Jacob reeled backwards, grabbed the shoulders of Harry’s shirt in both hands, his knuckles white as he pulled him behind the nearest stone. He noted that it was one of the removed lintels. Let’s hope it still offers us some protection, he thought. Once Harry was out of the firing line, Jacob dropped to his knees and checked his friend’s injuries.

The blast had burned through the armour and his shirt, a ragged smouldering hole six inches across centred over his heart. His skin beneath had blistered and burned too, in places an angry red and in others jet black. The repugnant smell of burned flesh invaded Jacob’s nostrils and for a moment he thought himself in the trenches, hearing mortar explosions and the cries of those burned by white phosphorus. He shook his head to clear it but the sounds lingered; they were here, in his present. The explosions were magical in nature, but the screams were utterly human.

Jacob swallowed hard and returned to his examination of Harry. “Hang in there, will you?” he whispered. No reply came. Jacob forced himself to look closer and realised that white flecks he saw in the wound were not ash or chalk from the plain, but fragments of Harry’s own breastbone. He placed his hand over Harry’s mouth to check for a breath, touched his neck for a pulse, but found nothing.

“No,” he breathed. Around him the battle raged but Jacob saw nothing. The cries of the wounded, the calls for him to get back into the fight went unheeded. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, cradling his friend, bargaining with a God he no longer believed in to bring him back, to swap his life for Harry’s.

A blast beside his hiding place snapped him out of his thoughts and he looked up. Rounding the stone was one of the tall fae, a calm look on its face as it peered down at the two men. In its many long fingers it held its staff, aiming it directly at Harry.

Jacob’s anger rose. “Leave him alone!” he shouted, not caring if the creature understood or even heard him. He groped around for his own staff, unwilling to take his eyes from the apparition. Then he saw it, clutched in the fae’s other hand.

He’d dropped it, to pull Harry to safety.

His anger intensified. His fury overwhelmed him; anger at this beast for attacking them, for hurting his friend, anger at himself for losing his staff, anger at Grey and Black for not heeding his concerns, anger at the world for making him face his own death yet again…

A tortured scream tore from his lips. Strange words bubbled up in his mind, not in English, not in any language he recognised, and they filled him with an urgent need to speak them out loud. In a low voice he began to recite the unfamiliar sounds, his mouth and tongue contorting to pronounce words that no human before had ever uttered. Power surged through him, stronger than any he’d previously felt. Whenever he’d used magic before the staff had controlled it, focused through the crystals it held. This was different, a deeper, richer feeling of energy rising from within himself, and controlled by his own will alone.

The creature stopped, its staff still aimed at the pair, and its look of calm changed to one of what might have been amusement. As Jacob raised his hands, the amusement changed to surprise, and then fear.

As it realised what he was doing, the fae raised its staff to a vertical position and mouthed strange words of its own; a faint shimmering mist appeared between itself and Jacob. As it continued to speak, the mist brightened, thickened and began to resemble light reflecting on the ocean, or a dusty mirror.

Jacob finished his incantation.

Fire and lightning arced from his fingertips, crossing the distance to the creature’s shield in an instant. The bolt hit the surface of the shimmering light, while radiating forks of energy ran sparking and sputtering across it. Jacob kept the core of his attack centred on the same spot, driving it against, into and finally through the beast’s defence.

When its shield fell, the fae had no time to react, and the bolt struck it right in the centre of its chest. Such was the force of Jacob’s anger and hatred it punched straight through the fae’s wiry body, exiting through its spine and continuing to burn until Jacob’s energy wavered and the lightning fizzled out. The creature still stood for a moment, before its hands fell open, dropping the staffs, and it crumpled into a smoking heap on the ground. Jacob, drained, sank back onto his heels panting for air.

Sweat dripped from his brow, every muscle in his body ached, and his mouth was cotton. His heart pounded so hard he could sense it in his ears and he couldn’t get enough breath into his lungs to stop them burning. He sat back against the rock that had provided cover and slipped unconscious.

Someone shook him awake.

As he forced open his eyes he saw Magenta kneeling beside him, concern etched into his face.

“Are you hurt?” Magenta asked.

Jacob looked around. “Where’s Harry?”

Sadness crept into Magenta’s expression. “I’m sorry.”

“Where is he?” Jacob shouted and tried to stand. The world spun around him and he fell back against the stone.

“Back at camp. We… that is I… had the lads pick up the… the dead.” Magenta stared at his shoes. “It needed a few trips,” he added. “We thought you were one of them I’m afraid, until Beige saw you were still breathing. Just about.”

Jacob saw Beige fidgeting behind Magenta and nodded. Even this small movement made him queasy.

“What happened?” Magenta asked. “I mean, Harry and that… thing dead, both burned through the heart, and you….” He tailed off. “Sorry.”

Harry saved my life, Jacob thought.

“He…” he began, then stopped as the image of Harry thrusting himself in front of Jacob flashed into his mind. “He…” Jacob tried again.

“You know what, it can wait,” Magenta said. “God knows you’ll be going over this for days with Black. Whatever those things were they were harder to kill than usual, he’ll want to know how you did it.”

So will I.

Magenta and Beige helped him to his feet, but another wave of dizziness and exhaustion forced Jacob to sit down on the lintel stone and place his head between his knees. It took a few minutes before he could stand and walk leaning on both men’s shoulders.

The march back to base was endless. On the way, Beige filled Jacob in on the details of the battle he’d missed. Once the humanoid fae had arrived, the men had realised they couldn’t compete with their magic. With Jacob and Harry believed dead it had forced them to improvise.

The fae had deflected each attack levelled at them, and Beige described the same silvery shield Jacob had seen. “Bolts just bounced off them,” he explained, “nothing seemed to get through. We had to try something else, and so Turquoise arranged us into groups of two, split apart to as to assault the fae from two sides like you did before. Split their attention and maybe weaken the shield-thing. It didn’t help much, they could keep it up, but it kept them busy enough not to see the third bloke.”

“The what?” Jacob’s head was still fuzzy.

“Two men to attack and keep them busy,” Magenta explained, “and a third to launch the real attack. He snuck in behind, hit ‘em with an iron knife. Turquoise got the idea from when you took out that mole-thing, since then we’ve all carried one.”

“Well done Turquoise,” Jacob muttered. “Remind me to buy him a pint. Or three.” Magenta’s silence hung in the air. “He didn’t make it?”

“He lasted longer than most,” Magenta said. “We lost most of ours during the first few minutes. Once Turquoise had the idea, we took them out quick. Before long they were down to two - and he tried something new. If he could capture one…”

“He didn’t,” Jacob gasped.

Magenta nodded. “He got up behind one of the last ones, and he had an iron chain from somewhere. He wrapped that round its neck, and the thing dropped like a stone. Shield down, it just collapsed onto the floor.

“He captured it?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah, kind of,” Magenta said. “It screamed or shouted or something, we couldn’t hear it but his mate did. Turned around and simply blasted Turquoise away. Like swatting a fly or something, he was gone. Almost got the guy behind too, but he got his knife in.”

Jacob tried not to consider that the same would have happened to him if he hadn’t… what had he done? Where had that power come from, without a staff? Even two men together hadn’t been able to breach that shield of light, so how had he?

“So we captured one, Black came and got it a little while ago with a whole bunch of blokes. They did some containment spell, and that shut it up. The iron burnt it pretty deep, but it was healing already when they took it away.”

Jacob trudged on in silence for a few minutes, before summoning the courage to ask the question he dreaded the answer to. “How many? How many did we lose?”

Magenta shrugged, almost dislodging Jacob from his shoulder. “Not sure, to be honest. More than half though, and I’m not sure how many of the injured will make it to tomorrow.” If Jacob hadn’t used the same flat tone himself so often over the years he might have missed the shock and fear it hid. He still didn’t have the words to help.

Jacob sat through the entire debriefing, not taking in a word. Around him in the canteen were the survivors of the attack on the stones who were well enough to attend. They only needed two tables pushed together to house them. Snatches of conversation around him filtered into his consciousness but even that couldn’t stir him from his thoughts.

Harry had given his life to save him.

Harry who had been there for him throughout the war, faced his greatest fears and shared his worst moments.

Harry was gone.

And to what end? So many others had died, so many others to be mourned and remembered, toasted and cheered, so they could protect a few ancient rocks in a damn field and capture some freakish fae that Black had already accompanied up to Headquarters to prod and poke.

Jacob heard his name and started to pay attention.

“Brown, I said I need to talk to you alone, come along,” Grey said, standing and leading the way out of the canteen.

Once a suitable distance away, Grey turned to him and spoke bluntly. “How did you do it? Take down that sorcerer alone?”

Is that what we’re calling them? Jacob thought. “I just… did,” he said. “I felt the energy, knew the words and just… did it. Sorry, I can’t explain any better,” he said as Grey looked at him with annoyance. “I just knew what to do.”

“Was it… because of him?” Grey asked. “Or perhaps it was the stones, some remnant of their protection working through you. Whatever it was, we need you to do it again. Not right now,” he said as Jacob protested, “but if we can work out what you did and more importantly how, we might have a chance of winning this thing.”