Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

her,” I said. “Trust me. I am the only thing keeping you alive at the moment. Talk.”
    “They spoke out, everyone here. Against the way things are. Someone overheard them and turned them in. Now they’ll squirm and rot on those spikes forever, kept alive by Merlin’s magic. Or at least, until the next batch of traitors get hauled in.”
    I stood up and looked round me. Sharp metal points protruded from mouths and eyes, and blood and other fluids ran down the poles to pool on the courtyard floor; but all of them were still alive. Dying by inches, over and over, but never getting there. Agony beyond belief ...
    “I can’t help them,” said Suzie. “I don’t have enough ammunition. Please, John. Do something.”
    I raised my gift, and, powered by my rage and disgust, it only took me a moment to find the magic that made all this possible. I could See it, hanging across the courtyard like a spider’s web, every strand an artery, pulsing as it fed on the pain it made possible. I grabbed the whole web in my mental hand and crushed it. Something far away cried out, in pain and fury, and I smiled. All round me, men, women, and children slumped forward on their spikes, dead at last. I looked at Suzie, still with one knee pressing down on the knight’s breast-plate.
    “Get his helmet off.”
    Suzie wrenched the steel helm off and threw it to one side. It didn’t travel far in the shit and gore crusted on the floor. The knight’s face was pale and sweaty, and very young. Barely out of his teens by the look of him. He tried to glare defiantly up at Suzie, but he wasn’t used to being on the receiving end. He couldn’t meet the cold fury in her eyes. He was close to death, and he knew it.
    “What’s your name?” I said.
    “Sir Blaise.” He licked his dry lips. “I am a knight of the land, and it is death to threaten me.”
    “Never stopped me before,” said Suzie.
    “Get him on his feet,” I said.
    Suzie hauled him back onto his feet again through a combination of brute strength and intimidation. I walked up to Blaise, kicking his helm out of the way. I smiled at him, and he flinched at what he saw in my smile, in my eyes.
    “Blaise,” I said, “you only think you know scary. Look at me, and look at Suzie. See that gun she’s holding? She just killed Prince Gaylord with it. If you say one more word to piss either of us off, she will blow your head right off your shoulders. Won’t you, Suzie?”
    “Love to,” said Suzie.
    “Lead the way, Blaise, and don’t waste our time with the scenic route.”
    He led us on, through the courtyard and out the far door. Suzie paused there for one last look at the bodies on their spikes.
    “That is it,” she said. “Merlin is dead.”
    “You get a decent chance,” I said, “go for it.”

    Blaise led us into the dark interior of Camelot, and we went with him. Guards in dark armour lined the corridors all along the way, but none of them spoke to us, only sometimes standing aside to let us pass. They looked at Suzie and me as though they were seeing something utterly alien. I don’t think they were used to seeing people who still had their pride. Who weren’t afraid of them. I felt like killing them all, on general principles, and given the fury that was still burning so very coldly within me, I think I might have used my gift to find a way to do it ... But I kept reminding myself, that wasn’t what I was here for. I had to concentrate on keeping Excalibur away from Merlin, or everything was lost.
    “How much further?” I said to Blaise.
    “It’s a big place, Camelot,” said the knight, looking straight ahead. “Don’t talk to me. You’re nothing but dead men walking. Merlin will make you suffer and die, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Because that’s what happens here.”
    “Someone’s getting snotty again,” said Suzie. “Let me shoot him somewhere painful, John, for the good of his soul.”
    “And death won’t be the end of it,” said the knight. “No-one stays dead here. No-one escapes Merlin that easily.”
    Suzie looked hopefully at me, but I shook my head. We still needed a guide.
    The interior of the castle grew steadily more awful the further in we went. Camelot was a place of fear and horror and endless suffering. The floors were covered with flayed human faces, there to be stepped on and crushed under metal boots. The faces still had eyes in them, alive and aware, and the mouths moved constantly in whispering