boots skidding. Caught, planted solidly just like the lance’s tasseled end, and he recognized the motion, a pikeman’s defense against the greater weight of cavalry.
He had been a knight once, too, but the truth of life was you couldn’t count on having a horse when you fought. Or anything else. Except the weapon tattooed into your flesh, carried everywhere with you. You couldn’t lose a dwarven-inked weapon, no matter how hard you tried.
Even if you wanted to.
Crunch. The horse hit, turned to leprous greenish mist as the iron broke its smoky hold on this side of the Veil. The lance flashed all along its length, and Jeremiah was ready. Knees dropped, body twisting back and to the side as the iron head tangled in the net of glamour and vapor, striking the solid heart—the knot that kept the horse on the mortal side of the sideways realms. The lance-shaft rang, a high, hard sound as it extended and flicked, a lizard’s tongue, shearing through half-physical strings.
The horse went down in a thrashing pile of mist and crunching bone. Jeremiah stepped aside, flicking the lance; it popped and black blood flew steaming. He took two quick, almost-skipping steps back, which placed him deeper in the throat of the alley. For better or worse, he’d chosen his ground; if there were any flying units—harpies, or even blackbird moraghs—he would be bottled. On the other hand, he could defend here against both flying and foot, Seelie or Unwinter, for a long time. Should he care to do so.
The horseman rose from the mess, his helm smoking with fury now. Definitely a highblood wight. Jeremiah set himself, the lance’s endcap clicking as if on parade. The girl heaved out a small retching sound behind him.
About… now. He wasn’t disappointed. The sword rose up, a slender scimitar-shaped sidhe blade with the moon in its metal, and he had plenty of time to strike if he could just move quickly enough. Throwing himself sideways, against the brick wall, which cracked like a piece of wet laundry snapped by a pair of capable hands. Adrenaline ran down his nerves and muscles, golden wires pulling a puppet along.
The girl blurted a warning Jeremiah didn’t need. He’d already seen the battle in his head, options and choices narrowing to a single unavoidable conclusion.
That was the true gift of the lance, and its best-kept secret. Even the former Armormaster hadn’t mentioned its possibility to Jeremiah during the harsh training to bring metal and haft to heel. A weapon such as this did not merely help a man fight. It also showed, as far as it was able, the outcome of a battle.
Where you could see, you could change.
Brick dust shook from his jacket as he leaned into the motion, the lance splitting air and smacking aside the downsweep of the horseman’s blade. The horseman’s strike spent itself uselessly, grinding against the shaft, and the lancepoint punched through plate with an agonized scream, matched with a curlew cry of effort escaping Gallow’s lips. The shock grated home, and the blood-tinted satisfaction of performing the movement perfectly turned everything red for a moment before Jeremiah wrenched the blade free. He didn’t want to leave the iron in contact with sidhe flesh any longer than he had to.
Instead of merely going to his knees like any other defeated foe, the horseman screamed.
The deathcry pushed Jeremiah back, broken glass tinkling to the ground in sweet cascades through the retreating fog. Cracks and veins of black tore through the armor, as if the sidhe had been stabbed with a mercury blade instead of honest iron. The smell exploded—wet fur and a maggoty reek. Jeremiah skipped back nervously, suddenly aware of the twitching in his muscles. He hadn’t fought in a long time.
Not since the week before he’d let himself get truly involved with Daisy, instead of just occasionally passing the diner she worked at, seeing her coppergold head through the window, and feeling his heart wring itself dry.
That shouldn’t have killed him! We didn’t even exchange names! “Wait—” A hopeless word. There was probably no more useless word in any language. “Shit!” Just as useless, but far more gratifying.
The girl let out a sobbing breath. His stomach threatened to reject both mortal beer and peanuts, the smell was that bad.
Stranger and stranger.
He whirled, the lance coming up, and eyed her as the fog retreated in thick tendrils. The dogs slunk back, whining as the Veil claimed them again. He didn’t need to worry about them