The men around the gate turned their fire on Joseph. Harris saw the giant shudder and jerk as he was hit, perhaps dozens of times. But Joseph waded into his enemies, swinging his club, smashing men to the ground.
Harris kept firing until his second gun was empty again. He thought he saw two men fell under his gunfire. He began to reload.
A hard, cold piece of metal pressed up against his temple. His stomach seized up and he froze.
A man's voice, hard and cold: "Drop those pieces of shit over the edge."
Harris complied. Below, he saw one of the gate defenders fall backwards, hit by fire from outside.
"Your other gun, too, dickhead. Angus told us about you."
Harris carefully, slowly drew out the revolver from his belt holster and dropped it off the wall.
The man stepped back. "Stand up and turn around."
Harris did. He turned to face Phipps. The man wore a dirt-streaked grimworld suit and burgundy-and-yellow power tie that seemed doubly incongruous in this setting.
Phipps smiled. "Here it comes, punk." Then he froze.
A woman's brown arm snaked from behind Phipps and relieved him of his pistol. Ixyail stepped back and away from the grimworlder. She carried another gun in her left hand. She, too, was smiling. "Two big steers fighting," she said. "I must see this. That will be worth all the climbing."
Phipps looked at her, confused, taking a moment to realize that he'd just been given permission to beat Harris to death. "All right," he said. "Just as good."
He stepped forward.
Harris knuckle-punched him in the throat. Phipps clutched at the injury, surprise in his eyes.
Harris grabbed him by the tie and yanked. Phipps sailed off the wall, his arms flailing. He got out one strangled cry before he smashed into the flagstones four stories below.
"Give me that." Harris, exasperated, took Phipps' revolver from Ixyail.
"That was no fight." She looked disappointed.
"Give Joseph some support. I'm going down."
He found temporary wooden stairs leading to the ground. As he descended, he saw Joseph, one of his legs near-useless and dragging, smashing one of the gunmen against a wooden cabinet. The last defender still at the gate fell over backwards and Alastair charged in, still firing at him, nearly stumbling over his body. Men were regrouping among the cabinets; some opened fire on the doctor, who dove behind a pile of masonry rubble.
Many of the wooden cabinets were on fire, as was the entire east wall of the castle. Flame and smoke rose into the sky.
Harris saw the squat shape of Angus Powrie moving among the cabinets, red-gold from reflected flame. Harris hurried down the steps, firing at targets of opportunity as he descended.
Noriko ran in behind Alastair and Doc, keeping as low as she could. One of the bleeding men on the ground raised a handgun. She lashed out with her blade, dispassionately watched as the gun and the hand that held it went flying.
Joseph, his face and body riddled with small craters, spun on them and raised the six-foot remnant of his club, but recognized them and stayed his hand.
Gunfire from the cabinets ahead. Doc angled right, diving, rolling behind bags of cement. Noriko headed left, hoping her dark clothes would make her tough to pick out in this light.
The lights decorating the cabinets abruptly brightened and burned out. The shaft of light Noriko remembered from Adennum launched itself toward the stars. The ground rumbled. She heard Doc groan. She knew it was from pain at having failed a second time. She felt it herself.
All the incoming fire seemed to be aimed at Doc and Alastair; maybe she hadn't been seen. She moved between two of the cabinets, headed toward the center, her senses alert.
Not alert enough. A loop settled around her neck and drew tight; a cold barrel pressed against the flesh of her neck. A gruff voice with a lowlander accent said, "Drop that toy, girl."
Harris moved into the circle of burning cabinets. In the center, the fire still issued a little red smoke, but no one stood near it.
That last shot had been his fifth. He swung out the cylinder of Phipps' pistol and dumped out its load of brass, then tried to reload.
No such luck. The ammunition in his pockets was a different type. He cursed, replaced the unspent cartridge and snapped the weapon shut, rotating the cylinder so that the one live round was ready to fire.
There was motion in his peripheral vision.
Angus Powrie stood four steps away. He held a Wexstan shotgun pistol in both hands, aimed upward. The cord at its end held its barrel to Noriko's neck. Noriko's face betrayed no emotion.
Angus caught sight of Harris in almost the same instant. "Drop your gun," said the redcap, "or she's dead."
Noriko shook her head, a mere suggestion of motion.
Harris took careful aim at him. "You need to come up with a new dialogue coach."
Powrie looked confused. "Maybe you didn't understand me, boy."
"Who was it who said that experience consists of recognizing it when you make the same mistake again?"
They waited there for long seconds, while the fire on the east wall blazed up brighter and gunfire blasted from the south arc of the ring of cabinets.
Harris kept his aim true. "Noriko?"
Her voice was faint. "Yes?"
"You're my friend, and I love you."
"I know."
"If it comes to it . . . good-bye."
"Good-bye."
He waited. Noriko slowly brought her hands up. Harris cleared his throat, held Powrie's attention. "Angus, listen. I'm willing to forgive and forget the thing with Jean-Pierre if you'll do something for me."
"Which is?"
"Kill yourself."
Noriko clapped her hands on either side of the Wexstan's cylinder.
Angus yanked the trigger. The cylinder, trapped between Noriko's hands, could not rotate; the hammer could not draw back or fall.
Harris fired. The bullet took Angus high in the chest. It didn't stagger the redcap.
Angus wound up and struck Noriko, a punishing blow to her cheek; her legs gave way but she kept the grip on the gun.
Harris ran forward and side-kicked, catching Powrie in the chest, throwing him to the ground. Harris dropped the empty pistol. Noriko crawled away.
Powrie was up in a split-second, charging. Harris side-stepped, grabbed the man's sleeve and added some momentum to the charge. The redcap flew past and slammed into the burning side of a cabinet. It didn't slow him; he bounced off and stepped away from the wood, fast enough that the fire didn't even char his shirt.
The redcap's pointed teeth gleamed in the firelight. He held up his undamaged left hand. "You ruined this," he said. "Now it's all better. I'm going to break your neck with it." He came at Harris, grabbing.
Harris leaned left, blocked right-handed, and as Angus reached him he spun into a backfist. The blow smashed the dwarf's nose into a flat, bloody mess of gristle. Angus staggered past a couple of steps.
Harris backed away, dancing, his hands at chin level to guard.
Angus turned, unslowed. Blood poured across his mouth but his smile mocked Harris. He charged again.
Suddenly Harris was in Sonny Walters' position, fighting the long-range battle against an enemy who had to close constantly. He fought it the way Sonny did, nailing Angus at the moments of transition, dancing away, throwing baffling combinations. He didn't forget the crucial difference between the two fights—he couldn't allow Angus ever to get a grip on him. He threw hard blocks against every grab and boxing-style punch Angus tried against him. He hammered the redcap's ribs, ears, stomach, knee. He kicked Angus full in the mouth and watched him spit out a half dozen teeth.
Then Angus took Harris' best cross to his jaw. He stumbled forward to his knees . . . and brought an uppercut straight from the ground, slamming it into Harris' crotch.
The thin cloth of the pants was no protection. Angus' fist crunched into the spike-laden bowl Harris wore as an athletic cup. Razory points and edges of cold iron and steel gouged Angus' fist, shredding flesh, ripping tendons and cartilage.
Angus staggered back, horror on his face as he stared at the new ruin of his left hand. Pieces of iron protruded from it.
Harris bent over, the pain from the blow making it hard for him to stand straight. He found his voice; it emerged as a wheeze. "Hurts, doesn't it?"
Angus didn't answer. The flesh on his hand not covered with blood was already blistering; he frantically plucked at it, pulling iron bits free. His eyes were wide.
Noriko stepped up beside Harris and fired the Wexstan. The shotgun discharge tore Angus' tormented expression away as though it were a paper mask, leaving behind only blood and bone. Angus' head rocked and he fell. He slapped onto the stone of the courtyard.
Harris stood over him and got his breathing back under control. He glanced over at Noriko and was amazed to see her cheeks wet with tears. Her words were barely audible over the crackle of burning wood: "I am sorry, Harris. He was yours, but I had to. Family honor demanded."
He took her in his arms and held her. "It's all right."
They collected in the center of the henge. Doc, unhurt, was first on the scene. Then Harris and Noriko.
Welthow, lately arrived, knelt beside Joseph. The giant's face did not express concern or hurt. His body was riddled with bullet-holes, but one by one they slowly began to contract to nothingness. Bits of dark metal worked their way free of his flesh and dropped to the stones.
Alastair moved from one fallen form to the next. With most, he did little more than check pulse and then close the victim's eyes.
The others trickled in. Gaby pushed a couple of gunmen before her, keeping them at riflepoint; both were fairworlders. Gaby looked in alarm at the blood streaking Harris' crotch. "Not mine," he said, but did not elaborate.
Ish moved to Doc, touched his cheek, stayed beside him.
"They finished the ritual," Doc said. "We've failed."
Angus Powrie and fourteen of Duncan's men were dead. Another dozen, most of them injured, were dragged off one by one into Harris' workout cargo hold, now pressed into duty as a temporary gaol.
Ladislas had a leg injury, a twisted ankle sustained as he left the
Frog Prince
. Joseph was almost recovered from the craters and divots that had marked him a few minutes before. And two of the villagers, one of them a child, were dead, killed during the triplane's strafing run; another was hurt.
The villagers added wood to the fire raging in the fortress. The lake's last remnant of Castilian rule would never be rebuilt.
Doc's associates retreated to the
Frog Prince
dock to watch the structure burn down. Noriko and Welthy worked to repair the damage done the plane during the strafing run.
One of the prisoners talked freely when pressed. "We were set up in some wretched hole of a town," he said. "The old man called it Lady of the Birds."
"Ixquetzal," said Ish. "Territorial capital of the blood-drinking sons of Castilians."
"He rented a warehouse, had us set everything up in a chalk circle. Said when we got here, all we had to do was hold the fort. When the ceremony was done, he'd bring us back. He was
supposed
to bring us back."
Doc dragged the man off to the cargo hold, then returned to the dock. Alastair said, "Ixquetzal next, I assume. Duncan will be working up the strength to bring them back."
Doc shook his head. "It took a tremendous amount of energy for Duncan to send them here at all. To bring them back would probably have killed him. Powrie probably had a return arrangement; the rest were sacrificed. He'll have packed up and taken off already. We need to get back to Neckerdam. Noriko, how long on the repairs?"
"We could take off now, but I don't want to fly all the way home on three engines. By dawn, I think, for the port inboard engine."
"Dawn." Doc balled up his fists, pressed them to his eyes. "All right. Keep at them. We need to get Harris and Gaby to where we can protect them."
Harris, dressed once more in his grimworld jeans, sat with his back to one of the dock's wooden support poles. "Let me get something straight, Doc. Duncan has to kill us if he's going to forge a new link between the worlds. He can't do that while we're alive because we have the wrong whatchamacallit valences."
"Firbolg. Yes. You could go back to the grim world and he would not need to kill you. But Gaby he would still need to kill. Remember, her Firbolg Valence lights up their registers on either world."
"Right. So we have to wait around until he makes a move on us. We can set up the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines around us, but it all boils down to when he decides to attack."
"Correct. Or until Caster's `umbilical cords' recover. Which could be months or years."
"So rather than wait, I think we need to force his hand."
"I'd considered that. The best way would be to begin the very ceremony he wants to initiate. Threaten to define the new links ourselves." He smiled apologetically at Gaby. "Of course, we'd have to send Harris home and kill you first."
"Let's not," she said.
"But even if we pretended to be planning it, Duncan has a few grimworlders of his own on the fair world. We got one tonight, but we'd have to capture the other two and send them home first."
Harris shook his head. "So let's take a different approach. Bring in more grimworlders of our own. Or make him think that we're about to, so he has to act right away to stop us. It's better than waiting around."
Doc considered that. "You're right, and I'm an idiot." He rose. "Ish, I need you to translate for me with the village leader. I have to apologize, make restitution to him somehow for the unhappiness I've brought to Itzamnál. Everyone, we leave when Noriko pronounces the engine ready."
By the time the sun rose they'd been in the air for half a bell.
Harris stared at the wooden ceiling above his bunk. Angus Powrie's beret was tucked away in the storage drawer beneath him. Noriko had been too numbed by events to think about it, but he knew that the royal family of Acadia would want to have it—tangible evidence of the death of their enemy. But it felt strange to take a trophy from a man he'd helped to kill.