April 7, 2987,
Weather: Too damn bright
Mood: Sucky
Music: None

Dear Diary,

It's a funny old world in some ways. I mentioned that I knew another human named Susan to Sir Sue this morning. She looked at me like I had two heads and like, three necks or something. It took me a few seconds to realize that the word human is not in her vocabulary. She doesn't call herself that, and she's only heard the word in passing.

So I told her about other humans and human-ish people I've known, going back to the days when there were rumploads of them running around, starting wars and blowing chunks out of the earth. I told her about my mother, and Simon, Two-bread Tom, Susan Strong, and about Finn.

And I learned about her people, which was frankly the more interesting part of the conversation for both of us. Her people are from the freezing far north, up in what had been Quebec before the waters rose. I learned that in her religion, they believe their messiah will be born in the year 3333, and that he or she will have hair. I learned that they count by nines instead of by tens; not because they have nine fingers (they don't even call the thumb a finger), but because they count on the bones of their fingers by touching them with their thumbs.

And I learned, between the lines of what she said, that she likes me very much, even if her personality won't let her show it that much. I think all of her people are stoic like that.

So the band was going to practice tonight. We don't have a name or a setlist, but we were going to work on both before dinner. I think Sundays are definitely going to be our practice day in general.

But about lunchtime, as I was gnawing on a chicken bone, trying to find the marrow, a deafening alarm started up. My heart did a triple-beat when I heard it. It's one of those old rotary sirens like the one they were blaring on the last day of the war, when the Great Bloc started shelling North America with H-Bombs. If you don't know what that siren sounds like, you're lucky: it sounds like the biggest engine in the world being revved up to the breaking point and then eased back down, over and over. And that's what the world was like in my childhood.

Now, of course, it's just antique hardware that's been repurposed, like everything else in the world nowadays. It's the signal they give when the Knights must assemble due to immediate danger to the campus. If it's urgent, they spin up the bomb siren, and if it's only a meeting, they ring this cool iron bell.

So I put on a big sun-hat and sunblock and rushed over there. I was too tired to fly, but I gave it a shot and almost got burnt when I came crashing back down in the grass.

I was the last to arrive, of course. All twelve of us besides Sir Howell formed up in the courtyard of the garrison whether we were in armor or not. Howell was wearing special matte-black armor with magical wards drawn on it in white chalk, as if to show beyond doubt who was the boss. His shield was the most beautiful and sweet-looking shade of red I've ever seen, and the books drawn on it glowed with their own light.

He paced the length of the formation once, then turned to address us.

"We have information that a very dangerous enemy is approaching our campus," he said, his voice calm but more than loud enough to carry across the courtyard. "His target is unknown, but the enemies of education seldom need well-defined goals. We will approach him in force and convince him, aut consiliis aut ense, that he needs to leave. We'll let him attack, if he wants to, but what he starts we will finish. Now scramble, I'm not feeling groovy about this!"

I have put on armor fast many times, but I was out of practice and made myself look dumb in the locker room, but less than four minutes later, we were marching out the gate in something like formation, with full armour and flaming swords drawn. The three most senior knights were riding things kinda like horses, only with antlers and tusks, looking incredibly badass.

And who was marching up the main mountain pass to us, with an angry mob at his back, but Billy? I felt awkward. Billy's in favor of education, I think, which means there's only one reason he could have come: to kill me.

"Then I must kill yew;" those last words he said to me came back like a sudden echo.

Howell ordered us to halt in front of the gate. In a show of military dressage that was pretty fucking neat, he made his steed turn around on the spot, its legs raised high and its motions dancelike. "Most of them are unarmed civillians," he said. "Put away your swords and take them barehanded, without magic. Wait for them to attack."

We sheathed our swords. I couldn't tell where Sir Sue was among all the Knights in armor, but I seriously doubted she was worried. I sure as hell was, in a way: worried that Billy would accuse me of something awful in front of the others.

As Billy and his mob came closer, the commander gave the order to "break and hold." I probably invented the term centuries ago, but the maneuver is a classic. It means to break formation, spread out in a loose clump and make the unit look as big as possible, but not to attack. It's like a bird puffing out her feathers to seem intimidating.

But there were only ten of us footmen, so we couldn't really make ourselves look all that big. At least it put us in a decent position to block them from advancing through the gate. Sir Howell rode up and parlayed with Billy. That's supposed to be French, and it literally means he "talked" with him. But it also means it's a war crime to kill him while he's talking. Words and their fine shades of meaning...

Sir Howell rode back, with the mob uneasily holding their place behind him as he did.

"These people have a grievance with one of our number," he said. My guts felt like ice. Billy could have told him, like, everything. "What do we tell them?" he asked.

"We are a unit!" everyone but me shouted in the direction of the mob. Apparently it's a slogan they didn't bother to teach me. "We are thirteen and we are one!"

I heard some of the Knights near me whispering to each other uneasily, though.

The mob had their answer, and they began to charge. Mobs are fucking bad at charging. There's no system of relaying orders, no front-guard and rear-guard, no buglers and usually no loudspeakers. Nevertheless, they moved towards us, not quite slow and not quite fast, a rolling cloud of people with Billy somewhere near the leading edge. I noticed that a couple of them had lit up torches. Like, totally standard fare.

And they reached us. I started cracking heads left and right. I felt guilty, and I felt like I wasn't helping my case with Billy, but I did it. Most of the mob were various mutant forest animals, but a few of them were non-descript humanoids, and I did my best just to knock them out, but these gauntlets are heavy, so I couldn't always be sure.

Like I thought, they didn't try to make for the gate behind us, and enveloped us instead. I had to concentrate on fighting people on all sides, so it was a while before I could see that the attackers were pulling people's helmets off, looking for me. A couple of them may have bitten the dust permanently while trying to get Julian's helmet off before someone managed it. They didn't try to bother him after that, but he kept harassing them as they kept fighting the ones with helmets on. Mean little fucker can fight, at least.

I managed to break free of a clump of the mob and make for Billy.

"Stop this now, Billy!" I shouted.

"Do you suwwendew?" he boomed.

"No!"

Billy shouted for reinforcements. The helmet-pulling was over now, as they'd identified me. Sir Howell had dismounted and sent his steed away, and he ordered the Knights to form up around me. The other riders dismounted as well.

"We're going to have to talk about this, Knight!" Howell shouted in my direction. "Knights, lethal force against the leader only!"

The others formed the square again with me in the middle rank, and the front edge of the formation all drew their swords. Billy batted the four of them out of the way and went for me directly. He was unarmed, and didn't have his magic gauntlet, but the gauntlets he did have were heavy, and he led with a massive punch to my chest armor. I reeled.

The knights on either side of me noticeably didn't help me, so I was fending off Billy's attacks with my sword and shield and nothing else. If he would've stopped swinging for a second, I could have gotten inside his swinging distance and shanked him real quick, but he knew this and he fought berserk. I couldn't gain on him.

His reinforcements arrived, and I found myself fighting two big humanoids as well. I shouted to the two knights next to me, who had moved back a little ways. They made no move except to block passing blows from some of the mob who were harassing them.

"What's taking you?" I shouted, as I knocked a flaming torch out of one of the humanoid's hands.

They made no move. One of the humanoids tried to grab my left arm, earning a gauntlet square in the face, but the other had grabbed my sword-arm. Billy backed off, and the one I'd just punched pulled a little dagger and went for the kill.

And Sir Susan was suddenly there. She caught his arm and broke it, before punching out the other humanoid.

Billy backed off further and ordered his entire mob to kill me. I have to say, that's so not his style, but people change.

The animals and humanoids left what they were doing and surrounded the two of us. There were three or four torches in the loose circle that came together around us. There were a couple of swords, too. One of those creepy deer with the fingers was swinging a big morningstar flail around, and he advanced ahead of the rest, towards Susan and I. No other knights were in the circle.

Suddenly, I heard a deep, ancient-sounding voice saying some kinda magical words. Everything else went supernaturally quiet while this voice finished its spell.

Then something ran through the circle and back out, faster than the eye could see. A humanoid and a bipedal pig found themselves disarmed and knocked on their butts before anyone knew what was happening. Another pass knocked the deer clean over, and the flail was nowhere to be seen. Then the flail landed on another attacker's head. Suddenly, a blur ran into the middle of the circle and stopped in front of the two of us.

It was Sir Howell. His hands were empty, but his skin glowed with magic power, and so did the magic signs on his armor.

"Go!" he shouted.

They obeyed. Grod, the attackers obeyed.

Billy went too, but he kept looking back at me.

We all limped inside, back to the garrison, where we all took off our armor and the wounded were treated by med students. Not many were wounded, of course, but one Knight, one of those translucent people from the West, had been stabbed in the throat with a wooden stake when his chainmail came undone. He was barely breathing and running the highest fever the students had ever seen. A real doctor was called in, and he was rushed away.

After I'd gotten cleaned up and showered. Sir Howell called me to his office, where he'd already lit incense and put a tea kettle on the hot-plate. He asked me to sit down.

"So what's the story with this guy?" he asked.

"Deluded hero. He thinks he has to kill the last vampire in Ooo."

"He has reasons, of course?" he asked.

"Of course. I haven't been a saint."

He looked at me hard for several seconds. "Do you pose a danger to this campus? Think very hard before you answer."

"I... of course! Billy's going to come back."

"He poses a danger. Do you?"

"What, am I going to snap and start killing people?"

He didn't answer.

"Of course I'm not going to murder anyone! I've done things I'm not proud of, but I'm not a psychopath."

"Then Billy will have to kill me before he kills you. Do you understand?"

I didn't. I mean, I have killed people for money multiple times in the last forty years, and sometimes I do get certain... urges. If he just wants to die protecting some poor sap, he can do better than me. A lot better. I don't get altruists, I guess.

But I said "Yes, sir."

"That will be all, Provisional Knight Abadeer."

"Yes, sir," I said. I stood up, but hesitated at the door.

"Is there something else?"

Whoo, boy, here it comes.

"There were these two knights," I said. "They just stood there while Billy and his idiots attacked me!"

"What?"

"I swear!"

"Sit back down," he said. I did.

"Could you identify them?"

"No, sir, they wore human-shaped armor, they were both about average-sized..."

"Was it reasonable to expect that they'd come over and help you?"

"They weren't doing shit. -I'm sorry, sir, I mean they weren't doing anything. No one was really attacking them."

"That's not good. I'll check into it personally. Oh, and by the way," he said. "Your investiture is tomorrow afternoon. Make sure your armor is presentable. I'm just about to do the same."

Outside, I found out that that guy, Sir Moon-In-Trees, had died of infection and damage to his windpipe. I felt faint.

I called everyone and canceled rehearsals, and spent a while sitting in the dorm bathroom, staring at a tube of blue paint. I threw it in the trash unopened, but it still calls me to it, even now.

There's a wake for the Knights tonight, because they're sending the dead man home to be buried. I'm not going. To be honest with you, diary, I'm thinking about leaving. I've gotten somebody killed, I've brought ruffians here, and just generally fucked things. I don't know what the good of staying here would be.