Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

affection, but again, probably only I could have known that. She kissed me briefly, then turned and strode away. She kept her head up and her back straight, and she didn’t look back once. Her way of being brave. I watched her till she was out of sight, then I entered Whitechapel Station, and descended into the Underground.

    The cream-tiled corridors and tunnels were packed with men and women and other things, coming and going, intent on searching out all those pleasures that were bad for them. They didn’t talk to each other and made a point of looking straight ahead, not wanting to be distracted or diverted from their chosen paths. Without quite seeming to, everyone gave me plenty of room to move. Having a good, or more properly bad, reputation does have its benefits. I was going to have to learn how to get results without that where I was going. The John Taylor who’d lived in London Proper five years earlier had been a much smaller man.
    I hurried down the escalators, ignoring the sweet-talking ads on the walls, and headed for the Outer Line. The usual beggars and buskers were out and about, singing and dancing for their supper. A ghost of a nun sang “Ave Maria,” accompanying herself with hand signals for the deaf. Three zombies with skin as grey as their shabby suits performed a careful soft-shoe routine that never ever stopped. Half a dozen clones made up a one-man band, and something from a Black Lagoon crooned old calypso songs as he tended his sushi stall. Recent graffiti on the walls included the Yellow Sign, the Voorish Sign, and an official sign saying all familiars must be carried on the escalators.
    Down on the platform, the destinations board offered SHADOWS FALL, HACELDAMA, HAVEN, and WHITECHAPEL. The platform was half-full, with all the usual unusual types. A bunch of cheerful teenage girls in public-school outfits were kicking the crap out of a bunch of thugs in bowler hats, heavy eye make-up, and padded cod-pieces. While a circle of City business types in smart City suits with blue woad daubed thickly on their faces steadily ignored the unpleasantness by immersing themselves in the City pages of the Night Times . And a large ambulatory plant thing was taking an unhealthy interest in a tree nymph. She was a pretty little thing, all gleaming bark and leaves in her hair, and I did consider getting involved—until the nymph decided she’d had enough and kneed the plant thing right in the nuts.
    I looked away and found myself facing a knight in dark armour. He was standing at the far end of the platform, unnaturally still, looking right at me. His armoured suit was made up of large black scales, moving slowly against each other and sliding over one another in places. Satanic markings had been daubed on his breast-plate, in what looked like dried blood. His squat steel helm covered his entire head, with only a Y-shaped slot in the centre for his eyes and mouth. He carried a sword like a butcher’s blade on one hip and a spike-headed mace on the other. I’d seen his type before. He was one of the knights in armour King Artur had brought with him to the Nightside, from Sinister Albion. A world where Merlin Satanspawn embraced his father’s work, corrupted Arthur, and made a dark and terrible world for him to rule.
    That’s parallel dimensions for you. For every heaven, a hell; and for every Golden Age, a kick in the teeth.
    The dark knight seemed to be displaying more than usual interest in me, but when I turned to face him squarely, he turned away and gave all his attention to the departures board. I shrugged mentally and put it down to paranoia. Lot of that about, in the Nightside.
    A growing roar, a blast wave of displaced air, and the train burst out of the tunnel-mouth, screaming to a halt beside the platform. A long, featureless, silver bullet, pulling windowless carriages because you really didn’t want to see some of the places the train had to pass through on its way from the Nightside to the outer world. The doors hissed open, I stepped into a carriage, and everyone else in the carriage got up and hurried out onto the platform. Not so much a mark of respect; more that they didn’t want to be round when the trouble started. I settled myself comfortably on the battered red-leather seat, the door hissed shut, and the train set off smoothly.
    The journey itself was remarkably quiet and peaceful; nothing tried to break in from outside, nothing tried to block the tracks, and there