Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,127
your foot planted, terrain so boggy you couldn’t tear your foot back out of it again, blood, and the fallen bodies of the wounded, the dying, and the dead, mixed liberally together.
The hell of it was, the most solid place to put your feet was on the fallen.
It would have been a hell of a workout, moving across that field, even if no one had been trying to kill us. But there was a war on—and outside of a few tightly gathered knots of troops around Marcone, Ethniu, Corb, and Molly, there was no order to be had at all. No real lines to speak of, no uniforms—just pure pandemonium.
Fifty yards away, I heard River Shoulders roaring in fury, a sound that stunned and weakened friend and foe alike around him—but since he was concentrating only upon tearing the Fomor literal limb from limb, it worked out pretty well for his friends. Parts were flying into the air where the Sasquatch rampaged, and his presence on the field sent the enemy fleeing in terror, or at least in search of easier foes.
From the remains of the fortress, Sanya lifted his Sword and led my people forward into the fight. Even though they were battered and bleeding, the Knight had recognized that the matter would be settled in the next few moments, and the light of Esperacchius led a wedge of my people directly toward Ethniu, a rare knot of coordination in the melee, a fragile arrow aimed at the enemy’s heart.
Then we were in the thick of it, and all I could see were struggling, mud-covered bodies. Frequently, it was impossible to tell friend from foe.
For everyone but Waldo Butters.
I don’t know how, but the little guy went through that fight, the chaos and horror and filth—and none of it so much as touched him. When his feet hit the cloggy parts of the ground, he was so little that he had no trouble getting out again. On the slippery bits, his feet and balance shifted, legs taking the motion as naturally as a pro skateboarder out goofing around, and I recognized someone operating on something like angelic intellectus when I saw it, though I doubted Butters was even aware that he was doing it.
The Knight of Faith had decided where he needed to go. Mere physics would not be enough to gainsay him.
A unit of heavily armored Fomor troopers got in his way, six or eight of the enemy who had grouped together and were pounding the stuffing out of a small group of slim, armored fae brought to the fight by the Winter Lady—or at least, I was pretty sure that’s what was happening. The mud of the fight coated everyone. In the stark light and the sheer chaos, it was all but impossible to tell a friendly face from a hostile one until the subject in question was so close that there was only time to strike, block, or attempt to flee.
Butters hit the entire group like a tornado—absolute, deadly, and bizarrely selective. The angelic chorus around Fidelacchius rose to an exultant crescendo as the weapon whirled and struck down everyone who got in our path—absolutely everyone.
When the Sword of Faith struck the soldiers of the Fomor, the slaves of the Titan’s will, it did so with gruesome, precisely egalitarian effect, cleaving armor and weapon and flesh with equal precision and disdain. And where it struck the defenders of the city, that same weapon swept away grime from eyes, cleared muck from ears, and burned away some of the environment hampering our allies, leaving the ground steadier under their feet.
Butters, flowing with the grace of absolute concentration, struck what I presumed to be a friendly with the Sword, shattering the bent and stricken helmet clear off the head of what turned out to be a rather unremarkable-looking young woman with medium brown skin and the arched cheekbones and angular eyes of a native of the far northwest of North America, her face twisted with utter terror—and I saw it when the Sword passed, and its light burned that fear out of her. She blinked twice, as if waking up from a nap that had been plagued with a bad dream, set her jaw, and rose with her weapon in her hand.
“Sir Knight,” she bade me, by way of greeting, gave me a short nod, and rose to drive her sword into the throat of an enemy soldier that lay on the ground, clutching at the place where