Elite: A Hunter novel (37 page)

“Well…what sort of
battery bank
were you thinking about?” the armorer asked skeptically. “And how were you thinking of verifying this notion in the first place?”

“Same answer for both questions, sir,” I said. “I figured I’d ask the Hounds.”

Well, that caused a stir. People began looking at each other, then back to me, then started muttering to each other. Did they think I was crazy? I wouldn’t blame them if they did. But I had to get everything I’d figured out in front of them before they made up their minds I was insane. So I continued right on, over the murmuring. “See, Hounds are magic, and they eat manna. I thought, maybe they could turn manna into magic. I know some of us can share our manna with them so they can heal up. Maybe they can share magic back with us.”

“That’s a lot of maybes,” remarked Elite Flashfire from my right.
He
looked like death warmed over, his head completely wrapped up in bandages and one arm in a sling. I didn’t blame him for feeling skeptical. But at least I had a source for the answers, and if the reply was no, well, we were no worse off than when I’d walked in.

“But it’s easy enough to find out,” I pointed out. “I just bring over one of my Hounds and ask him. I haven’t had a chance to do that yet—the idea just hit me as I started to open the door here.”

Kent made an impatient little gesture that more or less said “then get on with it,” and I got up, went to the front of the room, and pulled up magic inside myself. For the first time in a
long
time, it ached to do that, a dull, unpleasant throb deep in my chest followed by an all-over tenderness, like after you’ve overused your muscles and then try and do something before they’ve gotten a chance to recover. But it didn’t matter that it hurt, what mattered was that after that twelve-hour coma there was magic enough in me now to bring one Hound over, and I cast the Glyphs and opened the Way.

Bya leapt through and stood there in his greyhound shape, looking from me to Kent and back again, waiting for me to say something.

“Bya,” I said, “you know we’re in trouble; you know we can’t possibly face the Othersiders right now, not without help. So I need to know, can Hounds share magic with their Hunters? And if you can, will you?”

Bya put his head to one side and thought about this for a moment, while all the Elite in the room held their breaths and stared at him. Finally, he nodded slowly, and there was a kind of collective sigh of relief.
Tell them all what I tell you, exactly as I say it,
he ordered.

“He wants me to tell you exactly what he tells me,” I said. I heard some murmurs at that, as if some of my fellow Elite were not used to being spoken to by their Hounds as if we were all equals. Well, that didn’t matter, because we
are
, and if they hadn’t figured that out by now, it was time they learned it.

In the course of ordinary Hunting, this would not be possible,
Bya continued.
In the course of ordinary Hunting, there is only enough manna released in a kill to allow us to feed and prosper. But we do not face ordinary Hunting now. We face war.

Obediently, I repeated that word for word. A few of my fellow Elite looked shocked, not at what had been said, but at the fact that my Hound was smart enough to figure it out and say it.

“He’s right,” Kent said flatly. “We’re into a whole new phase of hostility now. What we faced out there was all-out war.” There were murmurs of agreement, but also a sense of fear.

You saw what happened when you faced so many of the enemy back there.
You
are depleted by what you do, but
we
have so much manna flowing to us that we cannot use more than a tenth of what is available. There is no reason to hoard it, since we cannot store that much manna, no matter how much we would like to. And it is foolish to let it go to waste. We can change it to the energies of magic, and, yes, we can give it in that form back to you. And I do not think that any Hound will refuse to do so. But do not take my word for this,
Bya added.
Ask your Hounds.

I repeated all that, and needless to say, the reaction was pretty electric and was followed
immediately
by everyone in the room, Kent included, casting their own particular Glyphs, opening the Way, and bringing through their pack alphas, until the room was full of all the wild and weirdly varied kinds of Hounds we all had. Each alpha turned his attention to his Hunter. But I saw something new in the eyes of some of my fellow Elite—a realization that their Hounds were not just smart, magical
animals,
but something much more.

And whether the query and reply was by thought or by word, the answer was the same as Bya had given me.
Yes.
They
could
turn surplus manna into magic, and they would, and they would feed us with it.

We weren’t fighting against overwhelming odds anymore. We might not have more Hunters, but we Hunters had just been given a whole new weapon to fight with.

The mood in the room, which had been somber, quietly frightened, and deep in despair, was transformed in that moment.

The room had turned from a gathering of Hunters to a sea of Hunter-Hound pairs as each Hunter went into deeper and more involved conversation with his or her alpha. For some, I sensed, it was the first time actual “conversation” had
ever
taken place. But Kent glanced down at his Perscom and looked stunned.

Then, without a word, he grabbed me by my elbow and dragged me out into the hall. Even limping hard, he was still a big, strong man, and I wasn’t exactly resisting. “Medbay,” he said as the door closed on the buzz of conversation. “On the double. I’ll catch up.”

Even though I hadn’t a clue what was going on, I blindly followed the order, racing down the corridors at the direction of my Perscom to the medbay, which combined the infirmary, where minor injuries were tended, with the surgery and hospital. I still didn’t know
why
I was being sent here—but no sooner had I burst through the doors when Jessie grabbed my elbow and started shoving me toward the Hospital ward. “Wha—” I said.

“Hurry up. He’s askin’ for ye, an Kent, I reckon Kent’s a-comin’.” Jessie was a big girl and muscled, and she wouldn’t have had any trouble frog-marching me anywhere she chose, but I didn’t see any reason to resist her. My only question was, who, exactly, was
he
?

I winced to see that all the beds were occupied, but Jessie steered me toward one in particular.

One that Hammer was standing beside.

One that held—

I gasped, but before I could say anything, Jessie had me parked on the other side of the bed from Hammer and laid a gentle hand on his unbandaged shoulder. “Mistuh Steel,” she said. “Got Joy here, an’ Kent’s a-comin’.” And only now did I realize that Jessie was still in a staff uniform—but it was medic white, and she had a little red cross over her left breast with an embroidered name,
Jessie Knight.

Steel looked like someone had been beating him with clubs. His face was so bruised it was blue-black, and his eyes were swollen shut. There was a stitched-up gash across his forehead and the top of his head, and he had his left arm in a cast. Frankly, he looked like everything in the world had used him for a punching bag.

“Wait for Kent,” he croaked. His voice sounded as if he had been screaming for about ten hours. Maybe he had been.

“They brought him in a couple hours ago,” said Hammer, which explained why he hadn’t been at the meeting. “He’s concussed, and the Othersiders had a grand old time dancing on him. His Hounds grabbed themselves a search party and practically dragged the rescuers to him. Once they got him here, I sent his Hounds home and positively ID’d him. He wasn’t in any shape to do anything more than mumble, so he was only marginally more incoherent than normal.” I knew by that little dig that Steel really
was
going to be all right.

“Ears work fine, moron,” Steel croaked.

That was when Kent got there. Jessie had left us to wait by the door, and towed him over so Steel could tell us what we needed to know.

He told his story in little bits, resting between each sentence, his words slurring together a little. “Last
I
saw of that rat Ace, he’d slammed me in the chest with a massive levin bolt and I was flying backward. I ended up landing soft, so I didn’t break every single bone in my body.” His paused for a breath, and Jessie stuck a straw leading to a glass of ice water in between his swollen lips. He took a couple sips, then continued. “Unfortunately, I landed soft on a bunch of Goblins, and they weren’t exactly in a forgiving mood.” He winced a little as he took a breath. “I managed to get something like a Shield up after they’d pounded on me with clubs for a while, but my Hounds couldn’t get to me, I knew I couldn’t keep the Shield going for very long, and I figured I was a goner.”

He paused for a lot longer, Jessie hovering like a protective bird. “Then, all of a sudden, they stopped beating on me and parted like the Red Sea, and this Folk Mage just strolled through them. Not the one that was helping Ace—this one was different.”

“How do you mean?” Kent asked when Steel paused again.

“Fancy,” Steel replied. “For starters, he wasn’t feral. For another thing, I think he must have been pretty high ranking, given how he looked. I’ve seen rich people out Straussing that weren’t dressed as fancy as he was.”

“You’re sure about that?” demanded the armorer as my mouth went dry. “You’re sure he was a civilized Folk Mage?”

Steel made a tiny little motion of his head that could have been a nod. “Mind, none of us have seen many Folk Mages, but this one would have stood out in any crowd.”

“Is this important?” Jessie demanded sharply.

“Yes,” Kent told her, so she backed off.

“All purples and lavenders, hair most women would kill to have, fancy robes, pretty face…You’d think he was going to a party, or out of some fantasy vid, not walking around on a battlefield.”

Kent thought about that. “That’s…Something about that is familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

I kept my mouth shut.

Kent shook his head. “Never mind. Go on, Steel.”

Steel managed to crack his eyes a very little; I could see the glitter of them between his swollen lids. “Anyway, I figured he was going to monologue for a few minutes, then finish me off. But he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t say a damn thing. He just stood over me, but the fact that he was there kept all the other monsters off me.”

There was a murmur of astonishment at that, and who could blame us? I was the only one that I’d ever heard of who’d had a nonfatal encounter with a Folk Mage.

“I tried saying something to him,” Steel continued, “but he didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to think, and my head had been beaten on enough that I wasn’t all that good at thinking anyway.”

“And that’s all he did?” Kent prodded.

Steel nodded again. “Eventually I just passed out, with him still standing over me, and when I woke up again, he was gone, the fighting was over, it was about noon, and it was all quiet. My Hounds were standing guard on me at that point.”

“That would be after PsiCorps showed up and we beat them back,” Kent told him. “I wouldn’t call it ‘winning,’ but we’re all right for now. Joy’s got us something I’ll explain when you’re feeling better.”

“I could barely think when I came to. My Perscom was trashed, my comm set was gone the second Ace hit me, and if it hadn’t been for my Hounds, I never would have gotten the attention of the folks looking for survivors or human bodies. That’s it. Now, Jess promised me the
good
drugs.”

“And you’ll get ’em, Mistuh Steel, now we got yer brain swellin’ down.” Jessie made shooing motions, and we moved away as she went and got one of the docs and towed him back to Steel’s bed.

But I was thinking about that description; there was no way there could have been two identical Folk Mages like that on the battlefield. What Steel had been describing was
my
Mage. All right, so that Folk Mage had been, for whatever weird Folk reasons, trying to give me warnings. That was bizarre enough. But now there was
this
! Why had he protected Steel? Why had he helped both of us? Who in the history of the world since the Diseray had ever heard of one of the Folk helping us? I had more questions, and no answers at all.

But my questions had to be put aside for the moment. We needed to tell the rest about our new power sources—and, as it turned out, Kent wanted
me
to be the one to tell them.