chapter 28
I will have nightmares about the battle cries and death screams, raw ululations of fear and rage and murderous intent directed at Atticus, and over it all the howling of the bean sídhe. And the snarling faces, the bared teeth, and the jets of blood—some of them fountaining because of my hand—those will haunt me also. The snarls would be directed at me if I were visible, I am sure, for Fand announced that this was about cold iron, and I have a measure of it dangling from my neck. I will remember those cries, the fire and the blood, and Fand floating above the field in a cold cocoon of sylphs, until I pass from the world.
I don’t know what spurred Fand to behave this way, but I feel certain this is not a fight that Atticus would have picked. He likes Fand and so do I, which is why I didn’t put that knife through her eye and into her brain. I knew she could heal from the neck wound and hoped it would make her rethink. I guess I screwed up from a strategic standpoint: I had the chance to end it and flubbed it. But who among us saw this coming? Atticus said in his note that he had come here seeking peace. I suppose Fand came here seeking war, and she found it.
And Manannan still loves her. He and I are on the left edge, and I can hear him moaning and crying through his Cloak of Mists—saying, “No, stop, Fand, don’t do this”—and when the mists part long enough to give me a glimpse of his face, I see torment and grief written there, not anger. He doesn’t attack but rather kills anything that enters the mist. I don’t think the goblins are especially after him, but he’s protecting Owen’s left side, and some of them try to get to the bear through him and fail. Those who choose to flank Manannan and go around to his left run into me, their feet leaving the ground when the staff they never see coming hits them between the eyes.
I can keep up with it—it’s safe here—so I have to leave. Atticus is right in the center of the line, and I can tell he’s barely holding on. He can’t clear a path the way the gods can. Perun is taking care of some to his left and Luchta is knocking down a few to his right, but Atticus is still in trouble, and when I see how bad it is, I abandon my position, confident that Manannan will be fine, and scurry around the back to help.
Since the goblins have the weaponry to do him serious damage, Atticus is rightly focused on them, taking a risk that none of the fliers will be able to get through Brighid’s defenses and take off his head. But as I run, I see a pixie slip in under Brighid’s inferno and stab him underneath the collarbone with a bronze needle sword. He swats her and she crumbles into ash. He can’t take time to pluck it out; he has to keep parrying and swinging at the goblins and a Fir Darrig who leaps at his head. But then a small formation of sidheóg archers follow up in the pixie’s wake, flying below the ceiling of flames, and unleash a volley of miniature arrows at him, kind of like toothpicks but much sharper. I imagine they’d be foiled by a thick wool sweater, but of course Atticus is fighting naked. The arrows prickle the left side of his upper torso en masse, and many of them lodge in his face and neck, sticking out like porcupine quills. There’s no serious damage, but it makes him flinch and miss the incoming swing of a goblin’s axe.
I cry out a warning, but it’s too late. The axe—a bronze number with notches in the blade—hits Atticus high up on his left arm, almost at the shoulder. It lodges in the bone and stays there as he falls to his right. The goblin lets go of the handle, partially because Atticus’s fall yanked it from his grip and partially because he’s surprised he made contact, and so he’s standing there, frozen, when I arrive. I treat his head like a fungo and swing for the center-field wall. His skull crunches and he falls like timber, and I redirect the swing to clock another two goblins upside the head in quick succession. They’re coming in, axes high and unguarded, thinking that they’ll finish off Atticus while he is down. They go down instead.
“Get up, Atticus! I’ve got your left side!”
He doesn’t waste time, just grunts as he pushes himself up and gets to his feet, knocking aside the thrust of a goblin sword to the right and opening the creature’s throat as he sweeps left. He keeps going because the goblins keep coming, checking his swing to the left to make sure he doesn’t hit me, and I do my best to lay the gobs out and give us some space. The axe is still buried in his left arm, which hangs useless at his side.
“Think you can pull … pull out the axe?” he says, blinking furiously as he deflects a blow from a spriggan who hopped over the lead goblin, hoping to surprise him.
“Sure,” I reply, switching Scáthmhaide to a left-hand grip. “Hold on.”
The staff whirls and staggers two goblins, who are in time to get caught in a chain-lightning blast from Perun. The enemy’s charge slows in front of us, the goblins behind the fallen front lines realizing that something unseen is kicking their asses. They’re squinting, searching for a target, and it gives me time to grab the axe handle and yank it out of Atticus’s arm. It tears him up a bit, and an awful lot of blood comes with it, along with a grunt of pain, but at least now he can heal it.
As a bonus, the axe turns invisible when I touch it, so to the goblins approaching warily, it looks as if it simply ceases to exist. It exists again once I throw it at the head of the nearest one, but by the time he sees it, all he can do is duck. His buddy behind him doesn’t have enough time to duck—it splits his face, and I leap in, sweeping the end of my staff up from the ground to connect with the ducking goblin’s chin as he rises. He sprawls backward with a broken jaw, teeth popping out in bloody parabolas before landing on his body. That gives some other goblins ideas about where I am, and they hack blindly in my general direction. I back up and feed their throats a couple of knives. As they fall, I deliver sharp strikes to the soft bits of the next rank. Atticus is still slashing with Fragarach next to me, though the movements look jerky and undisciplined.
“Nnneurotoxin in the nnnneedles,” he says. “Heal it ff. Fast if you geh. Geh. Get hit. I got lots. Sssslowing down.” He steps back and barely avoids the swipe of another axeman, but that unbalances him and he takes another step and another, staggering away from the fight until he keels over backward. Fragarach falls from his hand.
“Atticus!”