Page 146 of Quicksilver
Two.
The wind tore away what was left of his jaw...
...and then Ren's brilliant orb came crashing down onto the river. It exploded into a sphere of light and heat that smashed the fragile ice from one bank to the other. The other vampires, who had still been standing on the Sanasroth side of the river, screeched and howled as they plummeted into the fast-moving depths below and disappeared from sight.
All up and down the river, the ice was fractured, the way impassible. In other words, all was safe.
A cheer went up amongst the Yvelian Fae, bawdy and full of contempt. How many times had they stood on this bank and sent Malcolm's beasts back to Ammontraíeth with their rotting tails tucked between their legs?
Innìr was an ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail. Its purpose would never be fulfilled. There would always be another night, and the ice would always freeze, and there would always need to be a battalion of warriors here to keep the horde at bay and be ready should they one day succeed in making the crossing. The thought of it was exhausting. Some of these warriors had been here for decades, performing the same task every god's cursed night. So long that they’dnamedthe place. They'd built homes here. Had families, for fuck's sake. Because, without loved ones close by and some sense of imagined normalcy, what kind of life was this? With no assistance from Belikon—
“The shore! Look to the shore!” The cry was full of terror. It stopped my thoughts dead in their tracks. Kingfisher whirled around, facing the camp, his face pale as the snow, the quicksilver in his eye forming shifting patterns as he picked apart the edge of the river, searching for the cause of the alarm.
He found it before me. Renfis did, too. They both stiffened, a gasp of dismay slipping past Ren's lips. “What? It...itcan'tbe. That's not...possible.”
But I could see it now. Amongst the icy rocks and the churned-up mud, there was something crawling out of the river. And it had teeth as sharp as razor blades.
“Breach! Breach! Breach!”The warning spread like wildfire.
“Go. I'll stay with her,” Ren told Fisher.
“This is where you keep your promise and stay right here, Osha,” Fisher said. In the blink of an eye, he had become something wild. His skin cast off an eerie pale glow, his dark waves blowing on an invisible wind. He had never seemed very human to me, but now, balancing on the precipice of danger, he was unspeakably Fae.
“I'll stay. I promise.” A crashing roll of thunder drowned out my words, but Fisher nodded, his eyes lingering on mine for half a second, and then he was gone.
“There are more! More crossing!” a female warrior yelled.
Sure enough, the vampires who had remained on the bank were now slipping down the dirty snow and falling into the river. I watched as they were swept away on the current in twos and threes, blindly clawing at each other, trying to reach the other side. But there were those that vanished below the surface of the water and did not re-emerge. I watched, horrified, as more and more of the vampires started to crawl out of the water.
“Ready yourself,” Ren said tightly. “Let's greet the fuckers with steel.”
And us...an excited voice whispered.Us, too! And us!
Solace. The blade with the crescent moon pommel was a god sword, after all. Of course it held quicksilver. And it was awake. Alive. Listening. Talking. Talking tome.
No time to marvel at that. There were three vampires scrambling out of the water, and they hadn’t been slowed down by their ice-cold swim. The first shook itself like a dog, bared its teeth, sighted us, andmoved. With unnatural, jerky movements, the naked young boy galloped up the bank on all fours, his jagged claws tearing holes into the snow. Ren met his attack with a flash of his sword, barely even moving as he whipped his blade around and parted the creature's head from its shoulders.
The old man came next, though not as quickly. He was in rough shape after Fisher's magic, and barely managed to break into a run as he came for us. Ren spun, slicing upward, and severed the clawed hand the old man tried to strike him with. While he was unbalanced, Ren brought his blade singing through the air and took his head, too.
More bodies rose from the Darn. Far more than the twenty that had gone in when the ice broke. It made no sense. Ren cutthem down as quickly as they emerged from the water, but soon there were too many for him to tackle alone. He sent orbs up into the air, which came down with frightening force, detonating the second they made contact with flesh. The feeders erupted into pale blue flames, stumbling into one another, screaming, but still they came.
“Saeris! Find Lorreth! Head back up to the forge!” Renfis bellowed.
“No!”I drew Solace, and a ripple of heat charged up my arm. The sensation took me by surprise. Two seconds later, I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ren before sixty snarling vampires.
Ren looked at me like I was madness personified. “Youpromisedhim!” he shouted.
Nodding, I raised the sword. “I promised I'd stay here. If I run off into the dark by myself, I'll definitely die. He knew I'd have better odds if I was with you.”
There was nothing he could do. Gritting his teeth, Ren twisted, jamming his sword up through the skull of a vampire so disfigured that I couldn't even tell if it had been male or female. “Stubborn girl,” he growled. “Don't you dare die on my watch, Saeris Fane! Fisher will never forgive me if his sole reason for living is torn to pieces on her first fucking battlefield.”
Wait a minute. What did—ohfffUCK!I brought Solace up just in time. The vampire who had been about to lunge for my throat caught the weapon's edge right in the mouth. I pushed, following through on the swing, and took the top of the cursed thing's head off.
It dropped to the floor, but it wasn't done with me. A bunch of mangled meat and a fragment of its lower jaw was all that was left of its head, but that was apparently enough. It grabbed at my legs, claws scraping at my leathers, its bare feet kicking at the snow. Thick as tar, black ichor spurted all over my boots.
“All of it! You need to get all of the head!” Ren yelled.
All of it. Okay. I could do that. I took a deep breath and stilled my mind. My training took over. All of the endless hours locked away in the attic with my mother's rebel friends, learning how to put something sharp to good use. How to move my body. How to use my opponent's own momentum against them. How to strike and retreat, strike and retreat, strike and retreat. How to shut myself down and focus on the task at hand.
