Chapter 52

“I’m impressed,” Morgana began when we had all assembled for an early afternoon meeting. “But now the real ‘fun’ begins. The Nephilim are pushing a mass of troops towards us and we expect to be fully engaged from noon tomorrow.”

“Do you have a place to confront them?” Marja asked.

“Yes. The slopes of Mont Gatete, where we’ll have a few advantages of seeing them approach and hopefully deal them a blow that they’ll struggle to recover from,” Morgana replied.

“They could conceivably call in help from the Sidhe,” I posited.

“As far as the Seers can tell the Sidhe are simply gathering slaves and seem uninterested in what the Nephilim are up to, save only that it doesn’t impact on their security,” Morgana replied.

“Bigger fools them,” I retorted.

“Indeed, John. Although they may yet surprise us, so be on your guard,” Morgana warned.

“Yes, my Mage.”

“Where do you wish us, Mage Morgana?” Marja asked.

“Can you keep your people to our left flank?” Morgana replied, showing a map of the area. “When we engage we’d like you to flank them and try to get in amongst their rear.”

“I believe we can do that,” Marja replied.

“Be careful, make sure you can retreat if necessary,” Morgana added.

“Of course, Mage Morgana,” Marja replied, although Adok at her side looked disdainful at the thought of retreating.

“Will my people be required, Mage Morgana?” Nell enquired.

“I’d like them to scout the area to make sure that we do not face any unwanted surprises ourselves, Nell,” Morgana answered. “Other than that it’s up to you, though the battle will be in daylight.”

“We can fight in the day if necessary, Mage Morgana. Although I’ll only allow half our number to do so as we’ll still need night cover,” Nell replied to Morgana’s nod of assent.

“Numbers?” Arch asked.

“We estimate about 1,500 moving to engage us,” Morgana replied.

Hmm, odds of about 3 to 1, which in open field manoeuvres would normally be enough,” Arch mused.

“I’ve no intention of meeting them in the open field,” Morgana added. “We fight, if we must, behind earthworks, forcing them to attack us on our terms.”

“We’ll have the advantage of more Mages though?” Róisín enquired.

“Yes, Róisín. We estimate only 50 Malakha. Just enough to stop us from getting too creative with our offence however,” Morgana replied.

“Leaving their Caddiysh to try and roll over us?” Róisín asked.

“Yes, it’s their standard tactic and works to an extent as they demonstrated to the Æsir on Svipdag,” Morgana replied.

“I suspect they’ll find it a great deal harder to try that here,” I said with a grin as I eyed up the couple of M2HB heavy machine guns brought along by Mage Hermione’s people.

“Yes, but we’ll need to bring down their Mages and their wards for them to be fully effective,” Morgana responded.

“Shame we can’t make up a gigantic Null field to the front of our works,” mused Róisín.

“It would affect us too,” I said. “Plus turning it off would be easy as they’d have to know where the key glyphs would have to be unlike in an enclosed room,” I replied.

“That’s why we, the Mages that is, are going to hit their Mages with all we have all over their shield and hopefully give our Seers here an opportunity to penetrate a point like a needle with a balloon,” Morgana explained.

“I believe it will work, Mage Morgana,” Seer Jemima confirmed. “They’ll be reliant on their own resources as the shield will need to be mobile, whilst ours is warded and tapping into those diesel generators you brought.”

“If it doesn’t, well, we’ll still have the numbers,” Arch opined.

“That’s why I’m asking the Seers to only go after the physical shield,” Morgana confirmed. “If that goes down or it passes over and through us I’ll be reliant on your people, Olmer, to take their Mages down.”

“They’re prepped and ready and have one of the journeywomen from Loegria along as a spotter,” Olmer acknowledged.

“You all know your parts, but be prepared to improvise if necessary,” Morgana finished. “I’ve no doubt they’ll have plans of their own and I doubt we’ll get it all our own way.”

“Yes, Mage Morgana,” we all replied as we set off to prepare ourselves for the following day.

Outside I stopped to have a quick word with Abigail, mostly to make sure that she agreed with Jemima.

“Oh yes, John. We can do it, but it won’t be easy,” she replied to my query.

“What about a danger to yourselves and the camp if they can infiltrate the area tonight?” I asked.

“Morgana thinks it a possibility and has extra guards out, plus a good few of the Mages are already at the site where she expects to fight too, preparing positions,” Abi explained.

I nodded, wondering if my sense of unease over the approach of the Nephilim was simply nerves.

“You’re worried, my love?” Abi asked.

“Yes, they have to know we outnumber them magically and will need to deal with that,” I replied.

Abi nodded then promised to get the Seers to be extra diligent this evening and supplement the African Seer group as they scanned the continent.

I had just turned to head back to our quarters with Abi heading towards the Seers’ armoured vehicle when there was a massive explosion at the northern border of our encampment. Within seconds there was massed gunfire along that edge. Time just seemed to slow as I was bowled over by a shockwave.

Picking myself up I ran towards the sounds of battle, hearing screams and gunfire as whoever it was attacking poured fire into our encampment. Passing several bodies, I reached the dubious protection of one of our vehicles and struggled to raise my personal shields to a much higher level. Something out there was causing the raising of magical abilities very, very difficult indeed. Whilst pulling a Bushmaster M17S rifle out of a pocket dimension and observing carefully for a few seconds I loosed a few shots towards an advancing native carrying an AK47, taking him out.

“What’s happening, John?” came Abi’s breathless whisper from directly behind me.

“Abi, you should be in the Seer vehicle behind armour!” I hissed before loosing a few more shots towards a group of men racing into the clearing, dropping one and forcing the others to retreat.

“I followed you. You seemed to know what you were doing,” she replied.

“Oh...” was all I could think of to say. “Any idea who they are?”

“They’re native militia of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, but there’s a group of Sidhe out there controlling them and forcing down our wards and hitting the perimeter with a spell dampener. I doubt you’d even begin to raise an offensive spell at the moment,” Abi replied after a moment’s thought.

“Damn, means we also can’t use aversion warding or influence them mentally,” I cursed.

“No, John. But Marja has roused the wolves and they are coming round the camp borders in a wide arc directly towards the Sidhe and the back of the attackers.”

“Can you protect them?” I asked, concern writ large on my face as I deliberately targeted any attacker I could see.

“Not easily, but I can confuse the Sidhe slightly,” she replied as we were joined by Arch and Róisín.

“Do it, the wolves will need help to keep the Sidhe from confusing them,” I said.

“God dammit!” muttered Arch. “We were keeping an eye out for enemies, not the natives.”

“That’s why they did this, it was the only way to get a military force near enough to hurt us,” I replied.

“Well, they’ve managed to hurt us, but there’s more of us joining the fight and the tide will turn soon,” Róisín added.

“Who’s down?” I asked.

“They hit the medic Mages and their vehicles. Rowenna and her people are holed up behind some overturned vehicles and are cut off as the enemy infiltrated past them before using a few RPG’s,” Róisín replied.

“Shields holding?” I asked.

“Yes, although the Sidhe are forcing them to stay on the defensive,” Róisín admitted.

“How long before the wolves can get to the Sidhe?” I asked Abi.

“Fifteen minutes at least, John,” she replied.

“Going to take out that group near the latrines,” I told Arch. “Then see if I can get near the medics.”

“Just take them out, John. Morgana’s already making her way there with the Loegrians. Just keep them occupied,” Arch ordered.

“Yes, sir,” I replied with a grin.

Our small group took it upon themselves to let fly with our weapons towards a largish group of Rwandans who had just left the safety of the brush and had begun to run towards the cover of one of our burning vehicles. Several of them went down under our sustained fire as we kept our fire to three round bursts and not the spray and pray the Rwandans were using. Morgana had insisted all Mages in the various enforcement offices in the Bureaus as well as the Council itself learn small arms tactics as well as hand to hand combat. This was now coming into its own as several Mages, having recovered from the shock, were now hitting the attackers hard.

Still, the Rwandans had the advantage of numbers as well as being under cover beyond our perimeter and appeared to have the camp surrounded as both sides were now fully engaged. In the background I could hear the sustained crackling of the Loegrian troop’s weapons as they poured out accurate long range fire towards what I presumed was the command group in charge of this ambush. To the other side of our encampment I could hear the chilling battle-cries of the nosferatu who had been roused from their slumbers and who, as far as I could tell, were seriously pissed at the attackers.

“Dear Lord! Just how many of them are there?” came Róisín’s aggrieved voice as she scythed down another clump of attackers trying to breach our strengthening perimeter.

“Nearly a thousand,” Abi replied calmly, her back to an engine block on one of the overturned vehicles. “The Sidhe have detected the wolves but seem to be having a little trouble coming up with a solution to their advance.”

“Your doing?” I asked.

“Partly, mostly it’s the wolves’ lack of imagination as well as no fear of illusion as they can’t scent it,” Abi replied.

“That’d work,” I mused as I took out a probing attack with several shots before reloading.

There was a series of ‘whumps’ as the attackers tried to use grenades, both explosive and smoke only, to help their advance. Arch used his own grenade launcher to target the area the original grenades had come from as well as a torrent of fire to our front from the other Mages now well dug into the wreckage at this side of our encampment.

“Vamps have taken apart the group attacking the east perimeter,” Abi announced. “They’re now rolling up the wings of the attackers to either side.”

“Good!” I muttered as I followed Arch and Róisín into the fray as they darted forward into the scrub where there appeared a break in the enemy ranks.

We all made it into the scrub, including Abi who was unarmed yet capable I thought of steering clear of trouble. Despite the fact that the Sidhe were still playing havoc with our senses and magical capabilities the situation had now turned and I felt that the enemy were now starting to pull back despite the Sidhe given imperative to attack at all costs. Within seconds we had made contact with a small group holding position and we dealt with them swiftly as surprise was total and they did not expect to be caught from their flank.