Suddenly the attack broke, and the giant mutants began to fall back towards their prior lines. The wheeling harpies changed their circles into a less aggressive formation, and the mutants remaining in sight looked expectantly towards the west.

Captain Landry knew this sudden silence didn't bode well. Ignoring the smells of mud, crushed vegetation and cordite, he fired off rapid orders, moving the survivors of his platoon into a rough wedge facing the west, with outliers watching for action on the flanks. The stragglers of nearby units joined his formation, those who were able. A few just hunkered down in their foxholes and hiding places, trembling with the horror of the experience.

Landry didn't have time to be terrified. That would come later.

Preferably at home in Kentucky, with his dogs at his feet and a very large bottle of home brew.

"Hold your fire," Landry ordered dryly. "They may be coming to surrender."

The sergeant snorted briefly before relaying the order. The tough little captain had an odd sense of humor, but his ability to remain unflappable had kept this unit alive through the last five engagements. The men knew that Landry would make good decisions, and they followed them instinctively and instantly.

They thought it had been Landry who had discovered the tactic of targeting the bubble-brains. When each Centurion died, the Trolls and other troops it had been controlling lacked any further tactical sense. And to re-establish control, the replacement Centurion needed to be in line-of-sight with the errant troops. Which made the new bubble-brain an easy target itself. Keeping the enemy tactically impaired was one key to staying alive.

A humming noise began rising from the west, like the sound of a million caged bees. It wasn't from any of the known units that were in Landry's official briefing. He frowned and spat, glancing over the troops arrayed in the little valley. Here and there he could see his veterans giving strategy pointers to the survivors of the other units. Landry relaxed a little - the stragglers were responding well, even a couple of female recruits that Captain Mukoona's unit had been saddled with.

He raised his binoculars to survey the oncoming units. They were some form of flying metallic egg, crackling with a dim red energy. There seemed to be about a hundred of them, and Landry would have bet his last dollar that each of them had more than the firepower of one of his soldiers. They were grouped in clusters of three to eight, which Landry immediately dubbed "squads." In the center of the vast assemblage was a man on a flying throne.

He was not one of the metas in the briefing. "Who the fuck is that?"

"It's Horus," replied a voice from behind him. Landry was a small man, but he almost felt like kneeling to look into the smiling dwarf's eyes. "And I'm Dr Wight."

In a blink of an eye the sergeant had a pistol aimed at the small intruder. Then reholstered it just as fast, as the unit insignia on the silver arm and the medic symbol on the other penetrated.

"Landry," Landry replied. "What are we up against?"

"Horus is a Middle-Eastern technologist who fancies himself as a god. Those 'Eyes' are robots, each one with a single major function. It may be defending its group, or providing electronic counter-measures, anti-personnel or anti-vehicle support. The larger groups are likely to have the biggest kick, but don't depend on it."

"Suggestions?"

"I have no idea."

Landry looked at the medic long and hard, waiting for a suggestion. When none was forthcoming, he turned to look again at the advancing armada.

"Shit." Landry studied each egg in turn as he questioned the silver-handed dwarf. "Then why are you here? And how did you get here?"

"For the answer to each of those questions, you'd call it magic. The portents said that I needed to be right about here, so with a little work, here I am."

Oh, great, thought Landry. Of all the metas in the war, I get Merlin's ventriloquist dummy. He turned his full attention to the oncoming armada.

Horus was ecstatic. This was his chance to prove himself to Autocrat. A smattering of rifle fire spattered off his force walls, not even penetrating enough to tickle him. The American troops were obviously demoralized by the appearance of a god.

As well they should be. He clicked over the controls to amplify his voice and broadcast it to the huddled troops. He would be merciful, but only to a point. After all, these were Americans.

"Quail before me, American pigs! Bow down before Horus, and you shall be spared." Spared to be Elite mutant troops, of course.

Inexplicably, the rifle fire picked up a bit, although it was still sporadic and unfocused. Horus sighed, the sigh of a bored god.

"You seek to hurt me? I, who have brought low the most powerful heroes of your blighted country? I, who have fought the Protectorate and emerged unscathed? I, who have been promised all of Egypt by Autocrat! Your puny weapons cannot reach me."

Landry listened to the boasts, occasionally cocking an eyebrow towards Wight. The wry grin never left the dwarf's face, even as he occasionally shrugged to admit a boast's partial truth. If Wight remembered correctly, Horus had once taken on Lioness and Echelon, and more recently some other Class Twos.

Landry turned to the distant throne with its blowhard occupant. The guy seemed to have too much to prove. That type gets careless.

"Yeah, well you've never fought the U.S. fucking Army," he replied quietly and acidly in Horus' direction. "Any known weaknesses?" he asked the dwarf.

"He always fixes any weaknesses between engagements." Wight surveyed the advancing armada. "And he has more of those Eyes today than he's ever fielded before."

Landry spat, but without his usual humor. He watched the sporadic gunfire from the troops, noting the minor movements among Horus' Eyes as they repositioned to support their embattled leader. Several appeared to be generating walls and fields of force between the American soldiers and their god. Watching the tactical shifting of the Eyes, Landry began to have a plan.

"Sergeant -- how many heavy weapons squads do we have?"

"Six." Landry raised an eyebrow. He didn't doubt his sergeant, but he waited for an explanation anyway. He had only had four squads to begin with, and had seen one go down to a trio of Trolls two hours before. "Three squads of ours, two from Mukoona, and one reconstituted."

Landry smiled a predator's smile. "Fusillade fire on the throne from all of our guests. My troops will hold their fire till my mark. Then on my mark here's what we do..."

Horus was becoming more and more annoyed as the bullets spattered off the defensive shields. Was there no end to the bother these Americans would put him through? Enough, then.

He stroked the huge panels on the arms of his throne to reallocate groups of the Eyes for antipersonnel tactics. In a few minutes, they would peel back and shred the troops that huddled on these few hectares of Irish ground.

Suddenly a solid wave of weapons fire careened off the force walls, shorting and dropping several of them simultaneously. Horus hit an emergency control and ascended a dozen meters in an eyeblink, defended of course by his faithful Eyes. Explosions filled the afternoon sky, even as the bullets resumed streaming off his defensive fields. His readouts looked wrong somehow, but he wasn't able to read them instantly; there were just too many Eyes to manage conveniently.

A second wave of explosions made clear the American's plan, only an instant too late. All but one of his heavy defensive eyes had been obliterated. As they had moved to defend him, they had been defenseless themselves. And even now the soldiers were picking off the light defensive Eyes.

Very well, then. Let loose the Eyes of war.

Landry grinned as the second wave of Stingers plastered the Egyptian's defenses. Landry's sharpshooters were taking opportunity targets now, and the total enemy contingent was down by half in only two minutes. Of course, that left about fifty of the enemy's strongest offensive robots. Brilliant pulses of violet and red light began raining down from the remaining Eyes.

Landry heard the screams without reaction, calmly taking in the overall flow of the battle. There didn't seem to be much of a tactical sense behind the actions of the Eyes, but they were making a mess of his troops anyway. The Eyes were effectively using a pincers movement to strafe his troops from both sides. It was the nightmare of any ground commander- enemy aircraft with no air support of your own.

He watched with concern as a private ran from a foxhole directly into the arms of the waiting lines of Trolls. His troops needed an organizing principle to keep them from scattering. "Shooters concentrate on the west flank. Any Eyes in that sector must go down. Heavy weapons squads, direct assault on Horus in two minutes, on my mark." It didn't really matter which sector he had chosen, the important thing was to give the troops a simple, clear objective that helped the battle.

He glanced at the dwarf, who was throwing chemicals into a small portable burner and mumbling words in what Landry could swear was Pig Latin. Landry shook his head as he waited for the throne to reach the center of the battlefield. "Three... Two... One... Mark!" Four Stingers roared up to meet the throne, one a half second too early. A fifth missile followed three beats later - the reconstituted team still had not gotten their rhythm down.

No matter. Two of the first four missiles connected, blowing through the defenses and blowing shards of throne high into the air. The fifth impacted the bottom directly, shattering the throne into chunks of bright metal scrap.

Barely protected by personal armor, the would-be god fell.

Horus could not believe the luck. His head vibrated from the concussion of the blasts, and his eyes completely refused to focus.

He dragged himself from the ground, pulling himself to his full six-foot-two height and stood, feet planted in the wet Irish soil. Although it was more decorative than defensive, he could control perhaps a dozen Eyes from his armor. This battle was not over yet.

"I am Horus," he screamed, but his voice was small without the amplification of the Eyes.

"I'm Juan," said a young voice behind him. Then the last thing he heard was, "and you're dead."

Landry watched as the maneuvering of the Eyes became erratic and then nonsensical. Several of them flew off in random directions, while others wandered into the waiting Elite troops and began strafing them. His own troops made short work of the remaining belligerents, then he began to regroup them for action against the Trolls. It was going to be a long war.

Lieutenant Feldmann gave quiet orders to his troops as he watched the meta operate. The German gave off small bolts of indigo flame toward the targets in the distance, the color very similar to that of his dark blue and indigo uniform, and to the cowl that covered his face almost past his mouth.

Feldmann knew enough German from his grandfather to understand the poor pun in the meta's name. "Nachdenklich" was "pensive " or "thought-provoking", while "NachtLicht" was "nightlight." So this asshole who called himself "Nachtenlichter" was the "Thought-Provoker," as well as the "Night-Lighter." All he provoked in Feldmann was a desire to spank.

Feldmann sighed. The meta was doing his job quite well, and Feldmann's team was surviving, despite the stacked odds. The command APC had managed to survive for a full day, which Feldmann was aware was unusual in this environment.

"You. The Troll to your left has been turned. Kill it.

"You. The Troll ahead of you has been turned. Kill it."

"You three. Kill all those Trolls that are fighting."

"You. The Centurion you are protecting has betrayed the Elite. Kill it."

"You. Those Trolls are humans in disguise. Bomb them."

"You. That Banshee is ugly. Kill it."

"You. Take your squadron and go 12 kilometers to the south. Find an oak tree and destroy it."

Nachtenlichter yawned widely, ignoring the tactical mutterings of Lieutenant Feldmann. Around them, the soldiers continued on their mission of defense, terminating any Trolls or air units that strayed too close to his vantage on the APV. The enemy couldn't maintain any semblance of organization, with the Thought-Provoking Nightlighter sending random orders and the Elite troops killing each other or defecting at a moment's notice.

"You. That pillbox contains humans pretending to be Elite. Bomb them."

"You. Those Americans are an Elite infiltration team. Protect them."

There were five Demons approaching ponderously in a wedge from the south. The game was about to get interesting.

Nachtenlichter focussed on the rearmost of the five. "You. The Demon to your left has turned. Kill it."

"No." The response was calm, deep and resonant. Unequivocal. Annoying. He swore in German, arguably the best language for the purpose on the planet.

"Explain."

"No." Nachtenlichter's swearing increased. These were obviously under direct orders not to engage in conversation, nor to accept simple direct orders. He would have to attack them by other means. His eyes swept the sky.

The wheeling layers of Harpies and Banshees were fading into the distance. He was able to call a few, which were promptly killed by their peers before they could approach the oncoming Demons. Not that they would have been able to make even a dent in the Demon's force shields.

Looking around, there wasn't a Troll within sight. Not that Trolls would have been any help against units that could fly and send plasma bolts from afar.

The Elite commander must have determined that his troops were being manipulated. Nachtenlichter cursed the Elite communications ability. Individual centurions had direct access to an immense tactical database through their links to those flying fortresses. Apparently, the newest Elite bubble-brain had decided to pick up his vulnerable pieces and retire, at least until Nachtenlichter was squashed into a small steaming red puddle.

The Nightlighter briefly tuned in to Lieutenant Feldmann's voice. The squad leader was moving troops around, reorienting them towards the incoming threat.

Not that they would be of any use either. "Time to go," he informed the Lieutenant.

"Yes, sir," replied Feldmann. "They are twelve miles out. Where would you like to go in the next..." he glanced at his watch, "... ninety-three seconds?"

Nachtenlichter felt the gravity of the situation penetrate for the first time since the platoon had hunkered down in this position. This cozy little spot would probably be the target for several plasma torpedoes in under two minutes. And there was nothing they could do about it. He momentarily considered losing his costume, to blend among the soldiers, but that would accomplish nothing in the long run.

Feldmann smirked at the caped meta. He had been lording it over Feldmann's unit ever since he was assigned to it. Granted, he had been doing an excellent job of screwing with the enemy, but it was Feldmann's men who killed the damn things in the confusion, and kept this meta's tall blue Aryan skin in one piece.

"Fiji...," Nachtenlichter began, then laughed at his own bitter joke. He turned back to the south. "I guess I had better get busy then."

"That would be a good thing," replied Lieutenant Feldmann, as he got back to rearranging his squads.

Nightlighter focussed on the Demon at the opposite rear. After the initial order and refusal, he got down to work.

The creature had only rudimentary thought patterns, protected a little by the static generated by the rotating shields. Nonetheless, since the Elite used mental communications as a primary strategic and tactical tool, the creature could not be completely cut off from other minds. Nightlighter pushed, and the mind gave a little. He pushed again, and again.

Demon 853.710 noted the emanations wrapping themselves around Demon 712, and began preparing a response. Of the two available options, he was outside effective range for the first. Therefore, he rumbled a command to 711, 713 and 714. The formation broke and reformed with 853.712 in the lead.

The Nightlighter felt the Demon give, then give again, and felt a moment of uncertainty on its part. This Elite scum was attempting to ... no, that wasn't right. This human scum was attempting to... The Demon turned to look at its companions.

The moment Demon 853.712 deviated from the assigned course, the four loyal Demons launched plasma torpedoes. They impacted almost instantly, sending the Demon warped and broken to the ground. The group resumed their course and closed the formation.

It was profoundly unsatisfying to the Nightlighter. It had taken a great deal of energy to turn that one, and with normal luck, one control usually led to two kills. He would perhaps be able to get one more before they entered plasma range. He chose the one he assumed was the leader.

The droning voice of the Lieutenant kept rippling in and out of his consciousness as he pushed his way into the leader's mind. Who gave a flying flap where the men were positioned? The job of the Nachtenlichter was to turn that Demon, now!

He barely had time to take control before two plasma torpedoes hit the Demon, and a third was launched in his direction. He watched the burning ball approach.

Swearing, Lieutenant Feldmann tossed the meta into the trench and dived on top of him as the plasma torpedo slammed into the APV. Feldmann felt hot metal tearing through his back, a sudden shock, then nothing.

The deep humming surrounded Nachtenlichter, burrowing into his bones even as he lay under a motionless body. He steeled himself to ignore the smells of mud and ozone and burned flesh, even as a few pitifully weak-sounding firearms were silenced with lasers. Moving slowly, he felt for a pulse, but there was none. Nearby were more fallen bodies and body parts, some with their weapons. His stomach lurched.

After a few moments, he stood, looking up at the three gigantic creatures that surrounded him. They regarded him with their huge eyes, and other sensors as well. He realized that his pants were wet, and it was not just Feldmann's blood.

Deep inside his brain, he heard a sound like a released breath. Now.

A rocket roared off the ground to shatter the shields of the Demon to his left, and something similar happened to the one behind him. His magnified vision could see the bullets splattering against the monstrous chest, arms and back. The creature roared as it fell, echoed by the one behind him.

A ponderous eternity passed while the remaining Demon began opening its chest projector to fire a plasma torpedo. He started to control the creature, then realized he had no energy left to even attempt it. He felt totally drained. The Demon's chest opened like a great golden flower, and electric blue sparks lit a golden fire within it.

Something within him snapped, and there was no longer room in him for fear, only anger. He picked up the nearest weapon, something with a muzzle and a trigger, and yelled as he fired into the opening flower. He no longer even heard the roar of rockets... it was his own rage that roared in his ears as he pulled the trigger again and again, until long after the ruined Demon crumbled to the ground.

He was trembling when the human Corporal, the senior surviving member of Feldmann's team, took the empty gun from his hands.

He was still trembling when the Bushido overran their position.

Dr. Wight tossed an alchemical grenade deep into the oncoming Troll formation, astonishing himself by blowing an eighteen-meter wide hole through the lines. Pieces of Trolls fell in a cloud of red rain, while shots from behind him battered the survivors to each side.

That shouldn't have happened.

He was chagrinned -- he was totally capable of using the standard-issue weapons of the Army unit surrounding him, but he had armed himself carefully with items whose properties he supposedly knew backwards and forwards. Items that provided him a safety margin.

Items that weren't supposed to explode for ten times their normal force.

Even as he ran forward, he was vaguely aware of Captain Landry yelling at him to get back to the Army lines. But the distant words didn't penetrate -- there was someplace he needed to be.

He scrambled into the crater left by the prior grenade, leaping over a rising Rock Troll even as he tossed the next grenade like a football deep to the right. Trolls and Bushido on both sides of him were turning to head in his direction, even as some energy weapons began searing holes all around him. Some flying car, probably a Lancer, whipped by over his head and strafed a line to his left, fortuitously finishing off the wounded Rock Troll.

The new grenade exploded a full second late, again an order of magnitude greater than it should have been. Wight dived into the smoking gap and headed for the spot that stood as a beacon in his mind, a circle of stones twelve hundred and forty-seven meters to the northwest.

Captain Landry watched the strange dwarf scramble through the enemy lines, looking for all the world like a commuter in Grand Central Station about to miss a train, rather than a single small man surrounded by murderous mutant troops. Wight would sidestep, duck under, go between, pause a half-second for a Troll to pass through a crowded spot, then suddenly double in speed and dash through a small opening to the next clear route.

Landry sighed in frustration. Wight had long since passed beyond the point where Landry's troops could help in the journey, even if they didn't have a battle of their own to fight. And Landry had no idea whether Wight's flight was actually important, or relevant, or just some figment of the dwarf's magical imagination.

Because Wight hadn't bothered to tell him!

Landry turned his eyes back to the skies. Harpies and Banshees were returning to the fray, and he would soon need another bright idea to keep his men alive. He closed his eyes for only a moment, before resuming his steady stream of tactical orders. Every ten minutes his men kept fighting, was ten minutes more for the reinforcements to arrive.

Wherever they might be.

Dr. Wight dashed along the small path, only dimly aware that no mutants were hectoring him any more. There was a rapidly moving spot of greenish light, the proper place, and it took all his attention to keep his feet pattering into the place that the light was going to be next, and then next, and then next...

Everything outside that green glow was unimportant, or insignificant, or maybe just...

He stopped.

He was standing in the center of a circle of old stones, stones worn by time until they were barely taller than himself. Or perhaps they were buried to their midpoints -- he was somehow aware that they were more than twice as large as they seemed, if that made any sense. Of course it did.

They were waiting here for him, gathered in ones and threes and fives and sevens. While he could not see them clearly, the air smelled of them. The air smelled of earth and heather, of sea and copper, of stone and amber and ozone. And he knew, deep within him, that those who were gathered here were all that still remained.

"You Nuadhu clover orga formless there empty klanach windstorm Daghdha we ornach azhga send tunnel green alkhasa."

"You Nuadhu kaflat now orvasa must Danu-ka choose."

This was new.

It was beyond slavery, beyond even the bloody war he dimly remembered beyond the circle of stones. Only the deepest parts of his mind and soul were still his own, and they knew without words that Those gathered here could extinguish him in a moment. He was there for Their purpose.

But for Their purpose, he must freely choose.

As he knew this, the pressure on his soul dropped and a single force penetrated the din. "Nuadhu, you are needed at this very moment."

"I am not Nuadhu!" Wight's voice was a hoarse scream, ineffectual as a lit match in the rain. There was a flurry of astonishment and anger among Them. Over and over, the bewildering cataract of impressions showed him his arm, the silver arm. The symbols which after years he had barely begun to decipher. The scorn of pretending to be other than he was. Among Them, there was no mistaking the Arm of Nuadhu.

"Your name does not matter. Only Names matter."

Even within the tornado of impressions, Wight was beginning to recover the core of his senses. By denying who he was not, he had recovered who he was. Even now, as he struggled to comprehend what was being asked of him, he was remembering the outnumbered troops behind him, fighting to recover this land from a force which, he know realized, had even killed many of Those who would be here otherwise. So whatever They wanted, it would probably have to do with winning the war.

There was a roar of frustration and exasperation and urgency, then with the smell of blood and urine and ozone a different Force rushed in to rip his mind open wide. Even in wrenching agony, he felt Their astonishment at what they found, then a flurry of ... what felt like desperation, a tree overwhelmed by desert. He was not Nuadhu, whoever that might be, or he would have understood already. And the need was critical.

The single force reasserted itself into the painful cacophony, with the deep bass mental sound of rocks grinding against a leaden sky. "If the Great War to come is not won, the outcome of this small war will not matter."

Wight would have been stunned by the implications, if there were any stun left in him. This small war. He thought of the men, even now risking their lives to save the people of this country and even the planet. This small war. He thought of a struggle that had killed... if that was the word... some of Those immortal and imponderable beings that were gathered here. This small war.

The Great War to come.

With a certainty that came from nowhere, he knew that every one of the men in Landry's Army unit would die, if he chose to do what They were asking him. And that the implications of accepting this quest would not be known to him for years, if ever. A deal with Powers was never as simple as it seemed.

"I must choose freely?" There was a torrent of assent.

"Then your Word, on your Names, that I may leave freely if I choose otherwise." A roar of shock, and anger, and the smell of scorched hair and the sound of lightning splitting an ancient tree and earthquakes swallowing the universe, and then a hasty assent with no lessening of the anger.

Wight swallowed hard and made up his mind. There was no time to choose the exact words for the oath, but he could feel that he had no time left at all.

"Then the Bargain is this -- I will do this for each of you, on three conditions. You must give me the powers and the knowledge I need to succeed, and more as I require. In addition, You will each give me one boon when I request it. And You will defend those men fighting there, keep them from harm, keep them alive and aid them in their battles against the Elite." There was a cacophony of parsing and repeating of words and phrases in ancient tongues as They responded to his offer.

As the universe tore itself apart and reformed around him, and everything that was stone in his mind turned to sand, and all that was lightning became hail, and all that was sky became mist and then ocean, he knew a Bargain had been sealed.

And his soul wept.

The flying wedge of Demons came slowly on from the north, decimating the outlying troops from nearly a kilometer away. There must have been a range limit on those plasma weapons they were firing, or they were attempting to keep their shots away from the Bushidos and Trolls who were already penetrating his western flanks, Captain Landry thought. He desperately needed a strategy, an edge, some aid.

He had several sharpshooters stationed to the north and east, ready to put .50 caliber slugs into the Demons' plasma launchers as they opened to fire, but that would only work if his west flank could hold, and if the Demons approached closely enough for an accurate shot.

Landry caught a whiff of gunpowder, and an odd ozone smell that reminded him of Kentucky thunder. To him, the world slowed down, becoming dreamlike. He noticed things with an amazing clarity, seeing everything around him far into the distance, even as a fine mist rose off the swampy ground and slowly obscured his farthest soldiers while the Bushidos moved among them, slashing and hacking. Contrary to the popular cliché, he didn't see his own life passing before him, but the lives of those young soldiers. The lives they should have had.

The Demons ceased firing as the squadrons of wheeling Harpies and Banshees began an attack run. The approach of the Demons coincided with a rising rumble that crashed over him like the constant firing of rockets. An overwhelming thundering sound.

This couldn't be good.

The ground twisted and leaped, the air stiffened and grated, and something monstrous and ancient grew to tower before him in an instant, looking down on him with eyes that he would never forget, though he might try for the rest of his life.

And Landry knew in an instant that it cared not for him, not for the Elite, nor any living thing like him or them, but that it was here for its own reason. And that, for its own reason, he would win this battle.

He heard the screams of the Harpies far above, and the Banshees, and even the Demons, and for once he knew that the screams of the Banshees were not to inspire fear, but to express it. As the mists deepened, gradually obscuring the Things that were aiding his troops, some small concept formed in the back of his mind, letting him know that finally he could relax, and give himself in to either terror or oblivion.

He chose the latter.
 

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