“Screw you!” Britton shouted at him, circling around. The top of the tower offered no way down, with only the huge drop to the concrete flight line below. There was no hatch through the roof. Harlequin was right. Unless he’d learned to fly, there was no way down. “Go ahead and keep me Suppressed! So long as you do, you can’t come after me. We’re going to just sit here until we get old?”
Harlequin laughed. “Nope. Got plans for you, pal.”
The rotary whine of helicopter blades sliced the air. The sound was deeper than a Kiowa, and Britton recognized the low pitch as one of the larger Blackhawks. They were usually on practice flights or patrols around the base. It wouldn’t have taken the pilot more than a few seconds to respond to Harlequin’s call and divert to his position. Britton could see the minigun barrels pointing out the sides of the helo as it drove toward him.
It made no effort to go broadside as it approached at high speed, no effort to bring the guns to bear.
Then Britton noted that Harlequin’s pistol was still in the drop holster strapped to his thigh. He stood with a clear shot and all the time in the world to aim, but instead had his arms crossed, waiting.
Hope blossomed in his chest.
Britton turned and sprinted for the edge of the tower, putting a mad look of fear on his face.
Harlequin cried out and leapt off his perch, dropping the Suppression and flying to intercept Britton’s fall.
At the edge of the tower, Britton dug in his heels, abruptly reversing direction and throwing himself back onto the tower roof. He spun to face the Blackhawk.
A gate opened right before its nose.
Directly on the other side stood the APC, its gun silent for the moment. Fitzy and the bulk of the SOC force gathered around it.
Britton could see the pilot through the helo’s windscreen, hauling on the cyclic controls, but it was far too late to pull up. The Blackhawk passed neatly through the gate, the ends of the rotors shearing off and spinning over the flight line below. A grinding boom sounded from beyond the portal.
Britton closed the gate and leapt off the tower as Harlequin screamed, tackling the Aeromancer in midair and opening a gate beneath him just before the stone chairs.
Harlequin’s body cushioned his fall, but both men still hit the ground hard enough to jar them apart, just as the explosion of the crashing helicopter caught them. The blast drove them against the base of the great tree as the Blackhawk slammed into the SOC force, turning over and catching fire as it spun among their ranks, its half rotors ripping themselves to fragments on the ground and tearing the soldiers apart. The shock wave struck Britton like a massive hand, forcing him up against the tree trunk and singeing his eyebrows. His head fetched up against the hard trunk, and he saw stars. His whole ear filled with a ringing buzz, and the angry wound on the other side of his head wept blood and rang in agony.
He sat against the tree trunk, all strength gone from him, shaking his head. As his sight cleared and the ringing began to fade, he noticed something strange.
Silence.
No gunshots. No crackling of arcing electricity or whooshing flame. The field of battle was quiet, with the occasional moan coming from the gory path left by the Blackhawk’s ruined impact. The aircraft was buried halfway through a small two-story hut, which had collapsed over it, the thatching burning brightly. The APC had been knocked over on its side, the turret popped off and smoldering. Sarah Downer scrambled in the wreckage, her enemy forgotten, desperately trying to haul broken beams off the crushed bodies of soldiers.
Britton slewed his head to the right. Harlequin stirred weakly on the ground, blood running from a gash in his head, half-conscious. Behind them, Therese, Swift, Peapod and a few others had begun to stand, their faces streaked with blood and filth, their mouths open in shock.
Harlequin began to prop himself onto this elbows. Britton shot out a bootheel and caught him in the temple, knocking him back into oblivion.
Pyre lay a few feet before him, sprawled on his side. His eyes were open, seeing nothing.
Fitzy. Fucking Fitzy.
Britton launched himself to his feet, running to the wreckage.
He found Fitzy lying on top of two dead soldiers. His wounded arm had been burned to a stump from the elbow down, the wound mostly cauterized, but still leaking blood. Ribs protruded from his ruined side. He groaned, his eyes darting around, his good arm scrabbling in the dirt, searching for a weapon. Truelove was pushing himself to his feet behind him, swaying, blood streaking his shredded uniform. Richards sprawled beside him, his charred body cut neatly in half by a chunk of the helo’s tail boom.
Britton staggered a few more steps and collapsed on top of the chief warrant officer, his knee slamming into the broken ribs and eliciting a weak moan.
“Kill you,” Fitzy whispered. “Fucking kill you.”
Britton leaned in and whispered back, “You’re done killing.”
Fitzy grinned at Britton’s closeness, then moved his good arm with sudden speed to his belt, hauling out a small knife and lunging for him. Britton twisted aside, and the slim blade found his thigh instead of his side, gouging out a furrow of flesh.
He screamed and head-butted his former instructor, who sprawled in the dirt, spitting blood. He tried to open a gate and found that Fitzy, for all his injuries, could still Suppress him. He looked around for a weapon and settled on a fragment of the helo’s rotors, its jagged edges sharp. He snatched it up as Truelove regained his senses, and their eyes met. They held stares for a moment while Fitzy flailed weakly beneath him.
Finally, the Necromancer nodded and turned away.
Britton raised the rotor fragment over his hand.
“Fuck you,” Fitzy snarled.
“No,” Britton answered. “Fuck you.”
He brought the sharp edge down across Fitzy’s throat, suppressing the instinct to look away as the hot blood washed over him. The magic tide rushed back to him as Fitzy gurgled his last.
A few soldiers began to rise from the ruined swath left by the Blackhawk’s path, but were set upon by Goblins, screaming and dragging them back down to the ground, spears leveled at their throats. One of the Goblins dashed from the crowd, a chunk of stone held high over his head. He moved to one of the soldiers, raising the rock to dash his brains out. Marty barked an order from his position behind the stone chairs. The Goblin paused, looking askance, and Marty repeated himself until the creature reluctantly lowered the stone.
Britton examined the knife wound in his thigh. The gouge was deep, gently oozing blood around the edges, but he wouldn’t bleed out anytime soon. He tried to stand and found that he could, though his legs shook. Therese could heal him later. For now, he reached out, grabbing Truelove’s arm.
“Stay with me,” he said, as the Goblins converged on the survivors.
He looked for Downer, but was distracted by Harlequin, who had begun to stir against at the base of the tree, pushing himself onto his elbows. Britton took a limping step toward him, savoring the trip.
Somehow, they had won.
Swift reached Harlequin before Britton, leaping over the stone chairs and putting a bootheel on the Sorcerer’s neck. The flames were out, but they had left Swift’s chest badly burned, the swallow tattoo disappearing under charred skin. His black hair had melted to the sides of his face. One eye drooped into a track of burned skin that Britton knew would scar terribly.
Peapod appeared behind him, Marty at her side. Swift winced with each step, the side of his face twitching uncontrollably.
Therese knelt at Pyre’s side, weeping.
The Goblins had rounded up what remained of the soldiers and were dragging them into the plaza. They came without protest, shaking their heads in disbelief that they could have been beaten. One stumbled and was rewarded by a jab from a spear in his buttock that drew blood. Downer stumbled along with them, a Goblin helping her along with thumps of his spear butt.
Britton could feel the Aeromancer’s flow, but Harlequin was in no condition to muster any magic. Swift put his boot on Harlequin’s throat and loomed over him.
“You recognize me, you fucker? Look at me.”
