Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

wood without consuming it. The fires could have been burning for hours or days or even years. The longer I looked into the churning mists, the more convinced I became there was someone or something in there, looking back at me. And then I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs, drawing steadily nearer, and I backed quickly away from the door-frame. Suzie moved in beside me, covering the mists with her shotgun. The sound of hoofs grew louder, and a whole company of knights in dark armour came thundering out of the mists, right at us. Suzie threw herself one way, and I went the other, as horse after horse emerged from the mists to form a barricade blocking the road up the hill.
    The horses were huge: great black beasts snorting and stamping in the ash-filled air. And on their backs, knights in the same black armour that Artur had worn. Armour made of black scales that hissed and seethed and slid slowly over each other. The dark knights carried huge oversized swords and battle-axes, some so large they had to be strapped to the sides of their horses. Their breast-plates bore ancient satanic symbols, burned right into the armour, and they all carried heavy oblong shields, each marked with the sign of the inverted cross.
    And at their head, on the biggest, blackest horse of all, a knight in blood-red armour. His crimson helmet bore a pair of stylised horns but no slit for eyes and mouth—just a blank expanse of gleaming metal. The whole of the knight’s armour seemed fused together, made and forged all of one piece, so that even when the great joints moved, there was never any trace of an opening. The armour was a single sealed unit, with no way in or out. Designed, perhaps, to keep something inside from getting out.
    I knew who this was, who it had to be. Prince Gaylord the Damned, Nuncio to the Court of Camelot. I wondered if he knew his King was dead. Or, indeed, who had killed him.
    Prince Gaylord urged his huge black horse forward until it stopped right in front of me. Suzie was quickly there at my side again, shotgun at the ready. The Prince in scarlet ignored her, the featureless helmet fixed on me. I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to say or do, so I made a point of ignoring him and being only interested in his horse. There was something definitely wrong about it.
    The horse’s body was strangely asymmetrical, everything out of shape and out of balance, and its long head was almost a caricature of what a horse’s head should be. Its eyes bulged like a frog’s, and its wide, grinning mouth showed pointed teeth. Thin wisps of smoke curled up from its flared nostrils. And when I looked down, I saw the horse had cloven hoofs, with smoke rising from the ground they trod. A very disturbing horse—if it was a horse.
    “I am Prince Gaylord,” the blood-red knight said finally, his voice echoing inside his crimson helmet. It was a smug and very self-satisfied voice, with a hint of mocking evil. As though he had done terrible things and enjoyed every minute of it but didn’t like to boast about it. Effortlessly scary, because it came so naturally. “Welcome ... to Sinister Albion.”
    “Ask him if he’s got a small companion called Tattoo,” said Suzie. She sniggered loudly as I shook my head. Her sense of humour emerges at the strangest times.
    “You’ll have to excuse Suzie,” I explained, “because she’ll shoot you if you don’t. I am ...”
    “Oh, I know who you are, Lilith’s son,” said Prince Gaylord. “I’ve been looking forward to this little chat. We have so much in common.”
    “We do?” I said politely.
    “We both know what it is to have an overbearing parent whose very existence overshadows everything we do. You destroyed yours; and I really would like to learn how you did that.”
    “How did you know we were coming here?” I said. “Given that even I didn’t know half an hour ago.”
    “I know everything I need to know,” said the Prince. “Except for when I don’t. I saw you admiring my horses. Aren’t they wonderful? So much more interesting than the mere beasts of burden they started out as. Now they all contain followers of mine, brought up out of Hell with me, to serve me in this world. I’m pretty sure that possessing horses wasn’t what they had in mind; but I’m not ready to share my glory with anyone. Do you like the black armour my knights wear? My idea, again. Every separate scale contains the imprisoned soul of some innocent slain by the knight. Bound