The column came out of the western country at the working pace of men breaking camp and moving into the morning's operation. Hill read them through the tracking range from the wood line's outer position and called the read back to the team in the working quiet of a man who had been delivering scout reports for years and knew exactly which details mattered. He said, "Column moving. Standard formation. The wagons are coming forward in the order I read them last night — the gear wagons first, the heavy wagons in the middle, the chemical wagon at the rear under additional cover. They are deploying the mortar element into the wood line south of the western approach. They have a security perimeter pushing ahead of the main body. Twenty mounted men on the outer arc. The rest of the column on foot behind the wagons." He paused. "They are about to commit to the cleared ground."
Big Ed received it from the position between the berms. He looked at Dave. Dave was at the working stance with the silver-gray lines along his temples warmed at the surface, the lattice running down to the palms in the latent pre-activation register that the marks had been holding since the morning began. Vigor was at his right. Brick at his left. Tala at the rear. King at his heel.
Dave looked at Big Ed. Big Ed nodded once.
Dave brought his fingertips to his temples and called it.
The mercurial light came up through the lattice at the temples and ran down the lines along the neck and across the collarbones and around the forearms to the palms. Not bright. The quiet steady silver of the working at full register, the liquid-thought quality running through the lines under the skin with the specific signature of mead-runes activated. Dave's eyes shifted from the dark register to the reflective quicksilver Kvasir's blood produced when the working ran at full expression. He stood completely still at the center of the formation. He breathed at the working rate. He held the team's intent in his awareness — every fighter at every position, the collective focus of the formation, the unified purpose of what they were about to do — and he wove it into the broadcast and pushed it across the cleared ground into the country where the column was advancing.
The column was at the cleared ground's western edge when it hit.
The lead riders crossed into the open and the broadcast arrived in their nervous systems in the moment they cleared the wood line's cover. Not gradually. The full arrival. Dave was running the working at the register he had been holding for the situation that required it and the register was where it needed to be, and the column's lead element rode straight into a broadcast that infected the visual cortex and the auditory cortex simultaneously with the focused intent of every fighter in Big Ed's formation arriving in their heads as something the brain could not separate from what was real.
The first lead rider's horse reared. The man stayed in the saddle through the rear and got the animal's head back down but his face had gone the color of a man who had just seen something his eyes could not account for. He shouted something Hill could not make out at the distance. Two of the riders beside him reined up hard. One went off the side of his horse and hit the ground rolling and came up with the rifle in the firing position aimed at a place where nothing was standing. He fired. The shot went into the fog. He worked the bolt. He fired again. Another rider beside him fired in a different direction. A third rider added to it. Within a span of seconds the lead element of the column was discharging weapons into empty fog at targets their minds were telling them were there.
Big Ed read it from the central position. The team held the wood line. The Miller Mountain men at the southern berm were watching through cover with the practical attention of country men who had not yet seen what Dave's tattoo did at the full register and were filing what it did with the steady country quiet that did not perform reaction. Mike at the northern berm had his palms on the earth and the Bastion running its read of the engagement lane. Johnny at the wood line's western edge had his right palm against the trunk of an oak with the machinery mastery running its preparatory read of the column's mechanical systems at the distance contact allowed. Rustam and Magomed at the staging line had the runic marks warming at the surface in the working pre-activation. Zabit at the connecting position had the speed rune latent at his wrist.
Behind the wagons the main body of the column was reaching the cleared ground's edge and absorbing what the lead element was producing. The infantry came forward at the working pace of men who had been told this was a soft target and were now seeing their lead riders fire into empty air. A captain at the column's front was shouting orders. The shouting was operational. The men in the column were hearing the shouting at the same time as Dave's broadcast was arriving in their heads, and the broadcast was telling them what their minds were building from it, which was the unified visual presence of an overwhelming force stepping out of the wood line at the cleared ground's eastern edge — the silver-eyed shapes of giants, the rolling thunder of footfall, the low guttural growl of a hunting pack carrying directly inside their skulls.
The captain at the column's front saw what his men were seeing because Dave's broadcast did not distinguish between ranks. He saw it and froze for a half second and then saw his lead element wasting their first magazines into the fog and made the call that captains made when the situation in front of them required noise to be answered with noise. He screamed, "Fire at will."
The front line of the column discharged.
The volley came across the cleared ground at full automatic register, the rifles and the M60s opening up simultaneously into the fog at the targets their minds were constructing for them. The rounds passed through the empty air and struck the wood line at random distribution — most of them going wide, the ones that found the wood line burying themselves in tree trunks and the topsoil at the berms' outer face. The berms held. The team held. Nothing inside the wood line was hit because nothing in the wood line was where the column's fire was directed. The column was firing at the broadcast.
Gary at the southern berm read the engagement through the thermal scope. The marks down his shooting arm came up to the active green register, the chemiluminescent glow running through the lines under the skin. He read the column's positions through the fog and the smoke the column's own discharge was producing. He found the captain at the column's front shouting orders. He found the men at the M60s working through their belts. He found a man at the gear wagon's rear reaching for what looked like a backup detonation pin on one of the chemical canisters that had not yet been moved to the mortar position. He took the man with the crossbow first — the venom bolt left the rail at the flat trajectory the runes produced, crossed the cleared ground without losing velocity, and drove through the man's helmet visor at the angle the thermal scope had given Gary on the soft tissue. The man went down without making the sound he might have made if the bolt had not been venom. The detonation pin stayed where it was on the canister.
Gary worked the next target. The M60 gunner at the column's left. He took him with the magnum, the recoil absorbing into the wrist tattoo the way the runes were built to absorb it, the round leaving the barrel at the working register and finding the M60 gunner's chest cavity at the angle that ended his contribution to the engagement.
The five Miller Mountain men at the southern berm opened up. Their old rifles produced the working volume of country shooters who had been working country rifles their whole lives and knew exactly what they were aiming at. They took men in the column at the registers their gear allowed, the work clean, the discipline tight, the country men finding their targets in the chaos Dave's broadcast had produced.
Mike at the northern berm read the engagement and called the Shattering Hand at the moderate register. He sent a directed fissure across the cleared ground at the column's left flank where a group of infantry was attempting to organize a charge through the fog at what their minds were telling them was the wood line's eastern edge. The earth opened in the controlled directed pattern Mike's tattoo produced when it ran at the engagement register, the fissure traveling the cleared ground in the line Mike directed it on, opening beneath the infantry's feet and dropping them into the new geometry. The men who did not fall into the fissure broke from the charge and scattered.
The column was in disarray. The lead element had wasted their first response on phantoms. The captain was trying to rally the second wave. The M60s were down two operators in the first thirty seconds. The flank charge was broken. The wagons at the column's rear were beginning to be moved into the cover of the wood line on their side. The chemical wagon was still under the heavy tarp at the column's rear position. The mortar element was setting up in the wood line south of the western approach where Hill had read them deploying.
Big Ed read the moment. He looked at Rustam and Magomed at the staging line. He looked at Zabit at the connecting position. He looked at Rachel and Kelly at the wood line's interior with the short swords at their hips. He said, at the working volume, "Heavy element. Go."
The chains came up in his forearms.
The invisibility came on at the base of his skull.
The heavy element moved across the cleared ground at the working speed Big Ed had set. Zabit's speed rune came up at his wrist and the working register opened in him and he was across the first hundred yards before the column's nearest infantry registered that something was moving toward them through the fog. Rustam and Magomed came behind him at the working pace of men who did not need the speed rune to close distance because they had been closing distance their whole lives. The marks down their spines and across their forearms came up to the active register, the copper glow running through the lines under the skin with the specific frequency Zas's blood produced when the runes were called.
Big Ed crossed the cleared ground invisible. The chains stayed latent until he was at the engagement distance. Rachel and Kelly came across the cleared ground at the working pace of Valkyries who had been on the ground in operations before — the short swords drawn now, the working blades that fit the close work, the two of them moving in the parallel discipline they had built across the years of working alongside each other.
Zabit reached the column's left flank first. The speed rune dropped him into the working register at the moment of contact and he was inside the formation before the men at the formation's edge could bring their rifles around. He took the first man with the strength transfer driving the forward elbow into the chest cavity at the angle that collapsed the rib structure and ended the man's contribution to the engagement. He took the second man with the speed register, the movement so fast through the man's reaction window that the man's rifle was still coming up when Zabit's working hand found the carotid and the second man went down. He turned to the third. The third man's rifle was coming around at him and Zabit moved into the angle the speed register made available and was at the man's side when the rifle discharged at the empty air where Zabit had been a half second before.
The fourth man on the column's flank had a mark on his face.
Zabit registered it in the moment he closed on the man. The red teardrop tattoo at the man's left temple — not the full investment Jesper carried, the smaller pattern, the lesser mark of a hit-and-run squad fighter who had taken the Veles ink at the rank his commitment had earned him. The man saw Zabit. The mark on his temple came up to the active register, a dull red glow running through the line under the skin in the frequency that Veles's defiance produced when the marks were called. The man's rifle came up at the speed of a man whose own working register had just opened.
The speed rune at Zabit's wrist stuttered.
Not failed — stuttered. The working register dropped half a step, the inner room that had been holding at the full extension closing partway as the Veles frequency reached it across the engagement distance. Zabit felt the drop. He had been at the working speed and was now at the working speed minus the half step, and the half step was the difference between being inside the marked man's reaction window and being inside it at the margin. He adjusted. He drove the working punch through the marked man's defense at the strength register the transfer gave him independent of the speed rune, the punch arriving at the rib cage with the full force the strength carried, and the marked man went down with the rib structure caving inward.
The speed rune came back up to full register as Zabit moved away from the marked man's position. The interference had worked at the close range and not at the working distance.
Across the column's center Rustam was doing what Rustam did. The first infantryman came at him with the rifle held forward at the bayonet position. Rustam stepped inside the thrust at the angle his wrestling background had refined to instinct and caught the bayonet blade in his bare palm. The marks down his arm came up to the active register at the contact and the blade locked to the palm at the magnetic frequency Zas's blood produced. The infantryman tried to pull the rifle back. The rifle did not come back. Rustam twisted his wrist and the kinetic surge ran through the blade and shattered the bayonet into shrapnel that flew back into the infantryman's face. Rustam dropped the rifle's remaining frame, took the infantryman down with the wrestling takedown his body knew, and ended him at the ground.
The second infantryman came in with a saber. Rustam caught the blade on the upswing the same way, the runes flaring at the contact, the saber locked, the wrist twist, the shrapnel returning to the swordsman's face. The third man saw the second one go and changed his approach — switched from the blade to the rifle, fired at Rustam from eight yards. The round left the barrel. The bullet did not lock to Rustam's palm because the lock worked on cold iron at contact range and not on rounds in flight. Rustam moved into the angle his wrestler's read of the shooter's stance had given him a quarter second before the trigger pulled, and the round passed his left shoulder at the margin and continued past him into the column's own ranks behind, and Rustam closed the eight yards and ended the third man at the ground.
A fourth came at him. Marked. Rustam saw the dagger-through-the-neck tattoo on the man's collarbone as the man closed. The man's mark came up to the active register. Rustam felt the runes down his spine stutter at the contact range the way Zabit's speed rune had stuttered. Not gone. Reduced. The magnetic frequency was working at maybe seventy percent of its full register. He adjusted. He caught the next blade at the reduced register and the lock held but the kinetic surge required more from him to push through the saber's iron, and the shatter came late but it came. The fourth man went down with the rest.
Magomed worked the column's right flank with the copper runes at the forearms and the knuckles at full active register. The first infantryman swung a long-handled axe at his head. Magomed brought the forearm up. The blade rang against the runes with the thunderclap signature the Galvanized Guard produced when the kinetic force was reflected back through the iron, and the infantryman's arms broke at the elbows from the reflection. Magomed stepped past him and into the next man and put the shock-thrust through the man's plate with the directional sonic spike his knuckles released when the punch landed.
The third man had a mark on his hand. Magomed read the mark in the moment of closing. The Veles frequency arrived at the contact range and the runes at his forearms stuttered the way Rustam's had stuttered. The Shield-Breaker dropped to the partial register. Magomed adjusted to the partial register. He caught the next blade on the forearm and the ring came at the reduced volume and the reflection came at the reduced force, and the marked man's arms broke at the wrists rather than the elbows, and Magomed had to follow up with a working strike to put the man down rather than letting the reflection do the full work.
Big Ed was inside the column at the rear position by then.
The invisibility had carried him across the cleared ground without producing a single registration in any of the column's awareness. He had moved through the smoke the column's own discharge was producing and through the chaos Dave's broadcast was still running and had arrived at the wagon position where the chemical wagon sat under the heavy tarp at the column's rear. He stopped at the wagon's near edge. He read the men around it — six of them, working the wagon's outer perimeter with the focused attention of men who had been assigned to the wagon and were going to protect it with everything they had. Two of them carried marks. The marks were not active. Yet.
He brought the chains up at his forearms.
The ethereal chains manifested in the glowing register, the working extensions of Big Ed's intent running out of his forearms as the anchoring rune Shane had built into him produced its full expression. He sent the first chain to anchor the wagon's rear wheel — the chain locking to the wheel and making the wheel indestructible while Big Ed held the connection, the wagon now unable to be moved by any force that could move a wagon. He sent the second chain to anchor the wagon's forward axle. The wagon was locked in position. He came up out of the invisibility at the wagon's near edge and the six men at the wagon registered him in the moment the invisibility dropped, and Big Ed was already moving on the nearest of them with the chains running back from the wagon to his forearms in the working configuration that let him fight while the wagon stayed where he had pinned it.
The first wagon guard came at him with a rifle. Big Ed took the man with the working strike, the size and the weight of him doing what the size and the weight always did when Big Ed engaged a smaller man at close quarters. The second guard came at him with a knife. Big Ed took him at the wrist and broke the wrist and ended him.
The third guard had a mark on his neck.
The mark came up to active register and Big Ed felt the invisibility flicker. Not the chains. The invisibility. The Veles frequency was hitting his tattoo work at the contact range the way it had hit Zabit's speed rune and Rustam's spine runes and Magomed's forearm runes. Big Ed registered the flicker. He had not been using the invisibility at the moment — it was off, he had come up out of it. But he understood the flicker meant that if he tried to drop back into it at this range it would not run clean. He filed the information. He engaged the third guard at the working strike register and the working strike register did not require the invisibility, and the third guard went down.
Johnny Rotten had moved out from the wood line's western edge with the brine running ahead of him.
The water magic Shane had given him was working from the small stream that ran at the wood line's southern edge — Johnny drawing the water through intention, the stream feeding into the working volume his magic pulled, the conversion happening at the working register that turned fresh water to brine in the time the conversion took. He sent the brine across the cleared ground at the column's center in the directed arc he had refined across years of operations, the salt water catching the second wave of infantry as they came forward from the column's main body. The brine hit the column's eyes and the column's airways and the column's working visibility, and the second wave broke from the forward push and went down to the ground rubbing at their faces.
He came forward at the working pace. He reached the column's center where the M60 the team had not yet taken was on the ground beside the gunner Gary had ended. He put his right palm on the M60's working housing. The machinery mastery read the gun's full mechanism and Johnny found the working position in the belt feed where a misalignment of the cartridge in the chamber would lock the gun's bolt at the partial cycle, and he adjusted the alignment. He moved to the next M60 the column was setting up at the right flank. He put his palm on it. He locked the belt feed in the same configuration. He moved to the third one. He locked it.
A Veles-marked fighter came at him from the column's right.
Johnny saw the man coming. The man's mark was on his right forearm — the dagger pattern, the active register. Johnny felt his machinery mastery flicker at the contact range the way Big Ed's invisibility had flickered. The next M60 he was moving toward, he understood, was going to be harder to lock if he could not get the full mastery register at the contact. He adjusted. He moved away from the marked man's range and into the wood line's cover. The machinery mastery came back to full register at the distance. He filed the working information about the marks' interference and resumed the locks from the cover position.
Rachel and Kelly were in the column's interior with the short swords drawn.
The Valkyrie work was the close-quarters work they had been doing in operations for the years since they had awakened — the peak superhuman strength making the short swords function at the register a long sword would have functioned at in a mortal's hands, the choosers' read of which fighters in the column were going to come at them next, the soul-guide's awareness of when a man on the ground had crossed past the threshold of being able to fight further versus when he was performing the appearance of being down and was about to come back up. They moved through the column at the working pace. Rachel took fighters at the working register. Kelly took fighters at the working register. The two of them produced what two Valkyries produced when they were in the close work, which was the rapid clearing of the close-engagement space at a rate the column's mortal fighters could not match.
Three of Jesper's marked men converged on the Valkyries from the rear.
Rachel felt the marks come up at the contact range. She did not have a tattoo that the Veles frequency would interfere with — her Valkyrie nature was not a tattoo, her strength was not a tattoo, her capabilities were what they had always been since the cycles before the current one. The marks did not touch her. She turned into the three marked men with the short sword at the working position and ended the first one at the throat in the swing the Valkyrie work the close engagement allowed. Kelly turned into the second and the third in the parallel motion and ended them with the same working register. The marks did not save the men carrying them because the marks had been built to interfere with Sanctuary's tattoo work and the Valkyries did not carry tattoo work.
Across the engagement Jesper was shouting.
He was at the column's center near the gear wagons in the working stance of a field leader rallying his men. The blunderbuss was in his hand at the ready carry. The axe was at his hip. The teardrops on his arms and his face were at the active register — the dull red glow running through the lines under the skin in the frequency Veles's full investment produced when Jesper was at full working register. He was shouting at his marked men, "Get close to them. Close range. The marks work close." He was directing his hit-and-run squad fighters to converge on the corridor's tattooed fighters. He had read what was happening — the marks interfering at contact, the working interference at the close range, the fact that his marked men were the only counter the column had to the tattoo work the corridor was bringing — and he was running the rally at the working register the situation required.
The column began to consolidate.
The chaos Dave's broadcast had produced was beginning to settle as Jesper's authority cut through the panic. The men who had been firing into the fog were beginning to read what was actually in the engagement around them. The infantry that had been broken were being rallied back to the working line. The M60s Johnny had locked were being worked at by the column's mechanical operators who were attempting to clear the locks Johnny had set. Jesper was running the column back from the brink of collapse to the working register of an engagement that was now contested rather than overwhelming.
At the settlement's wall the people who had been watching began to fight.
They had been watching since the engagement opened. The man on the wall who had spoken to Shane at the gate had read what was happening as the column came across the cleared ground — the fake Sanctuary uniforms now visible on the column's men, the gray wool with the blue ring at the sleeve being worn by the fighters who were attacking the settlement under the corridor's stolen colors. He read what the corridor's actual fighters were doing — the work the heavy element was running against the column, the brine work Johnny was running, the rifle work the Miller Mountain men were running from the southern berm, the way the corridor's people were fighting to protect the settlement and the column's people were fighting in the corridor's uniforms to destroy it. He looked at his men on the wall. He looked at the gate.
He said, "Now."
The settlement opened up from the walls and the watchtowers.
The shooters at the wall positions began firing into the column at the angles the wall's elevation made available. The watchtowers added their fire from the higher position. The rounds came down on the column from the settlement at the angles the column had not been prepared for because the column had been planning to attack a sleeping community that did not know it was coming, and the community was now awake and firing from the elevated positions the settlement's design had been built around.
Shane and Freya and Thrud were still at the gate.
Shane had been holding the gate position since the engagement opened. He had been running the water magic across the cleared ground in the working pattern the gas defense would require — the saturation of the ground at the settlement's perimeter, the conversion of the cleared earth into the working mud that would absorb gas if the gas reached the ground, the preparatory work the Grimoire's water formulas allowed him to run while the rest of the engagement unfolded. He had been working since the column committed. The cleared ground around the settlement was now saturated to the working depth, the topsoil running with water that had not been there ten minutes ago, the mud forming in the configuration Shane had directed.
Freya looked at Shane. He looked at her. He nodded once.
The Valshamr came off her shoulders. The transition moved through her with the silence of a thing arriving at its true shape, and she was in the air above the gate in the iridescent falcon's form, climbing.
Thrud stood at the gate with the Jafna-Gaddr across her back at the working carry and the overwatch position she had been holding since the engagement opened. She had been reading the engagement at the working register, the Valkyrie's read of who was where and what was coming and what the threads required of her at any given moment. She had not yet entered. She was waiting for the moment that required her. She was not waiting in the passive register. She was waiting in the active register, the working stillness of a Valkyrie holding her position because the position was where she needed to be.
Hill stood at the gate beside her with the rifle in the working carry. He had been working the rifle at the engagement range Big Ed's plan had assigned him — the support fire at the angles the gate position allowed, the country he could read through the tracking range guiding the rifle work without requiring the offensive rune Shane had put on the back of his hand. He was not using the rune. The rune was for the last resort. The rifle was sufficient.
The falcon climbed above the cleared ground in the working circle she always climbed in when she was reading an engagement from the air. She read the column. She read the mortar element in the wood line south of the western approach. She read the position of the mortar tubes and the canisters in their carry configurations and the men working the mortar setup at the working pace the situation allowed them.
She came back across the gate at the working pass. She did not transform. She circled. She gave Shane the read through the way she always gave him the read when she was in the air and he was on the ground, which was through the connection between them that ran below language and arrived in him as the spatial picture she was holding from above.
The mortars were set.
The canisters were beside them at the ready position.
Jesper was moving toward the mortar position from the column's center.
He was moving with the marked men around him at the close protection range that the marks' interference covered him with — the working ring of the dagger-marked fighters, the column's hit-and-run squad clustered around their field leader, the Veles frequency at the contact range covering Jesper from anything in the corridor's tattoo work that might have reached him at distance. Dave's broadcast was reaching him, Freya could read — the working register of the Echo of the Gathering still running against the column at the broad scale — but Jesper was blocking it. The Veles investment in his teardrops was at full register and the investment was running interference against the broadcast at the focused contact range, and Jesper was moving through the cognitive infection at the working pace of a man whose mind was his own and whose intent was to reach the mortars and fire the canisters and turn the engagement.
The falcon dropped into the dive that would take her back to the gate.
She came down at the working speed. She came through the transition at the smooth working register and she was at the gate beside Shane in her woman's form with her boots finding the ground and the Valshamr settling around her shoulders. She looked at Shane. She said, quietly, "The mortars are set. The canisters are ready. Jesper is moving toward them with his marked men around him. The broadcast is not reaching him through the close-range interference. He is going to reach the mortar position. He is going to fire the canisters."
Shane looked at the cleared ground. He looked at the column. He looked at the wood line south of the western approach where the mortar element was.
He looked at Thrud.
He said, "Follow my lead."