Battle Ground

by Jim Butcher

  The mortal man holding that blade met the Titan’s fury.

  And he would not be moved.

  Like a rock in the sea he stood, as a tide of power crashed against him. The light could have struck anyone too near it blind through its sheer intensity. The heat ripped and tore the earth around him, rendering the ground down to bare earth in a furious flood of energetic violence. For the space of seven slow heartbeats, Butters stood before that tide, gripping the Sword, and the light and fury and shadow and flying debris formed a shape in the air behind him, of a tall, indistinct form that folded graceful wings around him like an eagle protecting her young from the rain.

  Then, like even the most terrible, hungry tide, that power passed.

  And an utter silence fell.

  Untouched in the center of a circle of destruction stood the Knight of Faith, shining in the white light of Fidelacchius, and that fire had done nothing but leave him untarnished and clean, dirt and grime and impurity burned away while he was left untouched, his white cloak stirred by the heat rising from the ground around him, his dark eyes glittering with determination behind his goofy sports goggles.

  Ethniu only stared.

  “You know what?” Butters said, and in the center of what looked like the end of the world, his merely human voice sounded, not epic, not mighty, not bold—not even scared or angry. He merely sounded . . . normal. Human.

  And if there was anything in the universe more defiant of the world the Titan was creating than that, I couldn’t have imagined what it might be.

  Butters nodded thoughtfully and said, “I believe you aren’t as tough as you think you are.”

  Ethniu’s lips peeled back in a contemptuous smile. “Behold your champions, the young gods, the forces of your world, lying helpless upon the ground, mortal.”

  Butters looked around and nodded. And then he said, “You know who’s come out ahead of every one of these guys at one time or another?” he said, and jerked his chin over his shoulder toward me. “Harry Dresden. You haven’t killed him yet.” Butters lifted the Sword again and his voice hardened. “And as long as I’m standing here, you aren’t going to.”

  The Titan’s eyes narrowed in sheer hatred. “Little. Man. Do you think you can stop me alone?”

  “It’s not about me,” Butters said. “And I’m not alone.”

  “Look around you, fool.”

  I heard the smile come into his voice, though it grew no less hard. “I. Am not. Alone.”

  I shed a tear for Butters and his courage.

  But the Titan was right.

  The horn of the Jotnar, of doom, sounded again, nearby. It was the sound of my city’s death.

  I saw a massive silhouette appear in the haze bordering the south side of the park.

  Ethniu glanced that way, then turned back to us, contempt scorching the edges of her smile.

  But the fool, the Knight of Faith, held his ground.

  And it turned out that I was wrong, and the fool was right.

  Sometimes that’s all faith is.

  Sometimes that’s enough.

  The enormous form in the haze dwindled with the rapidity of a backlit shadow, and suddenly River Shoulders staggered out of the pall of destruction into the clear air of the park. His old tuxedo had been torn away completely. One of his shoulders hung as if dislocated, and his fur was singed and matted the grey of falling ash, darkened in places with blood. But he’d apparently found his spectacles, and one of their lenses was sharply cracked.

  And over his good shoulder, he lugged the horn of a Jotun.

  The Sasquatch’s gaze swept around the park and his expression lit with an abrupt fierceness. The enormous muscles of his arm bulged and strained and hauled the horn into position, and he blew three long, wailing blasts from the instrument that shook the air with the clarity of their tone and sent fresh cracks spreading through the bone of the horn.

  And in response, there was a throaty roar from beyond the wall of vision-obscuring haze, and golden white light suddenly burned the pall away.

  From the south rose a light like the first of morning, as if a star had fallen to the street level. There was a flutter of silver motion, and then standing atop an abandoned refrigerated truck was the breath of dawn in the shape of something like a horse. Rivers of light poured from it like water in the shape of its mane and tail, and the sword of light atop its head shone like visible music. Astride his back was Sarissa, the Summer Lady, clad in falling swaths of curling silver hair and random flower petals. She held a staff of living wood covered in freshly bloomed flowers—and tipped with a copper spearhead stained with blood.

  Seated behind her was an armored figure bearing a flaming sword. Fix, the Summer Knight, my opposite number. As the Summer unicorn stirred and reared, forehooves flashing color, he lifted the sword in defiance.

  At the same time, the Summer Lady threw back her head and let out a scream that was a single vibrating note, and a column of glorious golden light suddenly burned a hole in the haze and the cloud cover, turning the few remaining raindrops to spectrum-shattered mist and steam.

  From the desperate clash of battle came an answering shriek—and a column of cold, defiant blue light rose into the night, centered on the darting, tireless form of the Winter Lady.

  Movement stirred around the truck at ground level.

  And the Baron of Chicago led the way.

  Marcone strode into the light and clarity provided by the Summer Lady and came forward as though he meant to walk through a steel wall. He had shed his suit jacket in exchange for a pair of freaking pirate bandoliers hung with, I kid you not, what looked like seventeen or eighteen flintlock weapons—and he was carrying one in either hand.

  To his right was Hendricks, dressed in a mix of tactical gear and what looked like samurai armor, carrying one of those automatic shotguns in one hand and a broadsword in the other. To his left, Gard strode along in silver armor that gleamed even when there wasn’t any light shining on it, over a mail coat that flowed like silk rather than steel. She carried her battle-axe in her hands, its blade shining with the power of glowing runes, so bright they left afterimages blurred into my vision. The two champions followed Marcone.

  And I could feel, from there, the banner of his will streaming behind him.

  Following in his wake came hundreds of Einherjaren, including that poor bastard on guard duty whom Lara had taken out, looking furious and still a little blurry with apparent drink. With them came Marcone’s troubleshooters, cold professionals whose job it was to find trouble—and shoot it. Behind them came the svartalves, or what I presumed were the svartalves—a block of troops that were kitted out for war in some kind of armor that had a veil built into every suit, so that the figures were mostly just blurs in the air about the right height to be a svartalf.

  With them marched LaChaise and his ghouls, giggling like drunks, all of them gathered like an honor guard around an open space in which whirled a number of heavy objects, as if they had been moons captured in the gravity field of some small, incredibly dense planetoid—and at the center of that deadly spinning atomic model of whirling junk marched a slim figure that I presumed to be the Archive.

  They came into the open and Marcone broke into a slow jog, and, following his banner, those coming behind him fell into step in unison. More figures came. And more. And more.

  Spreading out to the right of Marcone’s group came the White Council of Wizardry. My grandfather, the Blackstaff, led the way, the left side of his body shrouded in a deathly shadow that made me feel cold to look upon. On his right marched my friend Ramirez, grim and battered as hell, but keeping the pace, his silver Warden’s blade in hand. Cristos kept on his left, and the earth quivered around him as if some kind of heavy machinery was running wherever he walked. And overhead, I heard an eagle’s cry, and the sky rumbled with thunder in response. Listens-to-Wind was stil
l in. Behind them marched a column of Wardens, grim men and women in grey cloaks, bearing staves and silver swords in their hands.

  On Marcone’s other flank was a crew of ghostly white figures, covered in cloaks and shrouds of some kind of filmy white cloth and moving with inhuman grace. I felt the Winter mantle tug toward those figures in a movement of pure hunger, now that Lara and her people had also come to the fray.

  And behind them came people. Just people. Hundreds of them, armed with shotguns of the exact same make as the ones that had been stored in the Bean, hundreds of them following the banner of the Baron of Chicago’s will, frightened and furious and coming to destroy those who had brought death to their homes, who had challenged their territory, their very right to be.

  I stared.

  Hell’s bells.

  Marcone had rallied whatever troops he had left after the fight with the Jotnar. He had gathered his people together and then had to have circled down to help the southern defenses at the svartalf embassy. He must have gathered up a following much like I had—and he’d been able to arm them, and brought them sweeping unexpectedly to the aid of the southern defense.

  Who had then been free to come help us in turn.

  And now the enclosing arms of that force were about to spill directly onto the Fomor’s legion as they blindly encircled the Winter Lady, hungry to destroy her.

  Marcone, at the front of his own army, supported by some of the most powerful beings it had been my pleasure or misfortune to encounter, lifted one of those damned old guns, aimed it at Ethniu, and pulled the trigger.

  And he got lucky. There was a sudden buzz-thump, and the Titan twitched as sparks flew from her armor.

  The Baron of Chicago dropped the gun, drew another, and lifted his chin in sheer defiance.

  And the Titan’s face twisted in utter fury.

  “What?” she spat, so furious that spittle flew from her lips and spilled between her teeth, burning the ground where it fell. She twisted in place, feet scraping the earth like a furious child’s, only more apocalyptic, and Butters flinched in physical pain at the sheer rage and hatred in the Titan’s voice. “These mortal beasts. These worms. I will grind that man’s teeth to dust beneath my heel.”

  It was seeing that helpless fury that had taken her, that frustration and rage that did it, I think. I’d felt that way before. And I could handle it way better than she could. I had seen the Titan’s weakness: She had the vices of her virtues.

  In a way, it wasn’t her fault. Ethniu was an elemental being, a primal force of the universe. Such beings had been meant to shape worlds from raw matter, not to cope with their wills being frustrated. Her own personal power meant that she could demand and get her way in nearly every circumstance.

  But when she found a circumstance that wasn’t like the others, she was confounded. She had been able to make things happen her way for so long, she was not used to coping with opposition, had grown rigid in her habit of victory. She never needed the reflexes to deal with an agile opponent, with adversity, with unpredictability. She reacted to them the way a child would, confronting such obstacles for the very first time.

  She spent precious seconds throwing a tantrum.

  And hope rekindled and flickered to life.

  Just this little light inside. That made everything matter again.

  That reminded me that I had a job to do.

  “Heh,” I cackled. “Heh. Heh, heh, heh, heheheheheheh.” My voice came out creaky and cracking, but genuinely amused. “You noob.”

  Ethniu glared at me, and my heart skipped a little beat. Because fear was a thing again, too. Fear that I might still lose this fight.

  Because I knew that I could still win.

  Marcone’s shot had evidently been the signal to charge. The Baron of Chicago and his forces broke into a run, their voices rising in fury as they came, the earth trembling, white-shrouded vampires leaping as if on wires through the tide of light and resolution flooding from the Summer Lady’s beacon, the unseen battle of minds and wills being waged every bit as viciously as the physical conflict unfolding before me.

  If the newly arrived allied force hit the Fomor legions before order had been brought upon them, Marcone’s charge would shatter them.

  “Don’t let her get to the Fomor!” I shouted.

  Ethniu swept the spear at the earth between her and Butters, and another bolt of lightning howled from it—not at Butters, but at the ground itself, rending the earth between us and sending a truckload of torn ground flying at Butters and me. I covered my head with my arms and felt glad I was wearing the spellbound coat. It meant I had just collected a new round of bruises instead of broken bones. By the time I lowered my arms, Ethniu was on the last few degrees of arc on a fifty-yard leap that had carried her to the rear of the Fomor army, where she slammed the haft of her stolen spear into the ground and instantly arrested the attention of the surrounding Fomor troops. Her will flared out to enfold all of those around her, and they turned at once in lockstep, hundreds of the heavily armored warriors of the Fomor turning to face the Baron’s charge.

  The return to myself had meant the return of input from my own banner. I had one hundred and eighty-seven people still in the fight, most of them wounded.

  And, from the battered ruin of the earthworks around the auditorium, there was a sudden flood of light, as Esperacchius appeared on the walls, along with a sudden ragged roar of defiance, and I realized with a start that when I had swamped Listen and his troops, I had also taken the pressure off the fortress.

  I shoved myself to my feet, found my staff, and shouted, “Butters!”

  “Here,” came his voice, panting and pained but game.

  The white-shrouded forms bounded through the air in graceful arcs and suddenly blurred in all directions as the Baron’s army closed with the enemy, a dizzying display as the two masses crushed together.

  “Come on!” I shouted.

  “Where?”

  I pointed at the clashing armies.

  “What!?”

  “Marcone gave us a shot,” I said. “But if she kills him, his banner falls, and the people behind him will scatter. Then it’s an army of them against a few of us. Then we all die.” I gripped his shoulder and felt myself giving him the crazy grin, the one I know I get sometimes.

  And with my other hand, I grabbed the handle of the knife.

  It was time.

  The heartbeat of the city, panicked and furious, flooded through me.

  Butters’s eyes got a little whiter.

  I pointed at the army and said, “Cut me a way through there.”

  Butters looked at me. Then at the armies clashing. Then at me again.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Why not?”

  We didn’t charge into the fray so much as aggressively shamble.

  But into the fray we went.

  Chapter

  Thirty-two

  What came next was . . .

  Look. I’ve been in a few fights. I even did my bit in a war.

  None of it was like this.

  What I remember most was how unsteady the ground was. The earth had been torn to dirt by the forces brought to bear upon it, and then doused in rain so dense it needed a new word to describe it. Then thousands of beings started fighting to the death on top of it.

  The ground was a mixture of terrain so slippery you couldn’t get your foot planted, terrain so boggy you couldn’t tear your foot back out of it again, blood, and the fallen bodies of the wounded, the dying, and the dead, mixed liberally together.

  The hell of it was, the most solid place to put your feet was on the fallen.

  It would have been a hell of a workout, moving across that field, even if no one had been trying to kill us. But there was a war on—and outside of a few tightly gathered knots of troops around Marcone, Ethniu, Corb, and Molly, there was no order
to be had at all. No real lines to speak of, no uniforms—just pure pandemonium.

  Fifty yards away, I heard River Shoulders roaring in fury, a sound that stunned and weakened friend and foe alike around him—but since he was concentrating only upon tearing the Fomor literal limb from limb, it worked out pretty well for his friends. Parts were flying into the air where the Sasquatch rampaged, and his presence on the field sent the enemy fleeing in terror, or at least in search of easier foes.

  From the remains of the fortress, Sanya lifted his Sword and led my people forward into the fight. Even though they were battered and bleeding, the Knight had recognized that the matter would be settled in the next few moments, and the light of Esperacchius led a wedge of my people directly toward Ethniu, a rare knot of coordination in the melee, a fragile arrow aimed at the enemy’s heart.

  Then we were in the thick of it, and all I could see were struggling, mud-covered bodies. Frequently, it was impossible to tell friend from foe.

  For everyone but Waldo Butters.

  I don’t know how, but the little guy went through that fight, the chaos and horror and filth—and none of it so much as touched him. When his feet hit the cloggy parts of the ground, he was so little that he had no trouble getting out again. On the slippery bits, his feet and balance shifted, legs taking the motion as naturally as a pro skateboarder out goofing around, and I recognized someone operating on something like angelic intellectus when I saw it, though I doubted Butters was even aware that he was doing it.

  The Knight of Faith had decided where he needed to go. Mere physics would not be enough to gainsay him.