by Jim Butcher
We had discouraged their advance, but we couldn’t stop it. We kept going backwards. And the enemy kept getting closer. I plied my blasting rod without slowing down, hurling one blast of green-gold fire after another, sending some of my foes screaming with dread and pain while others took their place and closed the distance between us.
“That’s it!” bellowed Sanya, somewhere just a bit behind me.
“Dresden, down!” I heard Butters yell.
Something got behind my knees and I tumbled onto the grass.
“Fire!” Sanya bellowed.
And a thunderstorm erupted in the air around me.
I lay there gasping for breath and instinctively raised my arms to shield my head. I saw Butters, who had hit me in the knees in a friendly tackle, lying as flat as he could and doing the same. I realized that we had backpedaled all the way to the fortifications the svartalves had prepared.
Maybe a quarter of the defenders left behind at the fortifications had come to our aid. A hurricane of buckshot swept the field. It wreaked havoc among the charging canines and sent them scurrying. One or two of the armored figures dropped, but the others retreated in good order, dragging the wounded with them.
“Cease fire!” Sanya yelled. “Cease fire!”
The fire trailed off as people emptied their guns, mostly, but it ended, and the survivors managed to clamber into the fortifications all the same.
“Contact!” screamed someone from the other side of the fortifications. “Fire!” Shotguns roared. The spears of the Huntsmen shrieked.
“Sanya!” I shouted.
“On it!” the Russian called back. He vaulted past me, into the fortifications, and headed for the north side to take command of the defense there.
“Find a firing position!” I shouted to the rest of the defenders. “Reload!”
Butters and I got up and hurried inside, where probably too many of the defenders were trying to figure out what had happened to the mobile force. They were gathered around Randy, who was on his knees, sobbing. “They’re dead. They’re all dead!”
“Butters,” I said.
“Yeah,” Butters said. He went to Randy’s side, put an arm around the man, and started speaking quietly.
I looked up to find all the people who had followed me staring down at me. From their expressions, they didn’t want it to be true.
“It’s true,” I said in a firm, steady voice. “The enemy hit us hard. And they bled to do it. There’s a thousand dead bad guys lying on Columbus right now, and the rest of them have to climb over the corpses of their buddies to come forward.” I looked up and down at the people watching me. “I’ve got no claim on you,” I said. “If you want to run, I can’t stop you. But by now, the enemy is pressing us from three sides. Maybe four. It might still be possible to retreat if you leave here and go straight west. If you want to do that, go for it. But if you borrowed a gun and ammo, leave them here. The people who are going to fight will need them. Because if we don’t stop them here, nothing is going to stand between them and the rest of the town.”
On the far side of the pavilion, fire rose into a thunder and died away again, to occasional barks of weapons discharge. The enemy’s first rush at the fortifications must have failed.
“You came here to fight. So did they. If you’ve got loved ones somewhere behind us, you’ve got a reason to stay. If you don’t, the weapon that just killed most of the mobile force is going to be used on them. Make up your mind. Now.”
There was a long silence while everyone stared at me.
I turned and hunkered down by Randy across from Butters.
“We can’t fight that,” Randy sobbed. “No one can.”
I put my hand on his shoulder.
The skinny man looked up at me through tears. He wasn’t a coward. He just hadn’t been ready for what he’d been forced to see.
“No one can fight that,” he whispered.
I made a dangerous moment’s eye contact and said, hard, “I can.” I stood up and offered Randy my hand. “But I can’t do it alone. I need your help.”
He stared at my hand.
The volunteers stared at us. I could feel the moment hanging in the air, brittle and tense as crystal. They were terrified. The survivors of the earlier action were terrified, and the defenders were terrified.
And all of them were watching Randy for his reaction.
The man closed his eyes for a moment. Then he whispered, “My little girl was born early yesterday. She’s still in the hospital. They couldn’t move her.”
“Well,” I said. “That makes it pretty simple. But that’s not the same thing as easy, is it.”
His jaw clenched.
And when he looked up at me, his eyes were hard and cold. “No. It sure as hell isn’t.”
The sound of his hand smacking into mine was loud in the hazy quiet.
Butters and I pulled Randy to his feet.
Something like a long exhalation went through the volunteers. They turned back to their positions, watching the ruddy haze for any incoming enemy.
Sir Knight, came Grimalkin’s creepy voice. I report.
“Officers!” I called. “Get them into firing positions and make sure everyone has enough ammo. If you don’t, there’re cases of the stuff. Assign a runner to bring more.” Then I turned and walked several paces away, muttering, “Go, Grimalkin. Report.”
I am near the enemy, the Elder malk said. Hear them for yourself.
And suddenly my senses surged, and I was elsewhere.
* * *
* * *
“. . . a ridiculous mess,” hissed King Corb’s voice. “You said there were no mortal forces in the field.”
A steady baritone answered. “And there weren’t. This one came from nowhere.”
“Nowhere!” snarled Corb, furious. His voice bubbled like a teapot. “Would you like to see what nowhere truly looks like, slave?”
I looked around me. I was crouched in a hollow space beneath a mound of rubble, my fur compressed on all sides, and the ground was hard and vicious against my paws. The air was full of the scent of blood, human and monstrous alike, and the smell made me flex my claws in and out repeatedly in instinctive reaction.
Ah. I was getting Grimalkin’s sensory input, then.
Ethniu spoke, and the Titan’s voice was thoughtful, rich, vibrating pleasantly through octaves of sound I could not possibly have heard with human ears. “Corb,” she said, “cease your whining. Listen has proven his ability repeatedly.”
“Yet he could not see a small army of mortals ready to bleed us dry.”
Listen spoke, his voice steady. “It is hardly reasonable to expect millions of people to lie down and die for our convenience. Especially not in a place with so many interests in the supernatural world. We knew they would fight. The battle plan proceeds smoothly enough.”
“Smooth!?” Corb spat. “A fifth of my legion fills the gutters with their blood.”
“They shouldn’t have advanced without hearing from my recon team.”
“Your team was dead!” the Fomor king shrieked.
Listen replied without passion or uncertainty. “Which should have been an excellent indicator that it was not safe to attempt the crossing.”
The air suddenly crackled with sorcerous power.
“Corb,” Ethniu said. “Put your hands down or I will rip them off.”
Corb burbled a curse in some language that sounded absolutely disgusting.
“Better,” Ethniu said. “Captain Listen?”
“The enemy is in fortified earthworks around the pavilion,” Listen said. “And even if we had sufficient squids remaining, we couldn’t use them here. The svartalves appear to have prepared the lattices over the pavilion to prevent them.”
They had? Hell’s bells, I hadn’t noticed that, and I’d been st
anding in the place. Granted, I’d been a little distracted, but how the hell was Listen smart enough to know that?
“Mab appears to have taken position here, in front of the Cloud Gate,” Listen continued. “She has a single cohort with her.”
“Even a battle cohort of the Sidhe is no match for us,” Corb said. “Attack.”
Ethniu’s voice was acidic. “Naturally. Mab will be an easy kill, I am certain. Listen?”
“We have no intelligence of One-Eye taking a position on the battlefield,” Listen said calmly. “This is obviously a trap.”
Dammit. I mean, he wasn’t wrong, but . . .
“Of course it’s a trap,” Ethniu said. “That woman is a spider. The question is why she is allowing us to see it so easily.”
“The surprise attack took her off guard,” Corb said.
“The bodies of better than five hundred mortal troops we never knew existed would suggest otherwise,” Listen noted.
“Those were not soldiers,” spat Corb. “That was merely an armed rabble.”
“An armed rabble that killed a fifth of your legion?” Ethniu asked. “Perhaps I chose my ally poorly.”
Corb made a sputtering sound but didn’t speak. Which showed he had at least a few brains.
“The ambush was well set,” Listen said. “Partisans always fight that way, strike and flee. It is necessary given their lack of training and discipline.”
“We must pin them down,” Ethniu said.
“And we have,” Listen replied. “They are trapped inside their own defenses. My people and the Huntsmen press them from the north and have circled behind them in the west. They will not have another opportunity to inflict such damage. We only have to hold steady and finish pushing the blade home.”
“Your recommendation, Captain?”
“Destroy their fortifications with the Eye,” Listen said promptly. “Assign a cohort to mop them up after. Then turn everything upon Mab.”
Ethniu was silent for a time before she said, “Mab is too close. Should I use the Eye upon those fortifications, it will give her a window of opportunity in which to strike.”
Ah-hah. The superweapon wasn’t a wonder weapon. It had some kind of cooldown period. Good to know.
“Bring up the heavy weapons teams and bombard the fortifications,” Listen said. “It won’t be as decisive, but they’re only earthworks.”
“Will it be done before the mortals arrive with their mechanical weapons?”
“Difficult to say,” Listen said. “You saw who was leading the rabble.”
“The Winter Knight,” Corb spat.
“He is canny, resourceful, and stubborn,” Listen said. “It could be that he wields enough influence over them to keep them in place and fighting for a time, despite the bombardment.”
“Stupid Jotnar,” Corb muttered. “Dying to mere mortals. Were they here, they could simply stomp the fort flat.”
“They died killing the Einherjaren,” Listen noted. “Frankly, given what the revenants can do, I regard the trade as one in our favor. And we have a second group of Jotnar in the south. Could they be summoned?”
“Our messengers keep getting swarmed by these thrice-damned Little Folk,” Corb spat. “Who knew they were here in such numbers?”
“I did,” Listen said in a flat voice. “And my reports from the various scouting missions mentioned it specifically.”
“Mind your tongue, you jumped-up bed boy,” the Fomor snarled.
“Enough,” Ethniu said in a tone that made me clench up a little. When she spoke again, it was in her usual voice. “Captain Listen, the fortress is yours. Suppress it until such time as Corb and I have destroyed Mab. Once she is no more, I will reduce the fortress.”
“We attack!” Corb said, his tone enormously self-satisfied.
“Unwise,” Listen said.
“Time flees from us,” Ethniu replied. “Risks must be taken. I need someone competent on the fortress.”
“What?” Corb said.
“She said she needed someone competent,” Listen replied, in a polite, helpful voice.
“Prepare your warbands, King Corb,” Ethniu said in a placating tone. “We will destroy Mab together, and your people will have their vengeance upon the Sidhe.”
Corb made a sound that would have been more appropriate coming from a teakettle. Then he stalked away, followed by a retinue of Fomor as his personal bodyguards.
“He will kill you in your sleep one night,” Ethniu predicted.
“I’ll be waiting for him,” Listen replied.
“For a mortal, you are uncommonly capable—and insouciant,” Ethniu said. “If I did not need you for later, I might kill you myself.”
“But you do need me,” Listen said calmly. “And you haven’t got anyone else as good as me.”
“I find it pleasant to have the service of someone who can think,” the Titan replied. “Yet you are mortal. One is much like another.”
“How many starborn are there wandering about, this close to the endga—” Listen’s voice broke off abruptly. “Sergeant, I want a light on that mound of rubble, right now.”
The world blurred as Grimalkin moved, and gunfire roared painfully loud and near—
* * *
* * *
Gunfire crackled out in the haze somewhere, and I staggered and nearly fell as I found myself back in my own body fully once more.
Grimalkin? I thought.
Not now, Knight, came the pained and furious reply.
Mab? I thought, experimentally.
I heard, my Knight, came Mab’s voice, throbbing in the vaults of my mind. It would be ideal were you in position behind Ethniu when the time comes.
I ground my teeth. You don’t ask for much, do you?
Whinging does not become the Winter Knight, Mab said.
Listen and his people will wipe my volunteers out if I leave them.
Mab’s mental hiss was painful. They will also die if Ethniu is not defeated, along with your city. There is no time for arguments. Choose.
Dammit.
Mab’s logic was cold and inhuman.
And it wasn’t wrong.
“Get me Sanya,” I snarled.
The Russian showed up a minute later.
“Professionals are coming,” I said. “Bad guys.”
Sanya couldn’t really blanch very well, but I saw him swallow. “Bozhe moi.”
“Good news is, they’re pretty conventional,” I said. “Bad news is that it’s Listen running them. He’s smart. Smart enough to have been running various operations for the Fomor in Chicago for freaking years, as a front for scouting the place out for tonight.”
Sanya lowered his voice. “I cannot hold this place with these people. Not for long.”
“Hopefully, you won’t have to,” I said. “You don’t need to fight so much as survive for a little wh—”
My head snapped back as a sledgehammer swung by someone on a speeding train hit me right in the middle of my forehead. I staggered.
One of my volunteers fell from his position. Pretty much all that was left of his head was his mouth and jaw.
“Down!” Sanya screamed. “Heads down!”
Then we heard a number of hollow booms. And, a second later, a chorus of whistling sounds.
“Mortars,” Sanya snarled. “Incoming! Everyone down!”
“Butters!” I shouted.
I took off at a sprint and felt Butters on my heels. The little guy could really move. The training he’d been doing with the Carpenters was serving him well tonight.
I whipped up as much of a veil as I could around us as we ran. It wasn’t going to keep anyone from seeing that something was moving, but as long as we kept moving, it should make it a lot harder to shoot us.
We dashed out of the pavilion as the
mortar shells began to fall among the fortifications, and my people began to scream and die behind us.
Chapter
Twenty-seven
The svartalves had built the earthworks around the pavilion proper, the auditorium and concert hall. The Great Lawn had been stripped down to bare earth and Styrofoam packing in the process. Running across the broken earth was easy enough, except for all the bullets, and since the sidewalks around it had been made to be even with the lawn at its usual level, it meant that we had to hop up about three and a half feet onto the sidewalks to get back up to the park’s “ground level.”
We got lucky with the bullets, or at least we didn’t get unlucky. The shimmering field of the veil around us made us look like blurs in the air, maybe a little bit more obvious than a Predator. Between the veil and the pall of smoke and dust, trying to actually aim at any specific point on our bodies was hopeless, and the dimly seen enemy was mainly focused on dropping mortar shells on the earthworks. They couldn’t get enough guns pointed at us to simply fill the air with lead, not in the few seconds we were in the open and running, though the weight of enemy fire increased with every step.
I hit the ground with my staff and vaulted up to the ground level of the park, sliding on concrete for a few yards before springing up and continuing. Butters just jumped, hit the edge of the sidewalk at about belt level, and scrambled up with the agility of someone with a higher power-to-mass ratio than his build would suggest.
We sprinted forward, through the trees and onto the concrete in the square around the Bean.
“Friendlies!” I shouted into the haze, as the vague forms of the Winter cohort resolved themselves into the shapes of the ranks of armored Sidhe.
The entire formation snapped into battle posture, shields rising, knees bending, weapons lifted, when we appeared, and it did not relax from it as we approached. I dropped the veil as we did, and slowed my pace to a swift walk as I reached the ranks and plunged through, sword tips just barely moving out of my way.