Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1301: A Battle in the Snow

White was certain he was going to die when the strange gray bird plunged toward the mountain.

His only thought, in that last shaved second, was that he never should have come so far inland. He could lay that squarely at the feet of those sailors — those envious, imitative sailors who had seen the coachmen profiting from refugee traffic and decided to muscle into the trade themselves. Because of them, White had been squeezed out of his routes along the coast and driven all the way into the Kingdom of Wolfheart’s interior just to keep earning.

He had wanted to survive the competition. He had not expected to meet actual demons.

He might have outrun them — probably would have, if it came down to legs. He had survived worse on less. But when the strange birds appeared overhead, he understood it was over. Nothing with wings could be outrun. Certainly not by a man with one good leg.

White buried his face in his arms and sank to his knees. “God,” he said, voice cracking against the snow, “please see your pious believer to that divine land after he’s gone, and make sure the gold royals never run dry—”

The birds did not tear him to pieces.

Instead, they produced a series of familiar sounds — sounds he had heard once before, at the Sedimentation Bay. That same reverberant neighing, that same report rolling across a battlefield. Within half an hour at the Bay, the invincible knights of the Tusk and the Redstone Family had been reduced to ash and ruin.

Had the Graycastle men come?

White lifted his head. What he saw stopped every thought he had.

A jet of silver-white fire erupted from the head of the nearest bird. It moved with something like intelligence — reaching for the demons, tracking them — and where it touched the snow, the snow leapt skyward, and the demons fell. One after another, they dropped as though the light itself carried weight.

He stared, open-mouthed.

What made him catch his breath a second time was the demons’ reaction: they stopped chasing. They turned and ran.

“Mr. White — what — what’s that?” a refugee stammered beside him.

White shook his head on instinct. Then something shifted behind his eyes — a mercantile reflex, old and quick. He pinched his thigh hard, forced himself upright, spread his arms wide.

“Don’t be frightened!” His voice shook but carried. “This is the Graycastle army I told you about — I summoned them!”

“Graycastle?” The disbelief was collective. “From the sky?”

“That’s right.”

“You mean — we’re saved?”

“For now, yes. Though I won’t pretend their services come cheaply. I haven’t much left in my purse, and I can’t speak to how long they’ll stay—”

He never finished. The crowd surged around him.

“Don’t let them go! I’ll pay double!”

“Two silver royals — take it!”

“My gold ring — it’s yours if we reach the Sedimentation Bay alive!”

“And mine as well—”

The refugees who had been waiting to die a minute ago were now shouting over each other, faces bright with something reckless and wonderful. White had seen that look before too — the look of people who had decided, for the moment, to believe.

“I’ll carry your message to the Graycastle men,” he called over the noise. “Now follow me, and — my leg, it’s not quite right — could someone—”

“I’ll carry you!” A broad-shouldered man stepped forward without hesitation and hoisted White onto his back.

White settled in. That was the carriage problem solved, at least.

If everything held, he might even recoup it from the refugees’ donations.

He hadn’t told much of a lie. The important thing now was to keep them moving and keep them alive. “Stay calm,” he said from his perch, as the man broke into a run toward the foot of the mountain. “Watch the tracks ahead of you. Keep your eyes on the person in front — and whatever you do, don’t roll off the side.”

Good noticed the problem some minutes into the fight.

He made a count, rising in his seat to see past the snow. One plane was missing.

The Mad Demons below were finished, or nearly so — the harsh weather and the limits of machine-gun fire at range had kept the kills from being clean, but the field was scattered with blue-blooded forms and the survivors were scattering. That should have been enough to account for. But Tilly’s Unicorn was gone.

The Unicorn was identical to the Fire of Heaven save for one thing: it was built for a single pilot. Easy to overlook in a blizzard, easy to lose in the general roar of engines and wind. But Tilly Wimbledon was His Majesty’s sister. If she came to harm, no amount of poor weather would serve as adequate explanation before a military tribunal.

Before Good could call to Finkin, three green flashes ignited the sky to the north.

Enemy signal. More demons.

But the demons were here.

His heart lurched. He abandoned the injured mass below and banked north, toward the signal.

“Hey — where are you going?” Finkin called, still firing in long bursts at the shapes in the snow. “We’ll be court-martialed if we abandon our post!”

“Shut up,” Good said. “Have you noticed Her Highness isn’t here?”

Finkin turned. A pause.

Then he had seen it too — three green flickers, already descending slowly.

The planes were close enough that Good covered the distance in just under seven minutes. His relief, when he spotted the Unicorn, was genuine and immediate.

Tilly was attacking a second group of demons, larger than the first, concealed in the forest below. He had time to register the strangeness of it — two demon troops, why two, why send the smaller after refugees — before Finkin’s shout cut through the engine noise.

“More here! Let’s follow Her Highness — I can’t wait to shoot something!”

The other two Fires of Heaven arrived. Good thought: the Mad Demons can’t fight back anyway. The ones we left are finished. We can do more good here.

Then, out of the tree line, a pack of Devilbeasts rose.

They cleared the canopy and arrowed straight upward — a dozen of them, at least, howling as they banked toward the Unicorn.

Good had trained against imaginary Devilbeasts for months. He had studied their reported profiles, their attack patterns, their speed at altitude. None of it had prepared him for the sound.

All the blood in his body turned cold.

Twelve Devilbeasts. Four hundred meters. No angle of attack that didn’t put Tilly between him and the pack.

He cycled through everything he knew, discarded each option as he reached it, and found nothing.

Then Tilly moved.

The Unicorn lurched upward, nose swinging sharply east, and a red flare shot into the sky and blazed there: the signal for full retreat.

Good opened the throttle and followed.

The biplanes were fast — faster than anything the Devilbeasts had likely encountered. The fleet tore east through the blizzard, the nearest beast close enough to spear for one terrible second, and then the distance opened, and the snow closed behind them, and the howling faded into the wind.

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