They could see the Puck. That probably helped. It was one thing to defeat the Horned King and claim the helm. That was what made me King, I think. But it helped to have another Power crown you.
“Powers that are,” I breathed.
“Don’t swear by yourself,” the Puck advised. “It’s not a good look.” The projection shivered. “That…took more than I hoped. We’ll meet again, Jason Kilkenny.”
They disappeared and I found myself looking at my Hunt.
Fuck me.
45
The vague sense of distance didn’t fade. Neither did the burning star in my chest. Everyone was staring at me after the Puck disappeared and I slowly moved forward. I could feel the aura of power radiating out from me.
I had never realized that Mabona in full “terrifying goddess” mode was her default. It took effort to suppress that overwhelming aura, and I didn’t even know where to begin.
For now, however, it worked.
“I heard gunfire,” I said. “What happened?”
“The Hunters Silverstar brought with her attacked on some signal we didn’t see,” Riley told me. “The Valkyries stopped them.”
I saw that now. Two troops of the Hunt were disarmed and sitting on their hands, surrounded by the big horses and watched by armed women.
“How bad?” I asked.
“We lost three Companions,” he said grimly. “The shifters took the brunt of it, though, and…”
“And we’re fine,” Mary told me, slipping into the conversation. “Barry was feeling paranoid about the newcomers and put his people closest to them. They weren’t carrying silver.”
And while most shifters lacked the many and varied Gifts of the fae, they were even harder to kill than we were. I took a moment to kiss Mary, trying to put as much reassurance into an embrace and a peck on the lips as I could.
I didn’t know what was going to happen now, but I wasn’t giving her up unless I had to.
She leaned into me, somehow managing to reassure me as I was trying to reassure her.
There was a reason I loved this woman.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Mary stepped back and nodded firmly to me, gesturing for me to keep going.
I walked past everyone to where the Valkyries waited with their prisoners.
“Inga is in the building,” I told them quietly. “Bring her to me. I believe she lived, but I owe her.”
The oldest-looking Valkyrie bowed and disappeared in silence. The rest parted the horses as I approached the prisoners.
“You are traitors to the Hunt and the fae,” I told them gently. “You followed Grainne Silverstar into treachery and turned your arms and Gifts upon your siblings of the Hunt. There are penalties laid out for such things.”
The Cold Death was hard to inflict on a Hunter, but I could sentence the Companions to it. The Hunters we would simply have to execute.
I really didn’t want my first act as Horned King to be a mass execution.
“What do you have to say for yourselves?” I asked. “There will be enough death today, I think. What reason can you give me for mercy?”
There were thirty fae in front of me. I could use every one of them to stand against the assault I knew was coming, but that was only if I could trust them not to shoot us in the back.
They were silent for several long seconds, then one of them coughed.
“We were bound by Fealty,” she said in a thick Irish accent. “We didn’t know what cause she’d chosen until it was too late. Once bound, we cannot defy. You know that.”
I did. If they had been sworn Vassals, they were damned limited in how much they could stand against Silverstar. That would explain why she’d been willing to trust this group with betraying the rest of the Hunt, and left the rest of her loyalists behind.
“And now?” I asked.
“We will not be traitors,” the woman replied. She glanced around at the others. “I will swear Fealty to you as the new Horned King. Be bound, as I was bound before.” She shook her head. “It seems a fair trade for a life.”
I nodded to her and looked at the rest.
“Well?” I said. “I’ll make that offer to you all. Swear Fealty and be bound as my Vassals, and I will spare you the punishment for your crimes. I will grant you the assumption that Silverstar left you no choice.”
There were oaths and formalities I could insist on, that I would have needed an hour before. Now…now I only needed their consent.
And I had it. My power swept over them, releasing the bonds around their wrists and imposing new bonds on their Gifts and their minds.
“You are mine now,” I told them. “The Vassals of a Power.”
Ankaris and Silverstar had been the Horned King, but they had not been Powers. They had lacked an extra spark, an extra piece of power that had belonged to Calebrant…and that instead of passing on to them, Calebrant had passed it on to the son he wasn’t supposed to have.
He’d passed it to me, and it had made me one of the only Changelings to ever classify as a Noble. And now, with the mantle of the Horned King settling upon me, that spark made me what Ankaris and Silverstar hadn’t been.
A Power of the Fae High Court.
The Valkyries brought Inga out shortly afterward, and it wasn’t looking good. Before today, I could sense cold iron at a distance but not with any great detail.
Now I could tell that the cold iron blade had fragmented and several pieces of our ancient bane had made it through Inga’s armor. Not enough to instantly kill her, but enough that it would kill her—and would frustrate, say, Niamh’s healing gift.
Niamh was with them as they brought her out and she looked at me helplessly.
“There’s cold iron in her bloodstream,” she told me, stating aloud what I’d just sensed. “I can’t do anything. She has…an hour. Maybe less. I could wake her up, I suppose, but that would cost her time.”
A stimulant would wake the Valkyrie up despite the blood loss. It would allow her to say goodbye, but it would kill her even faster.
For all that we were nearly unkillable and wielded powers only barely imaginable by mortals, we were in some ways so very, very, human.
“I think I can help,” I said quietly. “I know I have the power now, but this isn’t something I’ve done before. Can you…can you guide me?”
The one time I’d been involved in healing someone, I’d linked minds with Talus to allow him to use my iron-seeker Gift to pull cold iron chunks out of Robert. That had been pure telekinesis, leaving the healing to the young noble’s own powers, but the pieces of cold iron had been larger.
Niamh clearly realized what she’d missed as she studied me.
“I can do that, my lord,” she told me. She offered me a hand, hesitantly.
I took her hand gently.
“Thank you,” I said. “I owe Inga.”
I channeled power. The burning star in my chest leapt to brightly cheerful life, sending energy surging down my hands. I linked with Niamh without even realizing what I was doing and leaned on her knowledge, her skill.
My power could locate the cold iron and move it, but extracting it without injuring Inga required a delicacy I’d never learned. Niamh’s healing gifts couldn’t touch the cold iron, but all of her powers required that same delicacy.
Together, we found each tiny piece of cold iron and extracted it with a delicate blade of telekinesis. Flesh knit behind us as we worked, removing fragment after fragment of metal from the woman who’d saved my life.
It seemed like an eternity, though it was probably only about five minutes, before Inga opened her eyes and looked up at us.
“That hurt,” she said in her Swedish-accented English. “And you…saved me.”
“There was iron in your blood,” Niamh told her as I released the bond between us. “Only a Power could have saved you. But…”
“Jason is the blood of Lugh, and if he’s still here, he defeated Silverstar in single combat,” Inga said instantly.
“My lord. Your Majesty,” she corrected herself.
“Did everyone see this coming but me?” I asked plaintively.
“Probably,” she replied. “Help me up, Jason. I’m guessing we still have a battle left to fight?”
“Whenever the Masked Lords decide to show up, yeah,” I told her. “Though I suppose they could go into hiding again.”
I snorted.
“I doubt I’m that scary, though.”
46
“They’re coming.”
Damh Coleman’s arrival had brought more than just hands and guns. He’d also brought a full set of military-grade radio headsets that we’d passed out.
I now had Hunters on both the road and scattered throughout the mountains around us. I didn’t expect the Masked Lords to try and sneak around us, not when they had several hundred mercenaries to deploy.
“What are we looking at?” I asked.
“Looks like a convoy of trucks. Rental pickups and minivans, mostly. They probably got them all out here two or three at a time, because it’s damn obvious they’re rolling a small army up the hill now.”
“All right. Pull the nearest teams together and set up a blockade behind them,” I ordered. “No one escapes, people. I prefer prisoners to corpses, even for the Lords themselves, but no one runs. You hear me?”
“No one ever outruns the Wild Hunt,” the troop captain told me. “We’ll be in position shortly.”
He paused.
“They’ll be knocking on your door in about five, maybe ten minutes if they drive right up.”
“We’ll be waiting for them. You just make sure the door stays shut behind them.”
The channel clicked closed and I looked at the others.
“Make sure we’re set up,” I ordered loudly. “We’re on the final countdown now.”
“We have a plan?” Raja asked. “I mean, beyond pointing a god at them and laughing?”
I winced.
“I am not a god,” I told him pointedly. “And I have no damn idea what I’m doing with this level of power yet, either.
“My plan is to hold the walls until they bring out Asi and the ritual team. At that point, I’m going to go meet them and we get to see how well their ritual works while we’re fucking their shit up.”
Raja grinned and shucked his long trench coat. The cold iron sword I’d given him was sitting on the ground next to him and, he picked it up while flexing his now very visible muscles.
“Aren’t you cold?” I asked the shirtless Indian.
“Absolutely freezing,” he confirmed brightly. “But Bollywood left me with an image to live up to! I can’t let those shirtless mortal hunks look better in a fight than I do!”
I shook my head.
“These are the people who killed your families,” I reminded him. “Are you going to be…steady?”
I couldn’t quite think of a way to phrase “Are you going to go mad with bloodlust and kill everyone, even when I’d rather have prisoners?” that was polite.
“Not really,” he admitted. “But we won’t kill anyone who surrenders. We swore Fealty and you gave your orders, my lord.”
I couldn’t even argue with the my lords anymore. Now I got to argue with people calling me a god.
It wasn’t an improvement.
“Let’s see what our friends decide to open with,” I said aloud. “I’m guessing it would be far too optimistic, hoping that Mabona wakes up before they get here, wouldn’t it?”
Raja chuckled.
“If anyone could wake her up, it would be the new Horned King. I take it that didn’t work?”
“They attacked what makes her a Power,” I said with a sigh. “Until that link heals, she won’t wake up.”
Which meant that this fight was mine.
Well, mine and my small army’s.
The vehicle convoy came to a halt at the entrance road to the lodge, where their sniper team had tried to take us out. I was tempted to try and disrupt their deployment, but I also was relatively certain that the Masked Lords themselves weren’t in the array of cheap rentals.
They would be coming from the Between when they were ready. Everyone else here was pawns on the board, especially the human mercenaries.
If we took out the Masked Lords and reclaimed Asi, this war was over. If we wiped out their assault force but the Masked Lords escaped with the sword, all we’d achieved was a pile of corpses.
So, we let them come. Hunters lurked in the trees, following their progress.
“We’re looking at about a hundred and fifty mortal mercenaries, presumably armed with cold iron rounds for their assault rifles,” Amandine reeled off to my impromptu command staff. “Sixty fae scattered throughout, with rifles and blades. We’re reporting everything from a couple of will-o’-the-wisps to at least one Masked Noble in command.”
“One Mask isn’t their ritual team,” I concluded. “How do we draw them out?”
“I think we have to throw back their first attack,” the Guardian told me. “Might help for bringing them out if we have the Horned King being obviously involved?”
“Probably.” I shook my head, the weight of the heavy antlered helm a new distraction. “That will leave them with a long list of unanswered questions, given that I think Silverstar was one of their core members. They know the Horned King is on their side.”
“Well, that’ll be quite a shock for them, won’t it?” Mary replied, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “Are you ready for this, love?”
“I have to be,” I told her, squeezing her hand in turn. “How long do we have?”
“Depends on how careful they’re being. Scouts aren’t reporting any real heavy weapons, so it’s going to be pretty straightforward,” Amandine said. “No grenade launchers, no mortars. Just rifles and body armor.”
“So, the only difference from the usual affair is the numbers and the mortals,” I concluded. “Think they’re expecting the machine guns?”
We only had four of them, but that was still four more machine guns than I would have expected to see in a fae battle formation.
“If they’re smart, they’re allowing for the possibility,” Raja said. “These people stormed the citadel of my order. Do not underestimate them.”
“And Tír fo Thuinn,” I added. “These people hit two of the most secured and heavily fortified supernatural bases in the world and won. This is all looking very low-key compared to what I expected.”
I considered the situation.
“It’s more than the ritual team,” I concluded aloud. “They’ve got a whole second wave coming via Between—and we need to be ready for them.”
The mercenaries might be underqualified for the fight they’d been recruited for, but they definitely knew their business. They made it to the edge of the forest in good order and took time to survey our crude fortifications before they did anything.
We’d kept everyone out of sight, but they definitely figured we were there. They stayed out of sight for several more minutes, and then half of them opened fire.
It wasn’t wild automatic fire and it wasn’t carefully aimed shots. It was an unhurried metronome of single shots taken at the top of the barricade and anywhere else they thought we might stick our heads up.
The other half started advancing at a run. They made it about a third of the way across the open space and then threw themselves down in the snow before they opened fire.
“I think that’s close enough,” I murmured as the second set of troops began to charge forward. “Watch yourselves. Those bullets are cold iron.”
We’d expected as much, but as they ricocheted off our defenses, I could sense enough to be certain.
“Gunners!” Raja bellowed. “With me!”
He was first up, the ammunition belt for the big M60 slung over his shoulder as he braced himself and opened fire. The mercenaries targeted him as he rose, bullets slamming into his golden skin—but the same cold iron rounds that would have been nearly instantly deadly to my fae shattere
d on the asura’s skin.
The second machine gunner was also an asura. Not quite as large or impressive as Raja, perhaps, but large enough—and his golden skin was just as bulletproof.
The third gunner was the only werebear in the group, Barry’s second-in-command. Almost as large in human form as in bear form, he was the only one of us capable of hand-firing a massive M2 machine gun.
We’d brought a tripod mount for the weapon, but Richard decided he made a better support system.
The fourth machine gun was the WWII vintage version of the same gun, mounted on the giant horse that nimbly leapt to the top of the barricade with her Valkyrie rider on her back.
As the three big men opened fire with their machine guns, the Valkyrie’s horse danced along the barricade like she was on a dressage field, delicately leaping and hopping over the streams of fire from the other machine guns. Her rider seemed to instinctively know what the horse was about to do, adjusting her fire to account for the motions.
The second wave of mercenaries went down. They probably weren’t all dead, but even the ones who hadn’t been hit knew better than to be upright while that hail of death swept the field.
Both groups started to focus their fire, trying to bring down at least one of the machine gunners.
I don’t know what the Valkyrie’s horse was, but it was apparently just as bulletproof as the asura. As the horse and the golden-skinned warriors alike shrugged aside bullets, Richard just calmly took the hits, bracing himself against the impact of bullets that inflicted injuries he healed in seconds.
“Now,” I ordered conversationally.
The Companions and the rest of the asura stepped up to the wall. They only had assault rifles, but that was all our attackers had. The exchange of fire wasn’t going entirely in our favor—even Raja or Richard could only take so many hits before they went down, at least temporarily, but the mercenary advance was halted.
Then the supernaturals that had been deployed with the mortals acted. A wash of green faerie fire appeared out of nothingness, sweeping across the snow toward us like a tidal wave. Telekinetic shields started blocking bullets and lightning crackled as the fae started to push back against our attack.
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 25
