Chapter 29
Final Assault
Ironheart cleared his throat as a female Etti resistance fighter prepared to walk though Harry's doorway. This had happened at nine of the thirty-eight cell camps, and Harry gave the waiting cell leader a meaningful glance.
Fortunately the young woman turned out to be the only spy in that cell—another cell had had two—and when everyone had passed through the dimension door, he followed and immediately shot a pair of stunners out of his eyes. Ironheart had already been in position, and he caught her before she hit the floor.
"She was a spy, but not a willing one!" the cell's Dait leader told the others quickly. "She will be taken to Floriath where she'll be cared for until she can be cured."
"How do you know?" a young Meidel said in his species' typical rumbling voice.
"The inventor allied with the duchess made worms that can take over people's minds. But Mind Readers can detect their presence," Harry quickly explained, like he had done in the previous cases. Then he opened a new doorway to the hospital in Floriath and levitated the unconscious woman through. The floor in the hospital had been marked before Harry left, to allow the staff to tell where the doorway would periodically open, and a trio of dwarves who had been waiting on the other side loaded the woman onto a stretcher and carried her off.
"Was this the last group?" Ironheart asked.
Harry nodded. "All the armouries that I know of have been covered, as well as the exits." He gestured to the still open doorway. "Your part is done. You're too valuable to be on the frontline, sir," he added, cutting off the protest Ironheart had been about voice. "I know you can do a lot of damage with your wand, but one of the guards might get lucky and take you out. That would leave us one Mind Reader short, and that might complicate Nicolai's pacification plans."
A shapely blue-skinned female had appeared in the doorway as Harry was finishing his sentence, and all Ironheart's objections fled his mind. He was through the doorway faster than Harry could say incubus, and Harry closed it behind him. Then he turned towards the heavy wooden door and consecutively cast locking and unbreakable charms on them.
When the doors were secured, he addressed the resistance fighters. "I suggest you mount your defence from the antechamber. Good Luck!"
He was off half a heartbeat later, invisibly floating through the corridors and resisting the temptation to stun passing palace dwellers and reduce the likelihood that anyone came across the resistance fighters guarding the gates. He knew he could have stunned them and shoved them through his doorway like had had done to the duchess's men in the guardhouse, but it would take precious time away from his tight schedule. The destruction of Yamato's weapons was more important than everything else.
Not wanting to risk missing Yamato's workshop, he stuck to the paths he knew, flying through walls and floors only when he was absolutely certain about where he'd end up. He reached Yamato's dungeon workshop within minutes, quickly stunning a pair of Etti who were cleaning out a fireplace. Then, after closing the doors to the workshop and barricading them with magic, he began laying everything to waste with powerful destruction spells, starting with Yamato's completed projects in the vault before moving to anything else in sight. In Harry's case, everything in sight included the artefacts stored in the cleverly hidden compartments Yamato thought no one would find. Of course, he hadn't counted on someone with powerful magical eyesight.
Harry checked his watch after the destruction was complete. Ten minutes had passed, and he was a bit ahead of schedule. He took another good look at the workshop to see if he had missed anything. He found what he was looking for hidden in what had appeared to be a reflection disk for the torchlight, having belatedly noticed its faint magical aura. It was a communications mirror like the ones used by the Order of Illumination and the Concordian citizens, and Harry guessed that it had been adapted to constantly send a one-way feed to another mirror. The other mirror was probably in Yamato's private chambers, and Yamato might have seen the destructive beams come out thin air, allowing him to put two and two together and identify Harry by his powers. Even though Harry hadn't yet been able to turn himself invisible when Yamato had fled into the Mirror Realm, the twin spell-beams and easy discovery of the hidden compartments should have been enough information for someone of Yamato's intelligence to allow him to deduce that Harry must have added a few powers to his arsenal.
Harry considered searching the immediate vicinity for Yamato but rejected the idea in the knowledge that his vengeful feelings increased the likelihood of getting carried away. Instead—after destroying the mirror, lest he clumsily betray his most valuable power to Yamato—he opened a portal to Floriath and carried the two unconscious captives through. He found Nicolai standing nearby, and called him over.
"Prisoners?" the young emperor asked as he and Princess Patrinia drew closer.
"Stages one and two are complete," Harry began, taking the opportunity to report his progress. Then he nodded to his prisoners. "And these two are prisoners. I caught them cleaning Yamato's workshop. You know how paranoid Yamato is, so the fact that they're allowed to clean his inner sanctum in his absence means that he trusts them to a certain extent. Or maybe they're under the control of mind worms. I didn't check. There was also a mirror altered to function as a surveillance device, and Yamato might have been watching. I was invisible, but if he was watching he probably knows that it was me anyway."
Nicolai nodded. "It's too late to do anything about that now. I anticipated that he'd be hard to catch, unless we were very lucky. I factored possible possession of an invisibility cloak into my calculations. The Xon can see in the ultraviolet spectrum, so I instructed them to keep an eye out for someone hiding under an invisibility cloak. They can't see the person under the cloak itself, but they can see the bending light. To them it would be like the person is Disillusioned instead of really invisible."
Harry hoped that the giant mantis-like creatures did indeed get lucky, even if he had just trashed Yamato's whole workshop and destroyed the dangerous weapons. As long as Yamato remained free, he would be a threat. It would be foolish to think that Yamato had kept everything in his workshop. No doubt he had a lifeboat stashed somewhere.
"Grandpa and I will check the prisoners for mind worms," Nicolai continued. "Are you ready to proceed with the next stage?"
"Are Floriath and Freedom Battalions ready to secure the palace?"
"They've been ready for hours," Princess Patrinia answered with a hint of urgency in her voice.
Harry knew that urgency. It wasn't a good thing for a fighting force to be on edge for too long. Normally a few hours wouldn't make much of a difference, but for people who have been longing for freedom for the better part of their lives, it could be an eternity. "And have they divided themselves by companies as I requested?"
"Overall commanders have been agreed upon," Patrinia said to his relief, for even though Wolfe had begun to teach the resistance fighters to operate on a larger scale than they had done previously, there hadn't been many opportunities to practice. In fact, before Wolfe came along they had hardly formed groups larger than medium sized platoons of about thirty individuals. However—excluding the towers—the palace had seven floors and three dungeon sublevels, each needing at least a hundred troops to sweep and secure them since Harry wanted any lingering armed palace guards easily overpowered in case they decided to resist. The actual room-to-room searching could be done in the small groups the resistance fighters were used to.
"I do have one more concern," Harry began, wanting to address the nagging worry he felt about the ducal soldiers that had been lured away. "What if the ducal forces that have been lured away decide not to lay down their arms if they hear that the duchess has fallen?"
"Those who have been sent to lie in ambush are mostly the mercenaries. What motivation to fight would they have left?" Patrinia asked.
"Can you pay them more?"
"No. Why would I want to do that? With the duchess gone, there will finally be peace."
"Exactly! And they have no use for peace, so the way they see it, the duchess is their livelihood. That might drive them to try to restore her to power, and the people who stand to regain their status will join them in their effort."
"It would be worse if Yamato manages to escape," Nicolai said suddenly. "The duchess is his avenue to power as well, and keeping her in power is in his best interests—until he's ready to overthrow her and grab power for himself, of course. He would warn them about the attack on Astirian City and have them back before we are ready to mount a solid defence."
"It would take him days—possibly a week—to reach the villages where the enemy is waiting in ambush," Patrinia countered.
Nicolai shook his head. "Before Yamato built the ships for the duchess, he must have built one for himself. He always puts himself first. It's how his mind works. We knew that the doomsday weapons were kept close by, since he's simply too paranoid to live with even the remotest chance that someone would stumble across a secret cache containing such a weapon. I have a feeling that the weapon isn't very hard to activate, increasing the likelihood that it could be used against him. But a personal transport … that wouldn't be any problem. He could charm such a ship to react only to him."
"Why can't he do that with the weapons?" Patrinia asked.
"Incompatible magic," Nicolai explained. "I've worked out the theory in my head. I found it extremely difficult to do so—and, at the risk of sounding conceited, that's saying something. It's definitely impossible to carry it out. Well, someone like me could do it, since I can mentally guide the spell, but my intelligence stretches way beyond even the upper end of the human norm. Yamato is a genius in his own right, but he's not intelligent enough. Not that it would matter if he were. Harmonising that much destructive magic with a personal imprint requires more power than any one wizard possesses."
Wolfe's revelation about the consciousness behind magic flashed through Harry's mind. It was almost like that consciousness didn't want any one individual to be able to control the destruction that magic can potentially cause. It didn't prevent the possibility of someone using magic for such destruction, but it did allow for the possibility of mutual deterrent. Harry would have been happier if creating such dangerous weapons had been downright impossible, but mutual deterrent was better than one person controlling everything.
"If only I had known about those ships sooner—how busy Yamato has been. I anticipate that these new ships are a great deal faster than the old troop carriers too." Nicolai slammed his right fist into his left palm in a rare show of frustration.
"I could deal with those ships after delivering Matt and Anzu to Astirian," Harry suggested. "But he'd be on his own until I'm finished with them, and that would take hours. I haven't been to any villages, so I'd have to actually cover the ground to get to them. Bugger, I don't even know which villages the ships are at."
"I'm fairly certain I know which villages they are likely to have sent the troops to, and I could also tell you which of the resistance cell locations you've visited are closest to the respective villages," Nicolai said with the self-confidence only a person with an encyclopaedic and photographic memory would be capable of in such a situation. "That would significantly reduce your travelling time, wouldn't it?"
Harry nodded. "It would be a huge help."
"However, you need to specify what you mean by dealing with the ships. It's true that a lot of the troops onboard are unscrupulous mercenaries, but there are also a lot of conscripts from the villages, people who have been forced to serve. Their deaths wouldn't sit well with their kin in the villages—and my cousin worked hard to win them over."
"I understand. I could invade the ships' bridges and take them to the ground before disabling them," Harry offered. "Unless the designs are radically different than the ones on the ship at Laketown, it shouldn't be too difficult."
"If you are going to leave Matt on his own for an extended period of time, I had better alter our plans a little. The amount of awe the sight of Anzu will inspire is highly uncertain. It certainly won't be as impressive as you doing your Superman thing and laying waste to some elite guard barracks by blasting them with your eyes." Nicolai turned to Patrinia. "Tell the reserves that they'll definitely see action, and I'll go tell Gaal to get ready to take off with Cloud Jumper. She's been outfitted with the cannons the cruisers use, so she'll play the role of gunship. She can make the trip in ninety minutes if she flies at full speed."
Harry narrowed his eyes suspiciously. He didn't have to be a Mind Reader to be able to tell that Nicolai was planning to be onboard Cloud Jumper when it appeared over Astirian City. "You can't risk your neck."
"What I can't do is command from the rear. The concept of leadership here is similar to that of ancient and medieval times in the Earth Realm. The Commander in Chief doesn't have to wield a pike in the phalanx, but he does have to be within sight of the engagement, and it's preferable that he spends at least a little while fighting himself. This is a time for making impressions, and hiding behind the soldiers is something the duchess has done throughout her ascension to power. It's why she's regarded as being cowardly even among her own supporters, and why she needs a secret police to keep those supporters in line. It'll be a little less difficult to pacify a population that respects its conquerors' leader, and every little bit helps."
"What if Cloud Jumper gets shot down?"
"They'll have to see her first. Besides, all the buildings that could likely hold weapons to repel a flying enemy will be controlled by our troops."
Harry sighed. "I'd better get to work, then. The castle still needs to be properly secured. But when do I get the locations of the villages? I won't be able to find you if Cloud Jumper is underway. Damn, this is all Yamato's fault. Why couldn't he have co-operated by being in his workshop when I got there? Don't we deserve a stroke of luck from time to time?"
Nicolai shot him a rueful smile. "We'll have to make our own luck, as usual. And you can find Cloud Jumper even when it's underway. It wasn't exactly stationary when you experimented with the doorways. We weren't travelling, but we weren't hovering in a fixed position either. It didn't occur to me until Gaal told me that he'd done some manoeuvring just to see if the doorways would shift, but nothing happened. Your destination doesn't have to be a geographically fixed location."
"Really? So I can go to mobile locations just like the Order's 'return to Cruiser' wrist-Portkeys?"
"Not exactly. Those Portkeys need to be within the range of a Cruiser's magic detectors, and those detectors have to be emitting a magic homing signal. You can find a ship once you've been on it, regardless of the distance."
Harry grinned. "I'm beginning to feel lucky again."
It was often said that strategy ended and tactics began when one met the enemy in battle. That wasn't quite right. People tended to forget the part about operations, since it had too many variables and thus wasn't included in most war games. The way fighting forces operated was more crucial than even the best strategies and tactics, since strategy and tactics actually had to be carried out. An army that couldn't operate never got the chance to implement any of its strategic plans. This meant that a wise strategist had to come up with a way to deprive the enemy of their operational necessities, preferably before the battle. This was the main shortcoming of the oldest war game, chess. The board was as regular and mathematical as everything else in the game, excluding the unknown variables that ruled in real battle.
The armouries had been taken first, preventing the off-duty guards from getting to their weapons in case the alarm was sounded, and all the doors into the palace had been shut by powerful spells, preventing anyone from entering in the unlikely event that some outside guards did manage to find weapons. But that hadn't happened. No one outside the palace had even know that something was amiss until Matt—flying on Anzu—had swooped over palace's tallest spire and ripped the ducal house's enormous flag of off its flagpole. It had been quite an impressive sight, and Harry had inwardly praised Matt's flair for dramatics. It had been his idea to inform the Astirian citizens of the situation in that shocking manner.
The invasion had gone more smoothly than anyone had hoped. Lady Luck must have been listening to Harry earlier, since fortune had also played its part. No off-duty soldier or city dweller had tried to enter one of the armouries in the city, only to find it suspiciously sealed and raising the alarm because of it. Not that it could have changed the outcome, but a heightened state of alert might have made the surreptitious intrusion into the city more difficult and bloodier. The armouries' neighbours had been taken completely by surprise and had thus been subdued quickly, none of them getting away to alert other parts of the city.
One by one, pockets of neighbourhoods had silently fallen to the resistance, and after that part of the operation, Harry had opened a doorway for Matt and Anzu. Together they had flown over the city, Harry destroying military barracks, ballistae and other weapons designed to take out large flying craft, with super-powered Reductor Curses from his eyes. After ripping the ducal flag off its pole, Matt had swooped low over rooftops, occasionally landing and transforming Anzu into its bipedal battle configuration to chase some misguided would-be city defenders back into their homes.
Harry now stood on the wall surrounding the palace and looked up at that spire. The ducal flag had been replaced by Shamballah's flag. Then he turned and looked at the citizens gathered on the market square that faced the main gate. They were all incredulously looking at the new flag waving in the gentle breeze. The expected short-lived skirmishes in the occupied city blocks hadn't occurred. The initial shock and awe of seeing the black griffon of an allegedly extinct royal bloodline must have been greater than Nicolai had foreseen. Still, that didn't mean that others wouldn't try to resist later. Harry hoped that the shock effect would last until Nicolai arrived in Cloud Jumper. He wanted things to be nice and quiet when they relieved him, so he could go after those invisible ships. But that was still an hour away.
"Commander Brother of Wolfe! The duchess and her aide have been captured, Divinely Marked One. Victory is ours!" a youthful Etti resistance fighter jubilantly exclaimed as he sprinted over the battlements of the wall. He couldn't have been older than fifteen. The boy had no business being a soldier!
Despite his dismay at the lad's lack of maturity, Harry allowed himself to smile. Boy Who Lived, Boy Who Defeated He Who Must Not Be Named, and now Brother of Wolfe. For some reason his real name hadn't stuck with the resistance. They kept calling him Brother of Wolfe or Divinely Marked One.
"What's your name, son?"
The raven-haired boy blinked, surprised that a commander was interested in knowing his name. "My name is Ash, Divinely Marked One."
"Don't call me that. Commander will do fine."
The lad's green eyes sparkled with hero worship. This was worse than dealing with the Creevey brothers used to be. "Yes, Commander."
"So tell me, Ash. Did they find the duchess's inventor, Yamato?"
"No, Commander. We asked her, but she refuses to speak."
Harry knew that her meant the duchess. He bit back a groan. Not finding Yamato had been only hitch in the entire operation. Now he had to cope with a terrible uncertainty, for Yamato was like a head that could grow a new body. Even though he had been reduced to whatever tools he kept in his escape craft, it still meant that he could start over somewhere else and become quite dangerous with the passage of time. The head needed to be crushed.
"Where is she being kept?"
"The ballroom, with the other prisoners."
Harry promptly walked to the nearest guardhouse and created a doorway to a guest chamber he knew to be exactly above the ballroom. He had chosen not to make a doorway to the ballroom itself because he didn't think it prudent to reveal his gift to the enemy just yet, in the unlikely event that the tables could still somehow be turned. After stepping through, he descended through the floor and came out of the ballroom's ceiling. No one noticed his presence until he had dropped to eye level. The two hundred or so prisoners emitted collective gasps. About seventy-five were palace guards, and the rest appeared to be support staff common to palaces. Only a young, silently sobbing Etti girl sitting at the edge of the group hadn't noticed him. She wore a stained, formless beige dress that was threadbare in some places, and her greasy red hair and the scent of food about her suggested that she was a scullery maid. The freshest stains on her dress came from the blood dripping out of her nose. He floated over to her before solidifying and kneeling down in front of her.
"Don't be afraid," he said, as she tried to crawl away. "I won't hurt you. Why are you bleeding? Tell me the truth," he added after sensing her hesitation caused by her fear.
"I was struck," she said quietly.
"By one of my soldiers." It was a statement, not a question. Harry had plucked the information from her mind. "Why?"
"I wasn't walking quickly enough."
"Because your foot is injured." Again, Harry had taken the information from her mind. A sharp poultry bone lying on the kitchen floor had pierced the thin sole of her simple footwear.
"Yes," she whimpered. "Please don't punish me."
Instead of answering, Harry cast a Cleansing Charm to clear away the blood. Then he cast a Numbing Charm to take away her pain, before employing Bone-setting Charm to return her broken nose to its original state and used his magical vision to check his handiwork. A Healing Charm quickly repaired the fractures and took away most of the bruising in her face, causing him to take note of her bright brown eyes. Then he looked at her foot, which had the beginnings of an infection. She needed a potion for that.
"How does you face feel?" he asked.
"Better," she answered uncertainly, not quite knowing what to think of Harry's kindness.
"Are you a slave?"
She slowly shook her head, as if she weren't completely certain that her negative answer was the right one. Harry decided to ask some questions that might clarify her status.
"What are your parents' occupations?"
"My father is the chief of my village, Anós. My mother is a healer."
A village chief and a healer were people who enjoyed a certain amount of respect in a community. They were hardly the type of people to send their daughter off to become a scullery maid, and that contradiction prompted the next question, "Why are you in Astirian? Your parents didn't support the way the duchess ran things, did they? You're a hostage of sorts, aren't you?"
She cast a frightened glance over his shoulder, and Harry turned to follow her gaze. The vulture-like duchess was glaring at them.
"Never mind that ugly carrion bird," he said firmly. "Her reign is over. She and her ilk will face justice soon enough. Now, which soldier struck you? Is he here?"
The girl scanned the ballroom and quickly found who she had been looking for. He was a burly and unpleasant-looking Etti with metallic blue-ish hair, betrayed the presence of Jann blood. Harry could tell at once that he hadn't joined the resistance for idealistic reasons. Most likely he had committed some crimes that had forced him into hiding, and the only reason he hadn't sold out his resistance cell was because it wouldn't have been enough to get him pardoned.
Harry rose from his kneeling position and beckoned the man over.
"Which part of Emperor Savin's edict not to harm any non-combatants didn't you understand? Or did your group leader neglect to mention it?" he asked, after the man had drawn to within ten feet.
"She resisted," the man lied.
"My word against hers. That's what you're thinking, right? That as long as you stick to your story, your claim can't be disproved. Right? Normally you'd have been right, but unfortunately for you, this commander can read minds," Harry growled, exacting some grim satisfaction form the man's paling face.
He had been afraid of this. Though this man was simply a malicious bastard, other resistance troops could also decide to vent their frustration on their captives sooner or later. In their eagerness to bring justice to their former oppressors, the sudden power they enjoyed quickly corrupted the formerly oppressed, making them every bit as brutal as those who had brutalised them in the past. Thinking that perhaps a burning example would curb any future temptation to indulge themselves, Harry gazed down at the man's crotch and shot a pair of incendiary spells out of his eyes.
The man roared, first in panic, and then in pain as the flames burned consumed the fabric and reached the flesh.
"Don't help him!" Harry bellowed, freezing a soldier who had been hurrying towards him with a heavy cloak in his hands. "There is a fountain in the next room. Let him try to reach it on his own." Then he turned and swept his gaze across the other resistance soldiers. "Remember what you've seen, and spread the word. Abuse a non-combatant, and you will be punished. Lie about it, and the Brother of Wolfe will personally burn down your branch of the family tree. And if the wrongdoer is female, I'll think of something else.
"I know that there will be times where captives will really resist—unlike what was the case here—and it isn't my intention to tie your hands," Harry continued in a milder tone. "If that happens, you need to be able do what is necessary to subdue them. But I can tell when excessive force has been used, so don't use it."
Then he fixed his gaze on the duchess. "Where is Yamato?"
She didn't answer verbally, but Harry could tell that her silence came from ignorance as much as it came from defiance.
Harry heaved a sigh of annoyance. "Of course you don't know where he is. He must have fled as soon as he knew something was amiss. He always has been the first rat to flee a sinking ship."
"You have no hope of holding this city," the duchess hissed. "You are too few in number."
"Ah yes, the troops aboard the invisible ships you thought were going to follow us back to our camps," Harry replied, sensing her thoughts about their return. "They'll be dealt with shortly. You've lost, Your Grace." He put mocking emphasis on the title. He knew he shouldn't have been behaving this way, but he couldn't ignore the fact that she was chiefly responsible for giving Yamato the resources to build the weapon that ended up killing Wolfe.
"What are you going to do with me?" the duchess asked, sounding much more subdued all of a sudden. With her power stripped away, she was nothing but a frightened woman. The ease with which her stronghold had fallen must have shaken her to the core.
"The resistance obviously wants your head on plate," Harry replied casually. "Can you give them a reason to change their minds? I wouldn't bother appealing to their sense of compassion. Hell will freeze over before they'll feel any compassion for you. Your only safe bet would be to offer them something they need, like co-operation from your loyalists. But you don't have any true loyalists, do you? Because you've ruled through fear and division."
"Commander Brother of Wolfe!" Ash came running into the ballroom, skidding to a stop in front of Harry. "Sir." The lad gasped, trying to catch his breath. "Prince Matthew of The Black Griffin wishes an audience with you."
"An audience?" Harry asked laconically. "I doubt it. I think he just want to talk to me in the good old informal way. Where is he?"
"On the battlements of the western wall, Commander. He was coming down when you left me there."
"Right." Harry glanced at the scullery maid. "Ash, would you help … I'm sorry, I forgot to ask your name."
"Xania."
"Ash, would you help Xania—"
"Little Xania? Daughter of Elan the healer and Dorf the sheriff?" The lad stared intently at the girl.
Xania's eyes widened as she recognised the boy. "Ash?"
Harry smiled. "I take it you two know each other?"
"He was my neighbour. His father was Chieftain of Anós before my father—but I thought you were killed along with your parents, seven summers ago."
"I'm afraid a more elaborate reunion will have to wait," Harry told them both, then turned to Ash. "Help her up and follow me." Then he spun around, stunning the duchess with twin stunners from his eyes and following up with Mobilicorpus.
Keeping a mental grasp on the unconscious duchess, he gestured for Ash to follow him. Harry had expected the lad to be supporting the girl, but instead he had her cradled in his arms, and she had her arms firmly around his neck. Once out of sight of the captives, Harry opened a doorway to Floriath. Xania inhaled sharply as she saw it unfold.
"Well, carry her over the threshold, son." Harry fought to keep a smirk off his face. "Take her to the healers so they can treat her injured foot."
"But aren't I needed here?" Ash asked.
"I also need you to find Princess Patrinia while you're there. I'm sure she'd like to know how things have gone. Don't worry, I'll return for you later." Harry slid the band of rank Patrinia had given him off his arm offered it to Xania, since Ash had his hands full. "If they don't take you seriously, show them this."
The boy swelled up with pride. "Yes, Commander."
After the boy was gone, Harry opened up a doorway that would take him to one of the guardhouses along the western wall. The resistance fighters were momentarily startled, but relaxed when they realised what was going on. He levitated the duchess through the doorway before stepping through himself. Then he made his way to where Anzu was perched on the wall, with the duchess floating behind him like a marionette without strings.
"Is that her?" Matt called from the armoured recesses of Anzu.
Harry nodded. "Yes it is."
"What happened to the kid I sent to fetch you? I told him to come back. I had some more errands for him."
Harry heaved a sigh. "He ran into his Ginny. She was a scullery maid, and a hostage of sorts. Her parents were the leaders of a village, and I guess her service here was an excuse to keep her parents in line."
"His Ginny?" Matt's tone of voice sounded quite amused.
"She had red hair and brown eyes, all right? It was a slip of the tongue. I miss Ginny," he sighed.
"You haven't been apart that long."
"Every additional day apart is a day too much. Now drop it! I need you to do something for me."
"Name it."
"Stand on this wall while holding her in one of Anzu's claws. That ought to distract anyone who might be plotting a counterattack."
Matt laughed. "Sort of like King Kong, eh?"
"I wouldn't know. Dudley never let me see any films he thought I'd enjoy."
"Well, hand her over then." Anzu's left arm extended towards Harry and the clawed hand opened with only the slightest metallic creak. When the duchess was securely held, Harry countered the stunner, and she regained consciousness.
"Why have you brought me here?" she asked nervously.
"Fresh air and sunshine," Harry replied sarcastically. "No, we're putting you on display as a reminder to future generations that some things come at too high a price."
She visibly swallowed. "Will you drop me?"
"That would be letting you get off easy," Matt said. "You've created a society based on slavery, and now you'll be held accountable by the former slaves."
"I'm off to see Nicolai about tying up those loose ends now," Harry said to Matt.
"All right, mate."
Harry turned on his heel and headed back toward the guardhouse, to create a doorway while unobserved. He was about to enter when a distant, thundering roar told him that something was amiss. He took off and accelerated towards the origin of the sound. A plume of dust was rising in the air, and he saw that it was caused by a steady collapse of abandoned mining quarries a mile or two outside the city.
Harry knew that such an extensive collapse couldn't have happened without some abnormal stimuli to induce it. Reports from resistance spies had all testified that the tunnels had been in good condition. Smelling a rat, Harry activated his enhanced vision, hoping to catch a residue of the magic that had collapsed the tunnels, if indeed magic had been responsible. Instead he saw the silhouette of a flying ship rapidly moving away from the site. It looked almost exactly like the one he and Wolfe had wrecked, though it was only about one quarter the size.
Harry's heart leapt into throat as he realised that it had to be Yamato, and memories of Heidi's anguished sobs resurfaced in his mind, making his blood boil. She had been so close to happiness, only to have it torn away, tearing up her soul, which had already been strained. He thought about Sissi and the boys, who would never have the chance to really know their father. Then there were the thousands of nameless people whose lives Yamato had directly or indirectly wrecked. The bastard was responsible for the deaths of wizards and Muggles alike in the Earth Realm, and a dozen or so races in the Mirror Realm. He owed it to all of them to stop Yamato once and for all.
Rendering himself intangible, he took off, aiming slightly ahead of the ship on a rough intercept course. He truly longed to obliterate the ship with its maker in it. Doing so could easily be interpreted as self-defence, since Yamato's continued existence was a threat to everyone, much like Voldemort had been. However, a tiny part of him rejected those grim thoughts and remained anchored in the truth. With Voldemort, he'd had no choice. Fate had decided that Harry had to be the one. And while he had destroyed plenty of vampires in his time as a Ranger, their destruction had been carefully debated beforehand and approved by a large number of people. But if he killed Yamato—at least, without first exhausting every other alternative—it would be voluntary. He would have taken the right to kill into his own hands, and no matter how much Yamato deserved to die, it would still be murder.
With that thought firmly entrenched into his mind and keeping his rage in check, he turned himself invisible so as not to give Yamato any unnecessary advantages. His anticipation grew as he closed in, and even though he didn't strictly have a heart in his intangible from, he imagined it to be pounding faster. The magic burned inside him, barely restrained, ready to be unleashed.
He slowed to allow the ship to pass before turning in pursuit. The ship was fast, but Harry's intangibility meant that he could fly much faster than anything subjected to aerodynamics. Then, just as he thought he was about to pass through the ship's hull, he crashed into a magical shield. After recovering from the shock, he immediately berated himself for not linking the fact that he still wasn't able to see into the bridge at very close range to the interference caused by a magical shield.
During his experimentation with the boundaries of his intangibility, Harry had noticed that it didn't completely protect him from magic, so he had always avoided being a target, lest a stray Killing Curse come his way. Stunners dazed him as they passed through him, and other hexes also minimally affected him, though his inner magic always reversed those effects in a fraction of a second. For obvious reasons, he had never experimented with the Killing Curse. Harry knew this magical shield had to be extremely powerful to have repelled him like that. Penetrating a Cruiser's shield—also during experiments with his powers—had been hard enough, but it hadn't kept him out.
He put some extra energy into vision and was rewarded with pieces of the inside of the bridge through the powerful magical interference, and he caught Yamato grinning with satisfaction. The Japanese wizard knew about Harry's intangibility, and probably about his invisibility as well. He had probably deduced that Harry had been the impact on the shields.
Seconds later, Harry saw rapid pulses of magic beginning to flash out from the ship and envelop him. Before he could begin to wonder what they were for, he noticed the changing of the ship's profile. The spindly hind 'legs' of the ship stretched and curved backwards. He saw the magic gathering at their tips, and he reflexively dodged downwards. A pair of bright energy spheres the size of bowling balls missed him by only a few feet, and they were barely past him when the legs swivelled to his new, lower position and fired another pair of energy spheres.
He realised that the pulses had to be emanating from a very sophisticated magic detection artefact, and again he berated himself for not anticipating that a magical artificer as brilliant as Yamato had means of detection equal to those of the Order of Illumination.
Keeping his flight erratic, he maintained the pursuit, trying to work out how to tackle the situation. It was impossible to make a doorway into the ship's bridge. The interference hadn't allowed him to see enough of the bridge to construct a mental picture. There was nothing else for it. He had to attack the ship and hammer it until the shields went down.
Harry drew on his magic, preparing to hit the ship with double Reductor Curses. He allowed the power to build until it felt like his head was about to explode. Then he let loose with what could very well have been the most powerful Reductor Curse ever performed. The shield glowed pink where the curse struck it, but it didn't break. It did weaken somewhat, allowing him to see inside the bridge a little better. He managed to get a glimpse of Yamato again even though he was busy dodging the energy spheres. The bastard didn't appear to be worried about the shields collapsing any time soon. Unfortunately, having to make evasive manoeuvres had also prevented Harry from getting a good enough look to create a doorway, but another idea presented itself. With the shields weakened, perhaps he would be able to penetrate.
He darted forward, but was immediately punished by one of the two energy spheres shooting through his body with the other one barely missing. He knew he wasn't physically injured, but the pain he felt now dwarfed the pain he had felt during his experimentations with the Cruciatus Curse on his intangible form. As with all spells, its effectiveness had been reduced. But this almost felt like being hit with the curse while solid.
When the pain blanketing his senses had finally subsided, Harry found that the ground was suddenly a lot closer. He pulled out of his involuntary dive, and the manoeuvre saved him from more suffering as it caused another two spheres to shoot beneath him, passing through the space he should have been occupying and going on to hit the ground, creating a pair of enormous explosions. He sent a silent prayer to the 'Powers that Be' for that bout of fortune, and at the same time he cursed his own recklessness. A target was easier to hit the closer it got, and Harry had completely forgotten about that in his enthusiasm to execute his plan.
Harry felt another dire consequence of Yamato's successful attack. The magic it had taken to purge the lingering effects of the energy sphere had significantly reduced his reserve, and panic began to set in as his brain focussed the increasing implications of this. The weapons that had been firing at Harry so far were probably the only ones that could cover the stern of the ship, but Harry had a hunch that each of the legs running along the flanks of the ship harboured a weapon of some sort. If Yamato brought all those weapons to bear on Astirian—or if its detectors discovered Cloud Jumper like they had discovered Harry in spite of his invisibility…
Yamato had to be stopped, and it was up to Harry to do it! If he failed, Yamato would destroy Cloud Jumper and its occupants. With Nicolai gone, nothing would stop him from taking over Astirian, Shamballah, and eventually the rest of the Mirror Realm. And with the Mirror Realm under his control, he'd probably set his sights on the Earth Realm too. If that happened, a terrible fate wait await all of Harry's loved ones.
With a new resolve fuelled by an increasing sense of desperation, Harry summoned magic from the very core of his being as he began to pursue Yamato's ship once more. He suspended his invisibility—since it didn't do him any good under the circumstances—and channelled the extra available power into a build-up for a new attack.
He kept bobbing up, down, left and right as unpredictably as possible as he closed with the ship's stern, always keeping his eyes locked on target, the power inside him growing and growing. Then, when he was close enough, he let loose with his attack. The shields glowed pink at the impact point and began to weaken again, but after fifteen seconds of this, Harry knew that he might not have enough reserves to keep that up until they collapsed. With that thought haunting the back of his mind, he decided to tap into the magic that sustained him in his intangible form.
His decision immediately took its toll, and Harry began to feel like he was being suffocated. But the effect made it worth it, because the power of his attack tripled. He held on even as darkness began to nibble at the edge of his consciousness. He couldn't allow himself to fail!
Then the shields suddenly gave away. They failed too suddenly and too completely for Harry—his mind sluggish due to deprivation of the magic that was normally used to sustain him during intangibility—to shut off his ocular attack in time. The twin Reductor Curses vaporised the bridge and continued into the centre of the ship, reaching the power core and causing a violent reaction. Harry banked sharply to avoid the debris, before slowing down and watching the largest remaining chunks plummet to the ground.
A wave of exhaustion swept over Harry, and he began a barely controlled descent to the Astirian landscape. Tangible once more, his knees buckled as he touched down, and he fell forward, preventing a collapse with a pair of shaking arms. Then he sat back on his haunches and looked up at the smallest burning remains of the ship tracing smoky lines in the sky as they fluttered down.
For what could have been mere minutes, or possibly an hour, he simply sat there, numb with shock. Then the enormity of what had just happened caught up with him, and Harry felt something inside him snap, discharging all kinds of pent up emotions. Annoyance about accidentally killing Yamato, but mostly relief because of his death. A wave of guilt loomed up, threatening to overcome the sense of relief. Had he committed murder? He had considered the possibility before he'd begun his attack on Yamato's ship. Perhaps he had subconsciously—no, it had really been an accident. He had been fighting off unconsciousness when the ship blew up. He had been in no shape to stop his ocular attack in time to spare Yamato. His choice of tactics had led to Yamato's death, but it hadn't been his goal, and therein laid the difference.
"It's over," Harry said aloud, his voice hoarse and shaking.
And it was. Justice had been done. Wolfe, and all the other people whose deaths Yamato had been responsible for—either directly or indirectly—had been avenged.
With quite a bit of effort, Harry forced himself onto his feet. Destroying the ship had taken a lot out of him—though the shaking might have been caused by emotions—and he hoped that the troop carriers the duchess had sent out weren't as tough as Yamato's ship had been.
Using the last of his magic reserves, he opened a doorway to Cloud Jumper and stepped through.
Aberforth was the first of the cabin's occupants to notice him. "Harry!"
"What's the status in Astirian?" Nicolai asked immediately.
"Really, Nick, can't you see he's exhausted?" Mary cast a reproachful look at her husband as she made her way over to Harry with large steps. "Here, sit down." She guided him to a leather loveseat, and feeling light-headed, he allowed her to. Then she turned to Nicolai again. "Make yourself useful and get him some of that nice Qoi milk."
Nicolai heaved a sigh of resignation. "Yes, dear."
Everyone knew not to argue with Mary when she saw a tired animal that needed care, and while Mary mopped tears he hadn't even known were there from his face, Harry didn't know whether to be insulted or flattered that the sight of him had made her instincts kick in. He chose the latter, but felt too tired to smile gratefully.
When Nicolai returned, Harry gratefully accepted the mug and took a sip. As the liquid slid down his throat, Harry felt his exhaustion diminish. He quickly downed the rest, and felt much better when he handed to mug back to Nicolai.
"Now can I talk to him?" Nicolai asked his wife.
"The city is fine. Everything went according to plan. We captured the Duchess of Astirian, and the reason I came in so tired was because I had to use most of my magic reserves to crack the shield of Yamato's ship. He fled in an invisible ship. I think it was built in the quarries."
"You caught Yamato?" Aberforth asked excitedly.
Harry smiled ruefully. "Not exactly. I was pouring so much power into taking down the shield that I overdid it. My curse vaporised the bridge and went on to the power core in half a heartbeat. The ship was confetti before I realised what I'd done. I'm sorry. I truly didn't intend to kill him."
Nicolai shrugged. "It's okay. I know powerful magic can't simply be shut off in the blink of an eye. I would have preferred to drag him back to the Earth Realm for trial, but he would probably have been executed in the end, so it makes little difference."
"You know, if those other ships are as tough as Yamato's, I won't be able to tackle them today. That milk did wonders, but I need to rest if I'm to recharge. Maybe it would be easier if I caught them with their shields down, but I don't have the reserves to overcome them if I didn't."
"I doubt those troop carriers are as powerful as Yamato's own ship. Either way, with Yamato dead, that's not a priority anymore." Nicolai patted Harry on the shoulder. "You've earned yourself a little rest, Commander."
Gogirl: Aye, he was rather lordly, wasn't he?
Sheila: Sorry. No more miraculous comebacks for Wolfe in this fic.
Shadowfire:
1) Ironheart and Thetis weren't being particularly loud, and Harry didn't stop to listen before plunging through.
2) The whole point of the Mind Reading solution was to side-step issues. I don't want any Iraq-like situations, which is what you inevitably get without the ability to sort the bad from innocent. And it isn't unconvincing; it's magic!
3) I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say in Chapter 23. Because a tiny part of him expected to survive, the self-sacrifice protection didn't kick in for him, no matter how resigned the rest of him was to his death. And with EFFECT I meant exactly like a normal Killing Curse, right up to and including being unblockable by magic. SO it is one enormous Killing Curse.
No loopholes, no miraculous comebacks for Wolfe anymore in this fic.
hootild: The poor boy needed to get laid in order to think better. ;-) As for Matt, he already stinking rich, and he'll only get richer.
blah29: I'm almost afraid that the final fight scene was a bit anticlimactic.
JakeTheSheepy: Sorry. No power transfers, and no free rides into Super Sorceror-hood for Harry.
Lady of Masbolle: Thanks
Magsluvsaragorn: Glad you enjoyed it.
Lipton: I hope it lived up to your expectations.
Pauline: The pat on the back is greatly appreciated.