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Chapter Forty-nine

"Ah, hell," I said

They caether I jumped down from the raised altar, away fro for her They were couy with Excalibur

And they weren&039;t real knights, I was sure of it At least not living knights They were ra the very stone Arthur had been interested in earlier

As they cay sealed the grip to my hand The sword and I were one

The four entities were uponbehind burning contrails of wispy black sht Indeed, I had been lucky enough for ten ht 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 ht More powerful, even, than Merlin&039;s enchanted sword

They took turns raining devastating blon upon me, and I did all I could to ward off their hammer strikes Any other sword, I kneould have shattered under such a ferocious onslaught, but Excalibur wasn&039;t just any other sword

It was the sword

One such blow hurled s Okay, this sucked I needed to do so to wear me down

And as I stood there with hts turned toward raphed unison

Perfect unison

Indeed, the enchantraphed 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 ly 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 aweso their ht lunged at ed, I stepped back

And so on, and we did this until I saw that if I stepped back soon enough, the enchanted knight to ht was briefly exposed

We did this so athered e came, I anticipated it and stepped back into the vacated spot - and drove Excalibur deep into the side of the knight to ht

It shrieked and threw back its head, and then disappeared in a puff of black shters iraphed attack to adjust to the rehts As they did so, their te down upon s weakening under the onslaught One particular chop caught hts iht for ht up and over ainst the stone wall, crashing in a heap

I scrabbled to my feet, spun away from another strike, and was soon met by all three enchant, I finally got the hang of their new, ferocious pattern And when I parried and stepped again, I drove ht closest to , it, too, disappeared in a cloud of black shts 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&039;t kno I held up under the attack, I&039;ll never know

Blow after blow rained relentlessly down uponI parried one and then the other, ht I could everfast I had to end this, and I had to end this now

Without thinking or forethought, as neither was possible, I dropped tothrough the stones I kept rolling as another crashed next toto hts pounced I saw the sed forward -

And drove ht to the left He threw back his head and let out an agonized cry, then disappeared in a puff of curling black sleft I stood before the last knight, keenly aware that I ht very well die in the next few ine the hellish fury that awaitedentity did sorateful for It lowered its sword and kneeled to one knee

I was too exhausted to breathe a sigh of relief