“Brace yourself,” said Molly. “The energies are changing. The Gateway’s opening. Looks like the show’s about to start.”
“I wonder if they’ve got a T. rex,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to have a go at a T. rex.”
“You go right ahead,” said Molly. “I’ll stand way over there, and watch.”
The Gateway hung on the air, halfway down the street, like a hole in reality itself. Strange lights flickered in and around it, while even stranger energies radiated away from the razor-sharp perimeter. Odd emanations pulsed and flared as the Gateway stabilised, enforcing and embedding itself in the world. Weird things began to happen in the street—other-dimensional fallout, warped probabilities. Half a dozen soldiers at the far end of the street turned suddenly inside out, flowering in bloody messes. Others melted, running away like candle wax. A few simply exploded. More disappeared, forced out of reality by the Gateway’s overpowering presence.
Birds fell dead out of the sky, and it briefly rained blood.
Buildings on either side of the street began to slump, bulging out as though tugged forward by some strange new gravity. Windows exploded, under too much pressure. The ground shook and then cracked beneath our feet, and deep booming voices issued up from far below. The sky turned strange colours, and the air suddenly tasted sickly sweet. And then the Gateway firmed, a perfect circle, cut out of reality. Not as big as I’d feared—maybe thirty, forty feet in diameter . . . But just its presence here was seriously bad news. At least the world had stabilised around it now. Everything seemed back to normal, apart from the damage already caused. And of course the dead soldiers were still dead. I wondered if Diment’s bosses thought their losses were worth it. Or if they even cared.
I tried to see what was going on beyond the Gateway, but that was too much, even for my mask. It was like looking at a different kind of Space, where the most basic rules were utterly different. Like one of those pictures that were all the rage a while back, where if you focused your eyes just right, you could see another image inside the picture. Three dimensions, hidden inside two. What was inside the Gateway was simply too complicated, or perhaps too real, for me to make sense of, even with my armour’s help. Time has substance, but not any kind Humanity can comprehend. And then something stepped through the Gateway and into our world, and I stopped worrying about theoretical stuff.
I knew a real and present danger when I saw one.
“What the hell is that?” breathed Molly, pressing in close beside me.
“A blast from the past,” I said. “From the Droods’ past.”
“I should have known,” said Molly. “It’s always about your family, isn’t it?”
The new arrival was a man in full armour. Medieval plate armour, with strange curves and angles, gleaming bitter yellow like diseased candlelight. The figure was completely enclosed from head to toe, and carried a long sword on one hip and a battleaxe on the other. Its helm had a countenance as blank and featureless as mine. Nothing to give any indication of a human face behind it. The figure stood inhumanly still, but I had no doubt it was looking at me, and a terrible chill ran down my spine.
“I know what that is,” I said. “I’ve never seen one personally, just pictures in a very old book, but . . .”
“It looks old,” said Molly. “Or at least old-fashioned. Is it one of the London Knights?”
“No,” I said. “Arthur would never have suffered a thing like that to sit at his round table. I never actually thought they were real, just a cautionary tale, to scare impressionable young Droods . . .”
“Eddie! What is that thing?”
“That is a False Knight,” I said. “Magical armour—a living thing in its own right, permanently bound to its wearer. Metal forged from the pits of Hell, they say. Once put on, of your own free will, it can never be taken off. The wearer gives up being a man to become something more and less than a man. Made over, into a new and powerful thing. Unbeatable, untouchable. A False Knight.
“The armour feeds on blood and death and suffering. Everything it kills makes it stronger. It lives to kill, and kills to live. The False Knights were created centuries after Arthur’s fall at Logres, intended as an answer to the Droods. There’s a reason they call that period the Dark Ages. This was the last desperate gamble of the Order of Steel—bad guys, who believed Might Made Right and they were the mightiest of all. Only the Droods stood between them and a reign of blood and horror. To destroy the armoured Droods, the Order of Steel made a deal with the darkest force of the Dark Ages and gave themselves up, to be False Knights. A whole army of them.
“We destroyed them all, in one great battle. Over a thousand years ago, in Tintagel, in Cornwall.”
Molly looked at me uncertainly. “You can take a False Knight, can’t you?”
“One, probably,” I said. “But there was more to the story . . .”
And that was when a great company of False Knights came striding through the Gateway, from out of the Past and one of my family’s darkest legends. Row upon row and rank upon rank, filling the whole end of the street with their sickly gleaming armour. They marched in perfect lockstep, with inhuman timing and precision. The sound of their metal boots hammering down in unison filled the air, and echoed back from the surrounding buildings. Their arms swung heavily at their sides, their hands clenched into metal fists, and not one of them had a face on the front of his bitter yellow helmet. I’d never understood before just how disturbing that could be, even though I’d used the same trick myself, for so long. To look at something you know can see you, even though it doesn’t have any eyes . . . The False Knights crashed to a halt as the last of them emerged from the Gateway. Standing so still, in their ranks, looking straight at me, and Molly.
The surviving MI 13 soldiers at that end of the street turned to run. One look at the False Knights was all it took to persuade them they wanted nothing more to do with any of this. Even their officers couldn’t bully or threaten them into holding their ground. I couldn’t see Diment anywhere, or his secret masters. No doubt they were watching, from somewhere they thought was safe. But nothing and no one was safe now, not with False Knights in the world.
“I was afraid of that,” I said, as steadily as I could. My mouth was dry, my lips numb. I had to swallow hard a few times before I could continue. My skin was crawling under my armour, and I could feel my heart hammering painfully fast. “At the battle there was one company of False Knights who just vanished. My family never did find out what happened to them. Well, I guess we know now, don’t we? Those damned fools running MI 13 opened up a Time Gate and brought them here. They have no idea what they’ve unleashed on this world . . .”
The Gateway disappeared behind the False Knights. Gone in a moment. Presumably whatever MI 13 had been using to generate the Gate had just run out of power.
“Damn,” I said. “There goes one solution to the problem I was counting on . . .”
“Forcing them back through the Gateway and into the Past?” said Molly. “That was never going to work. You said yourself the company of False Knights vanished from the battle and your family never saw them again.”
“I can’t believe MI 13 thought they could control something like this!” I said.
“After what happened at the Wulfshead, and what they think happened at Uncanny, they probably panicked,” said Molly. “They must have thought we’d be coming after them next. Eddie, we have been set up, big time. So what are we going to do? Get the hell out of here, and let your family deal with the False Knights when they turn up?”
“You’d do that?” I said.
“I know my limitations,” said Molly. “And I am looking at a whole army of them right now.”
“We can’t leave,” I said. “We can’t let False Knights run loose in the world. We have to hold them here, keep them focused on us, keep any of them from escaping until my family gets here. If the Knights scatter, it could take the Droods generations to hunt them all down. And God knows how many pe
ople would die. The Knights need blood and death and suffering, to survive. And a company of False Knights could wipe out the entire population of this city in under an hour. I don’t even want to think how powerful that much blood and slaughter would make them . . . They were created to be an answer to the Droods. A final answer. And even our own history books say they came pretty damned close.”
“So!” Molly said brightly. “How did your family defeat a whole army of False Knights, back in the day?”
“The book didn’t say.”
“Terrific . . .”
“I’ve always supposed we used one of the Forbidden Weapons, from the Armageddon Codex,” I said. “The kind we’re only supposed to use when reality itself is under threat. They never get discussed in the history books, because we’re not supposed to have them.”
“And they’re a very long way away,” said Molly.
“And we couldn’t use them anyway, without the supernatural fallout killing off most of the city,” I said.
“Then think of something else!” said Molly. “Because I am getting seriously spooked just looking at those things! How are the two of us supposed to stop a whole army of Drood equivalents? I mean, I’m good, but I’m not that good. I’m not sure anyone is . . . Don’t ever tell your family I said that.”
“We can do this,” I said. “We have to do this. We have to keep them occupied, keep them all here. Until someone arrives to save us.”
“You really think we can take them?”
“You want the truth, or a comforting lie?”
“What do you think?”
“Yes, I think we can beat them,” I said.
“Then so do I!” said Molly.
We nodded to each other, and then walked steadily down the street, side by side, to where the False Knights stood waiting, their faceless gaze still fixed on us. They probably hadn’t thought the first thing they’d see in their new Time would be a Drood in his armour. Just as well; it was the only thing that would have held them here. The only thing in the world they had good reason to be afraid of. While the only thing I had on my side . . . was that they had experience of only the old Drood armour. They knew nothing of the strange matter armour Ethel had given my family. With its far greater properties.
MI 13 officers finally drove their remaining men out from behind the barricades and down the street to reinforce the False Knights. Or at least to observe what was happening. The moment they drew level, the False Knights turned on them and butchered them all. Swords and axes flared dully in the grey light, and blood splashed everywhere as severed limbs and heads flew through the air. The False Knights cut the soldiers down with ease, bitter yellow blades shearing clean through Kevlar armour without even slowing. The few rounds the soldiers got off ricocheted harmlessly from the Knights’ armour. It was all over in a few moments, the False Knights moving inhumanly fast, with appalling grace and precision. Spurting blood splashed across the bitter yellow armour, which soaked it up immediately, leaving not a drop behind. Some of the Knights picked up pieces of dripping flesh and wiped their metal helms with it.
As though they were thirsty.
And just like that, it was over. Mutilated bodies, and pieces of bodies, were kicked carelessly to the sides of the road, and the False Knights resumed their ranks and looked at me and at Molly again. As though daring us to do something, anything, about the awful thing they’d just done.
“Why did they do that?” said Molly. “Why kill the soldiers when they were on the Knights’ side?”
“No one is on the False Knights’ side,” I said. “That’s the point.”
The Knights held their gleaming swords and axes at the ready, and not one drop of blood fell from the heavy blades. The bitter yellow armour had soaked it all up. The Knights had had their first taste of their new world, and they liked it. I made myself move forward, and Molly was immediately there beside me. That helped. I was facing one of my family’s oldest and darkest nightmares, and I’m not sure I could have done it on my own.
One of the False Knights stepped forward out of the front rank. His metal boots slammed down hard as he came to meet me, and the ground cracked beneath his every step, as though he was too heavy, too real, for this world. He carried a long sword, with a hilt long enough for him to use both hands. I concentrated on my armour, and forced a change on it. Heavy collars rose up to protect my head and shoulders, while vicious spikes protruded from my elbows and knees. I even raised spikes on the knuckles of my golden gloves. The False Knight stopped and looked at me. He hadn’t been expecting that. Droods hadn’t been able to change their armour the last time he’d met them. For the first time he realised he wasn’t facing the kind of Drood he knew. I grinned behind my featureless mask. They might be an army, and they might be clad in armour out of Hell itself. But they’d never met a Drood like me.
I gestured for Molly to hold her ground, and she stopped, reluctantly, glaring fiercely at the watching Knights. I grew a long golden sword out of my right glove. It shone with a bright, healthy light. I nodded to the False Knight, and he nodded to me, challenge given and accepted. And then we ran forward, charging straight at each other. We slammed together in the middle of the street, our swords rising and falling. And my strange matter sword sheared right through his bitter yellow blade. The end fell away, clattering on the ground, and as the False Knight hesitated, caught off guard, I brought my sword swinging round in a viciously fast arc . . . and cut off his head. The bitter yellow helm fell to the ground, and rolled away. The headless body fell stiffly backwards, like a felled tree. It clanged hollowly as it hit the ground, and not a drop of blood came out of it.
I turned to face the waiting ranks of False Knights, and laughed at them. The simple, unintimidated sound seemed to fill the empty street. Molly whooped loudly, and punched the air with her fist. And the whole army of False Knights came striding down the street, right at me, and Molly, to do together what one Knight had so signally failed to do. The ground shook and trembled under their weight, and the very air seemed to curdle around them, as though their presence alone was enough to poison the world.
Molly danced forward to face them, smiling unpleasantly. She raised both arms in the stance of summoning, and chanted a series of harsh ugly Words. A great raging wind blew up out of nowhere, and swept down the street to hit the Knights head-on. The wind overturned parked cars and sent them tumbling, and blew everything else around like leaves, but it didn’t even slow the False Knights.
Molly cut off the wind the moment she realised it wasn’t working. She summoned up fireballs and threw them at the Knights, fires hot enough to shimmer the air and melt everything in the mortal world . . . but the flames just splashed harmlessly against the bitter yellow armour, and fell away, and the Knights kept on coming. Molly lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, and hit the first rank with her strongest transformation spell. The air between them crackled with violent magical energies, but nothing in the spell could touch the False Knights in their armour.
Molly scowled fiercely, concentrating on one Knight right in front of her. She raised a hand, and then clenched it, hard. And the False Knight broke step, shuddering to a halt as his bitter yellow armour cracked and crinkled all around him. It scrunched up like tin foil, crushing the man within, collapsing in upon itself. The False Knight staggered, waved his arms wildly, and then fell to the ground as his armour closed in around him, crushing and compressing him, until there was just a crumpled ball of bitter yellow metal in the street.
Molly turned to look at me. Her face was drawn, and pale, and wet with sweat. She was shaking hard, only just able to keep her feet.
“Sorry, sweetie,” she said, trying hard to smile. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. It took everything I had just to bring one of the bastards down.”
“That’s more than most could have managed,” I said. “It’s all right, Molly. You stand down, and let me go to work. I’ll take it from here. But if it looks like I’m losing, get the hell out
of here.”
“I won’t leave you, Eddie.”
“You have to.”
“You can’t make me!”
“You don’t understand, Molly! If they take you, they’ll make you one of them! Wrap you up in their Hell armour, make you False too!”
“You go down, I go down with you,” said Molly. “Fighting to my last breath. Because I wouldn’t want to live without you anyway.”
She couldn’t see me smile behind my mask, so I nodded fondly to her.
“Together forever, my love,” I said.
“Forever and a day,” said Molly. “Now go kill those sons of bitches.”
“Love to,” I said.
I pulled the golden sword back inside my hand, strode over to the side of the street, and plucked the nearest street lamp out of the ground by its electrical roots. There was a shower of sparks as I hefted the long metal weight easily in my hands. And then I charged straight at the False Knights, using all the power of my armoured legs to close the gap between us in a few moments. I was in and among their front ranks before they even had time to react. Everyone always forgets that Drood armour is fast, as well as strong.
I swung the long steel lamp with all my strength, picking Knights up and throwing them this way and that. Their armour dented under the impact, but wouldn’t crack or break. More pressed forward, but I kept the lamp post swinging, and they couldn’t get past it. I slammed it into chests and heads, swept armoured legs out from under them, smashed them down, and swept them away. False Knights flew through the air, hit the ground, and rolled, then got up to come at me again. I couldn’t hurt them. The bitter yellow armour protected them, just like mine protected me.
Property of a Lady Faire: A Secret Histories Novel Page 17
