believe I didn’t care about them any more. That’s how Mordred was able to raise his army. And the land I made was split apart by civil war. Always the worst kind, that sets brother against brother. And father against son.”
    He stood there a while, his gaze far away, and none of us said anything. We were in the presence of history and legend, something greater even than the Nightside was used to. Eventually, Arthur shrugged off the past and looked directly at Kae.
    “So, brother, what have you been doing, all these years?”
    Kae explained quickly how he had fashioned the London Knights, to protect the people and keep King Arthur’s dream alive. Arthur nodded, and cut him off again.
    “Who better to keep a dream alive than the man who inspired it? Brothers, together, fighting for what is right.”
    “Can I ask?” I said. “Very respectfully, of course, but ... Why do we need King Arthur, specifically, to stop the elves? I could name any number of people in the Nightside who’ve fought angels, gods, and other-dimensional entities. Myself included.”
    “Right,” said Suzie. “Elves die as easily as anyone else. If you aim properly.”
    “But only Arthur can stop the fighting before it starts,” said Kae. “He was the only one the elves ever respected, and feared enough, to listen to. They often came to him at Camelot to sort out their disagreements when they couldn’t do it themselves. Mab and Oberon and Titania will listen to you, Arthur. They will recognise your authority and your impartiality.”
    “And my willingness to kill the whole lot of them if I can’t get them to see sense,” said King Arthur.
    “That, too,” said Kae.
    “I like him,” said Suzie.
    “My knights are ready and waiting, to do what is necessary,” said Kae. “At your command, of course.”
    “They’re your knights, Kae,” said Arthur.
    “Then command me, Sire,” said Kae.
    “Where is Merlin?” Arthur said suddenly. “He knows the Fae better than anyone; we could use his advice. I did think he’d be here, waiting to greet me, when I came up out of the grave he put me in.”
    “Merlin is dead and gone,” I said. I looked at Kae. Neither of us had anything more we felt like saying.
    “Damn,” said Arthur. “He always had the best ideas.”
    We showed him the other grave, and he stood beside it. “Yes, he was here. I can feel it.” He knelt, surprisingly gracefully for a man in full armour, and trailed the fingers of one hand through the grave dirt. “Merlin, couldn’t you wait for me, old friend?”
    And then he stood up abruptly and stepped back, as his touch triggered a message left behind by the grave’s occupant. Merlin appeared before us, a vision of a man long dead, floating on the air above his own burial place. But this Merlin looked young and in his prime, and very much alive. How he saw himself, perhaps. He grinned easily, his hands planted on his hips, as though he’d pulled off the best trick in the world. He looked straight at King Arthur, as though he could somehow see him, even across the years. And given who and what he was, perhaps he could.
    “Arthur,” he said, his voice seeming to come from a long way away, “one last confer, before I lay me down to rest in the grave that’s waiting for me. There are things I know, things I have Seen, of the world that’s coming. It isn’t what either of us thought it would be, but then, that’s life for you. Welcome to the future, Arthur. You won’t like it. But don’t let it get to you. The details may change, but people are