Battle Ground

by Jim Butcher

  The thing staggered and thrust its spear at Bradley. The blocky man slapped the weapon aside with one hand, seized the haft in one thick fist, jammed the pistol up under the Huntsman’s jaw, and emptied the little revolver, sending the thing crashing and thrashing to the ground.

  Bradley, half his face masked in blood, dropped the empty revolver, took up the spear in a grip that showed he knew something about using one, faced the remaining Huntsmen, and screamed, “Come on!”

  They roared back, the cries like a pack of beasts, none of them the same species.

  Five dead Huntsmen. Bradley had picked a good position to fight from, surrounded in stone, slight elevation from the street, good cover. But he was out of ammo now, bleeding, and the remaining Huntsmen would only be that much stronger and more difficult to hurt.

  And still he planted his feet. “Come on, you ugly bastards!”

  “That son of a bitch beat me in every tournament I ever fought him,” Murphy said. “Harry.”

  Winter, I thought. Take the Huntsmen.

  The ogres went in first, simply leaping from adjacent rooftops, huge white-furred things like River Shoulders, if he’d been a smoker since childhood, after a heroin bender. Though lean and seedy-looking, they were still enormous, viciously strong, and unremittingly savage. One of them landed on a Huntsman with a three-story atomic elbow and crushed it with a great crackling of breaking bones. The other landed on a planted spear that went in its chest and burst through its back in a welter of gore and silver flame. The ogre shrieked like a demon as the Huntsman arced the spear to one side and brought the dying Winter fae crashing down to the street.

  Malks yowled like a herd of chain saws and came bounding in from all angles. The Huntsmen’s spears howled and sent some of the murderous beasts to whatever hell waited for them, but there were simply not enough of them to target the streaking forms of the malks. They overbore two of the Huntsmen and buried them in a mound of thick fur and frenzied claws sharper than X-Acto knives. The Huntsmen died screaming.

  Beside them, the troop of gnomes had emerged from an alley and flung a dozen hatchets at another Huntsman, even as it swelled in size and power. The wickedly sharp weapons hit with savage effect, setting the Huntsman staggering, and Black Dogs flashed past, fangs raking, and tore through its hamstrings. Once it was at ground level, the gnomes, chestnut-skinned, white-haired little guys maybe two and a half or three feet high, had no problems reaching its vitals.

  One of the remaining Huntsmen turned to flee—only to confront the Rawhead coming out of the alley. The fae beast, made of the bones of slaughtered animals and foes, was an enormous form under a great black cloak. The cloak flared out, and the bulky body of the Rawhead, made of hundreds of sharpened bones, began to contort and shriek in a sound uncomfortably like that of a meat grinder.

  The Rawhead seized the Huntsman and dragged it beneath its cloak. Its bones rent and tore, where I couldn’t see it, and the Huntsman screamed in fury. And then there was a lot of blood and sausage tumbling out from beneath the Rawhead’s cloak and piling up on the Huntsman’s feet and lower legs.

  The last Huntsman roared, rearing up in size—and the second-largest malk I’d ever seen, the size of a mountain lion but far bulkier, flew like an arrow for the creature’s face. Grimalkin’s forepaws spread out to snowshoe proportions and sprouted two-inch claws that latched into the Huntsman’s face. The Elder malk sank its jaws into one of the Huntsman’s eyes, gripping on like a vise to the orbital bone beneath—and thus braced, the supernaturally powerful, swift cat began to rake with its rear claws.

  In less than a second, the last Huntsman’s throat looked like twenty or thirty pounds of pulled pork soaked in ketchup.

  The Elder malk flung himself aside as the Huntsman, not even yet fully grown into the size of the ones we’d had to kill, dropped limply to the ground, gushing blood like a broken water main. Grimalkin landed not ten feet in front of the Harley, flicked each set of claws once, fastidiously, and said, in that utterly unnerving feline voice, “Sir Knight. Elder Grimalkin, reporting for duty.”

  “Jesus Mary Mother of God,” Murphy breathed.

  Grimalkin flattened his ears and gave Murphy a glower, then turned to me and said, “There are multiple warbands on the adjoining streets. My kin keep them occupied, for now. We are badly outnumbered, Sir Knight. Retreat would be ideal, before—”

  The Jotun’s horn blared. In the haze and among the buildings, it was impossible to tell where it was, other than . . .

  “Close,” Murphy breathed.

  “Before that,” Grimalkin said sourly.

  “Well done, Elder,” I said. “But we’re getting those kids out.”

  The malk growled. “We cannot contest a Jotun, Sir Knight.”

  “Pussy,” Murphy said.

  I blinked at her.

  She smirked. “Too good, couldn’t resist.”

  Grimalkin’s fur bristled and his weight shifted slightly.

  Without breaking her smirk, Murphy swept her pistol out and covered the malk as quick as blinking. “Steel-jacketed rounds tonight, friend,” she advised. “Play nice.”

  Grimalkin growled at Murphy, eyed me, then relaxed as if nothing had happened. He flexed the claws out of his right forepaw and regarded them idly, ignoring Murphy completely.

  She put the gun away and returned the favor. But she never quite let the malk out of her sight.

  They’d get on fine.

  I swung off the bike. Murphy followed. I beckoned Butters and the Alphas. “We’re getting those kids out first,” I said, walking. “Grimalkin, you and Winter keep a corridor open for us, back to the defenses.”

  “We cannot hold it long,” Grimalkin warned me.

  “Do it,” I said over my shoulder. “Go.”

  The Elder malk made a throaty, ugly sound and vanished before it could even complete turning away.

  I came up on the entry to the day-care center stairwwell to find Bradley gripping his spear and standing braced in the doorway, his eyes very, very wide. The spear was already degrading and flaking away. It’d be gone in a few more minutes.

  “Hey, Detective Bradley. It’s, uh, me. Harry Dresden. Remember?”

  The blocky man stared at me. Then he jerked his head in a nod.

  “Murph,” I said.

  She stepped past me, her hands out. “Hey, hey. Brian. You with me, buddy?”

  Bradley stared at her for a second and then lowered the spear a little. “We aren’t buddies, Sergeant. You kind of hate my guts.”

  Murphy looked from the liquefying forms of the slain Huntsmen to Bradley. “That was then. This is now.”

  He blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?” He twitched as the wolves and Butters brought up the rear. “What the hell is happening?”

  “Hi,” Butters said, and waved.

  “Hi?” said Bradley. He blinked. “Doctor Butters?”

  “You know all that stuff I told you in closed session that you thought was bullshit?” Murphy asked.

  “And all that stuff I told you in closed session that you thought was bullshit?” Butters added brightly.

  The blocky detective looked from the dead Huntsmen and the fallen fae back to Murphy and Butters. “Jesus Christ.”

  Bradley handled it pretty well. He got a little whiter around the eyes for a couple of seconds, and then he closed them firmly, set his jaw, and adjusted, visibly.

  “Fuck it, I’ll lose my mind later,” he said, and when he opened his eyes again, he had his cop face on. “I got six kids, a nice old lady, and a Rudolph up there. How do we get them out?”

  “Back to Millennium Park,” I said. “We’re keeping a corridor open. Send them west from there.”

  Shrieks and yowls burst out around us, as Winter launched an attack upon enemy forces. Huntsmen howled, and their spears wailed. In the background, but
closer, came the thunder of the Eye claiming another building.

  “Get the kids out now,” Murphy said.

  Bradley tensed his jaw, nodded, dropped the spear, and pounded up the stairway. He paused by the door, flattened himself against a wall, and called, “It’s Bradley,” before he opened it with one hand, staying well clear.

  “Bradley?” came Rudolph’s voice. It was panicky.

  Rudolph had run into monsters a couple of times. Granted, both of those times had been bad. But he’d been like a lot of people who run into the supernatural—he just couldn’t handle it. Maybe that was a personal shortcoming. Or maybe he’d just been born without the capacity to face that kind of terrifying reality. Either way, it made it harder to like him, especially at times like this.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “Dammit, Bradley!” Rudolph screamed.

  “It’s me . . . sir . . .” Bradley said, his voice heavy with patience.

  “Get in here! Get under cover!”

  “We’ve got to get out of here while we can,” Bradley said. “Get the kids—we’ve got to go.”

  “Are you crazy?” Rudolph demanded. “It’s a war zone out there!”

  I leaned in and shouted up the stairwell, “It’s going be a war zone right in there with you if you don’t get moving, Rudolph!”

  “Dresden!?”

  “Yes, it’s me, moron,” I said, in my grumpiest wizard voice. “And we’re not going to be able to get out for much longer, you knucklehead, so move it!”

  “This is your doing!” Rudolph squealed. “More of your lies!”

  Bradley got a peculiar expression on his face. I wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, though you could probably have captioned the photo, How Could I Have Been So Blind?

  He held up a finger to me. Then he walked in through the door.

  There was a thump, and a clatter.

  Bradley emerged from the day care with Rudolph draped limply over one shoulder, and the man’s pistol in his own shoulder holster. He was carrying a small child, maybe two years old, in the other arm.

  Behind him came a woman with steely hair and a grandmother’s clothing. She held an infant in the cradle of one arm and the hand of a small string of larger children who followed her, all holding hands.

  Bradley led them down the stairs and onto the street. Butters immediately went to take the infant from the older woman, who surrendered the child with a grateful grimace and a twitch of her shoulder.

  The wolves immediately took position around the children, without me telling them to. They wagged their tails and took little happy steps and generally performed the canine equivalent of pinching their cheeks and making a fuss over them. The kids were instantly enchanted by the group of doggies.

  Who also did their best to keep their furry bodies between the children’s eyes and the worst of the horrors around us.

  They felt like I did. That no one should have to look at that kind of thing. And that those of us who already had? We were glad when we could spare someone else the same invisible wounds.

  I fell in beside Bradley, who carried his own weight and that of two other souls without visible effort. “The wolves are great kids. They’ll go with you, get you and the kids out. Two blocks south, to the park. There’re volunteers holding out at the pavilion. Tell them that the wizard sent you to see Sanya. He’s a big black Russian guy. Tell him I want him to give you an escort out.”

  “South, pavilion, Sanya, wizard sent me, get the kids out,” Bradley confirmed. He eyed the wolves. “Friendlies?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He heaved a breath. Then set his jaw, nodded, and said, “Got it.”

  “Good man,” I said. “You’re handling this well.”

  “I am not,” Bradley said without slowing his steps. “I am not.”

  “Then you are freaking out in the most useful way possible,” I said. “Keep it up.”

  Bradley stared at me for a second. Then he let out a bark of crack-voiced laughter. But it was a real laugh. He hoisted Rudolph into a slightly more comfortable position on one wide, thick shoulder—Rudolph let out a groan of protest neither of us listened to—and kept walking.

  “Butters,” I said, slowing my steps for a moment to drop even with the little Knight.

  “It’s kids, Harry,” he said. He showed me the hilt of Fidelacchius, carried in the hand that wasn’t holding a baby. “I’ll take care of them.”

  I squeezed his shoulder.

  And the ground shook.

  We traded a wide-eyed look, and I said, “Get them out, go!”

  “Harry!” Murphy shouted from behind me.

  The ground shook again.

  Bradley staggered and fell. He curled his body around the child to shield her, which meant that I’m afraid Rudolph took the brunt of it. The poor man. The gun hadn’t been strapped into Bradley’s holster and it clattered onto the street.

  I whirled, feet spread wide for balance, as a pair of comets shot out of a side street half a block up, whirling in an evasive helix in the haze, as the damned Jotun from before, bruised and bloodied and furious, swiped its axe at them.

  “My lord!” trumpeted Toot-Toot. “I have engaged the enemy!”

  The axe nearly split my major general in twain, but the second glowing globe hit him at the last second, as Lacuna slammed a shoulder into his, causing them both to veer out of the weapon’s way.

  “Pay attention, fool!” she screamed.

  The Jotun saw us and dropped into a low slide, legs spread wide like a surfer, slamming its axe into the street and dragging it behind like some berserk plow, rending the street with an enormous roar of breaking concrete and blacktop as it used the weapon to slow its enormous momentum.

  So that it could turn toward us.

  The ground shook under the violence of the Jotun’s very presence.

  I rubbernecked and saw Bradley struggling to rise. Butters was hurrying the nice old lady and the children along, but their best pace wasn’t a fast walk, and they were all in plain sight of the Jotun, utterly vulnerable.

  Right. That made my choice simple.

  Suicidal, but simple.

  I turned to fight.

  Murphy sprinted past me and behind me as the Jotun roared and raised its axe from the street. As if in tandem with its rising fury, the axe burst into flame. The Jotun roared, flexed muscles the size of European automobiles, moved with the technique perfect to use the full force of its unthinkably powerful body—and flung the axe, spinning parallel to the ground like the blade of a lawn mower.

  What must have been at least half a ton of hard, sharp, burning metal came whirling toward my freaking face.

  Chapter

  Twenty-one

  It is often surprising to people to discover exactly how strong a human being can be if he knows what he’s doing.

  The Jotun knew what he was doing. Given the raw power behind that throw, there was no way I was going to stop it. I could put every inch of power I had into a shield and be unable to stop that axe’s edge.

  But I might be able to deflect it.

  I summoned my will and rammed it into the shield bracelet on my left wrist. It hissed and popped with stray sparks of green-gold power as the energy of my magic met the inefficiencies in the material and spells carved into the copper bracelet, and the thing heated up almost immediately, as I brought a shimmering plane into being in front of me—and then I dropped to a knee and tilted the shield back, way back, into a slope of maybe twenty degrees.

  The giant axe hit my shield in an explosion of kinetic and magical energy. Literally. There was an explosion centered where the shield and the axe met, and I realized with a belated shock that the Jotun had imbued considerable power of its own into the axe.

  The world went white and silent.

  I was flung a good fifteen
feet back across the ground and wound up slamming into Bradley, who was only then getting moving again. Rudolph, tragically, got roughed up again as a result, oh no. I lay there for a second, stunned, and watched glass from hundreds of shattered windows fall with almost dreamy slowness toward the ground. My bracelet burned hot enough to scald skin, and the Winter mantle sent me pulses of weird tingly sensations to let me know what was going on.

  I shook my head and looked around blearily. The axe had hit my shield at an odd angle and skittered off to my left and up. It was buried to the eye in what looked like an office building, as if an enormous lumberjack had sunk it in so that he could spit on his hands and get to work.

  Oh right. The Jotun.

  I drove my staff into the ground and shoved myself to my feet, shaking my head in an attempt to get the damned bells to stop ringing.

  The ground shook as I did.

  I looked up to find the Jotun standing maybe twenty yards away, scowling down at me. It tilted its enormous head and studied me for a few seconds. Then in a voice so deep I could barely understand the word, it rumbled, “Seidrmadr.”

  What the hell. I faced it and said, “Jotun.”

  Its brow furrowed with cold anger. His skin was ruddy, his features rough-hewn, and his eyes were an almost violent shade of grass green within the shadows of his helm. From this close, I could see the enormous ugly scarring around his mouth, faded with time but lumpy and displeasing nonetheless. “Who are you and what have you done, that I might know whom I kill?”

  Oh right. Old-school Viking. I had been recognized as someone worth fighting, and now it was time to boast, which suited me fine. I had people who needed time to escape.

  I glanced back over my shoulder, to where Bradley was struggling to rise, cradling the child with great care and tenderness inside the circle of his torn and bleeding arms, and with a shock, I realized why he’d been at that day-care center in the first place.

  The little girl was his.

  Oh God.

  If Maggie was on this street right now, I’d be losing my mind with terror for her.