Page 8 of Chained Knight

She’d gone from being utterly alone on a weird forest road to holding lunatic conversation with a guy immortalized in a Dumas novel—although historically the Man in the Iron Mask had worn a velvet and silk face-covering, hadn’t he? The images of a sprawled prisoner in a metal head-canister were propaganda, some very well done. This would make a beautiful acid etching if the artist was skilled enough to capture the mass of individual links, the rough matte armor, the different texture of cobblestones.

Why was whatever-this-was dredgingthatup? She hadn’t thought about French literature or etching techniques since college, for God’s sake. And she’d made him repeat himself. Men didn’t like that, Ari knew.

“What kind of help do you want?” she heard herself say, and also knew she was about to make a huge mistake.

As usual.

7

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY

The chained mandidn’t move. He waited, as if expecting her to say more, but Ari was too busy hugging herself and keeping a nervous eye on the doors across the bailey. If one opened now and the inhabitants found an intruder… Well, this guy could be misleading her about the likely reaction, or he could be strictly honest.

There was no way of telling.

“Nothing much.” The words echoed slightly. What did he look like under the featureless helmet? Probably deadly pale from lack of sun. How did they feed their prisoners in that getup? Or did they bother? “You see the sword, there?”

He twitched, the helmet tipping to indicate direction.

“Yeah.”I can hardly miss it. Ari decided she had to believe there was an actual person inside all that metal, since the opposite assumption made a funny, squidgy feeling begin under her breastbone, as if she would vomit or pass out.

“All you must do,” he said, very quietly, “is bring it within reach.”

That doesn’t sound like a good idea. Or maybe it is, depending on who you are?Ari’s legs had decided they might as well stop impersonating pudding since she might need them for continued survival in the near future, and the rest of her was trying to decide whether running away now or later was the better option. “Then what happens?”

He considered the question for a few heartbeats. “I enter the Keep.”

Is that all?“Is that a bad thing?”

“It is… necessary. Do you not remember what happened?”

My dude, I just got here. Had he mistaken her for someone else—a native of this strange country, maybe? Did a lot of people show up covered in landslide? Of course, she was speaking his language, which was one more piece of evidence in thethis is a hallucinationcategory.

Or was it? Her head hurt; doubting your own eyes and ears was exhausting work. Ari glanced up, and her heart gave another nasty leap. Were there more lighted windows now? She hadn’t counted before, but theredefinitelyseemed to be a few extra narrow glowing shapes, very medieval, their tops tapered to sharp points.

Metal chimed. The helmet tilted; she wished she knew what era it was from. Maybe that would be the detail to tell her whether this was a bad trip on lunatic asylum drugs or… something else.

“They may have noticed a change and relayed the information to their master,” he said. Urgency rode the words. “Bring me the sword, or hide. They must not find you here, not while I am still chained.”

Really. That shed an entirely different light on affairs, so to speak. “What happens if they do?” Ari found herself edging past him, balancing nervously on cobbles. The rounded stonesfelt entirely real and individual, her hiking boots’ soles gripping differently on each one.

Why was she believing this guy? The useless urge to help an animal in a trap even if it ended with getting bit, or was it simple dream-logic? What else did you do when you came across something like this?

“Nothing pleasant.” He no longer sounded flat or robotic, but terribly grim. “And I would not remind you, if indeed you have forgotten.”

Maybe she only imagined she understood his language, and they were both gabbling at each other with increasing incomprehension? That was a horrible thought, too. Ari peered at the sword, and swallowed a disbelieving laugh.Oh, come on. I’m no Arthur, my friend.

A good portion of the long, heavy blade seemed buried in a chunk of craggy igneous rock, like a needle in a horsehair pincushion. The hilt was restrained, beautifully functional, the quillons wicked talon-curves.

I’ve gone around the bend. Just as crazy as Mike always said. Well, that made things easier, didn’t it? If this was insanity, it was a damn sight better than her usual reality.

Ari had to stand on tiptoe, reaching for the sword’s hilt.

“I would ask you to hurry,” the chained-up guy whispered, and she understood. The sound of weirdly modulated voices and footsteps was growing far more irrefutable, and there were alsodefinitelymore lighted windows above. Golden reflections filtered down to the bailey, light aggregating bit by bit.

I’ve had a helluva night, sir, and this is just icing on the cake.Briefly, she wondered what time it was—and what would happen if she pulled on the sword and it refused to budge.

Probably, in his words,nothing pleasant.

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