Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

“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.”