Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

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 still 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.