I threw myself back, slamming into the concrete wall set into the embankment. Another Redcap landed in front of me, the heavy metal pole he carried smashing into the earth, right where I’d been standing.
It’s raining men, I thought. I wanted to look at Bradley but didn’t dare. The Redcaps were between us.
And the one that faced me was swinging his iron staff again. I ducked, and the pole just barely missed me. He tried to stop it and pull back, but I fired before he could recover. The iron bullet slammed into his side and knocked him off his feet. He landed hard and didn’t move again.
Redcaps look like tiny little old men… little old men with muscles like stevedores. The eponymous hats are dyed in the blood of their victims, and they wear iron-shod shoes and carry iron staves. But they aren’t immune to iron. They wear it, carry it, as a sort of Fae machismo thing, to prove how tough are. They have no spurking fear of iron – no point waving the Badge at them – but it sure as hell can hurt them.
I looked around. Bradley was standing, thank Goddess, but the little bastard had clipped him on the way down. Bradley was bleeding from the side of his head and his left arm hung limp, as though he’d taken bad hit to the shoulder.
Bradley was backing away slowly, gun levelled at the Redcap in front of him. It was advancing, iron staff raised high to strike. I aimed my gun, but the three of us formed an almost straight line, and there was no way to take a shot without the risk of hitting Bradley.
And I didn’t want to shoot Bradley. The paperwork would be a bitch, for one, and… I cut the thought off when I saw it.
There was a third Redcap, and it was closing on him from his left with a vicious feral smirk and a pike made of iron.
“Bradley, eight o’clock,” I called.
I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me, or understood, and I still couldn’t risk a shot. Hand-to-hand it is, I thought, and ran towards them, but I was too spurking late.
“My kill,” cried the one in front of Bradley, and swung its pike.
“Nay, mine,” shrieked the other, and swung too.
Bradley twisted and dropped, and my heart and stomach lurched, but he was just in time. Like a dancer, like a spurking dancer, he slipped under the pikes as they met just over his head with a clattering clang. The Fae behind Bradley was knocked back and fell on his wizened ass.
Then Bradley was up again, he’d dropped his gun, and with his good hand he grabbed the pike of the Redcap in front of him, twisted and pulled.
And then it was Bradley who held a pike. He swung, and then there wasn’t a Redcap standing in front of him with empty hands. It was lying on the ground, and what was left of its head was the same color as its cap.
Bradley tried to hoist the iron staff again, but couldn’t. He used it to prop himself up instead. The last Redcap scrambled to his knees and reached for his pike, but reconsidered when it found itself looking down the barrel of my gun.
Bradley took long, slow, deep breaths and leaned on the pole.
