“I don’t want to worry you,” he whispered, “but there’s one seriously big fragger of a truck riding up to the hill. Looks like a twenty-tonner. Black as sin and completely sealed. I could hardly even see the thing. Can’t get any scan on what’s inside it.”

“Reinforcements?” Michael said, fretting.

“What for? Frag it, you could get the entire fraggin’ Inquisition into the back of-”

The elf’s voice trailed away into the eerily quiet night.

“Nah. Don’t be silly,” he said hurriedly. “Just a figure of speech. Let’s move it.”

They were thirty meters further along, within fifty more of their planned forward positions, when the truck rolled into view and stopped. Black figures appeared from the back of it like chitinous insects swarming out of a disturbed nest.

The first shell hit the building atop the hill two seconds later, lighting up the night like Times Square. Only Streak and Juan, with their flare-compensating cybereyes. didn’t have to turn away in pain and blindness.

“We got gate-crashers,” Xavier grunted. Juan swiveled and his laser designator focused on its target.

For what had been planned as an extraction operation, the ork was carrying some mighty potent weaponry. The shell screamed through the night at the truck, and rammed straight into the side of the massive vehicle. It should have ripped a hole right through it. Instead, it seemed to bounce off and disappear in a vast fireball somewhere to their right.

“Madre de dios!” the ork exclaimed in fury. “What the hell kind of fraggin’ armor has that fragger get on it?”

Geraint had kept his attention focused on the chapel building. At first it seemed little damaged despite being struck by a shell, then suddenly a wave of fire began to form around it, seeming to immolate the chapel even as he watched. Then, the fire-ring coalesced into a pillar and rolled down the hill toward the truck. The Priory mages aren’t taking this lying down, he thought. By God, I’m glad that thing isn’t coming our way.

The elemental swept to within thirty meters of the truck before it was snuffed out like a smoker’s match dropped in the rain. The chatter of automatic weapons began to fill the night, almost mundane in comparison. Dwarfing it, a fireball burst above the chapel and began to expand even as Geraint looked on, mushrooming until it encountered an invisible hemispheric bather. It cascaded down the sides of the barrier, spluttered, and died.

And they’ve got their defenses readied too, Geraint thought.

“Hey, you want me to frag the truck or frag the chapel?” Juan yelled at him. It was a pretty fair question under the circumstances. Geraint was still considering how to reply when the arriving mages, unseen in the back of the huge truck but very evident by their handiwork, pulled the stunt they’d been waiting for.

A vast pair of spectral hands, clasped together as if in prayer, appeared like some nightmare borealis above the chapel. They hovered thirty meters above it, suspended in the air, shimmering with magical power, and from the tip of an index finger a bolt of lighting crackled down and struck the hermetic barrier. When the irresistible force met the immovable object, the gates of hell were flung open-then slammed shut again.

The detonation flung everyone into the air, and then heavily back down onto the rocky ground. Michael groaned as his weak back was flung against a particularly unforgiving mass of rock, and he rolled over, yelping with pain. Even Juan was flung off his feet, though the immensity of the ork had seemed capable of defying gravity. Streak alone stayed on his feet, and managed to keep his Ingram leveled at the figures suddenly advancing on them. Two of the dark shapes fell before his arc of fire even as tracer rounds screamed through the night and, unbelievably, the howling of dogs came from the vicinity of the chapel. It was utter mayhem.

Fifty meters away from them the Priory mages and their unseen assailants were engaged in a titanic struggle of will and power, and Serrin suddenly switched his focus. He had to add to the spell lock and cover his friends, and the barrier Came up just in time to save them. Streak would have been carrying half his own body weight in flaming lead from the advancing samurai if he hadn’t. The elf gawked a little as he didn’t die in the field of fire, then emptied his clip just as Xavier pumped the first of the gas grenades into the samurai threatening to take him apart.

“The bastards have respirators,” he growled. “Come on, you stinking fraggers, lets see how you take stun.” Another grenade hot-fired, landing just behind their front line, and more were being frantically slammed into the launcher.

“How do you like this, you fraggers!” Xavier laughed as the first grenade landed right on target and blew the dark samurai backward. Streak hadn’t even bothered to slam another clip in. He just switched weapons and scythed down a few more of the previously advancing samurai. A fortunate shot from Geraint finished off one of those he’d wounded, Juan had learned his lesson from his previous assault on the truck, and started launching at the chapel, but Geraint told him to stop and concentrate on the unknown assailants beginning to fall back to their vehicle. The ork grinned and fired a canister grenade at them. The effect was horrifying: the shell burst in midair and a great web of sticky strands covered them, setting them alight on contact, the corrosive acid of the strands burning through armor and flesh as surely as the flame it generated. The screams of the dying were appalling to hear.

The hands in the air moved. The fingers were now pointing at the four men, and no longer at the chapel. Serrin saw it before the others did, and he knew they hadn’t a chance against the power of the mages. He’d known this would come some time, and had just enough time to grab Kristen’s arm and shout a few words to her.

“Cover me,” he said. “I’m not going to be up to much after this.”

She nodded once, grim and determined, and hefted her pistol, sliding the top of the barrel back to slip a round into the chamber.

Serrin had dutifully learned a lot about barriers and wards in the previous few months. He had enough anxieties about highly powerful mages with an interest in him, and a naturally paranoid nature to match. He’d spent more time practicing the centering rituals than he cared to think, and now he was going to find out if he’d gotten it right. If he hadn’t, the drain was going to kill him. It was either him or his companions. No contest.

He clutched the focus in a white-knuckled grasp and began the incantation.

The finger seemed to dip just a little. The four men were scattering. Even the monstrous ork samurai knew that whatever those hands were going to deliver in the way of chastisement, his samurai’s killing weaponry was going to be about as useful as papier mache armor.

The blue arc of energy left the fingertip. Serrin spoke the last words and fell back into Kristen’s arms. Xavier only had time to launch a frag grenade to discourage anyone from getting too close to him before be looked around to take in what had to be the mass funeral to his left.

The power struck the barrier and arced around and across it, great ripples of force thrashing at the invisible ward like breakers against a rock cliff. And the barrier held.

For a moment.

Then there was a deafening, nerve-shredding screech, like a thousand fingernails being dragged down a hundred blackboards, and the power bolt grounded itself-fifty meters away, to the left of its target.

Michael didn’t remember much after that. This time, his head landed where his back had the first time, and he was lucky to get away with concussion and mild amnesia. After a few moments, Geraint was also blasted off his feet, then managed to pull himself up onto all fours. In his swimming, hopelessly unfocused vision, he saw shells bursting into the chapel and, this time, disintegrating stone and thatch, smashing at the fabric of the building. Towering above him, an ork tottered around with his gyromount arm swinging relentlessly around to its designated target.