Then she stopped thinking, and fought.
Bloody and bitter, the battle raged. She felt her sword slice through flesh, hit bone. She smelled blood and smoke, felt the mild jolt from a glancing blow as the horse danced and pivoted under her.
She saw him, his armor black and stained with blood, sitting on a huge black horse with the castle-her castle-at his back. The sounds of the battle receded as she rode forward to face him.
“So, we meet at last. A pity for you, our acquaintance will be short.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she responded. “Let’s go.”
“This day my sword will wear your blood, and the blood of your lover.”
“Yawn.”
“You rush death? Then come meet it.”
The programmers, she noted and quickly, had made Manx very big and very strong. Blocking his blows sent shocking aches up her arm, into her shoulder.
Wrenched shoulder.
Sweat ran down her back, down her face, into her eyes to sting. She’d never beat him on these terms, she realized. She had neither the skill nor the strength.
And when he slid past her guard, she felt the jolt as his sword drew blood.
Arm wound.
He lifted his sword, the dark light of death in his eyes; she ducked and plunged her sword into his horse.
It screamed. She had a moment to think the sound was eerily human before it stumbled. As it fell, she swung out, caught her opponent in the side. Not a death blow, she decided. Time to finish it off.
“Pause game. Save, and stop.”
Breathing hard, she turned, looked at Roarke across the empty holoroom. “I don’t get to kill the bad guy?”
“You’re past Bart’s time, by a minute or so. Interesting strategy, killing the horse.”
“It worked. They built that bastard strong. He was going for the…” She swiped her finger across her throat.
“He certainly was. And if he’d landed the blow, game over. You’d have to repeat the level until you defeated him to move on to the next.”
“This is the game he was playing when he died. It all fits. Bruises from fighting, the shoulder, the arm wound, and the loss with the decapitation. K2BK. King To Black Knight.”
“Yes, I got that when he came into play.”
“Obviously there weren’t real horses and a bunch of dead guys littering the ground, but the killer reconstructed the game, using a real weapon. If he got in, programmed himself as the Black Knight, and used a real weapon. The right steps, the right angle.”
“I’d agree, but it doesn’t explain how he got in, and how he managed to delete a two-man competition from the unit without leaving a single shadow or echo anywhere in the system.”
Screw logic, she thought. Sometimes facts weren’t logical. “He figured it out because the Black Knight killed the king. Bart played that exact scenario before, that’s why it’s on this disc. But he didn’t stab the horse, and he lost. He’d have been more prepared this time, may have avoided the loss, or that exact loss, but-”
“When his opponent’s sword actually cut him-the pain, the shock, the blood-all real, he was too stunned to react.”
“And the game ended for real the same way it ended in play before. This works. I need to fast-talk my way into search warrants. By their own statements only the three partners knew all the details of the game, only the three partners ever participated in play. Those three knew this program, this level, and the results of previous play, so they’re the only ones who could have used it to kill him.”
“While I hate knowing you’re right, I don’t see how it could be anything or anyone else. And shifting that to me, I’m considerably pissed off I could have made such an error in judgment. I’d never have believed any of them capable of this.”
“Neither did he, and he knew them all a hell of a lot better than you. People can hide and hoard and stroke all kinds of nasty stuff no one else sees. You saved that play, right?”
“I did.” He smiled now. “You were fairly magnificent. We’ll have to go riding in real life sometime.”
“I don’t think so.” But she remembered that sensation of speed, of power. “Maybe. Anyway, I want to view it, then do an analysis. He’d have saved the play, too, so he could study it, see his mistakes.”
“Absolutely.”
“The one he used the day he died is toast.”
“We’re getting some of it. A little some at this point.”
She nodded as she called for the elevator. “And maybe that was his disc, where he’d saved his play, his levels. Or maybe, since it wasn’t logged out, the killer gave it to him. You know, Hey, Bart, I did some tweaking-or whatever words you geeks use. You need to try it out.”
“If so, there’d be another copy, Bart’s copy. Which, if the killer has any sense, has been destroyed.”
“Maybe. But people keep the damnedest things.”
That night she dreamed of blood and battle, of castles and kings. She stood, observer now, her feet planted while the wind whipped the stench of death around her. Men, their wounds mortal, moaned and begged as they scattered the ground.
Those who turned their faces toward her she knew. Victims, so many victims, so many dead who lived inside her head whose ends she’d studied, evaluated, reconstructed to find the one who’d ended them.
Some who fought, who sliced with sword and axe, she knew as well. She’d helped lock the cage doors behind them. But here, in dreams, they’d found freedom. In dreams, in the games the mind played, they could and would kill again.
Only in dreams, she reminded herself. And if she shuddered as she saw her father, her eyes met his manic ones coolly.
Only in dreams.
She watched with pity and resignation as Bart fought a war he’d never win. Swords and sorcery, games and dreams. Life and death.
She watched his end. Studied and evaluated even as his head, eyes still wide in shock, rolled to her feet.
And the Black Knight wheeled his horse and grinned at her, fiercely. When he charged, she reached for her weapon, but all she had was a small knife, one already stained with her father’s blood.
Only in dreams, she told herself, but knew a terrible fear as he came for her.
14
She jerked up, shoving herself free of the dream. For an instant, just one beat of the heart, she swore she felt the keen edge slice at her throat.
Shaken, she reached up, half expecting to feel the warm wet of her own blood.
“Shh, now. It’s all right.”
His arms were there, drawing her in, closing around her like a shield. As her heart continued to bound, she leaned into them, into him.
“Just a dream. You’re home. I’m right here.”
“I’m okay.” No blood. No death. “It wasn’t a nightmare. Or not exactly. I knew it was a dream, but it was so real.” She drew one breath, then another. Slow, she ordered herself. Slow and steady. “Like the games. You lose track of what is and what’s not.”
He tipped her face up, and in the glow of moon and stars through the sky window met her eyes. “We’re real.” He touched his lips to hers as if to prove it. “What did you dream?”
“The battlefield, the last game.” Bart’s last game, she thought, but not hers. “I wasn’t playing. I was just watching. Observing the details.” She sighed once, rubbed her hands over her face. “If you don’t watch, if you don’t see, you don’t know. But it weirded on me, the way dreams do.”
“How?”
“The dead, the dying, their faces. All those people I don’t know until they’re dead.”
In those eyes, so blue in the starlight, came understanding. “Your victims.”
“Yeah.” The pang in her heart was pity, weighted down by resignation. “I can’t help them, can’t save them. And their killers are out there, free, killing more. It’s a slaughter.” And the simmer beneath it was an anger that bubbled up in her voice. “We put them away, but it doesn’t stop it. We know that. We all know that. There’s always more. He was there. You have to figure he’d be there.”
“Your father.”
“But he’s just one of the many now.”
Still she trembled, just a little, so he rubbed her arms to warm them.