Page 145 of Quicksilver
Lightning rakedits claws across the night sky. Rain pelted us, torrential and freezing, as we ran along the western line of the war camp. Ren and Fisher were dark ghosts, blurring through the mayhem, darting straight through campfires that had already been kicked over, and around knots of warriors attempting to roll massive boulders toward the river's frozen edge. Fisher hung back, waiting for me, but I was right on their heels anyway, following at a dead sprint.
Along the other side of the Darn, a line of ravening vampires snapped and snarled at the ice’s edge. I could make out their shattered teeth and ruined tongues even through the lashing curtain of rain. Tonight was a little warmer than it had been since I'd arrived at Irrìn, and the smell that floated across the river—rotting flesh and the tang of foul, metallic blood— made me gag. I switched to breathing through my mouth, only barely managing to keep my stomach.
Fisher and Ren stopped abruptly at a switchback in the river, where the snowy banks were closest and formed a narrow bottleneck. Only fifty feet separated Irrìn and Sanasroth here. It wouldn't take much for the feeders to make the crossing.
Panic lived and breathed in my veins, multiplying by the second, but I gathered it in an iron grip, refusing to succumb to it. “Why aren't there as many of them here?” I panted. There were vampires on the opposite banks here, yes, but nowhere near as many as there were further down, where the river was wider.
“The water still flows beneath the ice. The current’s stronger here as it moves through this channel. That means the ice is thinner,” Fisher said. “More dangerous to cross.”
“And they know that?” I asked incredulously.
“Not in any intelligent way,” Ren supplied. “Vampires can’t pass over running water. They sense the current here and are afraid. But inevitably, one of them dares to step out onto the ice. Then the others follow.”
“When they do, we're here to make sure they don't make it across.” Fisher glowered at the pack of vampires, pushing and shoving each other on the opposite bank. His eyes were distant, his expression troubled. “He didn't come this time,” he muttered.
No need to ask who he was referring to. Ren and I both already knew he meant Malcolm. The silver-haired king of the vampires was nowhere to be seen. Tonight, he'd sent his servants out to do his dirty work and hadn't deigned to come out himself. I wasn't sorry for it. The sight of Malcolm, standing on the other side of the river, had struck a chord of fear in me that was still rattling my bones even now. He’d been no taller than your average Fae male. In truth, he'd been leaner than most of the warriors here in camp. But the sense of power he'd given off had been staggering; I'd felt it pushing and pulling at me, looking for my weak spots, as if it had wanted to force me to my knees in supplication. If I lived another thousand years and never saw that dead-faced male again, it'd still be too soon.
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
Like a two-part heartbeat, the sound of the hammers smashing down on the thick ice rang in my ears.
“Be ready,” Fisher said. His smoke rushed from his hands, forming a dark pool at his feet. It crept to the edge of the river but hovered there, going no further.
Shouts went up to the east—a furious roar of war cries. I scanned the writhing mass of bodies on both sides of the Darn, terror and relief holding hands in my chest when I saw the first wave of vampires racing out onto the ice there, but that the huge icebreakers had succeeded in shattering the surface of the frozen river as well.
“They're through,” Ren observed. “It's over now. A few more solid hits—”
As if the crowd of vampires closest to us knew that this was their last chance, a ragged old man with half his jaw hanging loose stepped boldly out onto the ice. His shirt was in tatters, clinging to his emaciated frame. His pants were frayed and filthy, hanging from his protruding hips. Side to side, his jaw worked, his lips cracked wide open and leaking black ichor.
Across the river he shuffled on rotting feet. A hundred feet away, back toward camp, the Darn splintered apart, ice groaning as it gave way to hammer and axe. Vampires plunged through the widening fissures, sinking into the rushing waters below.
The dead didn't swim. Nor did they float. A few of the blood-mad feeders grasped hold of chunks of ice, using them to buoy themselves above the surface of the water, but it was no good. The most determined among them held on for maybe ten seconds before their lifeless hands lost traction, and they sank below the choppy surface of the water.
The ancient old man crossing toward us must have been hollow-boned like a bird. The ice held under his feet as he grew closer, which gave his companions courage. A woman camenext. Her face was a ruin, her eyes missing, cheeks clawed to shreds. The wounds looked fresh, still pink in places. A day or two ago, she'd been alive. She was wearing an apron, which was a strained brown with old blood down the front. It looked like the aprons the cooks wore back at the Winter Palace. Had she worked at some fine estate somewhere? Had she stepped out for a moment to escape the heat of the kitchen, to catch a glimpse of a star or two in the night sky? Had some awful nightmare leaped out of the shadows and torn her face to shreds as it had fed?
A boy, next, naked and scrawny.
A woman with blackened hands and corkscrew dark curls, dragging a lifeless doll along behind her as she came. My stomach pitched when I realized it wasn't a doll. That it was a baby, punctured with hundreds of teeth marks like it was a pin cushion.
“Gods and Sinners,” I whispered. “Whatisthis?”
“Walking hell,” Renfis answered grimly. “It just keeps coming.”
Soon, there were at least twenty vampires on the ice. The others held their positions on the bank, refusing to come forward, either too overwhelmed by the sense of the water rushing close by or held back by some other voiceless command. But the twenty on the ice were plenty to be worrying about.
“They're almost halfway,” Ren muttered.
“The moment they cross, I'll have their fucking heads,” Fisher growled.
The rain came down harder, lashing the tents and putting out the unattended fires back in the camp. It struck our skin, soaking our clothes to our bodies and plastering our hair to our scalps. I watched the vampires' slow but determined approach and had to ask, “Why wait? Why not do it now?”
“We're bound by the rules of war,” Fisher said. “We can’t use magic to attack or affect an enemy until that enemy hasbreached our border. And anyway, our magic doesn't work on Sanasrothian soil. Fae magic needs light and life to survive. And there's nothing on their side of the river but death, darkness, and decay. Our lands are divided directly down the centerline of the Darn. But the second these fuckers cross over...”
It happened right as he said it. The old man with the shattered jaw stumbled beyond the midway point. Ren and Fisher acted in unison, drawing their power to them. The air crackled with energy. My teeth buzzed with it. Both warriors moved with lethal precision. Ren drew his hand back and launched a ball of blue-white light into the steel-grey sky. At the same time, a forceful ink-black wind surged from Fisher's outstretched hands. The wind struck the male vampire in the chest, howling around him and burning through the remnants of his clothes, through his sloughing skin, through the bare yellowed bones of his ribcage. The vampire snapped, infuriated by the assault, but he kept coming.
One more step.
