Battle Ground

by Jim Butcher

  I hit Mab and carried her off the back of the doomed unicorn.

  Two spears hit me. One of them in the small of my back, and one of them directly in the center of my right butt cheek. The damned things were heavy enough to carry considerable force, and while my duster stopped their jagged ends from spearing right through me, it couldn’t do nearly as much for the pain of the impact, and half of my body vanished beneath a cloud of tactile white noise as the Winter mantle masked the pain.

  I came down on top of Mab and sudden, hot, scarlet blood sprayed against me.

  I lifted myself off her rag-doll-limp body, even as I felt another powerful wave of earth magic building.

  The Queen of Air and Darkness stared up at me with wide, glassy, grass green eyes.

  Three feet of bloodied cold iron stood clear from the center of her torn, spraying throat.

  “Butters!” I screamed.

  I grabbed Mab by the nearest handle, her hair, and dragged her into the shelter offered by the body of the screaming unicorn thrashing weakly on the ground, just as another tsunami of metal spears flew our way.

  I fell over her as much as I could and heard the spears thwacking into the unicorn, which ceased its thrashing and screaming, and into the earth all around us.

  The haze was suddenly burned away in a circle around us as the Sword of Faith sprang to life, its fire singing in angry angelic chords. Butters advanced, whirling the Sword rondello style, slashing spears out of the air with shrieks of protesting metal.

  He reached my side, threw himself down behind the dead unicorn, and took one look at Mab.

  “Jesus,” he blurted. “Again?”

  “Shut up and get it out of her neck,” I said.

  “Harry, there’s no point.”

  Mab’s green eyes tracked to Butters and narrowed.

  “She’s immortal, dummy,” I snapped. “Get the rebar out of her and she’ll be fine.”

  A dank, fetid wind that smelled of swamps and decomposition began to blow from the east. The haze around us began to clear.

  “Dammit,” I snarled. “Don’t get cute with it. Just rip it out of her neck.”

  “I could use a little help here.”

  I checked behind us. I was staring at a bamboo forest of cold steel, rebar standing sharply up from the ground. Twenty or thirty of the Sidhe had been killed outright. The rest were nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t even feel the Winter forces under my command through the banner. The forest of steel had cut me off from them.

  More whistles and explosions came from the fortress. We were taking heavy casualties, and I could feel the mortals who had followed me. We were down to five hundred and eleven men and women, all of them terrified, their heads down, praying for survival.

  And I could see long, lanky shapes approaching through the haze, flickering bubbles of sorcery glowing around them.

  A dozen Fomor sorcerers were walking straight toward us.

  “I’ve got to talk to some people about some things,” I said. “You’re on your own, man. Hurry.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-eight

  Magical duels are about two things: anticipation and imagination. When you’re up against someone who literally wields the leftover power of Creation itself, they can bring forth damned near anything they can imagine with which to attack you. If you haven’t considered their attack and imagined a way to counter it, you lose. It’s that simple.

  Fully a quarter of my training with my safely dead mentor, Justin DuMorne, had been in magical duels. The man had been grooming me to be his attack dog, and he played hardball. When it came to trading magical punches, I knew what I was doing. Anyone on the level of the Senior Council could probably hand me my ass, but they’d know they’d been in a fight, even so.

  One-on-one, I was a beast.

  Twelve-on-one, nobody is a beast.

  I checked on Butters. He had extended the blade of Fidelacchius again, this time only a few inches, and was lifting Mab by her head. The head of the length of rebar had been shaped into a hooked point, like a harpoon, only duller. Had he tried to pull it out, he would have had to rip most of Mab’s neck open along with it, and I can’t imagine that would have been good for her combat effectiveness, immortal or not. Instead, he sliced it away as easily as a seamstress snips a thread, before beginning to lower Mab’s head again.

  I let myself look concerned, drew in a breath and my power, and waited.

  The Fomor Sorcerers’ Club chose to attack me when I looked distracted. I mean, who wouldn’t, but especially these jerks.

  Predictable.

  They lobbed those bilious green spheres of acid at me.

  I spun toward them, my hand lifted, fingers spread, and pulled out an old one. I sent forth my power in the same moment that I drew on the silent gale of magic in the air, shouting, “Ventas servitas!”

  On an ordinary night, the gale that my spell conjured would have been able to toss furniture around a room.

  Tonight, I could have tossed furniture trucks.

  The gale caught the spheres in midair, hurtling them back toward their origins on a nearly flat trajectory. The FSC was pretty good. Of the dozen orbs, eleven of their creators were quick enough to unravel the spell that held the acid in its sphere, which the furious gale promptly atomized and dispersed over an area too large to remain dangerous.

  That twelfth, guy, though. Maybe he was somebody’s nephew, because he didn’t figure out that his own spell was coming back at him until it broke on his chin.

  As endings went that night, his didn’t make the top ten. But on any other night, I’d have been impressed at the results. The acid was considerably more destructive to flesh than it had been to steel and concrete. It even turned his square yellow teeth into slurry.

  I dropped the wind spell, struck a cheesy karate pose, and said, “Waaaaaah!” in the style of Bruce Lee. “Which one of you has brought me my nunchucks?”

  My humor is wasted, wasted upon most of the supernatural community. I mean, my God. They really need to get out into the world more. For instance, the FSC hesitated and glanced at one another, as if to ask if anyone had understood me. Or, hell, maybe they were so ignorant of the mighty Bruce Lee that they didn’t even get that it was a joke and were looking for some kind of traitor among themselves.

  In that time, I glanced back at Butters, who was tugging on the other end of the rebar now and seemed to be having little luck. Mab’s flesh had engulfed the rebar tightly enough to form a vacuum seal, and Butters was having a hell of a time getting it out.

  “Boot to the head!” I shouted at Butters.

  He blinked, and said, “Nah, nah?”

  “Augh, you nerd!”

  The FSC had decided to stop worrying about whatever I’d had to say, meanwhile. They turned their focus on me again, and I felt them gathering power to strike—and they wouldn’t go with the same attack a second time.

  I shook out my shield bracelet, sending power coursing into it, building up layers of magical defenses in a half-dome shape in front of me. My shield bracelet went scorching hot almost instantly: Even if I’d had the additional magical fuel from all the power in the air, the tool wasn’t designed to handle all the extra juice—but it was my only chance of surviving a strike from all of them.

  “Boot to the head!” I shouted again.

  “Nah, nah?” Butters sang back tentatively.

  “No, dammit!” I screamed. “Boot! Head!” I lifted a foot and waved it.

  Butters’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. And then went a bit wider in pure intimidation.

  The FSC struck at me with black lightning in staggered bursts. The bolts rained in like a thunderstorm, irregular and savage, spaced maybe half a second apart. I stumbled, fell to a knee, and poured everything I could into the shield, and for a few seconds the world was blinding, deafening fury.


  When it passed, my shield bracelet was actually glowing red-hot at the edges, and I could smell my own scorched hair and flesh, even if I didn’t feel much of it. (I still felt the burn Butters had given me, though. That one wasn’t stopping.) Except for a half circle in front of me, the concrete was seared black for ten feet in every direction—the burn’s end was precisely described by the glowing edge of my shield. There was no sound, no sound at all, other than this ringing sensation in my skull.

  I looked drunkenly back at Butters.

  The little guy stood, put his boot on Mab’s forehead, grabbed the rebar with both hands, and strained to tear it out of her neck.

  Mab’s thin body arched in silent agony.

  The rebar began to slide, slowly at first, as Butters threw his whole weight into it, and then suddenly tore free. Butters went sprawling to one side.

  Mab’s lips moved, and her voice sounded clearly inside my head, even though I couldn’t hear anything else. “Finally.”

  She rose, just levitated the hell up, stiff as a board, like in the old vampire movies, her hair and battle mail covered in blood, and as she did, she lifted her left hand—and suddenly squeezed it into a fist.

  The surge of magic that came out of her was so dense, so intense, that it sent several pieces of stray Styrofoam fill nearby spiraling into the air on what looked like a helical sine wave around her. I looked back at the FSC. The Fomor sorcerer on the left end of the line . . . just sort of . . .

  Did you ever squeeze a handful of red Play-Doh?

  It was like that.

  The Fomor sorcerer hovered suspended, maybe a foot above the sudden large splatter of blood on the ground.

  Mab turned her head to the next sorcerer in the row and flicked her wrist.

  The remains of the first Fomor went flying at the next sorcerer in the line at maybe five hundred meters per second. The impact was . . . really, really messy. And confusing.

  Mab turned to the next Fomor sorcerer, her eyes cold.

  The FSC turned out to be smart enough to know when they were outclassed. And they were outclassed. Mab’s magic had crushed their defenses like empty beer cans. They turned to run, vanishing behind veils as they went.

  Mab watched them flee. Then she turned, still cold, and stalked over to Butters.

  The little guy popped up to his feet and gave me a beseeching look.

  “It would appear that we are in your debt, Sir Doctor Butters,” Mab said. Her voice came to me dimly now. It was ragged and rough, though it grew smoother by the word. The wound on her neck was already nothing more than an angry scar, lightening even as I observed it. The tread of Butters’s boot stood out in blood on her forehead. “Should we both survive the battle, in need you may call our name. We will answer.”

  Her hands flashed out and seized Butters’s white cloak.

  The Knight stiffened. Judging by his hair, he was about two breaths away from panic.

  Mab calmly lifted the cloak to the hem and tore off two large squares.

  Butters looked at me with wide eyes. I made a “go easy” gesture toward him with one hand and with the other put my forefinger over my lips.

  The little guy swallowed and nodded.

  Hey, Butters has got way more guts than sense. But he wasn’t crazy. Mab offering you a favor was an even scarier concept than Mab herself was, generally.

  “Do you find it acceptable repayment?” Mab asked.

  Butters gave her a jerky nod, without speaking.

  “Excellent. Done.” Mab turned to the fallen Winter unicorn and, using the fabric torn from Butters’s cloak like potholders, began drawing rebar spears from the creature’s broken body. There was nothing tentative about her motions: They were workmanlike, and she removed the impaling steel with superhuman ease. To my shock, the creature started thrashing and screaming again after a few of the lengths of steel came out, and upon the last one being removed, it heaved its way to its feet, shaking its head and trumpeting in outrage.

  So the scary horse was immortal, too. Check.

  Mab vaulted to the unicorn’s back with about as much effort as I used to fall into bed, and said, “ ’Ware,” before snapping her fingers.

  All of her blood that had been scattered around, and the unicorn’s, too, abruptly went up into heat and light like flash paper. It left my face and part of my neck seared as if by a sunburn. Butters very briefly managed a Human Torch impersonation and whirled on Mab in shock, the skin of his forehead and cheeks and hands as red as if he’d had them soaking in hot water. “What? Why?”

  “I warned you,” Mab said calmly.

  “She can’t leave her blood lying around,” I said. “Corb and his people use magic. If they get their hands on it, it’d be bad.”

  Butters frowned. He knew a lot more about how magic worked than most people. He was something of a neophyte at sorcery himself, and could manage a few fundamentals, and I could see him running through the possibilities of someone getting a magical handle on Mab through her blood. “Even her?”

  “It is foolish for most to attempt to chain a tigress,” Mab said. Her wide eyes swiveled to me. “Yet chains can be forged—and tigresses can be caged.”

  “Kind of a solid rule, man,” I said. “Doesn’t matter how big something is. If it bleeds, you can bind it.”

  Butters surreptitiously examined his own hands, presumably for any leaking cuts.

  Mab showed her teeth and said, “Indeed.”

  The chittering clicks in the haze ahead of us rose to a crescendo and then suddenly stopped.

  So did the fire falling on the fortifications.

  The night air changed.

  It stilled.

  Everything went completely silent and heavy. Sounds suddenly became immediate, close things, like on a winter night in falling snow.

  The unicorn threw its head back and shook its mane. Mab laid a hand upon the creature’s neck and shivered, leaning forward, her eyes brighter than stars.

  “Ahhhhh,” she said in a slow, sensual exhalation, barely more than a whisper. “Now we come to it.”

  I swallowed and kept my voice low. “She’s here?”

  Mab narrowed her eyes, as if peering through the haze. “The Titan and her”—she glanced aside at me—“frog prince.”

  “How tough is Corb?” I asked.

  “I have heard it said that it is not his destiny to perish before the deepest ocean meets the sun.”

  “Fuck destiny,” I said. “Maybe I’ll free will his ass. How tough?”

  Mab’s teeth showed. “He is your better in power, your better in experience, and your better in treachery.”

  “But I bet he doesn’t have as many friends as me,” I said.

  I held out my fist without looking.

  Butters rapped his knuckles against mine without looking, either.

  “Mortal wizards,” Mab sighed. “Forever meddling in things you do not comprehend.”

  I dredged up a quote from someone I rarely agreed with about anything. “What’s the point of free will, if not to spit in the eye of destiny?”

  “How to phrase this so you will understand,” Mab said calmly, facing the night. “Ah. Destiny is a . . . stone-cold bitch.”

  Which, given the source, was really saying something.

  “There are always consequences, wizard,” Mab continued. “Always a price to pay, to create a new branching of the universe, to bend the course of the great river.”

  The haze of dust and smoke before us suddenly glared scarlet.

  And then, like a curtain, it parted. Just unreeled away from the entirety of Millennium Park, leaving the air clear and clean, so that we could see plainly what was going on.

  “Oh,” Butters breathed. “Oh crap.”

  I swallowed and didn’t say anything.

  I could see the fortificat
ions clearly. One of the walls had slumped inward rather badly, so that I could see the actual amphitheater stage. I carefully allowed input from the banner, and it made my entire body ache with empathy at the sheer number of wounds my people had sustained. Only three hundred and ninety-eight of the volunteers were still alive. Of eleven hundred and eighty-seven, barely a third remained. Most of them were wounded. All of them were terrified.

  Behind us, the forest of rebar was still blocking our retreat in a half circle maybe forty yards across. Beyond that seemed to be nothing more than an empty park. The Sidhe cohort had deserted the field, and I could sense the Winter creatures through the banner, staying out of sight, wary of showing themselves in the now-cleared air.

  There were some wounded in sight, of both sides, struggling weakly on the field where they’d fallen.

  But for all practical purposes, the only ones still standing were me, Butters, and Mab on her nightmare unicorn.

  Four of us.

  And across the field from us stood the enemy.

  Even counting the casualties Mab and her cohort had inflicted, we were outnumbered maybe twelve hundred to one, and that was if you included the unicorn. And even as I watched, the enemy cheated again. Veils shimmered out of existence, revealing more warbands gathered around their banners, mostly of those heavily armored ape-looking things. We’d thought the enemy had come with about seven thousand bad guys. It looked like they’d managed to conceal another three or four thousand of their hardened troops from us.

  I didn’t know the specific numbers in the moment. That came later. I just knew that they’d added a couple of hundred yards’ worth of ugly to the block of bad guys facing us.

  “Wow,” Butters said quietly. His voice was flattened, numbed. “Sure are a lot of them.”

  “It only looks like that because they’re all in the same place, standing close together,” I said.

  Butters eyed me. “Yeah. That’s probably it.”

  All that fighting hadn’t been enough.