Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

hostages, but after today’s events, it’s clear we don’t know him at all any more. The order is given: kill Stark on sight.”
    He strode off with the other knight, still barking orders. Sir Gareth and I looked at each other. He shrugged.
    “Might as well make ourselves useful. Come with me; we’ll check the outer layers.”
    “Do you think Stark has come back?” I said.
    “He still wants Excalibur,” said Sir Gareth. “Where else can he go?”

    So we went walking back through the outer stone corridors and hallways. All was quiet. At the Hall of Forgotten Beasts, the long-dead animal bodies still lay where they had fallen. The stone walls were still cracked and broken, the wall mounts shattered. We made our way slowly between the piled-up dead, and I don’t think I ever saw anything so simply sad in all my life.
    “We’ll clear this all away, when there’s time,” said Sir Gareth.
    “Make sure it’s done respectfully,” I said.
    “Don’t worry,” said Sir Gareth. “They won’t remount the heads. I’ll have a word. For a man of your destructive reputation, you can be remarkably sentimental sometimes, John.”
    We hurried on and came at last to the Portrait Gallery. Excalibur stirred in its invisible scabbard on my back, and I stopped immediately. Sir Gareth stopped with me and looked round sharply.
    “I don’t see anything,” he said.
    “Something’s wrong,” I said. “Excalibur is warning me.”
    Sir Gareth drew his sword. The Gallery was quiet and empty. And while we were both standing and looking, the portrait behind me, that I hadn’t even looked at, came alive; and Jerusalem Stark reached out of his portrait, grabbed Excalibur and its sheath, invisible as they were, and hauled them right off my back. It was all over in a moment. Before I could even cry out, Stark had retreated back into his portrait with his prize, and was gone. And the portrait was only a photo again.
    I swayed sickly on my feet. It felt as though part of my soul had been ripped away. Sir Gareth grabbed me by the shoulder to steady me.
    “He’s got it, hasn’t he? He’s got Excalibur!”
    “Yes,” I said. “I don’t know if he can hold on to it, but he’s got it.”
    Sir Gareth pushed me away. “Only John bloody Taylor could gain and lose Excalibur in the same day!”
    “Don’t count me out yet,” I said, matching his glare with one of my own. “I can get it back. I have a special gift for finding things, no matter where they are.”
    I raised my gift, forcing my inner eye open as wide as it would go. It didn’t take me long to find Excalibur.
    “Of course,” I said. “It’s back in the Nightside. Only place he could hope to hide it. I’ll have to go back and get it.”
    “I’ll go with you,” Sir Gareth said immediately.
    “No,” I said, just as quickly. “I already have a partner in the Nightside. And ... you’re a London Knight. You don’t belong there. You wouldn’t know how to act, in the Nightside.”

FIVE
    Sinister Doings in the Nightside
    I left London Proper for the Nightside with a certain sense of relief and emerged from the Underground station into a refreshing dazzle of neon noir, amber street-lights under an endless night sky, and a bustling sea of Humanity driven along by unhealthy appetites and bad intentions. It felt good to be back, to leave the London Knights behind me, with their strict morality and uncomplicated sense of good and evil. And it felt even better to dive back into the usual crowd of gods and monsters, saints and sinners, and all the lost and battered souls who couldn’t hope to survive anywhere else. I was home again, back where I belonged. And the moment I stepped out of the station, there was Suzie Shooter, waiting patiently for me. I went straight to her, and we hugged each other tightly for a long moment. Then Suzie pushed me away, so she could look me over thoroughly.
    “No visible wounds. Blood on your coat, but it doesn’t seem to be yours. Kill anyone interesting?”
    “No-one you’d know,” I said. “I would have brought you back a present, but the knights didn’t have anything you’d want.”
    “The London Knights,” said Suzie, sniffing loudly. “Bunch of stiffs. Do they really wear chastity belts under their armour?”
    “I’m relieved to say I never got the chance to find out,” I said. “Suzie ... Tell me you haven’t been waiting here for me all this time?”
    She gave her usual sharp bark of laughter. “You wish.