Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

have to go out in force and hunt him down and put him out of everyone’s misery.”
    “He’s not in his right mind,” said Sir Gareth. “Grief and loss have made him forget his vows. But I still believe he can be saved, brought back to a state of grace.”
    “Of course you believe that, Gar,” said Sir Roland. “You’re his friend. I wanted to believe in him. He was the best of us. Best I ever trained. But what happened today changes everything. We must deal with the man he is and not the man we remember. Look round you, at all the dead and the wounded. He caused all this and meant worse. It’s time to put him down, like any suffering beast.”
    “I’m still not sure what this was all about,” I said. “Did the elves want to take Excalibur, or was that only Stark? Did they want to destroy the castle and everyone in it, with their hellgate? Or did they have some other end in mind? Do you have any prisoners we can question? I can’t help feeling we’re missing something here.”
    “Of course we are,” said Sir Gareth. “They’re elves. A secret hidden inside a mystery hidden inside an enigma.”
    “We should never have put you in charge of the library,” said Sir Roland.

    As it turned out, the knights did have one elf prisoner. Two knights had knocked him down during the battle, then sat on him when all the other elves ran. The elf was currently chained to a wall with a hell of a lot of cold iron. The metal burned his bare flesh where it touched, but the elf wouldn’t even acknowledge it. He glared at Sir Roland, Sir Gareth, and me with cold, aristocratic disdain. The kind of blunt contempt that makes you want to punch someone in the face. We didn’t. It was what he wanted, so he could feel superior to us. To the elves, humans will always be barbarians. His spelled armour had been stripped off him, revealing a bare pale torso covered in cuts and bruises. He was almost supernaturally slender, his pale skin covered with hundreds of etched, burned, and tattooed signs and sigils. Even chained naked to a wall, he still had that basic elf poise and arrogance, designed to make us mere humans feel base and clumsy.
    “Jerusalem Stark brought you here,” Sir Roland said heavily. “Why? Talk to me, elf. Are we at war with Oberon and Titania, or with Mab?”
    The elf said nothing because that would have interrupted his sneer, which was now so concentrated it was almost a work of art. He stared straight through us as though we weren’t worth looking at. I leaned forward, and, to his credit, he didn’t flinch. I studied the designs etched deep into his bare hairless chest, and grimaced despite myself.
    “I know a few things about elves,” I said, straightening up painfully. My muscles were really starting to ache and complain, after the battle. “I know those markings. This one serves Queen Mab.”
    “Why?” barked Sir Roland, sticking his face right into the elf’s. “Why has Mab declared war on the London Knights?”
    “He won’t answer to threats or intimidation,” I said. “He won’t even give you his name. He’s waiting for the torture to start because that’s what he’d do if the positions were reversed.”
    “We don’t torture prisoners!” said Sir Roland. “We are honourable men. And I think ... we already know everything we need to know.”
    He drew his sword, raised it high, and brought it swinging down in a long arc so that it sheared right through the main lock on the elf’s chains. They fell apart instantly, freeing the elf. Sir Roland stepped back, lowered his sword, and nodded stiffly to the elf. “Off you go. On your way. We give you your freedom.”
    For the first time, the elf acknowledged Sir Roland’s presence. “Why?”
    The knight smiled. “Because it’s the proper thing to do. The chivalric way. Because we’re better than you.”
    The elf turned his back on us and strode off through the knights, who all made a point of bowing and saluting him. When the elf was a safe distance away, he muttered a Word and disappeared. Because elves always have to have the last word.
    And then, all the alarums all went off again. A knight in blood-smeared armour came running up to us.
    “We’ve been breached again! Small-scale, this time. We think Stark’s back somewhere inside the castle!”
    “Search everywhere,” said Sir Roland. “Inner and outer. And send word to the Redoubt for the families to stay where they are. I don’t think Stark would stoop to taking