Control Point (50 page)

Beyond the wall, small garden plots stretched alongside sheds. Low wooden pens enclosed the same squat, hairy livestock that he’d seen when he’d attacked the Goblin fastness. Smoke rose from cooking fires beyond the palisade wall. Britton thought he could hear faint music, rhythmic and atonal.

Marty let out a sound that could only have been a sigh and pointed again. “There. Mattab On Sorrah. Home.”

Britton laughed out loud, then choked as it quickly became a sob.

Because, for now, he had saved them.

The Goblins met them some distance outside the gates, astride the backs of giant wolves. A few Goblin Druids, their skins painted white, walked among them, but the wolf riders were warriors with dotted faces less elaborate than Marty’s. They held spears, swords, and US military-issue carbines far too large for their small bodies, and wore leather jerkins studded with a pattern that resembled the tree from the banners.

At their head was a giant of a Goblin, still smaller than even Wavesign by a head; a mail hauberk was draped around his shoulders and he carried a huge spear bearing a banner matching those on the walls. His face was patterned in white dots that matched Marty’s exactly.

The group paused, uncertain how to proceed, but Marty strode to the front of the group, shrugging off his parka and squaring his shoulders, suddenly oblivious to the cold. He
seemed taller, radiating a confidence that Britton had never seen in him before. Gone was the curious, childlike creature that had shivered in the woods just a little while ago. He barked out a few words quickly in his language, his voice resonating the command that Britton knew the best military officers could invoke.

The Goblins’ eyes widened. Marty barked another word, raising his hands, his ears standing up straight over his head. The Goblins reacted, the riders leaping off their wolves and dragging at the reins until the creatures lay down on the ground. The entire party tapped their eyes, bowing deeply. The white-painted Goblin sorcerers also bowed, but only slightly and from the waist, also tapping their eyelids. When they looked up again, their faces were joyful, and a few cried out what Britton only guessed were greetings, coming forward to brush their fingers against Marty’s closed eyelids or the tips of his ears. Marty endured it all with an air of entitlement, his hands on his hips to allow the group to get close.

All except the spear bearer, who stood, clearly unsettled, the weapon resting in the crook of his arm. One of the sorcerers remained with him, exchanging whispers. When the greetings were complete, Marty turned back to Britton. His lordling face was gone, and he was friendly Marty again, grinning like a happy child.

“See?” he asked, beaming. “Important.”

Britton laughed, clapping Swift on the back. “No doubt, buddy. Important as hell.”

Marty wiggled his ears and led them into the gate, the wolf riders falling in as escorts around them, the spear bearer going in front, crying out what Britton guessed was a heralding of their arrival.

The village clustered around a broad plaza, the ground flat and covered with a carpet of moss that looked dry and comfortable. Ten glass-smooth stone chairs were arranged in a semicircle around a huge and ancient tree, wide and stunted like some giant bonsai. Britton recognized it as the tree from the banners on the palisade wall. Ten blue-robed, white-painted sorcerers, their ears sprouting tufts of long white hair, were already
taking their seats. Ringed around them were scores of Goblins, large and small. Britton recognized tiny children, as cute in their minority as they were ugly as adults. Females stood around the perimeter of the circle, wearing brown shifts that exposed single, long brown breasts. Some of them had the nipples pierced with a sparkling jewel of some sort, their faces painted with dotted patterns. The other females clustered around them in deference.

The huge spear bearer stood forward and began a speech in his language that seemed to go on for a long time, while the seated Goblins listened, nodding occasionally. Britton turned to Marty to ask him what was going on, but was silenced with a wave. Whatever was happening, he was not to interrupt. At last, the spear bearer gestured back to Marty, who stepped forward, cutting him off. He launched into his own speech, bowing and tapping his eyes.

The spear bearer bristled at his words and started forward, but Marty intercepted him, reaching a hand down to the sole of his foot, then placing his hand against the spear bearer’s chest. The assembled crowd gasped collectively. Whatever Marty had done, it was a grave insult or a challenge.

Britton stepped forward, unsure of what was going to happen, but Wavesign’s voice rang out from the gathered tribe. “Okay, looks like everyone’s here.”

Humans and Goblins alike froze, the Goblins fixing him with angry stares. Wavesign grinned and raised his hands, flashing them his middle fingers. “That’s nice, you fucking rats. Suck on this.” The boyish uncertainty was gone from his voice. He sounded cocky, commanding.

“Wavesign, what the hell are you doing?” Swift asked.

And that was when Britton noticed that the young Hydromancer’s perennial vapor cloud was gone. He could feel the boy’s current, steady, disciplined, gathering solidly around him.

Wavesign produced a small black box from his waistband and thumbed it. A red light blinked on the surface, emitting a regular beeping sound. The group backed away, but Britton knew that whatever it was, it was too small to be a bomb. It looked more like a pager.

Or some kind of transmitter.

Britton’s mouth went dry.

“You sold us out, you bastard,” Britton said.

Wavesign grinned, his fists shrouded in a cloud of whirling ice crystals. He nodded to Britton, the confidence in his eyes making him appear much older. “Just following your lead, sir.”

He leapt aside as a massive gate slid open behind him. Through it, Britton could see Billy, his mother gentling his shoulders. Around him, a SOC assault team was scrambling to their feet, racing forward, chambering rounds.

Harlequin led them through the portal, his body wreathed in crackling electricity. Shadow Coven followed, Fitzy grinning at its head.

“Too smart by half, Oscar,” Harlequin said. “You forgot you’re not the only one with a gate.”

Then he leapt airborne, the storm erupting around him.

Twenty-five soldiers burst through the gate, carbines leveled. Along with Shadow Coven and Harlequin came two more SOC Sorcerers, pistols drawn and ready.

Marty barked an order, pointing, and the Goblins surged forward to meet them, brandishing spears. Several of the white-painted sorcerers sprang from their chairs, leaping into the sky or bursting into flames.

But it was Fitzy who fired the first shot. His pistol belched smoke and spun Pyre in a tight circle. The Pyromancer sat down hard, gripping his stomach, blood flowing from between his fingers. Britton cursed and Therese shrieked, rushing to Pyre’s side as more carbines cracked, throwing back escapees and Goblins alike. A patter of bullets churned the ground between Therese and Pyre, and she was forced to throw herself in the opposite direction.

Britton raced forward, slapping down one of the carbine
barrels so the soldier fired uselessly into the dirt. He snapped open a gate directly in the middle of the soldier, slicing him neatly in half, his dissected body sliding slowly apart. Britton leveled the gate horizontally, sending it arcing through the ranks of the SOC assaulters. They threw themselves to either side, but not before three more were cut in half. He pivoted neatly and crouched as one soldier moved past him, grabbing his ankle and yanking him off his feet. The soldier grunted as he went facedown in the dirt, his helmet flying off. Britton opened another gate and dragged his leg back through it, closing it like a cleaver about the man’s hips before turning to lunge for Fitzy.

But Harlequin appeared overhead and dove at him, lightning springing from his fingertips. Britton opened a gate to receive the burst and began shifting it into the Aeromancer’s flight path, edge turning outward toward him.

Then suddenly he was freezing. Wavesign grinned at him, hands extended. A cloud of swirling frost cloaked Britton, numbing his limbs, his teeth. The Hydromancer’s voice was confident, precise, mature. All of his uncertainty, his childlike affectation was gone.

Britton recognized it as the voice of a trained solider.

“Once a traitor, always a traitor, I always said,” Wavesign said. “I knew we couldn’t trust you, Keystone.”

“I’m the traitor?” Britton yelled at him, his teeth beginning to chatter. “You sold out everyone who trusted you!”

Wavesign shook his head, his wry smile reminding Britton of Harlequin’s. “I’ve never betrayed anyone,” Wavesign said. “I’ve been carrying out my assignment, just like good soldiers do. But you wouldn’t know much about how to be a good soldier, now would you, Keystone?”

The cold began to overwhelm him and Britton swore, shutting the gate and opening another one on the sauna in the Air National Guard base where he’d been assigned. He dove through it, but not before a bullet whined past his head, tearing a notch out of his ear. An inch to the right, and he would have been dead. He slammed against the cedar wall and collapsed, shivering, willing the heat from the stifling chamber into his frigid bones.

He looked up at another soldier who sat, wide-eyed on one
of the wooden benches, clutching a towel over his privates. Britton smiled at him, working his fingers and stamping his feet, feeling sensation slowly drift back into them. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

The soldier got to his feet and ran past Britton, bursting out the sauna door and yelling for help, admitting a blast of room-temperature air that felt freezing to Britton. Britton took another moment to suck in the hot air, the silence, the pleasant smell of the cedar. The heat was as delightful as the absence of battle around him. No time for that. He opened a gate behind where Wavesign had stood a moment before and stepped back in, reaching for his neck. But the Hydromancer had moved on and he grabbed empty air, then suddenly Britton’s magic rolled back, and his head rocked forward, somersaulting him face-first into the dirt.

As he rolled over, he caught a glimpse of Harlequin and Swift grappling in midair, with Swift getting the worst of the beating, his skin blackening with electrical burns from each of Harlequin’s charged punches.

“Thought you’d get away, didn’t you?” Fitzy said, stomping at Britton’s face. He rolled out of the way, catching the chief warrant officer’s boot and kicking up to catch him in the small of his back. Fitzy winced and fell on Britton, dropping an elbow into his shoulder joint that knocked it out of socket. He howled in pain and threw Fitzy’s bulk off him, scrambling to his feet. Fitzy was up in time with him, pointing his pistol at Britton’s face. A grim smile spread across his face as he pulled the trigger.

But the bullet flew wide, for Fitzy was suddenly swept aside by a branch of the gnarled central tree. He saw Peapod gesturing to it as the Master Suppressor went flying through the air, slamming into Downer, who had just completed animating a bolt of frost that Wavesign had produced. The elemental bounded into the press of Goblin warriors, knocking them aside with great sweeps of its arms, sending them staggering, blue-lipped and freezing.

The elemental plowed toward him, and Britton backpedaled, calling up his magic for a gate. Then the elemental was gone, disappearing in a cloud of vapor. Britton sawed his head toward Pyre, his hand still smoking from the flame bolt.
Satisfied that Britton was safe for the moment, Pyre dropped to one elbow, his face pale and sweating. The blood had stopped flowing from his gut and came in weak spurts. After a moment, he collapsed.

Around him, wolves darted, snarling at their former masters. Britton spotted Richards standing among the SOC assaulters, Whispering the animals on to greater ferocity.

Fitzy sprawled facedown in the plaza. A Goblin warrior raced to him as he rose and thrust its spear through his arm, pinning him to the ground. Fitzy shrieked and hauled on the spear, gritting his teeth as he moved up the shaft to reach his assailant. The muscle of his biceps squelched around the shaft, oozing bright blood. The Goblin quailed, openmouthed, at the chief warrant officer’s bald ferocity, too terrified to drop the weapon. By the time it recovered its senses and released it, Fitzy had hooked his fingers into its eye sockets and slammed its head down into his knee. As the creature collapsed, Fitzy spun on Britton, ripping the spear from his arm and casting it aside. Britton goggled. Even with a Goblin-sized spear, the feat was impressive. Fitzy howled, covered in gore, looking like he had stepped out of hell.

Britton staggered toward the edge of one of the smooth stone chairs and slammed his shoulder into it, screaming as the joint popped back into place. The pain flared and ebbed as Britton tried his shoulder and found he could move it with some pain.

All around them, the battle raged. The sky was riven by streaks of lightning and gouts of fire as the Goblin sorcerers joined the fight. The sharp reports of gunfire and the stink of cordite thickened the air.

Britton still felt his current blocked by Fitzy, who charged him, screaming. He snapped a kick at Britton’s face, but Britton sidestepped, catching the chief warrant officer’s leg and pulling him into a solid punch on Fitzy’s wounded arm. Fitzy grunted and spun away, only to be grappled by the Goblin spear bearer, who snarled and sank his teeth into Fitzy’s shoulder.