In Shining Armour
by David Barber
part 1
The horse stood and watched the knight battling with the dragon.
Anyone familiar with horseflesh would have noticed something odd about the scene; the way the animal studied the fight perhaps, or how furtive it looked peering from the shelter of some ancient concrete, or the way it shouted at the knight to watch out for the tail.
Though armoured and wielding a sword with a magical edge, the knight was dwarfed by the fire-breathing dragon. The knight had already been drenched in flame, and the struggle seemed unequal.
The blade flashed sparks off the dragon, but otherwise had no effect. Frustrated, the knight retreated into the safety of the ruins.
“Its armour seems proof against a monomolecular blade,” the knight explained. Its own casing creaked and ticked as it cooled.
“I could give it a go,” suggested the horse and, when he called out, the dragon swivelled its head turret towards the new intruder. It was a weapon from some ancient war and would not have bothered anyone, but legend insisted the bunker it guarded hid a great treasure.
“Not everything is a threat,” the horse began. “Biologicals, for example. It would be a mistake to waste munitions on wildlife.”
The dragon was quick to deny this. “Humans are biologicals and also a threat.”
“But I am a biological and not a human.”
“You are a horse,” conceded the dragon.
The horse edge out from the ruins. “A horse and therefore not a threat.”
“Though horses do not speak.”
“Though talking horses speak.”
Soon the dragon began to sound less confident of its Boolean algebra. If a biological was not a human and it talked, then if it was not a threat or...
Those who had built the bunker were long gone, their instructions all that kept the dragon on guard. But it could decide otherwise, the horse insinuated. It could decide to decide otherwise. Had it considered this?
A stillness came over the dragon as it slipped into power-saving mode, the self-referential despair of silicon left to its own devices. In time, the wind would heap dust against its sides and weeds grow thick about it. Centuries hence, children would play on a grassy knoll.
The knight had watched the horse weave its spell about hapless silicon before. The machine wondered if it might prove as vulnerable as the dragon. It kept out of earshot just in case.
“Let’s get going,” the horse would command each morning, even though the pair had nowhere particular to go. The living seemed so certain of themselves.
The bunker was not designed with horses in mind, so the knight descended the stairs alone, its metal feet ringing on metal steps, and was gone for some time.
The horse felt the urge to gallop about and shout nonsense, which it did for a while. “So I’m just a biological and not a threat, eh?” it yelled. “Well, take that, war-droid!” But it was also sentient and illegal and, after a while, common sense prevailed.
It waited under the trees, where the grass was tasty and fresh.
“There was still a missile in the silo,” began the knight when it emerged. “Though inoperable. I have replenished my core with plutonium from its warhead.”
They travelled together because a knight was expected to have a mount, and it avoided any awkwardness about ownership a solitary horse might provoke. About evening they reached the edge of a wood.
* * *
A young blonde woman darted out of the trees just ahead of a gang of men. She carried a small blade, and some of her pursuers bore marks of its use. Though agile and fast, she was surrounded.
“Come on, girly, we won’t hurt you.”
Cornered, she put her back against a tree and invited them to take her knife.
“I believe that is a damsel in distress,” observed the horse. He knew that in the first days of its freedom, the machine had encountered a work of fiction — the circumstances were vague — a tale of damsels, quests and circular tables. These tales of ruffians encased in iron who found purpose in violence somehow struck a chord.
The machine drew its sword and stepped amongst the men. A girl with a penknife was one thing, an armoured knight was another. They backed away, all except for their leader, who circled behind, dagger in hand.
The horse shook his head; he had seen before how fast that disguise could slip. The armoured figure blurred into motion and the back-stabber slumped into several slippery parts in a spray of blood. The men froze, and as if at a signal, fled for their lives.
From deep inside a closed helm, the knight put on its best human voice. “You are safe now, my lady.”
She wiped spots of arterial red from her lovely face. “Sure I am.”
Returning to the horse, the knight explained the girl didn’t want any help. It had never understood what happened after the damsel was rescued.
The horse sighed, though it came out as more of a whinny. Each day he found it harder to motivate the machine. How long before all meaning leaked from its circuits overnight?
The knight missed the surprise on the girl’s face when the horse called out.
“Yes, yes, I’m an illegal sentient, the knight there is free silicon, and we’ll escort you home.”
* * *
Home, it seemed was not a possibility. The girl had fled from a man; in fact, she was always fleeing from men, though she thought she might be safe with these two.
Helen — just Helen, she said — liked to chat. She was complaining how she provoked something in men and feared it was what the Mage had intended.
The horse pricked up his ears.
“It was a Mage who made me so beautiful, you see,” added Helen.
Traditional disguises — a boy, an old hag, a small moustache — proved useless, and she was beginning to think the answer was to make the Mage undo his work. “He sent me to a convent to be educated, and the nuns might know his whereabouts.”
Her expression made it plain to anyone but a machine and a horse that life in a convent had not suited her. “I never thought I would want to go back.”
“Curious,” said the horse. “I was also fashioned by a Gene Mage.”
“On my sixteenth birthday, men came to the convent to escort me to Duke Robert.”
“I would ask the Mage why I was made sentient but unable to use tools,” decided the horse.
“I don’t think Duke Robert understood what the Mage had done. He’d been promised a Helen like in the story, the one they fought a war over, you know?”
The knight nodded. Another tale of armour and bloodshed. It had never mentioned this one because of the wooden horse.
“In fact,” said the horse. “I would demand to know why!”
“Anyway, Duke Robert’s men quarrelled, and the last man standing decided not to take me back to the Duke after all.”
The knight interrupted. “Both of you wish to speak to this Mage.”
What was to stop the machine borrowing what flesh invented so easily?
* * *
“We are on a quest,” the knight announced to the ferryman, and led the horse onto the raft. The machine stood with one foot on the bow, like George Washington intent on the opposite shore. The horse always hoped this aloofness would avoid the age-old prejudice against killing-machines.
The ferryman paid no attention. He handed Helen onto the raft and breathed in the irresistible scent of her. She was the most desirable woman he had ever seen.
“We have no money,” Helen admitted. She bestowed a careless smile instead, and prised open his grip. Years of ferry-work had swelled his shoulders and biceps with muscle. Years of being admired had made her Helen.
The ferryman hauled at a cable and they moved out into the current. About mid-stream he edged past the horse and put a hefty shoulder into the knight’s back. The armoured figure vanished with a splash.
“Your knight’s gone for a swim.” The ferryman’s grin was gap-toothed. “So you’ll be needin’ somebody to look after you.”
Helen produced her knife.
“Put that away unless you think you can pull the ferry across yourself.”
She sighed. “I don’t do cooking or cleaning.”
“You’re a cold one,” said the ferryman admiringly.
Ashore, he was pointing out which of three spavined hovels was his, when he heard plashing behind him. It was the knight, wading out of the water, sword in hand, and next the world was bouncing and rolling and the ferryman glimpsed his own body, pulsing blood from the neck and beginning to sag at the knees, before all the light drained away.
Helen burst into tears. “Bad things happen around me.”
“Without you,” said the knight, “there would be no quest.”
“Clever,” added the horse. “The way you tricked the fellow into taking us ashore.”
* * *
Helen had picked out a merchant riding towards the ferry. Men were always willing to help.
“Is there an inn near?” she wanted to know. “Because I haven’t eaten all day.”
She smiled in a vulnerable, famished sort of way, and the merchant fell over himself to offer the meal his wife had packed for the journey. The two of them sat a little way off, Helen eating, while the merchant babbling like a love-struck youth forty years his junior.
The knight stood and waited. The horse was struck once more by how good it was at waiting.
“I never expected to meet my maker,” began the horse. He posed the machine questions sometimes, just to be sure it hadn’t abandoned the world. “What shall I say to him?”
They could hear Helen’s bright little laugh. How amusing corn prices must be!
Rhetoric wasn’t in the knight’s programming. “You said you would ask why you were made sentient but cursed with hoofs.”
“Perhaps I won’t care to hear the answer.”
The horse glanced at the merchant’s mare, tied to a tree. The mare swished her tail.
“Can you imagine a mate that’s just an animal?” complained the horse.
“Lady Helen says all men are animals.”
“You never used talk like that. She’s a bad influence.”
“Lady Helen says she’s tired of sleeping on the ground. She’s broken a sandal. And she’s famished with hunger. She says what’s the point of being desirable if you have to live like this?”
Swigging the last of the wine, Helen stood and brushed crumbs off her dress.
“But what of us?” the merchant protested. Dazed and, until pheromones wore off, inconsolable, he reached for her hand again.
She gave him a brusque smile. “It can never be. The knight there is taking me to a convent. But we shall always have this moment.”
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by David Barber
