Knightfall: Book Four of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  I set it in motion. With a little luck, the Lord of Light would either be unable to cure radiation damage or find it cost-prohibitive to do so repeatedly on everyone in the Hand. I doubt I’ll kill everyone in the Hand, but I’ll settle for killing some and making all of them suffer.

  All I can say is, don’t try to kill my horse. It brings out my Demon King side.

  Just to be clear, in this case, I don’t care that it does. Do not touch the horse.

  Tuesday, March 16th

  It was a long night. Today might be longer.

  I had my waterfall-shower and dug around to find my modern-world clothes. Being inconspicuous is difficult to do in High Medieval formal wear—unless you’re at the Court, in which case you might blend in. In a postmodern society, I was going to have enough trouble with a gigantic horse and a pair of swords. The swords, at least, I could put in luggage. Bronze is another story entirely.

  To speed her recovery, Firebrand and I heated, molded, and reshaped some of her to seal the holes. They were obviously not healed—more like scar tissue—but it was a head start on the whole, or un-holey, process. With her color-altering bracelets, she could pass as a flesh-and-blood horse of unusual size as along as no one tried to meddle with her. The saddle doesn’t come off, for example, and nobody’s going to mistake the feel of her for anything but metal. On the other hand, she does feel warm to the touch, if a bit bristly. Come to think of it, someone unfamiliar with horsehide might not immediately think anything was amiss.

  I finished tying up my boots and considered my cloak. Miraculous it might be, but I had yet to see it do anything. Still, you never know. I put it on and, since it was daytime, regarded myself in the mirror. Did it look out of place or silly? Yes, I decided. Yes, it did. There was no way I could wear it without looking—

  It wrapped itself around me and turned into an overcoat, complete with sleeves, buttons, and belt. I unbuttoned it and checked the pockets. They were perfect. It even had a subtle label on the inside, done in glossy thread and stitched into the lining: “Penumbra and Shadow, Outfitters.”

  “Okay,” I admitted, “that’s impressive.”

  I’m pleased you approve.

  I ignored the faint, whispered comment from On High. At least the cloak wasn’t the one doing the psychic talking. I’m sure of that. Ninety percent sure, at least.

  One more stop, this time by the Royal Treasure room. I collected some gems sticking out of the walls and scooped gold into saddlebags. You can’t fill a saddlebag with gold. It’s far too dense. It’ll rip out the seams and spill. The key to making off with the loot is to avoid being greedy. I didn’t know how well Mary was doing on the yacht, but it would be impolite of me to not contribute something.

  We headed back down to the geode room. The bodies had quit smoking and steaming, but were starting to smell for other reasons. Torvil and Kammen were present, regarding the remains and discussing whether or not to bother asking what happened. They’re not stupid. Besides, the big, overlapping, round crush marks were something of a clue.

  Kammen grunted and gestured with his chin. Torvil turned and saluted.

  “I’m not the King, Torvil.”

  “With respect, Sire, you are, but the Queen is ruling.”

  “He’s right, Sire,” Kammen added.

  “I hate you both.”

  “No, you don’t,” Kammen replied.

  “No, I don’t,” I admitted. “Quite the opposite, in fact. What’s going on?”

  “Investigating the smell, Sire,” Torvil said.

  “And I had a crimp in the Ribbon,” Kammen added. “Figured it was you.”

  “I suppose it was,” I admitted. “Sorry I forgot to clean up.”

  “Told you,” Torvil said, grinning at Kammen.

  “I’ll leave this in your capable hands, gentlemen. I’ve got a little trip to take.”

  “Sire, before you leave?” Kammen asked.

  “Yes?”

  Torvil and Kammen exchanged glances. Torvil cleared his throat.

  “We would be honored if we could join you.”

  I thought about it. I did more than think about it. I seriously considered it. In the end, though, I decided against it. What I was about to do called for Purloined Letter levels of sneaky.

  “Maybe later,” I told them. “I have some preliminary preparations to make. As it stands, I need you helping Lissette. I won’t be standing at her elbow to glare menacingly at people. I want you two—along with Seldar, Malana and Malena, and the whole corps of the red sashes doing it for me.”

  “But there’s a chance you’ll send for us?” Kammen asked, hopefully.

  “Why so eager?” I asked.

  “I’ve been a pimp for the Demon King for years. We get to train a lot, but we don’t have much call to ride to battle.”

  “Aha! I get it, now. Yes… yes, I see your problem. Well, if I run into a war, I promise I’ll ask Lissette if she can spare you. Is that fair?”

  “More than fair, Sire.”

  “If you’re really bored, you might consider arming a bunch of the army with wooden weapons and having practice battles, rather than letting the knights hog all the fun. Just a thought.”

  “There will be casualties,” Torvil mused. Kammen harrumphed.

  “It’ll be time to practice our healing magic, won’t it?”

  “They don’t see it the way we do,” Torvil sighed.

  “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I have an arch to open.”

  “Of course, Sire,” they replied, in unison, and saluted.

  Muttering to myself about gung-ho knights, I set up the gates. Plural. Again, I was landing on Johann’s home turf. With a dozen or more tiny gates to register on any hypothetical gate-detection alarms, I hoped to get through without being instantly targeted. Of course, I don’t know he even has any such detection, but I can’t afford to assume. Optimists may have more fun, but pessimists live longer.

  I took my time setting it all up. First and foremost, my priority was hitting the right world, especially since I knew for a fact it was possible to miss. I walked carefully through the process of defining the world I remembered. With it pre-set and programmed in, I drew power from the crystals and fed the target to the little ring-gates, linking them to the main archway. If they could all open at once, that would be best…

  So, where in that world am I going? I cracked the wax on Mary’s list of rendezvous points and read through it. I didn’t like it. She has an impish, sometimes fiendish sense of humor.

  After some thought, I picked Paris as my first port of call. Later, unless something changed my plans, I could make a circuit of Berlin, Rome, and London, then back to Paris. At every stop, of course, I would check for and leave messages. Mary and I would catch up to each other, but hopefully without attracting undue attention. It would be immensely easier if we had phone numbers, but using the ones we had the last time we were there was asking for trouble—from vampires for certain, including their human minions, with a possibility of intermittent magi.

  Ring gate one. World set. General location, greater Los Angeles. Ring gate two, home in on a small opening in Peking. For ring gate three, I hear Hawaii is nice. Ring gate four…

  I worked my way down the list, spreading them all over the globe. Then I thought about my aim. If I opened an arch and went through to Paris, it might show up on a map and be monitored thereafter. It might simply result in someone investigating the place. It might also be unnoticed or disregarded. It might provoke an intense magi-fueled search. I don’t know, but I can’t afford to take risks. Maybe it would be better to pop out somewhere else and make my way to Paris? Preferably somewhere reasonably tolerant of foreign strangers.

  Switzerland, I think. That’s not too bad. I aimed the arch for Geneva. This was also far enough from Avignon to—hopefully—avoid undue interest. Geneva also offered a city full of man-made structures to act as an anchor point for the main gate. Plus, it was close enough to wilderness, both mountains and fore
sts—I hoped! —to be useful if we had to run for it.

  Last I checked, Johann was altering the brains of world leaders. If he had gate detection, and if he had the influence for it—and the anger, fear, or paranoia for it—he might decide to drop a nuke on us. He doesn’t like me, and it’s mutual. But there is a lot to be said for having a mountain between you and the possible soon-to-be-vaporized ground zero.

  I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. It probably wouldn’t. But while it was unlikely, the possibility was significant enough to take note of. I didn’t like it.

  The gates were charged and ready. Bronze pawed silently at the floor, prepared to launch herself through. I stood by the edge of the arch, ready to swing around it into the other world. Since it was daytime here, I wouldn’t have to worry about stepping into sunlight. If I stepped into nighttime, Bronze could grab me by the collar, lift me clear off the ground, and run if the situation called for it.

  The whole set of gates fired off together, seeking something to link to. The lesser ones could handle themselves; my attention was on the big one. It probed, searched, found a suitable opening, locked to it, snapped it close.

  Beyond the arch was a parking garage. I considered it perfectly acceptable. Bronze and I went through and I slammed the gate behind us as my nighttime metabolism killed me dead as disco. My heart seized up, my guts knotted, and my whole body felt as though I’d just done a one-and-a-half gainer into an empty pool.

  If you missed it, let me simplify: I hate that.

  Bronze picked me up, as per plan, and trotted quickly as she followed the arrows toward the exit. I fired off my Ring of Hygiene and activated my human illusions while I recovered. She put me down when we reached the exit and I mounted up.

  The parking garage didn’t want to let her out. The automated system thought she was a car. Bronze was slightly offended.

  “It’s probably a pressure sensor and maybe a motion sensor. Don’t feel bad. It’s an idiot box.”

  She still didn’t like it. Taking a few bites out of the gate wouldn’t bother her a bit. She favored it with a medium-hostile eyeball and considered where to insult it in return. The idea of kicking it into the Mediterranean wasn’t a serious consideration, but it did cross her mind.

  “Now, now. The Med is a little far away for that. Let me see if I can persuade it…” I ran psychic tendrils into the machine, traced some of the wires in the wall, found the circuit to control the gate, and momentarily shorted it. The gate hummed out of our way. We hurried off through the streets, hopefully to get out of town fast.

  Everything was in French and marked in kilometers, so we burned through the countryside like a German panzer division. We followed the contour of the land, occasionally following a road or trail until we found one going the right way. Bronze merged smoothly into traffic as though born on the highway. Well, she did watch us drive for quite a while. We earned a number of wide-eyed looks and open mouths, but either nobody was on manual-drive or they kept their heads.

  Hmm. Is it legal to be on manual in Europe? I never checked. The Autobahn might be robot-only by now.

  At that thought, we got off the main highway and onto smaller roads, circling a mountainous area. I wanted to be sure we didn’t have a line of sight on Geneva, just in case. Assuming Johann fingered us instantly and snapped out an immediate order, how long would it take to arm, launch, and deliver a nuclear weapon? My best guess was a minimum of four minutes, counting flight time, assuming he had a suitable asset afloat in the Mediterranean. We didn’t make it around the mountains in four minutes, but nothing exploded behind us, either.

  We lived. Score one for the good guys. Good-ish guys. Okay, the lesser evil.

  All right, where the hell am I? Earth has Polaris, so there’s north… we came south and west, so I know where I am in relation to the rest of Europe, kind of… and I never realized how important Geography class was in high school. France is southwest from here, but I’m not sure how far.

  Does anyone around here speak English?

  We backtracked a bit to the outskirts of a town. Turns out we were already in France, outside Cruseilles along Route de Droniéres. Nobody I met spoke English, but everybody had a skinphone and a translation app—thank you, Google, for simplifying my life as much as you complicate it.

  It was a little odd to speak, hear the translation, hear the reply, and then hear the translation. The young man running the counter at the all-night convenience store seemed used to it, though. He was kind enough to hold out his arm and let me consult his skinphone map.

  I left a gold nugget as a souvenir, simply because he didn’t have to be so helpful. I appreciated it. Now I had a good idea of which roads to take to get to Paris.

  Which brought my thinking back around to Bronze. How do I help her blend in? Or conceal her? Could I get a dead truck and use the body as a rolling disguise for her? No, that’s silly. Can I get a truck big enough to transport her? That might be possible, but it would require, as usual, money. Good thing I brought valuables.

  Which requires someone to help me convert it, which means daytime.

  I wonder if France is any more tolerant of high-speed horse traffic?

  No, but it takes them a while to notice.

  According to Emile’s skinphone, I could take the D971 north all the way to Paris. The other option was the A6, but the A6 was a robot-only road. Bronze would need a transponder and other hardware to pretend to be a vehicle. Going up the D971 was still less than ideal, but at least the computers didn’t immediately finger us to traffic control.

  We made it all the way to Dijon before a gendarme caught up to us. I glanced back and saw him coming, so I turned off my human illusions. He pulled up alongside as we turned off the loop around the city and headed northwest. Bronze adjusted her mane so it streamed by to my left, letting the gendarme get a good look at me. He stared at us without saying anything for over a mile. I waved. Bronze tossed her head, spewing smoke and fire.

  Boss?

  What’s up?

  He’s trying to decide what to say to his commander. He’s thinking through a number of conversations, but they all end with him fired, suspended, or medicated.

  Sounds about right. Is he going to try and pull us over?

  That’s what he’s trying to figure out. He wants to, but he also doesn’t want to.

  We’ll let him off the hook.

  I waved at him again and Bronze slowed suddenly. We took a sharp left, cutting across a break in traffic and an open field before vanishing into the woods. Behind us, the gendarme stopped his vehicle and got out to watch us disappear. We waited. Bronze held her breath to avoid flaming, but smoke poured out her ears. I doubt he could see it in the dark.

  At last, he shook his head, sat down in his car, and drove on. My guess is he never actually called it in.

  Saturday, December 19th

  We stayed hidden in that small woods until dawn. I snuggled up to the westward side of a fallen tree and wrapped up in my new overcoat—now complete with a hood. I didn’t notice when it changed, which freaked me out more than the change, itself. I cut a couple of pine or fir branches, half-buried myself, and Bronze kicked leaves over the rest. It wasn’t the worst dawn transformation I’ve ever had, but it was far from the best.

  After climbing out and cleaning off, I considered what to do with the day. Bronze doesn’t travel well during periods of high visibility, obviously. Dijon, however, was actually a pretty sizable city and within walking distance. I could probably find someone to trade with, exchanging gems and gold for digital cash. I might even buy or rent a moving van.

  Bronze was rather blasé about it. She might not outrun every vehicle in the world, but she was game to try. What she couldn’t outrun, she could cripple or kill.

  “It’s not the quality, it’s the quantity,” I assured her. She expressed a low opinion of fiberglass and plastic. I agreed.

  I suppose I’m not going with you? Firebrand asked.

  “Not today. I�
��ll have enough to carry and I don’t want to draw attention.”

  Always not drawing attention! What is it with you and hiding all the time?

  “Remember the night with the vampires at the farmhouse?”

  There were a lot nights with vampires at the farmhouse. You mean the one when the other vampires burned it down?

  “That’s the one. Now imagine that night, but with more shotguns, more people, and bigger guns.”

  Ugly. Doable, but ugly.

  “Add more people. Add the fact every time I show my face, someone screams about the vampire and more people close in. Imagine a sea of people stretching to the horizon, all of them shooting at me.”

  It wouldn’t really be like that, Firebrand protested.

  “You’re right. But suppose I want to sit in my favorite chair and read? Think the people who want me dead and know where I am will let me? Do you think I’d have a book to read? Do you think I’d have a chair? And, more to the current moment, do you think Johann will hesitate to drop a volcano on me?”

  You mean “drop you in a volcano.”

  “I said what I meant.”

  Hmm.

  “I agree with you about having a nice life where I don’t have to lurk all the time. I’ll look into it as soon as Johann and the Ebon Eidolon of Evil are dealt with. Until then, I need to avoid their notice while I plot their downfall. With this suitably explained, may I continue with my sneaking?”

  Oh. Certainly. You may go.

  “Thank you, too much.”

  I hung my swordbelts on Bronze’s saddlehorn, filled my pockets with gold and gems, and walked into town.

  After a long morning of asking for help, I found out I should have stayed in Geneva. The Swiss are very understanding about every sort of money-conversion problem. France, not so much. I’m still not sure if I was cheated or if it was simply the cost of doing business with less-reputable merchants.