Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

unexploded bomb, or a warning from history.
    “That ... is not just any old sword,” said Suzie.
    “No,” I said absently. “That’s Excalibur.”
    “What?” said Suzie. “You mean the Excalibur? As in King Arthur? What the hell is that doing here? Hold everything. You knew what this was all along, didn’t you?”
    “I was told the sword had come into the Nightside,” I said. “I never thought it would end up here.”
    “Excalibur,” said Suzie. She sounded honestly impressed, which wasn’t something that came easily to her. “Damn ... Aren’t you supposed to draw it out of an anvil, set on a stone? I mean, something as important as this, it shouldn’t just turn up in the post. Where’s the mystical significance of that?”
    “This is the Nightside,” I said. “We do things differently here. Somebody wanted to make sure I got it; and this was the best way of sneaking it in, under the radar.”
    “Well, if you don’t draw the bloody thing from its scabbard so we can get a look at it, I’m going to,” said Suzie. “That is one of the great legendary swords! How can you not want to try it out for size?”
    “Because I don’t want it to bite my hand off! I’m working up to it, okay? This isn’t something you draw and wave round for the fun of it! This is Excalibur we’re taking about. It makes history and gives birth to legends. Everything it does, matters.”
    “Are you afraid there might be a geas attached to it?” said Suzie, looking at the sword with a new wariness. “Like the Old Man of the Sea—easy to pick up but a damned sight harder to put down?”
    “I think I would have Seen anything like that,” I said carefully. “I think ... we’re back to destiny again. And I have had enough of that in my life. I have been there, done that, and seen my mother banished from reality rather than embrace the destiny she intended for me. I’m my own man; and I won’t give that up, even for Excalibur.”
    “We can’t leave it lying there. I was going to start making dinner soon ...”
    “I know! I’m thinking ... I’m trying to think of anyone else I could safely hand it over to ... Oh hell. Why is it always me?”
    I took a firm hold of the polished-bone hilt, set my other hand on the scabbard, and slowly eased the sword out of its sheath. It came easily, almost eagerly: five, maybe six feet of blade that glowed supernaturally bright in the gloomy kitchen. Suzie made a shocked, almost awed sound, and fell back a step. I held the sword out before me, the hilt fitting perfectly into my hand, and the long, golden blade shone brighter and brighter, free at last after centuries of waiting. I swept the blade slowly back and forth, supporting the whole length of it easily with only one hand, and it all felt so natural, as though I’d been doing it my whole life. The long, golden blade seemed impossibly light, almost weightless, moving easily with my hand as though it belonged there.
    I stamped back and forth round the kitchen table, thrusting and cutting, the golden blade leaping this way and that. The longer I held Excalibur, the more I knew how to use it, how to handle it. Without quite meaning to, I ran through an increasingly complex series of attacks and manoeuvres, jumping and pirouetting as I slammed the blade back and forth. Suzie fell back to the kitchen doorway, to give me plenty of room.
    “All right, cut it out, I’m impressed!” she said. “Where did you learn to use a sword like that?”
    “I didn’t,” I said, forcing myself to stop. I was hardly even breathing hard. “I’ve never handled a sword in my life. Excalibur is making all the moves; I’m just along for the ride.”
    “Okay,” said Suzie. “Getting a bit spooky now ...”
    “Trust me, you have no idea. Wait a minute ...”
    Suzie’s head came up sharply, as she sensed it, too. Without moving or changing in any way, Excalibur was suddenly so much more than it had been. There was a new presence in the room with us, like a third person, uncanny and overwhelming; and it was the sword. Excalibur’s presence beat on the air like a breaking storm, like a great bugle sounding a charge that would never end, a cry to battle, for the soul of Humanity. It dominated my small kitchen—a cry from the past, the deep past, wild and glorious and very dangerous.
    Suzie had backed half-way out of the kitchen doorway. I would have liked to join her, but I was still holding the sword. I could feel it coming awake,