Cold Days (The Dresden Files #14) - Jim Butcher Page 0,195

back then, Fix had ached to be able to save her, to have the power to stand up to the Winter Knight.

And now he did.

There comes a time when no amount of talk can change the course of events—when people are committed, when their actions are dictated by the necessity of the situation their choices have created. Fix had put his faith in Lily, and would fight to the death to defend her. Nothing I had to say would change that. I could see that in his face.

“Go back,” he said.

“Can’t. Stand aside?”

“Can’t.”

“So it’s like that?” I said.

Fix exhaled. Then he nodded. “Yeah.”

And for the first time in a decade the Winter Knight and Summer Knight went to war.

Fix hurled a bolt of pure Summer fire that scorched the ground beneath it as it flew at me.

I didn’t have time to think, but some part of me knew this game. Dodging the bolt wouldn’t be enough—the bloom of heated air coming off that fire would burn me if it even came close. That was why Fix would have the advantage in this match if he kept the distance open and just threw bolt after bolt. So I called upon Winter to chill the air around me as I ducked to one side. Fire and cold met, clashed, and filled the air with mist—mist that would give me the chance to close to grips with my foe.

Part of me, the part of me that I was sure was me, viewed these tactics with alarm. I was freaking naked and unarmed. Fix had the mantle of the Summer Knight, and it made him just as strong and fast and tough as I was. He was armored and toted a freaking sword, and he’d had ten years of training with the Summer Court to learn how to fight and use the mantle. Plus, he presumably hadn’t spent all day pushing his abilities to the limit.

But the Winter mantle didn’t care about that. It simply saw its enemy and wanted to destroy it. The best way to do that was to get in close and rip out Fix’s throat.

Except that wasn’t how the last Winter Knight had killed the last Summer Knight. Lloyd Slate had iced the stairs underneath the other guy’s feet and pushed him down. And Slate had been young and in good shape, whereas the other Summer Knight had been an old man. So I thought it would be smart to assume that the instinctual knowledge of the Winter mantle, while it could be handy, was basically that of a starving predator, a wolf in winter—it wanted blood, lots of it, now.

And if I played it like that, Fix was going to leave my guts on the ground.

Instead of charging ahead, I veered to one side for several steps and then froze. An instant later, another bolt of fire lit up the mist, right through where I would have been if I’d followed the mantle’s instinct.

Of course—it had to be that way. Winter’s Knight was the mountain lion, the wolf. Summer’s was the stag, the bison. Winter was oriented to stalking, hunting, and killing prey. Summer to avoiding a confrontation until an advantage could be had, then savagely pressing that advantage for all it was worth. Fix would have a wealth of instinctive knowledge to draw on if I went after him Winter’s way, and would be at his most dangerous the same way as, for example, a student of pure aikido. He would use the strength of an attack to assist his own defense, turning it back on the attacker. But if I didn’t give him that kind of aggressive assault, I would rob him of his instinctive advantage.

Screw being the Winter Knight. Before everything else, I was a wizard.

So I flicked my wrist, whispered, “Obscurata,” and vanished behind a veil.

My veils aren’t much good compared to the grasshopper’s, or almost anyone else’s, really, but when you’re standing in a giant fog bank they don’t need to be very good to make you effectively invisible—and I know how to move very quietly. I wouldn’t have trusted them against one of the Sidhe, but Fix wasn’t one. He was a changeling, with one mortal parent and one fae one, but except for the Summer mantle, he was as human as the next guy.

I prowled ahead, Listening, sharpening the acuity of my ears to a far greater level than that of which they were normally capable, and heard Fix’s smooth breathing before