Robert Charrette - Arthur 01 - A Prince Among Men

by Robert N. Charrette

  "I'd still feel like I was betraying him."

  "Betray? He'd kill you if he knew your heritage."

  "But he—" John thought about Bear's offer to squire him. Somehow the idea of being a murderer's squire didn't seem bright. If he was a murderer. "He's not like that."

  "The man is a master of blending in and making people see what they want to see in him. It is the cornerstone of his successes. Don't tell me that he has dazzled your eyes as well?"

  "He's been a good friend to me."

  "Speak to your good friend Artos about elves. Then you will see where your path lies."

  "I don't know."

  "Think about it, John. Test him. If he's the man you think he is, you've nothing to fear. But if he is as I have told you, you have everything to fear."

  CHAPTER

  14

  Things in the 'hood were busy after John's meeting with Bennett, what with the latest phase of Bear's peace negotiations going on. It was almost a week before John found a chance to get a private talk with Bear. John sat impatiently through Thursday night's council meeting, but fortunately, nothing needed immediate attention and the meeting broke up sooner than usual. Usually a lot of folks hung around MaxMix Manor after the meeting, but John had put the word in a few choice ears. Lots of gangers, even some John hadn't talked to, seemed to have other places to be. That was fine with John; it meant fewer people to get rid of. Soon he, Trashcan Harry, and Artos were the only ones left in the big common room of MaxMix Manor. He could hear the last bunch making their good-byes in the front room. A nod to Trashcan set him to fumbling his way through an excuse for his own departure. Absorbed in listening to the mid-evening news vid, Artos barely noticed. John pulled a chair over and sat beside Bear.

  "How come you never talk much about the past or the people you knew back in the old days?" "They're gone." Pointing a finger at the vid, he said, "The world's changed. Doesn't seem much point in talking about

  them."

  "There was magic back then, wasn't there?"

  Bear looked at him, eyes full of a guarded something. "Too much."

  "And all kinds of weird beings from the otherworld."

  "Too many kinds. Where are you heading with this,

  .lack?"

  Bear hadn't blinked at his mention of the otherworld. He knew about it. What else did he know about? "Did you ever meet any elves?"

  "Don't get me going."

  "No, really, I'm curious. You know, everybody these days has got a picture of elves as keeblers or some kind of half-naked cosmic tree worshipers. What were they really like? Were they really different from people?"

  "They're different, all right. Elves are lazy, lying good-lor-nothings that would sooner stab you in the back than say hello."

  "Don't pull your punches!"

  "If you think I was, then you don't want to hear what I really think. Most of the best words aren't in the language anymore."

  "So you're saying you have met some?"

  "To my sorrow. But let me tell you, boy. If you should meet one, kill it before it starts talking. You'll be better off."

  "Kill him in cold blood?"

  "They don't have any other kind."

  "1 don't think I could kill anybody in cold blood." Hot blood, maybe. Winston's face, beaten and bruised, swam before his eyes. According to Bear, elves were cold-blooded, not hot.

  "Killing's something you can learn. It's something you ought to learn, with regard to those pointy-eared snake-lovers."

  "Something you've learned?"

  Bear—no, that name didn't fit him now. This was Artos, the man John had seen attack Trashcan Harry with a sword. Artos stared at him.

  John had to ask. "Do you kill elves on sight?"

  "Why? Have you seen one?"

  "I—" He was afraid that if he told Artos about Bennett, he'd have to tell him that Bennett had said he was John's father. Was Artos's attitude toward changelings any different than toward ordinary elves? If Artos knew John was an elf, would he hate John? Hell, would he kill John? John didn't want to find out. For the moment, Artos was accepting John as human; and that was something John wasn't ready to chance giving up. "How would I know?"

  "How's a good question." Bear seemed to relax a little. "They're masters of deception. They can make themselves look like someone else, blind all your senses so you act like a fool and never know it until they have you in their snare."

  It sounded personal. "Did they do that to you?"

  "I don't want to talk about it," Bear said firmly.

  So they didn't talk. Bear watched the news, and John sat there watching him watch the news. Bennett was right that Bear didn't care for elves. Referring to them as "its"—how cold could you get? Bear didn't treat John as an "it." Would that change if John revealed his elven heritage? He didn't want to think so, but how could he be sure?

  There was a clatter from outside, followed by a muffled cry.

  "What's that?" Bear asked, tense. He seemed poised to explode from the chair.

  "I don't know," John replied. It didn't sound normal, though.

  In eerie silence, Bear got up and went to the weapons cabinet. Unlocking it, he took out something long that glinted of metal. Not a sword, a rifle. He tossed it to John. It was a shotgun. Bear took one for himself, pumping it once to chamber a shell.

  The front door crashed open. Bear shifted to clear John out of his line of fire into the front room and brought his weapon to bear on the doorway, but it was just Trashcan Harry, breathless, sweating, and bleeding from a cut on his cheek. He shoved the door closed behind him and slammed down the locking bar. Stumbling into the common room, Harry stared at the shotguns with wide eyes.

  "John, we gotta get outta here!"

  Footsteps pounded on the porch. Out in the back, someone coughed heavily.

  "There's half a dozen at least," Trashcan Harry said. "Serious guns."

  Bear kicked shut the door to the kitchen and upended the weapons cabinet across it. Metal crashed as the contents jammed together and tumbled free, to spill in a jumble of guns. The ammunition drawer canted out and dumped a pile of boxes and loose shells. As Bear bent to grab a box from the heap, something crashed against the door he had barricaded. The barrier held. Something else hit the door in the front room. The wood groaned, but the bar held. Bear ordered, "Upstairs."

  T hey crossed the front room and started up the stairs, Bear trying to watch both doors at once. Scraping sounds came from the room they had just vacated. Worried and fearful of what he might see, John looked back. Bear's attention must have been on the front door, because he didn't immediately react to the figure in black John glimpsed moving through the common room.

  "Behind you!" John shouted.

  Bear whirled, shotgun held low. Without hesitation, he fired. The flash was bright and the sound deafening. The black-clothed figure spun and fell back.

  Someone on the front porch pounded uselessly on the scarred and pockmarked Perspex™ panels. The panels held. With surprisingly little noise, the lock blew off the door in a cloud of smoke and splinters. The bar kept the door closed. The pounding started on the door again.

  Carla was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed.

  "What's happening? Where's Hector?"

  "Shut up and get out of the way," Trashcan Harry ordered.

  She kept repeating her screamed questions until Bear seconded Harry's order. John was afraid the wild-eyed Bear was going to shoot her, but he just used his gun crossways to herd her away from the landing.

  "Who else is still in the house?" Bear asked from where he watched the stairs, but he was only half listening for the answer to his question. His attention was focused on the lower level.

  "Most everybody's out tonight," John said, thinking about how he had contributed to that.

  "Shanta was in the kitchen," Carla said. "Hector was out in the backyard. Where is he? Is he all right?"

  "Gillie was on the porch," Trashcan said. "They already got him."


  "You said six," Bear said.

  "Yeah." Trashcan Harry was breathing heavily. "Two teams of three. Might be more."

  "Damn! Back to Gillie's room," Bear said urgently. "Go!"

  There was a second stairway there. Someone might be coming up behind them. They ran. John could hear footbeats on the stairs. Bear's shotgun roared again, and somebody screamed. Then the only footfalls John heard behind him were from Bear's heavy feet.

  Carla was the first to reach Gillie's room. She opened the door, then jerked back to the sound of the same rapid coughing John had heard from the back of the house. She kept jerking as slugs tore into her. John crashed into Trashcan, who had stopped abruptly. Carta's blood splattered them.

  Bear shouldered John aside roughly and dove across the opening, firing as he went past the doorway. There was a thud inside the room. Rolling back to the frame, Bear fired again.

  There was no more firing from the room.

  "Separate. Hide. Try and get outside. I'll keep them busy in here."

  He disappeared into Gillie's room.

  With uncharacteristic alacrity, Trashcan Harry ran to the window at the end of the hall. Unlike most of the downstairs windows, those on the upper stories weren't sealed. A creak from down the hail warned of someone climbing the stairs. I here wasn't time to join Harry at the window.

  In here.

  A door opened beside him and, without thinking, John followed Faye's advice.

  It was Carta's and Hector's room. Absurdly, he thought that Hector would have a fit seeing him there. But Hector wouldn't have any more cause for jealousy.

  John found himself in a corner of the room, panting. If was quiet now, and he was scared. Feeling the cracked, brittle wallpaper under his palms made him realize that he no longer had the shotgun Bear had thrown him. He couldn't remember dropping it. He was unarmed while armed men crept stealthily toward him.

  The unlatched door shivered slightly; there was someone outside in the hall.

  John felt exposed. His eyes flicked to the closet, the only place large enough to hide.

  Don "t move, John. Pretend you 're not here.

  But, Faye ...

  Quiet.

  The first thing John saw was the muzzle of a weapon, made fat by a sound suppressor. The weapon was held in black-gloved hands, and those hands belonged to a man clad completely in black.

  He looked like something out of a thriller vid as he moved cautiously into the room. His torso was clothed in something bulky like a fencing jacket. Odd-shaped packages hung festooned in various places. His head was sheathed in a black hood that even covered his face below the bulbous goggles he wore. Everything about him was the matte black of night. Not an inch of flesh showed to indicate his humanity.

  John could see Carla's contorted right hand on the floor outside the doorway. They had shown no human virtues; maybe there was no humanity to see.

  A second figure appeared in the doorway, covering the advance of his fellow. This one was much shorter, though just as broad in the shoulders; he didn't look the part of a classic hunter-killer like his companion, though he was clad the same. And he had just as evil-looking a weapon.

  The first moved to the closet, easing the door open. Poking among the clothes, he satisfied himself that no one hid there. He passed John, and though his head swept across the corner, he gave no sign that he saw him. The man crossed the room, suddenly stopping as his head snapped toward the window.

  "It's Black," the prowler said softly, pointing out the window with the muzzle of his weapon. John could see Trashcan Harry running away from the house. The gunman raised his weapon and took aim.

  "Nix," said the figure by the door.

  The gun came down.

  "First we find the sleeper," the shorter one said. "Then we sweep up the mess."

  The gunman nodded.

  Tilting his head down, the short one whispered, "Who's got the sleeper?"

  He received no audible reply, but he stepped back into the hallway, motioning the taller one to follow.

  Bear's shotgun fired again, and John heard the two men rush into Gillie's room. The house was quiet for a long time after that. John remained where he was, too frightened to move. His mind raced.

  The "sleeper" would be Artos, but who the hell were these people? John remembered the men with guns who had broken into the museum during Bennett's magical duel with Nym. Were these the same guys? If so, presumably they had intended to kill Artos then. Hadn't Nym told John and Artos to run away? She must have known about these guys.

  Could these be the same guys? One of the men he'd seen at the museum had earlier represented himself as a federal agent, and while breaking into the museum didn't seem like a typical FBI kind of thing, those guys hadn't masked their faces. These men in black were pure terrorist stuff. Or maybe secret agents. They might as well be alien invaders for all the sense their presence made.

  Why had they come here with death on their minds? Why did they want to kill Artos?

  John caught the scrape of a stealthy footfall in the hall Had they taken care of their sleeper and come back to "sweep up the mess"?

  The new hunter moved into the room in as cautious and predatory a manner as the black-clad gunman, but he was dressed differently. He wore a long coat like some outlaw of the Old West. He carried a pistol like one, too, but not some massive hogleg, a smooth, efficient-looking automatic. He wore a hood like the others but his goggles were different, barely more than wraparound sunglasses. All in all he looked less like a soldier than the others, but no less dangerous.

  Their leader? Come to view the dirty handiwork of bis henchmen?

  The man in the coat scanned the room once before his gaze settled in John's direction.

  "Reddy?" His voice was a whisper.

  I'm sorry, John. He's not like the others.

  Yeah. Unlike the others, this guy could see him.

  "Easy, Reddy. I'm here to help."

  There didn't seem to be any more point in pretending he was invisible. "Who are you?"

  Bear's shotgun sounded again.

  "Stay here," the stranger ordered. And he was gone.

  John roused himself, reluctantly abandoning the corner. If he could find the shotgun he'd lost, he could help Bear.

  He found it, all right. It was lying in the hall, in a pool of ( aria's blood. He couldn't bring himself to touch it.

  Downstairs he could hear more gunfire: Bear's shotgun, the black-clad men's coughing weapons, and a sharper crack that had to be the stranger's small pistol. He heard the stranger shout orders to something called "Bravo Team." More firing. A flash of light lit up the walls of the landing and acrid smoke was soon drifting up the stairs. There was one last blast from Bear's shotgun, and everything was quiet.

  John crept to the top of the stairs. Still quiet. The front door was open to the street, half off its hinges, its restraining bar lying shattered on the floor. There were no sirens, no shouts of alarm. This was the sprawl; there wouldn't be any police to investigate until well after everything was resolved, if even then. The neighbors knew enough to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.

  Two men entered the front room from the common room. Bear had his shotgun sloped over his shoulder. The other man wore a long coat, but he now had his shades off and his hood pulled back. He was a sandy-haired guy who would have looked more at home behind a desk than helping Bear check on the body lying sprawled at the base of the stairs.

  "Who are you, friend?" Bear was saying.

  "Name's Holger Kun. I'm pleased to meet you, sir."

  "I'm pleased to be around to be met. Lot of people seem to want to make my acquaintance today, but not all of them are as polite as you, Mr. Kun." Bear kicked the body. "These folks, for example. You wouldn't happen to know who they are, would you?"

  "I've got an idea."

  "Then you're ahead of me. Maybe you're far enough ahead to know if there might be more of them around? Or can we leave them for your Bravo Team to take care
of?"

  "Bravo Team's a fiction, sir. Did its job, though. Made them think there were more of us and bought us some breathing room."

  "You think they'll be back?"

  "They didn't get what they wanted," John said, coming down the stairs. "They said they wanted the sleeper."

  Bear looked up at him and gave him a nod. "Jack, glad to see you're all right. Where's Trashcan Harry?"

  "Here," came a voice from the kitchen. He came through the doorway, half carrying a semiconscious Hector. "They're gone."

  "But Reddy's right," Kun said. "You're still here, sir. They'll be back."

  "You think they wanted to capture me?" Bear snorted. "Weren't enough of them for that."

  "Capture you. Or kill you," Kun said. "They might have been satisfied with either."

  "What did I do to them? I don't even know who they are." Bear tugged the hood off the corpse. "I've never seen any of them before."

  "I have," John said, staring at the face so revealed. It was Surimato, the supposed federal agent. Everyone turned to look at him, but John faced Bear. "I met him before ... before the night in the museum. He said he was FBI. Showed me a picture of the sorceress who woke you."

  "He's not FBI," Kun said. If the mention of a sorceress was odd to him, he gave no sign. "This man's name is Vadama. He was a special agent for Mitsutomo Keiretsu."

  John wasn't sure that he had heard correctly. "Mitsutomo?"

  Kun nodded. "Not a public branch, mind you."

  "Still want to go home, Jack?" Bear asked.

  "It must be a mistake," John protested.

  "No mistake," Trashcan said.

  "How would you know?" John snapped. "This must be some kind of fraud. Somebody is trying to make Mitsutomo look like the villains."

  "It wouldn't be hard," Trashcan said. "Don't matter if you don't believe, Jack. We got to get out of here."

  "Jack?"

  John looked up into Bear's questioning face. Some squire. I le hadn't done anything but cower during the fight. Did Bear think he was a coward? "I won't run out on you."

  "Good lad."

  "This is crazy, Jack," Trashcan Harry said.