Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,73
Budweiser horse, plus an extra few hundred pounds of armored chitin that looked black but shone deep purple wherever light reflected from it. Its smooth head and the blank spots where eye sockets should have been were eerie, and when it champed its jaws, it showed hard, serrated ridges of bone in a jaw that could open wider than it ought. Its ears swiveled about alertly, moving too smoothly, like exceedingly precise automation, and a flicker of insight made me realize why the Winter Sidhe respected their unicorns: They had no eyes to be deceived by glamour or beauty. It didn’t have a horn. It had horns. Curling ram’s horns as big across as a stop sign armored to either side of its skull, and the horn that arched from its forehead was more a spiked saber than a spiraling lance.
Mab’s steed pounded a foot down against the concrete impatiently, and the energy that rippled out from that impact lifted a visible, expanding ring of dust from the ground and stirred the haze in the air. Mab laid a hand upon its neck, a soothing motion, and the unicorn stilled—but it didn’t take a wizard to detect the rage and hatred seething off of the creature.
It wanted to fight. It wanted to kill.
I knew how it felt.
Ah, that was it, then. The horn. What had that Tim Curry character called it, an antenna pointing to heaven? Maybe he’d been half-right. After I focused my attention on the power surrounding the creature, I could feel Mab’s subtle influence, the spirit of Winter in the air, pouring off the unicorn’s horn, the energy buzzing like high-tension lines carrying current. The being was serving as a living focus for Mab’s power, the way I’d use a staff or blasting rod—or the knife at my hip, the one I had carefully not touched, barely even with my thoughts, since coming ashore.
That artifact, taken from Hades’ vault, continued to vibrate with a power all its own that remained unabated and uninfluenced by the terrible forces in the air around the city.
I kept on not touching it—and, after a moment of mental effort, not even thinking about it.
I touched a hand to Murphy’s shoulder, and she brought the bike rumbling to a halt. I swung off and crossed fifty or sixty feet of concrete. A block of the Sidhe, each warrior armored in that faemetal they preferred to steel, shining in variegated shades of glacial green, winter blue, and deep, dark purples, whirled to face me as a single being, their boots stomping hard on the concrete as shields were raised and weapons came up.
I didn’t so much as break stride. Lions do not lower their heads for jackals. Even jackals know they can kill what fears them.
The Winter Sidhe respected those who understood the law of the jungle, and I had demonstrated to them from the first that I wasn’t putting up with any of their crap. They would test me—predators always test potential prey for weakness—but as long as I made them think it would be more trouble than amusement to push me, they would press no further.
The warrior Sidhe, male and female alike, each deadly skilled and experienced in the art and practice of war, yielded before me, melting as smoothly from my path as if they had never been there.
For today.
They would look for weakness again tomorrow. Assuming any of us survived to see it.
As I approached, I saw Mab staring hard at me, and then past me, at the uncertain form of the people who had followed my banner. Her eyes narrowed and then bored into mine, even as I walked the last few yards to her. For some reason, I felt . . . utterly naked, as if my clothing had vanished and a cold chill had swirled into damned uncomfortable places.
Then her expression changed. For a flickering portion of an instant, I thought I saw . . . something, in her eyes, some vague shadow of pain. Of . . . sympathy?
Then Mab was Mab again.
“My Knight,” she murmured. “Half a dozen cohorts have come to your banner.”
Eleven hundred and eighty-seven, I thought. I blinked. Because that’s how many people had chosen to follow me. I didn’t know how I knew that. It just . . . flew into my head. This had to be another instance of intellectus, a form of intelligence that bypassed standard human processes of rationality, just as I experienced on the island.