Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

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.