Elite: A Hunter novel (40 page)

“Roger that,”
the armorer replied.

Now the winds before the storm came in at ground level; we hunkered down as we were buffeted by heavy, cold gusts and blasted with kicked-up dirt and debris. “Goggles,” I said as I pulled mine out. “It’s gonna be raining pitchforks in a few minutes.” The rain line was visible now, in fact, as a silvery curtain that reached from the cloud base to the ground, obscuring everything behind it.

“All Hunter teams on the ground,”
Kent said on the common frequency.
“Army moving in, pincher formation, but you’ll have to hold your own until they get here.”

“Psimons?”
someone asked hesitantly. Kent’s only reply was a snort.

Now it was possible to make out that the shapes riding the storm front were ebony birds, birds easily the size of a small jet, riding the winds like a hawk or a vulture rides an updraft, wings scarcely moving except at the tips. But they were nothing at all like a hawk; they had long forked tails, long necks, and their wings were long and pointed, like a swallow’s, not blunt like an eagle or a hawk’s. They did have raptors’ beaks, but the thing that put chills up my spine were their eyes, eyes that glowed brilliant red. In a way, they were beautiful—but I remembered the other stories about them, how they snatched up humans and carried them off to eat, decimating entire small villages. And most of all I remembered how they had attacked
my
people and would have destroyed them, and I hardened my heart.

They were definitely making for the pylon we crouched beneath, and Bya and Myrrdhin trembled under my hands with tension.

Just before they got in range to start pasting the pylon, they swooped down, neatly skimming the earth, and little dark figures leapt off their backs at the bottom of their arc. Moments later, Portals opened up all over the place as the Thunderbirds rowed their wings to gain the altitude they’d lost and get into formation to make
their
attack.

“They dropped off Folk Mages to open Portals. Hold steady,” I murmured into my mic. Hordes of monsters were pouring out of Portals and engaging with the other teams. Some were converging on our pylon, unopposed for the moment. “Remember, we’re not supposed to be here.” It was hard to crouch in place as the sounds of battle erupted all over the field; I could feel my Hounds burning to get out and attack. But we needed them nearer, near enough that our Hounds could absorb their manna.

Without the need to fight their way to the base of our pylon, the troops of Othersiders coming our way were trotting along with grins on their faces. I was extremely happy to see that most of them were creatures that were vulnerable to plain old bullets. Goblins, Kobolds, Redcaps, a gaggle of Hags. What Shields they had were rudimentary and wouldn’t stand up to much physical punishment. It looked to me as if they had been told to set up a little distance away from the pylon and defend the Thunderbirds from attack from the ground. The really heavy rain hadn’t reached us yet, but it was bad enough, coming at us slantwise, hitting the Shields and sliding down them in sheets, deforming our view.

I waited until the monsters were so close that it was a dead certainty that every bullet and shotgun pellet we fired would hit something.
“Now!”
I ordered, and Souxie dropped the camouflaging spell, and the rest of us let loose with blasts of magic intended to shatter their Shields. The Othersiders were caught so completely by surprise that they froze for a moment, mouths agape. Their Shields broke like so much glass, leaving them vulnerable.

“Shields down in three, two, one!”
called Steel, repeating the tactic that had worked so well the last time. And while the Othersider Shields were still down, we unloaded with everything we had, as the rain, no longer kept away by the Shields, pounded down on us, plastering our hair to our heads in seconds.

The front ranks and part of the second were mowed down like so much hay. The Hounds leapt out of the circle of protection to finish off any creature that had survived the volley and to take down a few uninjured ones just for good measure. Then they raced back in among us, and Hammer and Steel put up their Shields, giving us shelter from everything the Othersiders could throw at us. And from the rain.

Three times we repeated this because the response by Othersiders to being attacked was to charge in a rage. We could have been synced up like a bunch of Psimons, our coordination was so perfect—first, a magic blast to take down the Othersider Shields, followed by a hail of bullets and iron shot. I was keeping an eye overhead, just in case the Thunderbirds decided to take a hand, but they were circling high above the pylon, black against the charcoal of the clouds, occasionally discharging lightning into the top of it. So far, they hadn’t even melted the lightning rod on the top—but it didn’t look to me as if they’d ramped up to full power yet, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they did. And when they did, they would melt through or short out all the pylon’s protections. And then one good concentrated burst of lightning from all of them together would take down the pylon and with it, two sections of the Barrier.

Just wait,
I kept telling myself.
Wait. Wait until the Hounds are sated. It can’t be long now.
And then, as the third wave of Othersiders fell, I felt it—the rush of magical energy into me from my Hounds.

I was not expecting this. And I don’t think anyone else was either.

It was as if I had been asleep and suddenly came completely awake; my vision sharpened to a point that I can’t even describe, every sound struck my ear as separate, clear and completely distinguishable, and every nerve ending on my body politely informed my brain of what it was feeling. I was immersed in sensation, but not overwhelmed by it. And as for my brain—I was thinking at light speed, processing all that information as quickly and coolly as a computer, and I was aware of
everything
, but especially of magic. Sensing magic wasn’t something I had to concentrate on now; it just happened and came more easily than breathing. Last of all, I had the uncanny impression, not that my perceptions and reactions had sped up, but that the entire world had slowed to a crawl.

I glanced up and immediately identified the lowest-flying Thunderbird, and I almost laughed at the unsuspecting monster, circling slowly, building up both electricity and magic from the clouds and the storm. Fatigue was gone. Sheeting icy rain meant nothing. I activated the ice spell with a mere flick of my fingers. The spell lanced up into the sky, struck, and stuck. In moments, it had pulled rain out of the sky onto the monster’s wing and tail feathers, then sucked all the warmth out of the air around it. And since that heat had to go somewhere, as a nice little side effect, I brought the heat down to us, creating a cozy pocket around us. My team and I stopped shivering, even though we were still being pounded by the storm.

The Thunderbird noticed what I was doing immediately, of course; it broke off its attack on the pylon and frantically pumped its wings for altitude, trying to get out of my reach. But more and more magic came pouring into me, and the bird would have had to get above the clouds and out of my sight before it would have been able to do that, and I felt Cielle’s spell working with mine, her ice bolts layering on top of what my spell had laid down. It couldn’t shake itself to break off the ice; birds can’t shake unless they’re perched. It could flap hard enough to clear its wings—but not its tail. That long forked tail that worked so well as a kind of anchor to allow it to turn quickly now worked against it as more and more ice built up on the feathers. Layer by layer, I added the ice; the bird’s wing beats became more labored as it tried to overcome the added weight. And Cielle turned her attention to icing the wings while I concentrated on the bird’s tail and back.

Then it wasn’t gaining height; it was
losing
it. It wasn’t thinking now; in the battle to stay aloft, its world had narrowed to the fight to escape the pull of gravity. Desperation overcame it, and all it could do was call out frantically to its fellow Thunderbirds as it fell, slowly, to earth.

In the last few yards, it gave up the fight altogether—or maybe it just ran out of strength. It crashed to the ground with a piercing cry of mingled fear and despair.

“Don’t shoot it!”
I yelled into my mic as Dusana and Hevajra
bamphed
to its shoulders, pinning its wings to the earth without breaking any of the delicate wing bones.
“Cover us!”
I added as I sprinted to the front of the fallen creature. Like most birds, now that it was pinned breast-down on the ground, it couldn’t raise its head very far and certainly couldn’t strike at me. The deadly talons were extended beneath and behind it, and it couldn’t lever itself up enough to stand and rake me with them.

The rain poured down on both of us as we took the measure of each other.

“What are you doing, Joy?”
Kent shouted in my ears.

I didn’t answer. He’d put this in my hands. I hoped he’d continue to trust that I knew what I was doing.

I hoped I knew what I was doing. Now that I was here, in front of the thing, I was galvanized by something that was not quite fear but was not far from it.

I stared into its eyes—still red, but no longer glowing. I’ve never had much to do with birds. That was Master Pepperberg’s specialty. I didn’t think I was misreading what I saw there, though; behind the flattened feathers and staring eyes, it was terrified of me.
Good.
I wanted it terrified. This would only work if it was afraid of me, and the original plan of picking the Thunderbirds off one at a time while more mobs of monsters attacked us was not an optimal strategy.

“What I have done to you, I can do to every one of your flock,” I said. The eyes flared fiery red for a moment, and then the light subsided again, leaving only the fear. “And you know that. You know what we can do. But I think you have been misled, and I am willing to allow you to correct that mistake.” Now I bowed a little to it, remembering what Master Hon Li had done so long ago. “Of a courtesy, I think that you should abandon your allies, who did not warn you of this, and leave us in peace.”

This was what I was gambling on; after that encounter my uncle had described, the Mountain had never again been troubled by Thunderbirds. That made me think they might be very different from the Othersiders we usually fought. That they could be something we could negotiate with.

The circle of my reality narrowed to the Thunderbird and myself. I stared into those glowing, alien eyes and tried to project confidence, even though I was probably as terrified as the Thunderbird was. The bird’s eyes blazed. Finally, the great hooked beak opened, and a strange metallic voice emerged from it.

“What surety do you give us that you will not pursue us?”
it said in perfectly good English. I nearly jumped, I was so startled. But I managed to cover my surprise by turning that into a shrug.
Does it understand a shrug? Never mind….

Overhead, the other Thunderbirds circled, their attack on the pylon aborted as they stared down at us. This was what I had hoped for—that the Thunderbirds would remember or had heard of the encounter with Master Hon Li and be willing to listen. They’d shown they could be talked out of attacking once, so why not a second time?

“The surety that we have more than enough to deal with without pursuing you,” I replied, forcing a laugh. “Your allies have done you no favors; they lured you here with promises they could not keep, and they lied to you about our strength. Escape with your lives, and stop your ears to them in the future.” Bya came up beside me, and we put a double Shield over ourselves.
Get off his wings,
I told Dusana and Hevajra, taking the chance that even if the Thunderbird struck at me, the Shield would deflect it and the rest of my team would cut it down with their weapons before it could get in a second attack.

The two Hounds
bamphed
off it. Then the rest of them gathered up beside me, still feeding me magic, and the huge bird got clumsily to its feet and gave itself a tremendous shake, finally breaking the ice on its tail and sending shards everywhere. Now that it was free, it was threatening enough to bring my heart up into my mouth. It was taller than Dusana and loomed over us all, staring down at us with its neck curved so it could stare at us directly, strange and indecipherable thoughts passing behind its eyes.

It looked from me, to its fellows, and back again. Was it talking to them? It looked as if it was.

Then it spoke for the last time.
“I do not understand why you would do this, but we say yes,”
it replied shortly. It raised its head skyward and uttered a deafening, piercing cry. The others answered it, and it spread its wings. Warned by that, the Hounds and I scrambled backward, and it shoved itself up into the air with powerful thrusts of its legs and wings. We were buffeted by the blast from those wing beats, nearly knocked off our feet, in fact. Or at least, I was. I had to hang on to Dusana and Shinje to keep my footing.

It gained height rapidly now that it was no longer weighed down by the ice. When it reached the same altitude as the rest of the Thunderbirds, they circled the pylon three times before shooting up into the clouds, heading westward, and abandoning their attack.

An unnatural silence fell on this part of the battlefield; for a moment, the rain slackened off, and I turned to see that the rest of the monsters that had been attacking us were staring, dumbfounded, at their retreating allies. Before they could break out of their shock, I pulled my rifle around from my back and stitched their front line with bullets. A second or so later, so did the rest of my team. My Hounds and I sprinted back to the group, and Hammer and Steel raised their Shields again. The rest of my team cheered, while they continued to hammer at the Shields of the latest lot of monsters.

I became aware of someone sputtering at me on the comm.

It was the armorer.