Fiddler Fair (anthology)

made films of, there must have been as much harm done by breaking bones as by whacking bits off.

It wasn’t anything fancy, though, not like you saw in the flicks or the comics; a plain, black, leather-wrapped hilt, with what looked like brass bits as the cross-piece and a plain, black leather-bound sheath. Probably weighed about as much as four pry-bars of the same length put together.

He put his hand to the hilt experimentally, and pulled a little, taking it out of the sheath with the vague notion of having a look at the blade itself. PENDRAGON!

 The voice shouted in his head, an orchestra of nothing but trumpets, and all of them played at top volume.

He dropped the sword, which landed on his toes. He shouted with pain, and jerked his feet up reflexively, and the sword dropped to the floor, half out of its sheath. “What the hell was that?” he howled, grabbing his abused toes in both hands, and rocking back and forth a little. He was hardly expecting an answer, but he got one anyway.

It was I, Pendragon.

He felt his eyes bugging out, and he cast his gaze frantically around the room, looking for the joker who’d snuck inside while he was sleeping. But there wasn’t anyone, and there was nowhere to hide. The rented room contained four pieces of furniture—his iron-framed bed, a cheap deal bureau and nightstand, and a chair. He bent over and took a peek under the bed, feeling like a frightened old aunty, but there was nothing there, either.

You’re looking in the wrong place.

“I left the radio on,” he muttered, “that’s it. It’s some daft drama. Gawd, I hate those BBC buggers!” He reached over to the radio on the nightstand and felt for the knob. But the radio was already off, and cold, which meant it hadn’t been on with the knob broken.

Pendragon, I am on the floor, where you dropped me.

 He looked down at the floor. The only things besides his boots were the whiskey bottles and the sword.

“I never heard of no Jameson bottles talking in a bloke’s head before,” he muttered to himself, as he massaged his toes, “and me boots never struck up no conversations before.”

Don’t be absurd, said the voice, tartly. You know what I am, as you know what you are.

The sword. It had to be the sword. “And just what am I, then?” he asked it, wondering when the boys from the Home were going to come romping through the door to take him off for a spot of rest. This is daft. I must have gone loopy. I’m talking to a piece of metal, and it’s talking back to me.

You are the Pendragon, the sword said patiently, and waited. When he failed to respond except with an uncomprehending shrug, it went on—but with far less patience. You are the Once and Future King. The Warrior Against the Darkness. It waited, and he still had no notion what it was talking about.

You are ARTHUR, it shouted, making him wince. You are King Arthur, Warleader and Hero!

“Now it’s you that’s loopy,” he told it sternly. “I don’t bloody well think! King Arthur indeed!”

The only recollection of King Arthur he had were things out of his childhood—stories in the schoolbooks, a Disney flick, Christmas pantomimes. Vague images of crowns and red-felt robes, of tin swords and papier-mache armor flitted through his mind—and talking owls and daft magicians. “King Arthur! Not likely!”

You are! the sword said, sounding desperate now. You are the Pendragon! You have been reborn into this world to be its Hero! Don’t you remember?

He only snorted. “I’m Michael O’Murphy, I work at the docks, I’ll be on the dole on Monday, and I don’t bloody think anybody needs any bloody more Kings these days! They’ve got enough troubles with the ones they’ve—Gawd!”

 He fell back into the bed as the sword bombarded his mind with a barrage of images, more vivid than the flicks, for he was in them. Battles and feasts, triumph and tragedy, success and failure—a grim stand against the powers of darkness that held for the short space of one man’s lifetime.

 It all poured into his brain in the time it took for him to breathe twice. And when he sat up again, he remembered.

All of it.

He blinked, and rubbed his mistreated head. “Gawd!” he complained. “You might warn a lad first!”

Now do you believe? The sword sounded smug.

Just like the nuns at his school, when they’d gotten done whapping him “for his own good.”

“I believe you’re damn good at shoving a lot of rubbish into a man’s head and making him think it’s his,” he said stubbornly, staring down at the shining expanse of blade, about ten centimeter’s worth, that protruded out of the sheath. “I still don’t see where all this makes any difference, even if I do believe it.”

If the sword could have spluttered, it probably would have. You don’t—you’re Arthur! I’m Excalibur! You’re supposed to take me up and use me!

“For what?” he asked, snickering at the mental image of prying open tins of beans with the thing. “You don’t make a good pry-bar, I can’t cut wood with you even if I had a wood stove, which I don’t, nobody’s going to believe you’re a fancy saw-blade, and there’s laws about walking around with something like you strapped to me hip. What do I do, fasten a sign to you, and go on a protest march?”

You—you— Bereft of words, the sword resorted to another flood of images. Forewarned by the last one, Michael stood his ground.