Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,125

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.

I stared.

Hell’s bells.

Marcone had rallied whatever troops he had left after the fight with the Jotnar. He had gathered his people together and then had to have circled down to help the southern defenses at the svartalf embassy. He must have gathered up a following much like I had—and he’d been able to arm them, and brought them sweeping unexpectedly to the aid of the southern defense.

Who had then been free to come help us in turn.

And now the enclosing arms of that force were about to spill directly onto the Fomor’s legion as they blindly encircled the Winter Lady, hungry to destroy her.

Marcone, at the front of his own army, supported by some of the most powerful beings it had been my pleasure or misfortune to encounter, lifted one of those damned old guns, aimed it at Ethniu, and pulled the trigger.

And he got lucky. There was a sudden buzz-thump, and the Titan twitched as sparks flew from her armor.

The Baron of Chicago dropped the gun, drew another, and lifted his chin in sheer defiance.

And the Titan’s face twisted in utter fury.

“What?” she spat, so furious that spittle flew from her lips and spilled between her teeth, burning the ground where it fell. She twisted in place, feet scraping the earth like a furious child’s, only more apocalyptic, and Butters flinched in physical pain at the sheer rage and hatred in the Titan’s voice. “These mortal beasts. These worms. I will grind that man’s teeth to dust beneath my heel.”

It was seeing that helpless fury that had taken her, that frustration and rage that did it, I think. I’d felt that way before. And I could handle it way better than she could. I had seen the Titan’s weakness: She had the vices of her virtues.

In a way, it wasn’t her fault. Ethniu was an elemental being, a primal force of the universe. Such beings had been meant to shape worlds from raw matter, not to cope with their wills being frustrated. Her own personal power meant that she could demand and get her way in nearly every circumstance.

But when she found a circumstance that wasn’t like the others, she was confounded. She had been able to make