Battle Ground

by Jim Butcher

  For example, I was about to attempt a summoning using a being’s true name, right here in front of half of the world. Dammit. I’d have to go nonverbal on this one. It was a low-powered-enough spell that, with any luck, wouldn’t hurt too much to perform silently.

  Words and magic go hand in hand. Hell, half the words to describe magic practitioners go back to root sources that basically mean speaker. There’s a reason for that. Magic happens mainly in your head, fueled by emotion and shaped by concentration, reason, and raw will. There’s an awful lot of juice going through your brain at any given moment while performing real magic, enough to actually do damage to it.

  Part of what keeps your brain insulated from damage is “wrapping” the concept of a given spell up in verbalized phonemes—and it’s got to be done in a language that you’re not really familiar with, if it’s going to do you any good. It provides a kind of insulation for your mind and thoughts. You can do magic without using words all you like—but it has consequences that begin with twitches and disorientation and eventually result in violent seizures and death. No wizard with an ounce of sense makes a practice of doing his magic silently.

  But that doesn’t mean we can’t cheat now and then.

  * * *

  * * *

  The circle trap with the pizza bait was purely pro forma at this point. I’d been working with this particular being too long and too closely to really require it. So, once things were set up, I settled down on my knees, closed my eyes, and created a mental image of myself in my head, positioned just as I was in life and softly chanting a Name. I poured a whisper of energy into it and held the image, silently kneeling and waiting.

  It took less than a long moment. There was a burring sound in the air, and I saw the Redcap tense and raise his gun. I held up my palm toward him sharply and gave my head a single firm shake. He stared hard at me for a second before lowering the gun, and then my only actual vassal arrived.

  Major General Toot-Toot Minimus resembled a glowing violet comet more than anything else as he approached in a low-pitched buzz of dragonfly wings. It wasn’t until he got closer that the nimbus around him resolved into the shape of an athletic young man crowned with a shock of dandelion-silk hair in shades of lavender and violet. He might have cut a very impressive figure if he’d been more than about thirty inches tall.

  Toot . . . was not dressed properly. I’d grown used to his little outfits made of castoff doll clothing and repurposed human refuse, which had served him well for weapons and armor over the years. But now Toot-Toot had been upgraded.

  He wore a full suit of gothic plate armor, made of some weird-looking alloy colored a deep, almost black shade of purple. It came complete with a small black cape emblazoned with the corporate logo of Pizza ’Spress, a local delivery chain, in gold embroidery, surrounded by letters in the logo, FOR THE ZA LORD.

  Instead of his usual utility blade or X-Acto knife, he bore in his hands a spear as long as he was with a broad head suitable for stabbing or slashing, made from the same metal as his armor. Upon his back, between his wings, was a pair of short blades hanging from a harness, also in the same kind of metal.

  Toot deftly avoided a clutch of darting pixie messengers and came streaking directly toward me—ignoring the circle completely and coming to a screeching halt in midair in front of the Redcap at eye level.

  “Avaunt, scoundrel!” he piped at the Sidhe warrior. For a pixie, Toot had an absolutely roaring basso of a voice. For everyone else, he sounded like a cute cartoon character. “I saw you giving my lord dirty looks!”

  The Redcap narrowed his eyes and showed his teeth in a lazy smile. “Care, little one. I’d prefer not to waste a bullet on you when there’s so much more interesting game in the offing.”

  “I’d like to see you try it!” huffed Toot, buzzing in a little circle that sent motes of light exploding out from him like a cartoon figure’s cloud of dust.

  Even as I watched, there was a flitting shadow, and by the time the sound of a second set of buzzing wings was audible, a slender figure in black fae armor, almost Toot’s size, was hovering just behind the Redcap, the tip of her little black lance touching the skin of the back of the Redcap’s neck with delicate precision. The pixie holding the lance was female, pale of skin and dark of hair, and she had way too much makeup around her eyes.

  “Think carefully, biggun,” the pixie piped. “For though one day I will end his miserable life, while my durance continues I will lend my arm to the major general.”

  The Redcap’s eyes shifted behind him. By the time they moved back to Toot, the pixie’s distraction was over, and his lance was resting a hairsbreadth from the Redcap’s eye.

  “Lacuna adores me!” Toot shrilled.

  “We are comrades in arms,” Lacuna said. “Then I will kill you.”

  “It is love!” Toot insisted.

  “When you’re dead,” Lacuna said, “I get your teeth.”

  Toot beamed broadly. “See? She loves me for me!”

  The Redcap took a deep breath and said, “Boo!”

  Both pixies fluttered back a dozen feet before the sound was done leaving his mouth.

  “Dresden,” the Redcap said, a touch plaintively.

  “Major General,” I said, “Lacuna, stand down. Tonight, he is the enemy of my enemy.”

  Toot gasped and gripped his spear more tightly. “A double enemy!”

  Lacuna buzzed over to hover near Toot. “No, idiot. It means he is an ally right now.”

  Toot gripped his lance in both hands, his arms extended to full length, and buzzed in a happy circle. “My girlfriend is so smart!”

  “I am not your girlfriend,” Lacuna said sullenly. “I am a prisoner of war.”

  “Harry, I must say,” Toot-Toot said, dropping his voice to a stage sotto voce, “that’s frozen pizza. What are you doing?”

  “It’s symbolic pizza,” I said.

  “Symbolic pizza sucks!” Toot shouted.

  “None of it is good for you,” Lacuna insisted.

  “Guys!” I said. “The pizza—all the pizza—is in danger!”

  That got their attention.

  Toot-Toot whirled to face me in horror. “What?!”

  Lacuna’s face suffused with joy. “What!?”

  I gave them the kindergarten-level, probably cheaply animated rundown on who Ethniu was. “And now,” I concluded, “she’s coming here to kill all the people.”

  “Uh-huh,” Toot said, nodding, listening, completely supportive.

  “And me,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Toot said, brightly, waiting.

  “And all the pizza shops,” I said.

  “Oh no!” Toot wailed. He buzzed in a vertical circle. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

  “That will definitely be better for your teeth,” Lacuna said.

  “The stars take my teeth, woman!” Toot bellowed.

  Lacuna gasped, shocked.

  “This cannot be borne!” Toot trumpeted. “It cannot be endured! We must fight!” He shot out into the open air above the street, spinning as he went, so filled with fury was his tiny form, glowing brighter and brighter. “We must fight!” he called, and his shrill voice rattled from the stones of the castle. “WE MUST FIGHT!” came his tiny roar, echoing down the streets.

  And something happened that I had not expected.

  The stars fell on Castle Marcone.

  One moment, the bustle of the command center was proceeding along. The next, glowing lights, some as tiny as the little elements inside Christmas lights, some as large as beach balls, all began descending from overhead, emerging from corners and crevices of houses, rising from gardens and bushes and gliding from trees. In moments, the torchlit night, full of shadows and uncertainty, had become filled with an ambient aurora that bathed entire blocks around the little castle in multicolored radiance. They weren’t
coming by the handful or by the dozen, but by hundreds and thousands, with more gathering from every direction.

  In a particular circle around Toot-Toot, thirty or so of the largest and fiercest of the pixie warriors had gathered, each of them armed and armored like their leader, in finely made fae plate, bearing small and wickedly sharp weaponry. The Za Lord’s Guard had turned out for battle, but it was more than that.

  I realized that I was watching something that I had never seen or even much heard of before.

  The Little Folk were mobilizing for war.

  For pizza.

  Hell’s bells.

  Well.

  You always find support for your causes by making them relatable to people where they live, I guess.

  “Idiots,” Lacuna breathed. “We could just hide and then take all the teeth we wanted from the dead.”

  “You are a highly creepy little person,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Lacuna said gravely.

  “Where’d they get the armor?” I asked.

  “Lady Molly had it and the new weapons delivered with the pizza, at the solstice,” she said.

  I eyed her armor. “What happened to all the barbed fishhooks that were welded on yours?”

  She sniffed and gave me a haughty, disgusted look. “The general kept cutting himself. Because he knew I would be honor bound to nurse him back to health after. It was necessary.”

  “Toot and Lacuna, sitting in a tree,” I chanted, grinning. “K-I-S-S—”

  The tip of Lacuna’s lance landed firmly in the space between my two front teeth.

  “Attempt to complete that enchantment, wizard,” she said, “and I will ram this lance through your uvula.”

  I couldn’t stop smiling without the blade of the lance cutting my lips. So I stood there carefully with my teeth together and my lips lifted away from them and said, “Okay.”

  There wasn’t a visible signal, but Lacuna looped up into the air, joining the Za Lord’s Guard and then, in a coordinated streak of light, all thirty of them came zipping down to the roof of the castle and hit the ground in formation, in unison—in the classic superhero landing, before straightening to slam tiny fists to tiny breastplates, the faemetal ringing like a chorus of wind chimes.

  “My lord!” Toot shrilled. “Your Guard stands ready to serve and to lead our people in defense of the pizza!”

  I looked up and . . . the sky was full of a wheel of tiny lights, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of the Little Folk, in an aerial field half a mile across and slowly rotating, as if that entire circle, that entire . . . pizza of tiny fae, was deliberately, precisely centered.

  Above me.

  The talk and chatter died away as light bathed the grim, dark little castle. Silence spread across the rooftop. I looked down to see Mab and the Ladies regarding me with small, knowing smiles. Everyone else, from ghouls to White Council to svartalves to Sasquatch, just stared up at the sky and then at the focus of the whirling mandala of Little Folk, at the kneeling formation of warriors, awaiting my word.

  They all stared at me.

  Mab’s eyes glittered with fierce, bright pride.

  I didn’t really know what else to do. So I just got to work.

  I dropped to one knee to address my little fighters, like a football captain in a huddle. I pointed at the body of the dead assassin squid and said, “See those things?”

  Toot growled, and the Guard followed suit. It was kind of adorable.

  “The bad guys are sending those things to kill the big people trying to protect the pizza,” I said. “They fly and they’re under a veil. We need your help. Only the Little Folk can protect us against them. I want a cohort stationed here and at the svartalf embassy to intercept any of these creatures coming in. Everyone else should hunt them down wherever they can be found. The littlest of your folk can help us by watching out for veils. If they see any bad guys moving around under veils or being sneaky, they should swarm them and make sure the big folk can see them and fight them.”

  “Kill these things,” Toot said, gesturing at the fallen assassin squid. “Guard this house and the svartalf house. And point out any sneaky bad guys to the poor, stupid bigguns.”

  “Exactly, General,” I said. “Can you do it?”

  Toot shot to his feet and up to my eye level, and the rest of the Guard came with him. He shouldered his lance and slammed a little fist over his heart, making the faemetal chime again, and whirled to begin giving orders. He pointed and gesticulated wildly, speaking in too rapid and high-pitched a tone for my poor biggun ears to clearly understand. Individual members of the Guard sped out into the night, up to the cloud of Little Folk above, to gather a constellation of glowing lights around them and speed off in different directions.

  Within minutes, the effects could be seen. Clouds of determined Little Folk, too small to fight individually, would zip around darting assassin squid in little swarms, creating streaks of light across the sky. When the first one was sighted, Toot himself zipped out with his lance gripped tight, Lacuna on his wing. Within a moment, the pair of them flew a dead squid back to the roof and dropped it proudly at my feet. Their armor and lances were stained with ichor, their little faces satisfied and proud. “Like that?” Toot asked.

  “Good work, General,” I said firmly. “Carry on until we’ve driven them all away or the battle is lost.”

  “We will not lose the pizza,” Toot-Toot said grimly.

  Lacuna sighed.

  Then the pair of them zipped off into the night.

  “Impressive,” the Redcap said, once they were gone. He glanced at his pistol with a faint expression of disappointment and then slipped it into his waistband at the small of his back. “How did you manage to bind them all?”

  “Trade secrets,” I said. I tried not to think about how much pizza it would take to pay off that many of the Little Folk. Maybe I’d send Marcone the bill. It was technically his stupid territory we were defending. “I’m done with you.”

  The Redcap narrowed his eyes but nodded at me politely and went back over to Molly, who had returned to running her own communications through her own Little Folk crew.

  Mab approached and stood beside me for a moment, looking out at the night. You could see a squid being taken down every minute or so. It was a bit like watching for falling stars at the right time of year.

  “Mortals ask a question,” she said after a moment. “Is it better to be feared or loved?”

  “I can guess your answer,” I said.

  “And I yours. Yet they do not love you, per se,” she mused.

  “Not exactly, no,” I said. “But I found something they did love. Something that united them.”

  Mab looked at me blankly.

  “When a group comes together around something they love,” I said, “it changes things. It changes how they see one another. It becomes a community. Something greater than the sum of its parts.”

  Mab did not seem enlightened.

  I tried to explain another way. “The creation of the community encourages investment in that community,” I said. “Once they’ve invested, they’ll fight to protect it.”

  Mab’s eyebrows went up in comprehension. “Ah. You found a weakness in their psychology and manipulated it. You provided them with a resource and incurred their debt.”

  “I made them see themselves differently.”

  “Neuromancy? You? I shudder to think of the results of that.”

  I sighed. “Look. Maybe you’ll just have to trust me. It’s a mortal thing.”

  “Ah,” Mab said dismissively. “Still. An impressive display. You frightened several very confident beings tonight. I found it entertaining.”

  “Yeah, it just . . . sort of happened,” I said. I leaned tiredly on the battlements. I wished I had a sandwich.

  I sneezed out of nowhe
re, so hard that I nearly slammed my head into the merlon I was leaning on. By this time, I was getting used to it. I felt the surge of wearying energy leave me, felt where the conjuration point drew matter from the Nevernever into the mortal world and shaped it. I managed to get my hands into the air above my head in time to deflect a falling club sandwich. It bounced off one of my forearms, splattered partly on one shoulder and partly on the ground—before promptly turning to gooey ectoplasm.

  Mab stared at me as though I had just begun dissecting a fetal pig at the dinner table. She shook her head slowly, once, and said, “Just as you begin to impress me.”

  “Oh bide be,” I muttered, and fished out a handkerchief to blow my nose.

  Stupid conjuritis.

  I was exhaling when the first explosion thudded through the night air.

  Everyone froze.

  To the east and a little south of us, a column of flames rose into the air, flaring out in the night. The shock wave of the explosion was tangible, even where we stood on the roof, something I felt push through my chest.

  “Was that . . . ?” I breathed.

  Mab drew herself upright, cold light gathering around her brow in a coronet of glittering motes that trailed a veil of tiny snowflakes behind it. Every eye on the roof turned to her, as the Queen of Air and Darkness lifted her face to the night sky and spoke in a voice that did not so much thunder through the air as glide into the earth itself and resonate in gentle music from every solid surface in sight.

  “Accorded nations,” Mab said calmly. “Stand to arms. Mortal men of Chicago, remain in the homes that offer you your only safety. The enemy has come for the city.”

  Chapter

  Eight

  My stomach did a little twisty flip.

  Somewhere in my head, I’d been processing it all night, that events this large could not go by unnoticed. That destruction on this scale simply could not be brushed under the rug, that this many witnesses could not be silenced. Whatever happened in the battle, whoever prevailed, one fact was clear.