Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,132

to the Titan they were so many annoying mosquitoes doing nothing but proving how necessary it was to crush them.

“Harry!” Butters called, his voice twisted with rapid breathing and rising distress. “What’s the plan here, man?”

“Uh, uh,” I said.

I’d never been in an epic mythology fight quite this epic before.

The Archive gestured, the ground shook, and a sudden fissure opened in the earth, swallowing enemy troops and the bodies of our fallen allies alike, and nearly took Ethniu with them. The Titan staggered, and I could see the slight tug of exhaustion in her response, the signs of slowness that showed how much energy she had been expending.

The biggest guns around weren’t putting her in the ground.

But they were weakening her. Slowing her.

This was our chance.

“Get her!” I screamed.

On the other side of the field, Marcone shouted something to his people that probably sounded cooler than me and meant, “Get her.” They came forward aggressively, and Marcone led the way, drawing pistols and firing them one at a time, in alternating hands—and where they struck, they smashed through shields and armor and flesh alike.

Butters and Sanya rushed forward on either side of me. Sanya was bellowing laughter like a madman. Butters shrieked the battle cry of maybe something like a leatherback turtle—but there was a long swath of ground he had taken from the enemy in his wake. Behind them, our volunteers shouted exhausted, terrified cries and came forward.

I used to wonder how people could run forward into things like that. I think it’s about the environment. There’s just too much confusion, too much fear, too much pain, to think rationally. It’s not a rational place. When death is all around, forward can get to looking like a pretty good way out. And humans can only bear tension, fear, and worry for so long. We aren’t built to sit quietly under such burdens. We’re built to go out and deal with whatever is causing them.

We aren’t built to sit and take it. We were made to take action.

Eventually, too much pressure will bring a willing fight out of anybody. Even in a nightmare hellscape. Or especially in a nightmare hellscape. Eventually, it’s better to go forward into it and have things settled than to huddle in terror for one second longer.

I think we’d all had as much as we could take.

It was time to settle it. One way or another.

So I charged in and felt others following me, the light of the Swords casting an implacable, inexorable glare ahead of us.

I had a couple of seconds to see everything, absolutely everything about the charge. Time slowed, as it does sometimes in such circumstances. I could see the interplay of the plates of armor worn by the enemy, the skill with which they had been made. I could see individual droplets of mud flying, almost floating, through the air. I could smell mud and blood and viscera as clearly and vividly as a fresh, steaming pizza put on your table. I could see dead eyes and broken bodies, shifting as they were walked upon, giving the illusion of animation.

And then we crashed into the foe, and everything was flying weapons and screams and balance and trying to get enough air into my lungs. There was no music now—few clicks, few calls. Just panting breaths and grunts and cries of pain. Weapons hitting one another. Curses. Bodies slipping, falling into the mud, visibility of no more than a few feet.

Absolute chaos.

But we had the Knights of the Sword and the enemy didn’t.

The light of the Swords blinded the enemy to everything else. If there were missiles flung, it was at the Knights. A froggy minor sorcerer tried his hand at them, to no success, his magic blocked by the light of the Sword of Faith. The Swords filled our foes with fear—as long as the Knights were coming at them, they had little thought for the most intelligent response and reacted to their fear instead.

We cut our way toward the weakened Titan, step by step.

I saw things. Ebenezar set a squad of octokongs on fire with an absent word and a flick of one hand. Cristos began making fists and just yanking the enemy down into the earth, right down past the tops of their heads, killing and burying them all at once, very efficient. Ramirez hustled over to the Archive, melting bad guys along the way, and covered Ivy while she kept ripping at the earth beneath the Titan’s feet in