“You mean superior!”
“Well, yes, that, too. They are knights of the realm.”
“Stuck-up pricks ...”
“Suzie, be reasonable ...”
“I don’t do reasonable! It’s bad for my reputation. You are not going back into London Proper without me! Or try and deal with those aristocratic head-cases on your own. They’ll talk you into things. Probably persuade you to hand Excalibur over to them because it ought to belong to one of their kind!” She scowled fiercely. “Look at what owning the sword has already done to us. You think now you’ve got Excalibur, you don’t need me to guard your back any more.”
“I’ll always need you, Suzie ...”
“Don’t you patronise me!”
“I can’t let you go with me! Not this time.”
“You mean you don’t want me to.”
“Of course I want you to!”
“Then that’s settled,” said Suzie. “I’m going.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, hanging on to my self-control as best I could. “Look, Suzie, this has to be a diplomatic mission. The London Knights aren’t going to share their most valued secrets with me unless they’re convinced I respect their position and authority in these matters. I am going to have to be very diplomatic. And you don’t really do diplomacy. Do you?”
There was a long pause. And then Suzie said, very grudgingly, “I could learn ...”
“Not in time you couldn’t,” I said, hiding my relief behind a reasonable voice. “I have to do this alone. I’ll be fine. Trust me. When I get back, we’ll—what the hell is that noise outside?”
“I don’t know,” said Suzie. “But whoever it is, they’ve picked a really bad time to annoy me. I am in the mood to take out my displeasure on someone. You check the front door. I am going to load up on guns and grenades.”
We left the kitchen. It seemed to me that the noise outside had been building for some time, but I’d only just noticed it consciously. It sounded like a crowd of some size had gathered outside the house, and none of them sounded too happy about being there. I opened the front door and looked out; and the whole street was packed full of people. They took one look at me and went ballistic. The noise level shot right off the scale as they shouted and yelled and hurled abuse, stamping their feet and shaking their fists. I ostentatiously ignored the commotion, knowing that would annoy them most, and looked up and down the street. My house appeared to be under siege by hundreds of people, all of them with one thing on their minds. I could tell that from the loud chant that had gone up.
“Excalibur! Excalibur! Excalibur!”
Suzie squeezed in beside me in the doorway and glared out at the crowd. The chanting died away.
“Get off my lawn!” said Suzie.
“I think you need grass for it to be a lawn,” I said. “And we got rid of that when we laid down the land mines.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Suzie said vaguely, scowling indiscriminately at the crowd, who were looking at anything except her. Those at the back started shoving those at the front forward. General pushing and shoving in the crowd increased over who had the better right to approach us and who had the better right to stand at the back shouting orders. It was mostly groups, along with certain individual protestors, and I recognised quite a few of them. The Salvation Army Sisterhood were out in force: overmuscled nuns of the militant persuasion. God-botherers with attitude, they were always heavily armed, the better to get their point across. Maintaining a respectful distance from the nuns were representatives of the Church of the Riddle of Steel, all the way from the Street of the Gods. They dressed like Vikings, right down to the culturally inaccurate horned helmets, and they worshipped swords. And not in a good way. At least half a dozen different groups of the Arthur Is Not Dead Only Sleeping persuasion were arguing fiercely with each other over obscure points of dogma that probably meant nothing to anyone except them.
Plus, a whole bunch of notorious faces, well-known on the scene, determined to get their hands on one of the most dangerous weapons of all time, by whatever means necessary. Either because they had their own plans for it, or thought they could sell it to people who did have plans. Most of them had come armed or with armed body-guards. There was even a contingent who’d turned up in full armour, riding caparisoned horses with brightly coloured plumes.
And every now and again a voice would rise up from somewhere in the crowd, loudly proclaiming that Merlin was a louse.
The crowd was getting out of hand, so I stepped forward and held up a hand to get their attention. Somewhat to my surprise, the whole lot immediately fell silent. In fact, there was something very like a breathless hush as they all waited to see what I was going to say. Which threw me a bit. I wasn’t used to that. I gave them all my very best hard stare.
“What are you doing here?”
They waited to see if I was going to say anything else, and when it became clear that I wasn’t, they all looked at each other in a confused sort of way. Finally, one of the nuns stepped forward, bobbed a curtsey, made the sign of the cross, and adjusted the Smith & Wesson .45 on her hip.
“Because you’ve got Excalibur. Haven’t you?”
I did consider denying it, just to wind them up a bit more, but I didn’t have the energy.
“How did you know Excalibur was here?”
“You drew the sword,” the nun said flatly. “You should have known it would blaze so very brightly, in such a dark place. We’ve all been waiting for the sword to reveal itself. Precogs and oracles have been predicting its arrival in the Nightside for months now, but due to its overwhelming nature, no-one could pin it down. Most groups have been running a countdown to today, ready and poised to spot the sword the moment it made its location clear. Once you drew Excalibur and revealed it to the world, we all came running. The sword of destiny must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands!”
A great roar of agreement went up from the crowd, which fell apart almost immediately as everyone began arguing fiercely over whose were the right hands. Merlin got called a louse again.
“Okay!” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the general clamour. “That takes care of how. Now would anyone care to take a stab at why?”
“Give us Excalibur!” cried the Salvation Army Sisterhood.
“We demand you turn the sword of destiny over to us!” yelled a rather podgy Viking, who was quite clearly wearing a long blond wig under his horned helmet.
“Only we have the right to Excalibur!” roared a knight in full armour.
“Merlin is a louse!”
“Will somebody please shut him up!”
Then they all fell on each other, the whole crowd fighting for the right to be heard, the right to bear Excalibur, and the right to smite the unbeliever, knock him down, and trample him underfoot. Swords were brandished, magics were unleashed, and punches were thrown when only close quarters would do. There was also a fair amount of gunfire, from the non-traditionalists and those only in it for the money. The crowd had become a mob, surging dangerously back and forth at the bottom of my property. The most enthusiastic groups quickly wiped each other out, and there was then a general tapering off of violence as calmer and more moderate voices made themselves heard, urging that they all work together to take Excalibur from me, by force if necessary. A few self-appointed spokesmen (there are always a few), came right to the edge of my non-lawn and shouted their demands at me. Well, demand, really. They wanted me to hand over Excalibur. Right now. Please.
I shook my head; and before I could even begin to explain why, the whole crowd went apeshit all over again. They surged forward into my garden. Or non-lawn. Or whatever else you wanted to call it. I always thought of it as my first line of defence.