Knight Watch Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter TWO

  Chapter THREE

  Chapter FOUR

  Chapter FIVE

  Chapter SIX

  Chapter SEVEN

  Chapter EIGHT

  Chapter NINE

  Chapter TEN

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Chapter TWELVE

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  Chapter NINETEEN

  Chapter TWENTY

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX

  Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  Chapter THIRTY

  Chapter THIRTY-ONE

  Chapter THIRTY-TWO

  Chapter THIRTY-THREE

  Chapter THIRTY-FOUR

  Chapter THIRTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  KNIGHT

  WATCH

  TIM AKERS

  Baen

  Knight Watch

  Tim Akers

  MEN IN BLACK AT THE REN FAIRE!

  John Rast went to the Ren Faire looking for a fight. Well, a simulated fight, with blunt swords and safety equipment. But when his final opponent turns into a living, fire-breathing dragon, John finds himself in the fight of his life. It’s John or nothing stopping a disaster in its tracks—and the only real weapon at hand is his mom’s Volvo. So John decides to let it roll . . .

  And that's when destiny comes to call. John is spirited away to the well-hidden base of Knight Watch, the organization that stands between humanity and the real nasties the rest of the world doesn’t know about.

  Knight Watch would be John’s dream job—except for the storm goddess that destroys his parents’ house, the abandoned mall replete with too much dead, and the Fetch that aims to make John’s domain a final resting place. All this has John’s putative allies in the Knight Watch worried that John is the one bringing bad things into multiple worlds. John and his reluctant teammates have to figure out who, or what, is pulling the strings before all of Knight Watch falls prey to a well-concealed puppetmaster and far worse things enter this world.

  BOOKS by TIM AKERS

  The Horns of Ruin

  Knight Watch

  The Burn Cycle

  Heart of Veridon

  Dead of Veridon

  The Hallowed War

  The Pagan Night

  The Iron Hound

  The Winter Vow

  Knight Watch

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events

  portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance

  to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Tim Akers

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book

  or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-9821-2485-4

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-793-3

  Cover art by Todd Lockwood

  First printing, September 2020

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Akers, Tim, 1972- author.

  Title: Knight watch / by Tim Akers.

  Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen Books, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020022155 | ISBN 9781982124854 (trade paperback)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3601.K48 K56 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022155

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  TIM AKERS

  DEDICATION

  For my mother,

  who does in fact drive a Volvo. You're the best.

  Chapter One

  Dragonslayer

  I killed my first dragon with a blunt sword and the engine block of a 1977 Volvo station wagon. It was my mom’s car. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me, but in my defense, that dragon was a real asshole.

  This all happened at the fighting competition at my local renaissance faire. In case you’re not in the nerd know, a ren faire is a place that adults go to pretend they’re living in the Middle Ages. Full metal armor, overpriced beer in equally expensive steins, some light bard-work with a side of bustiers, and a plethora of mud. It’s a good time, completely harmless, and the sort of place you might expect to see a frustrated college student living out their dream of being a knight.

  The thing you shouldn’t expect to see is a dragon. Because, and I can’t emphasize this clearly enough, dragons aren’t real. No more real than wizards, or flying carpets, or werewolves. No more real than struggling English majors who become actual knights. Or at least, that’s what I believed going in.

  For now, though, I was running late.

  I was staying with my parents over the summer. My penultimate year in college was going well, but just before the term ended the apartment I was supposed to live in next year fell through, followed shortly by the job that was supposed to pay for half that apartment and the roommate who was supposed to cover the other half of the rent. It was like the gods were knocking down my hopes and dreams, one at a time. Oh, and my girlfriend left me. Cool. Good end to a year.

  Discouraged, I had returned home for the summer. It was kind of weird. I hadn’t been home for more than a weekend since I left after high school. I had kept in touch with friends online, and in some ways it was like stepping back into high school all over again. My old pal Eric welcomed me back into his D&D campaign as if I hadn’t missed a session, and the various dramas, traumas, and gossip that I thought I had escaped resumed without missing a beat.

  The best thing that had come out of this was the local ren faire. I used to go every year, but in college I had gotten involved with the statewide faire, a much larger and more professionally run event, but it somehow wasn’t as fun as the local deal. I had started fighting again and was quickly moving up the ranks of the tournament scene. That fateful weekend was the regional competition, which would maybe get me back to the state level, if I was lucky. Eric was coming along, and he told me he had a surprise waiting at his house.

  “Please God, not another story. Please God, let it not be another story,” I whispered to myself as I gathered my gear. Eric was kind of a writer, in the way that a thunderstorm was kind of a bath. He produced an endless deluge of elves and heroic farmers and whispering woods that dripped with primeval...evil. That sort of thing. And as his friend, and too polite to decline, I had been exposed to all of it. If you have to write a hundred bad pages to produce one good sentence, then Eric was well on his way to produce thousands of good sentences. I just hadn’t seen any of them yet.

  “Did your watch stop again?” my mother called from the bottom of the stairs. I whipped my phone out of my pocket and stared at the blinking zeroes. I tossed it into my bag. Stupid phone, always flipping out.

  “No, Mom!” I lied. “My phone is just fine.”

  “Then you know how late you are?”

  “Yes, I know how late I am!”

  “Because Eric lives fifteen minutes away, and you’ll need time to pa
rk, use the potty before—”

  “Mother!”

  “Use the potty before you go, and I don’t know how long it takes to get back into your fancy pants after that, but I imagine—”

  “Mom! It’s fine! I’m just a little late. Eric won’t mind.”

  Mother left her post at the base of the stairs, though I could still hear her grumbling all the way to the kitchen. I tossed the last few supplies into my bag, strapped my sword and shield together, and hurried downstairs.

  “Did you eat your snack?” Mom yelled as I hit the front door. “Because your tummy—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of it. I hammered down the stairs to the porch, fumbling in my front pocket for the keys to my little hatchback. Gear went into the back seat, then I squeezed between my car and Mom’s ancient station wagon, carefully opening the driver’s side door and shoehorning my way into the car.

  “Fourteenth Century, here I come!” I shouted and turned the key.

  The Fourteenth Century was already waiting for me. There are no cars in the Fourteenth Century. And there was no working car under my butt. Nothing happened. Not even a whimper from the engine, or the clank of a dead starter, or anything. Just the click of the ignition, and then silence. I laid my head against the wheel.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now I’m late.”

  Eric’s neighborhood was a little older than mine, a little nicer, and a whole lot out of the way. I turned down his street going too fast, the screeching tires of Mom’s dilapidated Volvo drawing the stares of a group of mothers on the corner. I cued up my Monster Manual voice.

  “Beware the feral packs of soccer moms. Disapproving glare, plus ten to hit, applies the existential horror debuff. You don’t look like you’re from around here. What are you doing with your life?” I rolled past them with a wave. “Ladies.” They turned back to their strollers in disgust.

  Eric’s house was at the end of the street. Tall trees surrounded the yard, and the main house felt like a forest retreat, rather than the suburban mansion that it actually was. I rolled up the driveway and came to a halt in front of his porch. Eric was leaning against the front steps, his iconic beer stein in hand. He was a little heavy, his curly hair sticking out in bits and bobs around the crushed velvet of his bard hat. I had never known Eric to play an instrument, or sing, or show any musical inclination, yet he insisted on wearing a bard outfit to the faire every year. I think he just liked the tights.

  “Oh, dude! The mom-mobile! What happened to the hot hatch?” he asked. I got out of the car, slammed the door like a cannon shot, and shrugged.

  “Wouldn’t start. Probably something to do with the ignition or, or the alt...altro...”

  “Sure, it’s definitely one of those things, and not the fact that you break every complicated thing that you touch,” he said, bouncing down the stairs and throwing his cooler into the back. My mom’s station wagon was the old kind, a Volvo with steel doors as thick as tank armor and an engine that ran on high-grade coal. When Eric slammed the back door shut, it made enough noise to scare a flock of birds out of a nearby tree.

  “Well, it’ll get us to the faire. You ready?” I asked.

  “They might not like us bringing something this old into a renaissance faire,” Eric joked. He hauled a cooler down the stairs and slid it into the back, along with an authentic lute case that probably contained various grains of vodka, and his boots. “It strains the realism of the experience. Might want to trade it in for a couple of horses and a wagon.”

  “You don’t like the ride, you can drive,” I said.

  “No, it’s cool, man,” he said, getting into the front seat. “Besides, I tore up my license. Living old school!”

  “Why the hell did you tear up your license?” I asked.

  “Historical authenticity,” he said, waving his fingers like he was casting a spell. “Don’t want to mess with the ren faire mojo.”

  “Oh yeah? And all the gear in the back?” I asked, opening my door. “How authentic is that Yeti cooler?”

  “There is power in anachronism,” he answered. “And ale.”

  “Well, as long as you know what you’re—”

  The front door of Eric’s house slammed shut, and someone strode out onto the porch. I looked up, and my heart sank.

  Chesa Lazaro glared down at me from the shadow of Eric’s porch. She competed in the archery competition every year, and of all the competitors, she probably leaned into the elf-fantasy the hardest. She wore her ears and costume to every match. She spent as much time and money on her outfit as most people did on their wedding gowns, and it showed. This year’s version of Elven Warrior Princess was a knee-length armored dress with splint mail leggings and high laced leather boots trimmed in gold. Light breastplate and shoulders were done in leaf-shaped metal scales, tinted the color of spring grass and also trimmed in milky gold. Her glossy black hair was pulled back in a dozen braids, woven through with golden thread. The tan tips of her fake ears poked through the plaits, indistinguishable from her coppery skin. Glittering black paint covered her high cheekbones in a false tattoo that was a cross between a butterfly and a switchblade, hiding the spray of freckles that had first caught my attention years ago. Her eyes, dusty tan with a hint of green, glared at me. We were a thing for two weeks the summer before I left for college, and Eric never missed an opportunity to remind me how badly I’d screwed that relationship up.

  “Leaving without me again?” Chesa asked.

  “Hey, Ches!” I said half-heartedly. “Good to see you.” I ducked into the car and lowered my voice. “What the hell, man?”

  “Surprise!” Eric whispered back, his pudgy face framed by jazz hands.

  Chesa threw her bow and quiver in the back, along with a leather pack that looked like it came out of the props department for Elf Wars: Revenge of the Elf Lord. I twisted around in my seat.

  “You guys are bringing a lot more stuff to this faire than I am. Something I should know?” I asked.

  Chesa sniffed. Eric shrugged. I put the Viking bitchwagon into gear and rattled down the road.

  The drive to the faire was about as long and awkward as you could imagine. Eric talked about his latest story, which had something to do with mildly erotic tree people and a lot of adjectives. “I’m doing some great work with adjectives,” he confided to me. “Really, really, really great work.”

  When we got to the faire, Chesa disappeared into the crowds. While I was gathering up my gear, I snagged Eric by the elbow.

  “What was that all about?” I asked, nodding in Chesa’s direction. “Are you guys a thing?”

  “Holy cow, no. I mean, I would, don’t get me wrong, but this,” he motioned to his body like he was presenting a movie trailer. “This is not the ideal elf body. We’ve just been hanging out. She’s a cool girl.”

  “I know she’s a cool girl, Eric. That’s why she hates me so much.”

  “Yeah, well. She needed a ride. Don’t make a thing of it.”

  I gathered my gear out of the back of Mom’s car under Eric’s watchful eye. After I closed the door, he stood there looking at me. He seemed a little nervous.

  “You waiting for something?” I asked. He shuffled his feet and pulled something out of his pocket.

  “I just...I got you something. For luck.” He handed it to me. It was a kerchief, black with white runes on it. “It’s a favor. You could tie it to your sword or something.”

  “A favor? Are you my lady fair now?”

  “No, no...it’s just...it’s good to have you home. And I know you’re going back to college at the end of the summer, and I’m not sure how many days like this we’ll have. So, I thought it’d be nice to have a souvenir or something. I don’t know. It felt like something I should do.”

  I was touched. A little creeped out—but touched. I unfolded the kerchief and looked it over. It was...complicated.

  “This something from one of your books?”

  “It’s the war banner of the Lost Empire of the Mage Witche
s. Dinndero-Dannion the Delft flew it as he rode to war against the Inerrant Emperor.” Eric cleared his throat and continued in a false bardic falsetto. “The slick, ichorous, sodden legions plunged, dark and endearing, into the clamoring emptiness of the endless, breaking—”

  “Right, got it. I’ll do it proud,” I said, knotting the kerchief around the hilt of my sword. He smiled. “You going to be at the match?”

  “You betcha! Wouldn’t miss it for this world, or the next!” He slung his lute o’ vodka over his shoulder and tipped that ridiculous hat. “Good luck in the lists today, Sir John of Rast! Maybe I’ll sing to your victory!”

  “Please don’t,” I said, then buckled my sword in place and closed the gate on the Volvo. “I have enough trouble without your ballads of whoa.”

  Chapter TWO

  ENTER THE HERO

  I worked my way to the tournament ground, which was tucked into the far side of the faire, past a lot of vendors selling armor, leather corsets, and quite a bit of grilled meat. Usually I would stroll through, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the faux renaissance. The people were the best part, mostly because they were genuinely, thoroughly happy. A rare thing these days. It was a delightful place. But as I said, I was running late. I could already hear the marshal’s call, and the reading of the lists. If I didn’t hurry, I would miss my place in the tournament.

  I was competing in single-hand and shield, or sword and board as it’s known in my circle. I’m not a big guy, tall and skinny and probably too gangly to be graceful, but for whatever reason I’m good with a sword. Call it a gift, or a curse, since there’s not a lot of demand for expert swordsmen this side of the sixteenth century. I always felt like I missed my time slot, like I should have been born in an age of knights and castles, rather than smartphones and fast food. These tournaments gave me a chance to connect with similarly displaced heroes and spend a weekend forgetting about the disappointing convenience of the modern world. I made some of my best friends at these things. Sometimes I wonder what happened to them all, if they think I’m dead or, worse, if I finally gave in to the mundanes and spend my weekends brewing mediocre beer or having opinions about politics. Thank the gods, nothing could be further from the truth.