“I accept, vindicated,” Chevalier said.
“Your logic is impeccable as always, Thomas,” Shadow said. “I must also accept.”
“There. Inform your charge he must empty his pockets of his golf bombs,” Chevalier said, to Shadow.
“No,” Thomas said.
“No? But you…”
“To save time, I shall explain, without waiting upon further questions,” Thomas said. “I was speaking earlier of preparations of the dueling ground. The portable objectified dross constructs are no different than personally held dross constructs, which have been valid in Crow duels since before we referred to ourselves as wizards. Yes, I understand your objections, Chevalier, and they are worth study. I fear that our system of nomenclature regarding Crows will need expansion, for your objections prove to me that there are at least two different branches of wizardry, one involving objectification of dross constructs, the other involving the skills of personal stabilization of dross constructs. To challenge a Guru of Gilgamesh’s skills, which if I may be so bold to name as alchemy, you would need as a challenger a similar alchemist. This follows the precedent that not-yet-a-Guru Occum has set up regarding shaman Crows: a duel between shaman Crows is a duel between their Noble households, a tournament, not a Crow wizard duel. Each Crow specialist should be challenged only in his area of expertise.”
“That’s as clear as the mud at my feet,” Chevalier said. “I challenge this supposition as well, on the grounds that the validity of shaman Crows existing at all rides upon the stature of Shadow as a Mentor, and stands upon the outcome of this duel. Unless Shadow can somehow come up with other Gurus to present.”
“I will accept a withdrawal of challenge, Chevalier, if that is what you’re asking for,” Thomas said. “It’s only fair for you to present as a challenger a specialist of wizardry such as is practiced by Gilgamesh.”
“Withdrawal of challenge? I asked nothing of the sort.”
“Then Phobos, with his skills as a wizard, will engage in a duel with Gilgamesh, with his skills as a wizard, dueling with what they can carry with them, on neutral ground not prepared by either,” Thomas said, summarizing.
“I must accept, though I still object,” Chevalier said.
“I also accept, though my acceptance is not necessary,” Shadow said.
Shadow then turned to Gilgamesh. “I’m afraid you’re going to need to clean up your creations, Gilgamesh.”
Gilgamesh nodded. “Already at work on it, Shadow,” he said, an edge of exasperation in his voice.
Now, how was he to win? At least Thomas allowed him his golf bombs.
Carol Hancock:
My pre-battle jitters went away as soon as I felt the edge of the corruption marking Patterson’s compound. I knew this corruption: I had lived in the crap for many long days during my CDC captivity. Patterson’s compound had the same level of noxiousness as the CDC, perhaps worse. Bad juice beyond bad, what Rumor termed self-organized élan. We cut fences, listened, heard defenders coming, opened fire, and waited.
I still couldn’t believe Keaton had gotten her normals to lug her howitzer in an eighteen wheeler all the way from Los Angeles to use in her attack. How in the hell had Patterson covered up the use of a howitzer with the authorities? The rubble pile Keaton had made of the freight entrance to Patterson’s compound sat forty yards to my right; I wasn’t going through there, no way, no how. Oh, Stacy, you and your goddamned toys. She would never learn. So much work to create so big a mess that mattered so little.
We needed to disrupt the illusion of darkness Patterson used to cover her compound, or her people would pick us apart before we ever got to her. Haggerty tried punching the illusion, Polly attempted to disrupt the illusion with juice patterns, Rumor did the same with dross constructs and by direct Crow dross sucking. None worked. Pearl, bless her heart, started to sing, which was the way she directed both her charisma and her juice manipulation abilities. “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharaoh let my people go…” Her singing parted the darkness like the Red Sea, to expose a sandy pitted ground just as desolate as the Red Sea floor. Once the darkness parted, Sir Rick, an orangutan, grabbed her and pinned Pearl to the dirt, just before high caliber rifle fire riddled her former location.
The rest of us hit the deck as well. “Crawl forward,” Haggerty said. “Concentrate at two o’clock.” She must have seen something, because her shooters, FBI all, shot at ‘two’ and hit something.
More defenders came up. We growled at them, and they dropped, fearing predators. Imagine that.
“Amy, they’re putting out claymores,” I said, and then gave the positions of the mines and their triggers. Patterson’s darkness was good cover, but Patterson hadn’t mastered the concealment of odors, at least not to my sensitivity. Her lack gave the Nobles and me a significant advantage.
We hadn’t planned on being out of contact with the other groups. We had thought we could push metasense through Patterson’s muck and communicate using various Focus and Crow tricks. Our best metasense people, Sky and Nameless, were in other groups. Unfortunately, group three, Hoskins’ so-called unstoppable group, didn’t have anyone with good enough metasense to communicate through the muck. Their Crow, Occum, had little strength in that area.
“Sokolnik,” I said. “Can you metasense through this?”
“I can get out about two hundred feet,” she said, in her chilly, robotic voice. “I miss things, though. Some of their Transforms are warded from my metasense.”
“Tell me what you metasense,” I said. “Keep talking.” My metasense barely reached thirty feet through this shit.
Sokolnik did her job, and Haggerty paid attention, giving orders. My group should appear weaker than the others. Only twenty-eight of us, the smallest of the four groups. Individually, though, we were noticeably stronger.
I didn’t mention the little voice inside of me saying ‘Claim this place as yours. Join with Patterson.’ The seductive power here tempted me, very beguiling. I resisted the voice.
“Boss,” Tom said. “My gut says move early.” We were supposed to wait until Patterson engaged the other two groups and moved resources over to cope with the larger problems they presented. We were supposed to wait until she opened up an easy path for us.
I looked at Haggerty, who had heard Tom. “RPGs ready,” she said. “Fire forward on five, wait three, and then charge.”
We did so and created a ruckus. Haggerty and I called out positions of traps and land mines as we charged into the compound. We came in to the right of the former freight entrance, running up a ten foot tall grass embankment, wet, the embankment topped by a wooden fence with a brick footing. We expected Patterson to defend this area heavily, in as much as when you looked at a map, it said ‘attack here’. Someone played games with us, because instead of being heavily defended to start with, and then weakened by Patterson as she pulled resources to defend against the other groups, the area turned out to be weakly defended to start with. We broke through the outer fence, then through a second fence, and then for a few moments we spread a bit to both the left and right to allow our normals and combat trained Transforms to get inside the compound and take cover. Well, take cover as best we could in the damned artificial darkness, that is.
I heard combat to our left and right. The combat to the left, in the area of the ‘unstoppable’ group three, sounded like firearms, land mines and the roars of Nobles. To the right, where our group two was, the sounds were mostly screams and hand-to-hand combat, with a little gunplay.
I should have heard more gunplay from group two, and fewer screams. Group two, our sucker punch, had drawn the defenders’ heavies: Focuses, top-end Transforms, perhaps Patterson herself. Other things we didn’t know about. The heavies were supposed be in front of the ‘unstoppable’ group three, wasting their strength on our numbers.
Someone called out “Arms!” to my left. Then the welcome sound of a group Noble Terror roar. Arms. Hopefully not Keaton and Rayburn.
Hopefully just a few of Patterson’s kidnapped baby Arms.
“Fools to trust in such a simplistic defense,” Rumor said, to my left, and clapped his hands. The darkness rolled back, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Ahead of us, three squads of defenders came into view, poorly concealed among various sheds and storage units. As the darkness cleared from them, they started to scream and swat at themselves. Rumor used Patterson’s élan against her own people. I wasn’t sure what the counter cost him, but it wasn’t trivial, as beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He did good, though, clearing Patterson’s main defense.
The freight road turned right and became an alley behind a row of houses, a good place for ambushes. Instead of following the freight route, we jogged a half block to our left and onto the residential boulevard bisecting the small neighborhood Patterson claimed as her territory. Down the boulevard and to the right sat Patterson’s grand headquarters, a dingy old warehouse. Winter toys and ancient tricycles littered the lawns to the side of the boulevard, some of which my nose identified as containing devious booby traps.
“Pin them down and isolate them,” Haggerty said. She turned to Dowling, the three other Nobles, and myself. “Group combat. Follow me.”
We charged.
I only collected three minor wounds before we finished off the twenty-five defenders. Transforms all, enhanced at least to start with by juice patterns, none of which lasted past Polly’s first poetic dispel. They died and we were in, past the houses and on the packed dirt yard around the warehouse. The first part of my strategy, setting us up as the needle to prick through the bubble of Patterson’s defenses, worked.
“Forward,” Haggerty said. “Follow me.”
We angled off to the left of our originally planned course toward Patterson’s headquarters, Haggerty seeing or sensing something different. She put us in a staggered diffuse line, using the row of tiny houses as cover. I metasensed non-combatants in basements and bunkers, and I used my sense of smell to guide us around booby-traps and landmines.
The screams quieted to our right, but group two didn’t appear out of the vanishing darkness as they were supposed to. I caught a short glimpse of the ‘unstoppable’ group three off to my left, doing their job and engaging a whole shitload of defenders. The defenders’ backs were to us, and that’s where Haggerty led us, in an attempt to flank the defenders.
She stopped, frozen to the ground, as a yellow zone of ick came out of a house across the road. The hairs on my arms and legs stood up and I winced away from the yellow ick zone as it began to sing a seductive song, an offer of power.
I too froze for a moment, hungry for what the yellow ick offered.
“Down!” Haggerty said. Haggerty’s booming command broke me out of my reverie and I hit the ground with the rest of the group. A huge explosion rolled in from our left, from near the ‘unstoppable’ group three. Lances of white light sprang at us from the singing yellow thing, hitting one of the lesser Nobles, two of Polly’s Transforms, and Polly herself. Polly bathed herself in a purple shell, and skittered toward Rumor. The yellow thing continued to sing and fire at us.
“There’s nothing in there!” Polly said. “What is it?”
“I don’t believe I know,” Rumor said, and vanished. Shit! Shit! Something bad enough to panic a Crow of his age and talent? So the power seduction wasn’t aimed just at me? The information made the yellow zone easier to resist.
“It’s alive,” Sokolnik said, more of a mutter to herself than an official observation. “It’s living juice.” I ignored her nonsense words, at least for now.
“I’m still here,” Rumor said, whispering into my ear. Good. He had just hidden himself from our enemies, and being a smart Crow, he now hid behind me. Polly’s shell expanded around us.
More lances of white light sprang at us, not hitting us anymore because of Polly’s protection, her warm and cuddly purple shell. I smelled warm apple pie.
“Your defenses are messing with my mind,” I said.
“Sorry,” Polly said. “I can leave you uncovered, if you want.” Okay, I could live with the urge to cook. Dammit. Innkeep began to sing, praising Jesus. The Nobles joined in the song, except the one first hit. That Noble crawled away and looked back at us as if we were the enemy. Shit!
The yellow ick zone, this dross-powered lance-puking automatic defense, had turned a Noble with a single hit.
“No. Keep us covered,” I said to Polly. I didn’t want to be next.
What I really wanted was one of those yellow things for my own.
Across the compound the parted darkness revealed two enemy Focuses and a squad of Transforms carrying Mary Sibrian and Viscount Kevin toward Patterson’s warehouse headquarters. Where were Armenigar and Lori? What the fuck had happened to group two?
Henry Zielinski:
They moved forward, in past the wreckage of the perimeter fence, and then over to the right, to a set of two houses. They took cover.
“Rumor now controls the darkness,” Nameless said. “We’ll be able to see everything, soon.” Nameless paused. “Viscount Nash! Group two is in big trouble. Patterson concentrated her people on them.”
“Tell me,” Viscount Nash said. He turned from the clump of Monsters surrounding him. One of them, a tiger with oversized fangs, growled at the distraction and glared at Nameless.
“Massive Crow attacks flattened half of them. The enemy captured the Arm, Mary Sibrian, and the Noble, Viscount Kevin. Armenigar and Lederer are down, skunked badly. Sky’s trying to clean them off, but he’s been skunked as well, with élan. Élan from a Crow. The attacks continue.”
“What does the path between us and group two look like,” the Viscount said.
“We’ve got one Focus and her household between us.”
“Let’s go!” Viscount Nash said, and then turned to Nameless and Icestorm. “You two! Can you cope?”
Nameless shrugged. Icestorm shook his head, panicky.
“Alright. Icestorm, you get back with the pack. Spread out sideways, there, with our right flank along their perimeter fence.”
Nameless looked at Zielinski. “You’re not panicking, are you?”
“I have wounded to tend to.” Lori. Lori attracted bullets like a million gauss magnet attracted iron filings. She would be wounded. That was just the way the world worked.
“If you can take it, well, then so can I,” Nameless said, a quaver in his voice. “We’ll let the rest of them take on the Focus.”
The Arms and Nobles took the front, along with the half dozen Monsters making up the rest of their reserve group. They advanced, slowly, toward the run down house where the Focus and her people had taken cover. Focus Webb’s Transforms tightened up against her, hiding her from Zielinski’s sight. As they approached the opposition Focus, screams and curses erupted. Webb was at work.
A moment later Connie Webb screamed, and she and her Transforms went down. The Arms, Nobles and Monsters charged the house where the Focus holed up. Gunfire followed the charge. One messy gout of blood splashed up on the inside of a partly lit window. Then nothing.
From nowhere, Icestorm crept up. “Focus Webb ran into a Crow-designed trap. I can help her, and you can too, Nameless.”
“Not my skill set,” Nameless said.
“Well, then, just follow my lead,” Icestorm said, with a panicky hiss. The Arms, Nobles and Monsters came out of the house on the other side, drenched in blood but otherwise unscathed. Zielinski winced. What were the authorities going to make of that? Their predators had taken out a Focus and her household. How could they do such things and say they were the good guys?
Zielinski pushed the thought out of his mind and elbowed his way over to Focus Webb and her fallen Transforms. He checked them out and assigned people to carry them.
The group moved forward more slowly, and after about thirty seconds, Connie opened her pale eyes.
“Patterson’s taken Tonya,” she said. “She almost got me.” She paused. “I can’t move the juice!”
“Your juice structure has been partly destabilized, Focus,” Icestorm said. “You should be dead, or at least screaming your bloody head off.”
“Yah, yah, whatever, yes I’m in agony, pain is just the TS’s way of reminding you you’re a Transform, no big problem. How can we restabilize my juice structure? I’ve got work to do, and I can’t use juice patterns when I’m messed up like this.”
“I don’t know of any way to cure this save time,” Icestorm said.
“Shit,” Connie said. “Well, at least I’ve still got my metasense. Give me one of those guns!” Zielinski finished checking her over. She remained physically healthy; the attack only affected her juice, not the rest of her body. “Tell me again why we didn’t go in as a single group, Hank,” Connie said. “Patterson’s picking us off one by one, laughing all the while.”
“As best I understood it, the danger was that if Patterson could concentrate on us, she would do to us what she did to Keaton and her attackers. What Carol said was that this method of attack neutralized Patterson’s unknown tricks.”
“It didn’t work,” Connie said, examining the AK-47 that someone had handed to her. “Patterson’s winning.” She flicked the safety off and stalked forward, angry. Zielinski followed.
Another massive explosion to their left, and behind them. One of the other fights, perhaps something with the ‘unstoppable’ group three. Ahead, Zielinski saw prone Transforms, from Inferno, firing to their right. Group two.
A wave of darkness overtook him before he could answer Connie, accompanied by incredible pain, and he blacked out.
Tonya Biggioni:
“Yes, my lady,” Tonya said. She basked in the glorious Focus’s gaze, and directed her people to shoot at the Monsters. They retreated toward the fairyland castle, the glorious Focus’s palace.
The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) Page 33
