His cell phone rang. I jumped a little. I don’t know if it was my jumping or the ringing of the phone, but one of the men by the door jammed his hand inside his coat pocket, then slowly took it out again when Mr. Samson began to talk.
“Yes. . . . When? . . . Are you certain?” He listened for a long time. In the early-morning light his face looked old, with deep shadow-filled creases. I wondered how old Bernard Samson was. I wondered if he was telling me the truth. I wondered what exactly he was telling me.
“Very well,” he said into the phone, and flipped it closed. He sat next to me again.
“I’m afraid I haven’t much time, Alfred. Things are moving very quickly and time is our enemy now. We’ve tapped every resource at our disposal, but he has had time, too much time, to slip through the net. The rest of your questions, quickly.”
“I just want to know what’s so special about this sword; why three guys dressed like monks with black swords tried to kill me for it; and most of all I want to know why my uncle is dead.”
“Your uncle died to send a message, Alfred. To me. To you. To those men you met last night. He died as a warning and a promise that more will die should we oppose Mogart. I’m afraid we can fully trust that message, Alfred: More people will die before this is over.”
“Before what is over? Why don’t you just talk plain to me, Mr. Samson? I’m really tired and I feel really bad. I felt bad from the first about this deal and I tried to talk Uncle Farrell out of it, but he wouldn’t listen, and now I feel really bad.”
He patted my hand, looked at his watch, and then said, “The sword you took from my office, did you notice anything unusual about it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You fought those men with it. Have you ever fought with a sword, Alfred?”
“Not a real one. A play one, when I was a kid.”
“Yet, despite your total lack of expertise, you were able to best three very accomplished swordsmen, were you not?”
“Yes. Who were they? They don’t work for Mr. Myers— or Mogart, or whatever his name is, do they?”
“No.”
“So they work for you.”
“They work for no man, Alfred. They are part of an ancient and secret order, bound by a sacred vow to keep safe the sword until its master comes to claim it. Yes, they should have killed you for refusing to give it to them, but they are not murderers or thieves.”
“No, I guess that would be Mr. Mogart and me.”
“They are knights, Alfred, or at least that’s what we would call them, if there were such things in this dark age.”
“Mr. Samson, are you ever going to tell me what this is all about? I thought you had to go.” I felt like I was shrinking to the size of a pencil lead, which wasn’t a very comfortable feeling for someone my size.
“Long ago, Alfred,” Mr. Samson said. “Long ago there was a man who united the greatest kingdom the world had ever known. This kingdom was not great in lands or armies, but great in the vision it gave humankind, that justice, honor, and truth were within our grasp, not in some world to come, but here, in the world of mortal men. That king departed, but his vision remained. We are the guardians of that vision, for what we guard is the last physical embodiment of it.”
“You mean the sword?”
“The sword is in this world, Alfred, but it is not of this world. Forged before the foundations of the earth, not by mortal hands, it is the True Sword, Alfred, the Sword of Kings. In another time it was known as Caliburn. You may know it by its other name, the sword Excalibur.”
“You’re talking about King Arthur, right?”
“Yes, King Arthur.”
“That’s just a legend, a story, Mr. Samson.”
“I don’t have the time to convince you of anything, Alfred. You held it tonight. In your inexperienced hands, the Sword bested three of the finest swordsmen in the world. Yet that is only a fraction of its power. The Sword of Kings contains the power of heaven itself, Alfred, the power to create as well as to destroy. All the mortal arts of weaponry are powerless against it, but more than this, the will of ordinary men cannot withstand its might.”
I thought of the tall monk stepping aside to let me and Uncle Farrell pass, as I held the Sword, telling him to move. The will of ordinary men cannot withstand its might.
Mr. Samson’s eyes were shining with a faraway look, as if he was seeing things I could not see, great battles and men in gleaming armor on horseback, thundering across rolling fields.
“You asked who those men in the Towers were. Only twelve of us are left now, but they—and I—are the descendents of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. The Sword has been in our care for centuries and, as far as I know, this is the first time we have failed to keep it from the hands of evil men.”
“You’re a knight,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “You’re telling me you guys are knights like King Arthur–type knights?”
“Not those men, no,” Mr. Samson said, gesturing toward the two gray suits still at attention by the door. “Their organization did not even know of the Sword’s existence before tonight. Circumstances now demand the use of every tool at our disposal. You see, Monsieur Mogart has many powerful friends, Alfred, friends who would pay any price for a weapon against which there is no defense. And Mogart’s friends are no friends of humanity. They are despots and dictators who would pay anything to possess the Sword. Do you begin to understand? There is no weapon devised by man, no army or combination of armies, no nation or alliance of nations on earth that can resist the power of the Sword.”
“Mr. Myers paid my uncle to steal the Sword so he could sell it to somebody?”
“To the highest bidder, and you can guess how high those bids will go.”
He touched my arm again, and I was surprised to see tears shining in his hazel eyes.
“And what kinds of men will bid on it. Alfred,” he said, “an army with the Sword at its head would be invincible.”
11
“It is a prize beyond any price, Alfred,” Mr. Samson said. “But Mogart can expect billions for it. Tens of billions. And if we do not find him before the Sword passes into the hands of evil men, the world will plunge into an age of unimaginable cruelty and terror. Envision the horrors of Nazi Germany or the Russia of the Stalinists, multiply them tenfold, and then you will begin to understand the magnitude of this loss.”