Battle Ground

by Jim Butcher

  Footsteps began to sound in the haze nearby, along with desperate clicking noises.

  I grabbed up the Eye and dumped it in my duster’s pocket. Then I reached up and unlatched and unscrewed the dagger from the end of my staff, sticking it back in its sheath at my hip. There was a sense of frustration from the weapon, as I undid it, but the throbbing power behind the blade eased and quieted.

  Then I slopped up a veil that would do and shambled back up the rock-and-gravel beach to the street level of the city. I staggered to one side and sat down on a bench and watched as the coalition led by Baron Marcone and the Winter Lady drove the Fomor legions from the field—first in a trickle, and then in a wave.

  I was too exhausted to do anything but sit there as the enemy was driven away—and the rest of my team wasn’t much better off than I was. Once the defenders had driven the foe to the waterfront, they staggered to an exhausted stop themselves, casting weary cheers and jeers after the fleeing foe, and swiping with exhausted, halfhearted energy at the enemies who were still fleeing past them.

  It was odd seeing citizens of Chicago, armed with baseball bats and shotguns and whatever else had been at hand, standing shoulder to shoulder with armored warriors of Winter, even the high-and-mighty Sidhe, shouting defiance and scorn in unison at the fleeing foe.

  And then we all heard it together.

  Whupwhupwhupwhupwhupwhupwhupwhup.

  We’d all heard choppers coming before. But not like this. This was magnified tenfold over anything I’d heard from the machines. This sounded more like weather.

  Our side immediately began withdrawing from the shoreline, and the enemy broke into a desperate sprint for the water. I saw King Corb and his retinue leading the way, mainly because they blasted to death any of their own people too slow to clear their path and leapt over their bodies. They hit the water maybe ten seconds before the cavalry came.

  It was just poetry that the broken overcast had begun to lighten out over the lake, and that the first rays of dawn turned the eastern horizon to a band of gold.

  The enemy did their best to get away—but the very destruction they’d leveled in order to come ashore laid them bare to the guns of the Apache attack ships that came overhead. Those big cannons under their chins started going chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk, like a thundercloud playing steel percussion. Explosions started ripping through the Fomor as they tried to flee.

  What came next was every bit as hideous and savage and thorough as anything that had happened that evening.

  But it was a lot more impersonal.

  That cavalry unit swept the “beach” clean. Which was an odd turn of phrase to use, given what a mess they made of it. By the time they were done, everyone there looked like they had gone through a food processor.

  I bore witness, too tired to care about the odd clatter of shrapnel that came near. Then I turned my back on it and started slogging my way back toward the Bean.

  There would be a lot of people in uniforms asking questions soon. I wanted to get Murph clear of them.

  As I walked, a gentle, steady rain began. At first, it almost seemed black—even with what had already fallen, there was so much particulate matter in the air that the rain literally came down muddy. But after a few moments, that lessened, and then the water began to fall clean over the war-torn city.

  I stopped for a moment and let it fall over me, too, with my eyes closed.

  When I opened them, a pair of large wolves sat on the street in front of me, and I realized they’d been standing guard. The bulkier of the two looked at me with obvious relief. The taller and leaner came and leaned against my side a little.

  Will and Georgia had come through okay.

  We all walked together toward the Bean.

  There were knots of order, here and there, of the city beginning to lurch into motion again as the light began to gather. A group of EMTs and medics had arrived and established a triage station for the injured. They were working frantically to save the wounded defenders of the city. I saw Lamar crouching down beside a dazed-looking Ramirez, pressing a bottle of water into the Warden’s hands as medics bundled Ebenezar onto a stretcher. I saw my grandfather wave a vague, irritated hand at a medic trying to press an oxygen mask over his mouth, and part of me sagged in relief that my friend and the crusty old bastard had survived.

  There were plenty of wounded to work with. They were piling them up around the base of the Bean.

  “Harry!” boomed Sanya as I approached. He waved an arm from where he’d been stretched out on the concrete with what was obviously a pair of broken legs to go with his other injuries. “There, you see? Next time, we know better! Make better plan!”

  I slogged over to him with my furry escort. Butters was lying next to Sanya, carefully flat on his back, his arms folded in a funeral pose. There were two more wolves lying on either side of him, and both looked as though they’d tear to pieces anything that tried to harm him.

  “Sir Butters,” I said gravely.

  “Nngh,” Butters said. “My jaw. My back.”

  “Is fine,” Sanya boomed cheerfully. “If it was really bad, you feel nothing at all. Is good, all this pain!”

  Butters squinted at me without moving his head and spoke without taking his teeth apart. “So you got her?”

  “It’s done,” I said.

  “Sweet,” Butters said, and closed his eyes. “I’m going to sleep for a week.”

  “Good, good, you rest until we can find some food,” Sanya told him. “I am starving.”

  “Cheerful for a man in your condition,” I noted, peering at him.

  “We are too alive to not be cheerful, eh, wizard?” He reached up and clapped my forearm. The burned one. Cheerfully.

  I winced. And laughed a little.

  Lara’s people were doing a lot of the work, I realized. The members of the House itself were gathered together over to one side, a good fifty yards from anyone, and the pale glitter of hungry vampire eyes told me why. But her hired help, led by Riley, was assisting with the wounded, sharing out water and sorting those in need of immediate care from those who could wait by the Archive—who sported what looked like a broken nose and radiated a sense of . . . not command, but the tangible, absolute authority wielded by those with sure and certain knowledge in an emergency.

  Well. The living repository of the accumulated knowledge of mankind probably had a real good idea of the most appropriate measures to take in any given emergency. If she told me what to do in this situation, I’d probably listen and pitch in as well.

  I lost track for a bit after that, and found myself seated in the shadow of the Bean, a cup of water in my hands, my staff at my side, the Eye heavy in my pocket. Molly, now wearing what looked like a fireman’s coat, put her fingers under my hands and lifted, nudging the water toward my lips. I drank.

  I looked up at her, coughed out some smoke, and then croaked, “Where’d you hide them? Our family?”

  She glanced at me and then smiled faintly. “Right across the street. Where they could watch the whole thing. Like in Fellowship.”

  “Clever girl,” I said.

  She showed me a vulpine smile.

  “They’re calling you the Eye-Killer,” she said. “Rumors are spreading about how you defeated a Titan.”

  “She had gone through a few sparring partners before she got to me,” I said. “I was just batting cleanup.” I looked around us and said, “Look what we’ve brought upon them, Molls.”

  She looked. There were a lot of hurt people. Most of them bore their pain quietly. A few couldn’t. And a lot of them would never make another sound, except during decomposition.

  “We have to answer for this,” I said quietly. “We have to help. The wounded.” I didn’t look back at the dark opening in the base of the Bean. “The dead. We owe them. You know I’m right.”

  “That could be
a tough sell,” she said in quiet answer.

  “I’m not asking,” I said. “My fealty is a two-way street. I have gone above and beyond my duty to Winter, right in front of God and everybody, by doing what no one else could. Now Winter will respond in kind, by helping as no one else can. You will help them. Every one of them. Do it in secret, no connections. We’ve interfered in their lives enough. This will happen.”

  The Winter Lady gave me a very long, very intent stare.

  And then she shivered and bowed her head.

  “Already you have bound a Titan. And now a Queen. Sometimes,” Molly whispered, “I’m very proud to be your friend, Harry. And sometimes you frighten me.”

  Sometimes I frightened the Winter Lady.

  I shook my head. Molly was soon called away to her royal matters. She had plenty of wounded of her own who needed tending to.

  I looked over at a slight rise in the ground where Mab and Titania stood, their respective unicorns standing nearby. The Winter unicorn was mostly coated in thick mud. The rain was washing it slowly clean. The two Queens simply faced each other, silent.

  I propped my chin in my hand and watched, fascinated.

  “The rain was a kind touch,” Mab said finally. “There were a number of fires it checked.”

  “You understand what has happened,” Titania replied quietly. “What it means.”

  “I expect you to do your duty,” Mab said.

  Titania’s expression flickered in pain. “When have I not?”

  Mab nodded. Titania matched the gesture. Then a warm southern wind blew a curtain of gentle rain around her and the Summer unicorn, and when it faded they were gone.

  Mab walked over to me, moving as if her bones were made of fragile porcelain. She stood staring down at me for a moment.

  “And so. The man who has bound a Titan. What will you do with her, I wonder.”

  I squinted up at Mab. Then snorted. “Leave her buried. Bury her deeper if I can.”

  Mab stared at me. “The creature is bound to you, Warden. Your will can compel her now. The power of a Titan, at your beck and call.”

  Which was true enough, in its way. Ethniu was my prisoner. I could . . . extract service from her. It would be tricky and treacherous as hell, but wizards had done it before, with beings of tremendous supernatural power. It was possible.

  Just . . . massively, massively unwise.

  “My will causes enough trouble,” I said wearily. “Until I get the sense to use it wisely, why don’t we just let sleeping gods lie.”

  I shoved myself to my feet as sturdily as I could.

  “Easy, my Knight,” Mab said quietly, glancing around. “You show weakness.”

  “National Guard is going to be here soon,” I said. “I don’t want to leave Murphy here for them.”

  Mab lifted a hand and physically stopped me from taking a step. “The honored dead will be cared for,” she said. “You have my word on that.”

  Which settled that. When Mab gives her word, it is good. Period.

  “And there is another matter which must be settled ere we are through,” she said.

  I glanced back and saw Lara Raith coming toward me.

  Behind her, in a circle of empty space maybe ten feet across, were Justine and Goodman Grey. The man looked like thirty miles of bad road. His clothes were in rags, and he was covered with bruises that had gone to school and graduated as contusions. One of his eyes was completely shot with red, his nose was broken, and when he snarled at someone who stepped a little too close, he was missing some teeth.

  But no one was getting within an arm’s length of Justine, either.

  “Dresden,” Goodman Grey demanded. “Deed done. Contract over. Here. Delivered, one female, cute, no damage.”

  He gave Justine what could have been a rough push but wasn’t, and she crossed the space to stand beside me, her expression dismayed. “Harry, my God, what have they done to you?”

  “Explain this, Dresden,” Lara Raith snapped. “This lunatic put half a dozen of the security team I had watching her in the hospital.”

  “What?” I said to Grey. “I didn’t hire you for that.”

  “You hired me to make sure she was all right,” Grey spat. “And when the lights went out a bunch of goons went rushing at her apartment.”

  “To get her to safety,” Lara insisted.

  “I didn’t know that!” Grey protested. “Just be glad you’ve still got them. I didn’t have to settle for broken bones, you know.”

  “This creature is your hireling?” Lara demanded of me.

  I fumbled in my pocket and found the envelope with the crumpled, baked dollar. I passed it over to Grey. “I mean. Barely.”

  He snatched the envelope, muttering darkly. “. . . running all over the damned city, fighting every damned thing that popped up, all for a pretty face . . .” He gave me a dark glower, then one for Lara, turned with a limp, nodded politely to Justine, and stalked lopsidedly away.

  Lara was giving me a furious look. “How dare you interfere with the protection of one of my own.”

  “Yeah, well, Thomas wanted me to,” I said. “And she’s one of mine, too. What was I supposed to do?”

  Lara threw her hands in the air and said, as if the word held terrible significance, “Communicate?”

  I spun my finger around at the general everything. “Been a little busy, right?”

  “Oh,” Lara said, glaring at Mab.

  “I did warn you,” Mab said. “He is independently minded. Did he repay you as I ordered?”

  “I mean, barely,” Lara said, imitating my voice but making it sound a lot dumber.

  “Time flies from us,” Mab said. Her gaze shifted to the south. “Mortal armsmen approach.”

  Lara nodded and squared off in front of me, glaring. “I have a request.”

  “Seriously?” I demanded.

  Lara’s eyes hardened. “What you did tonight, Dresden. What you took from me on the island. That should be balanced.”

  My insides went queasy and I lurched a foot to one side.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It should.”

  Lara looked blank for a second, and I think I had said something that actually surprised her. Some of the coldness went out of her eyes as she pointed at Justine. “She wants to see him. You should be the one to take her.”

  I turned to look at Justine. The young woman was wearing pajamas that had been through the hellish cityscape and holding her arms tightly across her chest. She looked exhausted and terrified. She’d been crying at some point recently. “Harry,” she said. “I’m scared. No one will talk about him. Is he . . .”

  “No,” I said. “No. But . . . it’s complicated.” I thought of explaining his condition to her and quailed, but that was just too bad. She deserved to know. I also thought about all the svartalves in their invisible armor and glanced around warily. “And we shouldn’t talk about it in the open.”

  Lara eyed me. And I saw the tension and the damage wrought by the evening’s terror in her face. “Justine has given much to my House,” Lara said. “And I take care of my people. Show her. Now. She’s been kept in the dark long enough. That’s what I ask of you.”

  Again, that vicious pull on the inside. God, I was tired. I wanted to fall over somewhere and cry for a while. Or drink for a while. Or both.

  I wanted to make sure Maggie was all right with my own eyes, my own hands.

  I lifted my lip in a snarl at Lara.

  But then I looked down at Justine, at her weeping eyes.

  I’d done enough harm for one evening.

  Maybe I could help someone a little. Start paying off that karma.

  And suddenly it was too crowded here. There was just too much. The silence of the island sounded wonderful by comparison. And I think I knew where I’d left at least half a bottle of whisk
ey, back in the cabin. I could put the Eye in safe storage with the other artifacts I’d acquired. And it was probably a good idea to check on Alfred and the state of the island’s defenses, after the spirit had exerted itself in such an epic fashion. “Fine,” I said. I glanced at Mab. “But I’m not walking to the boat.”

  “It is a unicorn,” Mab said, “not a . . . ride-sharing service.”

  I sat down and glowered.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Well. That was terrifying,” Justine said a while later. “It wasn’t like being on a horse at all, really. More like . . . riding a living train. That might eat you.”

  We were on the Water Beetle. The Winter unicorn had dropped us off, seething in fury and apparent hunger, and I had gotten the boat going, even as the first hint of dawn began to touch the sky. As the light rose, I saw several other vessels out on the lake. Apparently, fleeing the little-A apocalypse on one had been a valid idea, and there were enough engines sufficiently old and well maintained to have escaped being disabled by the Eye. So that was good. I’d have hated to be the only thing moving and to attract the attention of more helicopters.

  I got the Beetle settled on course and locked her steering there. The gentle rain had continued, washing terror and leftover black magic out of the air. The coming day was going to be a hot one, but with the rain the current temperature was just about perfect. So I shrugged out of my coat and just turned my face up to the sky for a while.

  When I looked down again, Justine was looking up at me from the deck with the first-aid kit. “Harry,” she said, “come into the cabin. We should cover those burns up, at least, so they don’t get infected.”

  She was right. I was just about too tired to understand English, but she sounded pretty right. So I stumped down to the cabin. She took some time to clean and cover the burns on my left forearm. I’d lost my shield bracelet along the way somewhere. Dammit. I’d have to make another. A real one this time.

  I’d need a lab.

  I answered questions mechanically as she worked on me.

  “So he’s alive. He’s safe,” she said.