A tiny oak tree.
Chapter Forty-eight
We were back in the open air chapel.
"We must go on, you know," said Marion, her voice flat, emotionless. She looked like she had lost a son.
"Yeah," I said. "The Underworld, or something. Got to tell you, Marion, I'm not looking forward to that."
"It's not as bad as you think, James," she said, standing over the very stone Arthur had indicated earlier. We were each holding a Godfire torch.
"Oh?" I said. "You know something I don't?"
"I've been dreaming of it," she said.
I was holding Excalibur in my right hand. Amazingly, the grip seemed custom-made for my hand, a perfect fit. I didn't recall it fitting this well earlier today inside the tent.
"Fine. Then how do we enter the Underworld?" I asked. And hearing the strange words issuing from my mouth nearly sent me into hysterics. I was doing all I could to remain calm and salvage what sanity I had left.
"That was not revealed to me in my dreams," she said. "Sorry."
"Of course not," I said. "That would have been too easy, right? Hey, let's blow off this whole Underworld thing and go get something to eat. I'm hungry. Is there a Denny's in Glastonbury?"
"I'm not very hungry, James," she said, cutting me off.
"Neither am I," I admitted, exhaling. "Well, Arthur said something about the greatest swordsman in the history of the world knowing a way in."
"Indeed he did."
"Any idea who he's talking about?"
"Some," she said, pursing her perfect lips. "Many consider Sir Lancelot the greatest swordsman in the history of the world."
Like I said, I didn't know much about Arthurian legends, but I certainly knew that one. Sir Lancelot of the Lake. The greatest knight. Ever.
"Well, maybe he'll come out of the woods naked, too," I said.
"Maybe," she said, and might have grinned.
To take some of the weight off my exhausted legs, I rested the tip of the sword on the wide, flat stone, the same stone Arthur had indicated earlier. And the moment the sword tip touched the stone, the chapel came alive.
Literally.
Four glowing knights appeared in the four corners of the abbey hall, all dressed in full medieval armor. All wielding swords of fire, which they raised high.
And charged me.
Chapter Forty-nine
"Ah, hell," I said.
They came at me fast, converging together. I jumped down from the raised altar, away from Marion. I instinctively knew they weren't coming for her. They were coming for me.
The guy with Excalibur.
And they weren't real knights, I was sure of it. At least not living knights. They were magical enchantments, perhaps akin to holograms, activated somehow by pressing the very stone Arthur had been interested in earlier.
As they came, Excalibur jolted in my hands. Crackling energy sealed the grip to my hand. The sword and I were one.
The four entities were upon me, all heaving their fiery swords at once, leaving behind burning contrails of wispy black smoke.
I had been lucky tonight. Indeed, I had been lucky enough for ten men tonight. But I suspected my luck was about to run out.
But until that happened, I did the only thing I could think of: I raised Excalibur and fought back.
And I fought like I had never fought before.
I fought like a cornered hellcat.
* * *
The four knights were inhuman, I knew that much, and each of their strikes was more powerful than anything I had yet to encounter tonight. More powerful, even, than Merlin's enchanted sword.
They took turns raining devastating blows down upon me, and I did all I could to ward off their hammer strikes. Any other sword, I knew, would have shattered under such a ferocious onslaught, but Excalibur wasn't just any other sword.
It was the sword.
One such blow hurled me back into the church wall. Air exploded from my lungs. Okay, this sucked. I needed to do something, and fast. Excalibur or not, they were going to wear me down.
And as I stood there with my back to the wall and the rain in my face, the four knights turned toward me as one, moving in choreographed unison.
Perfect unison.
Indeed, the enchantments had also attacked in a choreographed pattern, as well. I knew instinctively that I had to exploit the pattern if I hoped to live.
And I hoped to live.
Oh, yeah.
So I pushed off the wall and met them in a pool of inch deep water. They formed a circle around me and attacked viciously, same as before, each blow seemingly harder than the one before it. Sparks showered down. My world was a blur of fiery swords, repartees and grunts. Of course, I was the one doing all the grunting.
Most important, they fell into a pattern. And despite the awesome strength of their combined attack, I began predicting their movements. In particular, I noticed that when one spirit knight lunged at me, the knight opposite would step back.
So when one lunged, I stepped back.
And so on, and we did this until I saw that if I stepped back soon enough, the enchanted knight to my right was briefly exposed.
We did this some more. My strength was weakening. Sweat stung my eyes. Marion gasped behind me. I gasped, too.
And so I gathered my wits, focused my strength, and as the next lunge came, I anticipated it and stepped back into the vacated spot - and drove Excalibur deep into the side of the knight to my right.
It shrieked and threw back its head, and then disappeared in a puff of black smoke.
Sweet Jesus.
The remaining fighters immediately altered their choreographed attack to adjust to the remaining three knights. As they did so, their tempo seemed to increase, too, their strikes raining down upon me like the Hammer of Thor itself.
I staggered, my legs weakening under the onslaught. One particular chop caught me off-guard and drove me to the ground. One of the knights immediately pounced on me, swinging his fiery sword straight for my head. I met it with Excalibur and kicked the knight up and over me. It sprawled across the floor and slid against the stone wall, crashing in a heap.
I scrabbled to my feet, spun away from another strike, and was soon met by all three enchantments in the center of church.
Parrying and stepping, I finally got the hang of their new, ferocious pattern. And when I parried and stepped again, I drove my sword deep into the side of the knight closest to me. Screeching, it, too, disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.
And that's when the two remaining knights went berserk.
* * *
They attacked with unholy ferocity. Their strikes were a blur. Furious. Harder than ever, desperate. How Excalibur held up under the onslaught, I don't know. How I held up under the attack, I'll never know.