A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(104)
Monotonous, identical no matter which throat it was coming from, and utterly unintelligible syllables emerged from them in a kind of drone. There was nothing about the guttural chant that was even remotely familiar to Nan.
But it certainly had an effect on the Celtic Warrior—and on Grey and Neville. She felt a primal rage engulf her—some incarnation of the past recognized those words—and in a flash, she was wearing her bronze armor, woolen tunic and trews, and carrying her glowing bronze sword and a small round wooden shield strapped to her arm so she could still use her sword two-handed at need. And Neville was now the size of an eagle, with Grey the size of a huge hawk. This time, instead of staying with the girls, they both flew up to the rafters. Nan placed herself between the group of psychics and the chanting girls; Memsa’b in her short Grecian tunic and with her spear and Sahib in his medieval armor and with his sword both moved to flank her. And flanking them were Agansing and Karamjit, a wedge of protection in front of people who were ill-equipped to defend themselves.
On the other side of the room, Lord Alderscroft and half of the magicians with him held out hands that were engulfed in flame while fire in the form of lizards climbed over their shoulders or wove patterns around their feet. John Watson’s form of offense was more mundane; he had a shotgun and a double bandolier of shells. Nan couldn’t see Mary from where she stood, but she knew that Mary was a fine shot with a rifle and probably had one in her hands.
A black void formed between the chanting girls and the assembled defenders. It doubled in size every few seconds, until it stood nearly a story tall.
And then the monsters poured through it, and with them the strange, bitter wind of that other world. Dozens of them. Not just the things Nan had seen before, but other creatures, things that in the chaos she barely got a chance to look at, much less identify. She only knew that she was fighting for her life and the lives of those behind her as the things hurled themselves at their line. She heard the steady crack of rifles and the voice of the Sergeant, calmly, calling out orders. But mostly she saw horrifying, hideous things flinging themselves at her, trying to disembowel her with claws and talons, shred her with fangs, crush her with powerful jaws, sting her with barbed tails. The stench of these things was overpowering, bitter, sour, poisonous. She didn’t remember that from the other world—but maybe that had been because they had all been in the open then and were in the confines of four walls now.
Neville and Grey dove at the things from above, shoving off from the beams where they perched, plummeting to hammer at a head or rip at a limb with their powerful beaks, and flapping back up to safety before the monsters could retaliate.
And none of it was enough. The monsters kept pouring in, two for every one that was cut down. The only limit to how many could pour in seemed to be the size of the portal and the size of the room itself. Nan and the others were pushed back into the corner—she couldn’t tell what was happening to the others, but the sharp cracks of the rifle volleys were growing more ragged, and the only thing she could see of Alderscroft and his group were the occasional gouts of flame rising above the heads of the beasts.
Where’s Puck? she wondered frantically, as she hewed and hacked at the beasts two-handed, her arms aching, spattered from head to toe with gore. Roan should have alerted him the moment Sherlock brought the seventh girl to the hall. So where was he? Did he desert us after all?
But just as that horrible thought crossed her mind, the two doors in the middle of the wall to her left burst open, unleashing an army of things most children would have recognized from fairy books on the horde of monsters.
There were trolls, eight feet tall and looking as if they were made of stone, wielding huge clubs. There were giants even taller, who could barely make it through doors that were themselves ten feet tall. There was something Nan would have been willing to swear was a “small” dragon, and plenty more of the fiery salamanders. There were a half dozen tall warriors too, with faces the color of clay, armored in antique style and carrying thick bronze blades. There were creatures she didn’t recognize; they almost seemed to be composed of rags and sticks, with a horse-skull where the head should have been. But despite their apparent fragility, when those heads came down and rose again, it was usually with a limb between their teeth.
Nan heard an unholy battle howl from somewhere near her waist, glanced down, and saw Durwin and Roan making good on their promise of defending her and Sarah, with little round wooden shields to protect them and swords that glowed like Nan’s own.
As short as the hobs were, the monsters generally didn’t notice them until it was too late, and one or the other had gotten up underneath their target and chopped a leg nearly in half or executed a perfect gutting strike.
As for Robin—she got glimpses of him bareback atop what appeared to be an enormous black stallion. She knew better than to think it was anything of the sort, of course. A pooka, most likely. He was flanked on either side by two more of the beasts, which fought viciously, lashing out with all four feet and snapping flesh and bone with their teeth. And flanking them were creatures that looked to be half man, half tree; as tall as the trolls, with hair and beard of leaves, clothing of bark, and rough skin that seemed half skin and half bark. The creatures seemed impervious to stings, bites or claws, and waded into the monsters, tearing them apart with their bare hands. Green Men! She’d never seen one, only heard of them, mostly in the Arthurian tale of Gawaine and the Green Knight.