Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,20
Dyfan’s chagrin, I never learned the Shiv tongue. Too much studying, too much confusion. Kyn’s tone is placating, peacemaking. Almost pleading.
I understand, then, something about Kyn. The pitch of his voice, the open posture of his hands. He could have blown this Shiv man away with one pull of the trigger, but he didn’t. He knows Mars will kill these people with little thought if they attempt to block our passage. And despite the risk to himself, he’s doing what he can to prevent that.
Kyn’s desperation crawls up my own back, circles my chest, constricts.
I find myself begging the wretched Kerce smuggler to breathe, to drop his hands. The Shiv here in the pass are not the friendly, laughing comrades he’s found in Dris Mora. They are devout about the Desolation and they would rather die than let anyone desecrate it.
The feet overhead shift, metal creaking under the weight of them, and despite my own reservations, I tighten my grip on the rifle, watching the ceiling bow and curve.
The Shiv man is speaking. His voice is low, the words pulled from somewhere dark. His feet are heavier now. More determined as they move left and then right—I follow them with my gun.
And then the window next to my head shatters.
Splinters of glass fly and I throw myself to the left, smacking my head on the steering wheel. My ear buzzes but I whip around, the rifle pointed at a long pale hand clenched tight around a slick knife.
Not a knife. A stone, sharpened to a point—a triangle of rough serrated edges.
A shiv.
The fist pulls back, glass shards slicing as it slams the window once again.
He’s trying to get inside.
I clamber upright and aim Kyn’s rifle. But before I can pull the trigger, the hand is yanked backward, out through the broken window. The hand has a body now. A long, rangy body, wearing only a pair of trousers dripping with sleet. A fiery orange stone covers his bare chest and abdomen, clashing with the yellow beard hanging from his face, snow clinging to its bristles.
Mars has control of him now and the Shiv is not at all pleased. He’s hovering over the hood of the rig, snow and ice whipping around him. I watch as slivers cut into his face and arms. They chip away at the stone on his chest.
Mars tilts his hands, pushing the Shiv higher into the sky. I lean forward against the windshield, trying to see. With a twist of Mars’s wrists, the man starts to spin. He’s fighting hard to hang on to the knife in his hands, his face strained with the effort of it. Just when I think he’ll keep his hold, he pulls his hand away like the weapon’s stung him. He’s a good ten feet above the hood of the rig and the blade is falling hard and fast. Too fast.
I throw myself back into the seat as the weapon crashes into the glass, sending spider cracks across the windshield. I catch only a glimpse of the makeshift knife before it slides to the ground, frozen solid in a block of ice.
Mingled relief and horror race through my veins. Through the shattered glass, I see Mars drop his hands, satisfaction somewhere amongst the rage. And then the Shiv is falling.
“The window!” I yell. “The window!”
But it’s no use. The Shiv tumbles from the sky, his knees crunching into the hood, his face smacking the splintered glass with a thud that has his arms flopping forward and the air audibly squeezed from his lungs. He’s hurting, clearly, but he catches himself before he can slip to the ground.
In one swift move, his feet are underneath him again, and in two leaps he’s back on top of the hood, warm handprints fogging the broken windshield. His blue eyes narrow at me and he punches at the glass separating us. I whip the rifle around, but he’s done nothing more than bloody his hand.
Mars flings his right arm wide and the Shiv skids across the hood, flying into the air again. This time, he collides with the mountainside and crumples to the snow.
For a moment, all is still.
I watch each of the crew in turn. They scan the cliffs above us, Kyn with Drypp’s gun locked and loaded, Hyla with both her handguns raised, and Mars—looking far more dangerous than either of his comrades—his feet spread wide, armed with only the disgust painted on his face.