Britton threw the wounded soldier through the gate just as the first Goblin reached him. It snarled, clad in leather armor, face mostly hidden behind a mail drape hanging from a crude steel bowl of a helmet. It leapt forward, slashing downward with a two-handed axe.
It might as well have moved in slow motion. Britton could see its strike rise, exactly where it meant to fall. The creature’s movements, its eyes, the angle of its shoulders; all telegraphed the axe’s destination. It was faster than an animated corpse.
But it was slower than Fitzy and far slower than Britton.
He sidestepped the blow, catching the axe’s haft and torquing his arm, sending the creature banging into the helo’s side before dropping off the parapet walk and plummeting to the ground below. The Goblin behind it was even slower, stabbing with a pike that dangled beads on leather thongs. Britton grabbed the weapon’s head and opened another gate. He ran the creature halfway through it, then shut it, leaving half a Goblin shuddering in the Source.
Britton turned, leveled the gate horizontally, and sent it slicing down the parapet. Goblins were cut in two, leapt to their deaths, or ran screaming back to the turret.
Fitzy’s words rang in his ears.
But the other end of the parapet swarmed. The front of the helo was black with small bodies. They reached through the broken remains of the windscreen, hauling the pilots out.
The Terramancer appeared at the end of his wooden fist, striding triumphantly over the tail boom. He paused just outside the range of the slowing rotors, said something to Britton, and gestured. The parapet walk erupted, sprouting into gnarled branches, blossoming with buds. Hooked wooden fingers reached for Britton…and stopped. “Get back in the damned bird!” Fitzy cried, gesturing at the Terramancer.
Britton raced back into the helo. The flight officer and one pilot held the other pilot’s legs, engaged in a brutal tug-of-war with five Goblins standing on the nose of the Blackhawk. Britton rushed the cockpit, grabbing the pilot’s ankle and adding his strength to the contest. They struggled for another moment, but at last the pilot came flying back through the windscreen, howling as he left skin on the ragged shards of plastic.
The Goblins reached, and Britton opened a gate in the middle of them, slicing them and the helicopter’s nose in half, sending the remains spiraling to the ground. The gate looked in on Portcullis’s loading bay, where the three soldiers were tending their wounded comrade. James the armorer stood over them, buckling on a tactical vest. A few soldiers milled around him in various states of readiness. Their eyes went wide as the gate opened. Britton motioned them back and threw the wounded pilot through.
“Go! Go!” he shouted to the remaining men, who nodded and jumped through. The flight officer paused at the gate, turning back to him.
“Sir, what ab…”
“I’ll get him!” Britton shouted. “Get out of here!”
Britton ran back to the parapet, where Fitzy stood over the Terramancer, slumped and bleeding. The chief warrant officer wrenched back and forth, Goblins hanging from his arms. One leapt and wrapped its arms around his neck while another grabbed his leg. Fitzy hauled the Goblin over his shoulder, hurling it into its fellows. Another Goblin threw its sword down, grappling his waist.
Slowly, Fitzy sank to his knees. Britton shouted and ran toward him.
Then he was ripped off his feet, spinning in the air, whipping through the helicopter’s cabin. He came out the other side of the bird, his body whirling through hundreds of feet of empty air, the helo shrinking in the distance.
He hung in the air. A Goblin Aeromancer faced him, its grimace cracking the white paint that covered its body. It leaned forward, grinning, prying one eye open wide.
And then Britton was falling.
Terror unleashed a flood of adrenaline that threatened to swamp him. He felt the Dampener kicking in, shunting the terror aside. The wind whipped his face, his dry eyes too painful to keep open.
So he closed them and concentrated on the soft couch in the recreation area at LSA Portcullis.
He felt the shift in magical currents, the sudden change in smells, temperature, air pressure. He slammed into the soft couch, sprawling among soldiers who squawked, scrambling. His kicking boots knocked the TV off its stand. He bounced, his nose spraying blood from the impact, his shoulders and chest reporting the hit. He didn’t think anything had broken, but couldn’t be sure.
There was no time.
Britton sprang to his feet and leapt off the back of the couch. He heard the shouts of the startled soldiers, saw Don and the blond desk officer staring openmouthed, then he’d opened another gate and jumped through, slamming shoulder first into the Goblins swarming Fitzy, sending them flying. A few clung stubbornly to him.
The Aeromancer swooped over them, screaming, a dark cloud spinning behind him.
“Get out of here!” Fitzy screamed.
“Sure thing,” Britton said, locking his arms around Fitzy’s neck. A Goblin squirmed between them, clinging to Fitzy’s waist. The Aeromancer descended, cloud pulsing with light. Britton gripped Fitzy tight, pushing off with his thighs, opening up the gate behind him.
They slid on the loading bay’s smooth floor, the gate shutting behind them. Britton’s shoulder collided with James’s shin, sending the armorer tumbling over them.
It took them a moment to scramble free, the Goblin crawling out from their midst, gasping. It scrabbled a few feet on the concrete floor, its fur cloak flipped backward over its head. Fitzy hauled himself to his feet and threw himself on it, grabbing the fur-covered lump of the Goblin’s head and slamming it into the concrete again and again.
Britton moved to stop him, but hands gripped his arms, holding him back.
“Son of a fucking bitch!” Fitzy screamed over and over, punctuating each shout with the muffled wet sound of the Goblin’s head striking floor. At last, the creature was still, a dark stain spreading across the cloak.
Britton looked around. Soldiers crowded one of the SOC soldiers from the helo. The arrow had been pulled from his collar, white gauze pressed to the wound. He stirred weakly, his skin white and sweaty. The injured pilot sat beside him, dressing his own wounds with the help of the flight officer. Radio chatter blared somewhere in the darkness.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” James whispered. “What the hell happened?”
Fitzy whirled on Britton. “Genius here pulled a bunch of heroics instead of getting himself to safety like he was ordered! You goddamned idiot! Do you have any idea what it would have meant if you had died? What if they captured you?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Britton screamed back. “I saved your goddamned life!”
“You’re not in the life-saving business!” Fitzy yelled, spit flying. “You’re in the shut the fuck up and do as your told business! When I want to be saved, I’ll order you to do it!”
Britton shook his head. “…damned crazy.”
Fitzy leaned in close, his breath sour. “You think this means I owe you. You think this means we’re buddies. You remember one thing, contractor. I am not your friend. I am not your comrade in arms. I am here to make you into a righteous engine of war. Nothing more, nothing less.
“You’re paid to be a weapon, not a hero. Remember that.”
Shadow Coven sat in their usual place at the bar. Britton slumped moodily over his folded arms, doing his best to ignore Truelove, who badgered him with questions. Richards and Downer sat beside him, trying hard not to look as interested as they were.
Britton couldn’t concentrate on the flurry of questions his Coven threw at him. Fitzy’s words echoed over and over in his mind.
But this last raid. Where was the good in that? Was that what he was? A weapon? An instrument wielded for whatever capricious whim the army chose?
“Fitzy was pissed,” Britton said, turning back to the conversation, trying to drive such thoughts away.
“Man, I bet. He just wanted you to leave him there to die?” Truelove asked.
