Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,84

a sheet of slippery ice. Not only that, but nervous systems are nervous systems. Signals that have to travel a maximum of six feet are going to be faster than ones that have to cover twenty.

I had to make that advantage count. If I could dance fast enough, maybe I could maneuver Svangar into tripping into a building or something, and run before he got loose.

With the reach that axe gave him, there was no way to get around him without coming into range—and I did not want to do that. One hit from that thing, and I’d look like a Rorschach test image.

So I ran right at him.

Svangar bellowed a war cry as the axe came down toward me.

I pointed my staff to one side, focused my will, and screamed, “Forzare!”

Even magic can’t escape a lot of fundamental physics. Project force at something and it pushes back with an equal and opposite reaction. I used a lot of force, slamming against a brick building to my right. The building slammed me back, and the impact sent me flying to one side—and out from under the axe.

The axe cleaved into the asphalt where I’d been a second before. I flew sideways and forward, dropping into a roll as I came down to the ground. The giant roared, his momentum taking him into his own axe. The handle jabbed him in the gut with a whoosh of expelled air that sound like a miniature gale.

I made my feet again and darted up the street a dozen paces, to force the Jotun to face me and turn his back on the escapees.

Svangar wasn’t a dummy, though. He knew he was slower.

So he twisted his blazing axe, melted a bunch of the street’s asphalt into a blob of burning tar that could have filled a small hot tub, and flung it at me even before he’d begun to turn.

I dodged that one easily enough—but Svangar had never intended to turn me into a living, screaming tar baby. As the Jotun turned, he simply seized a disabled car in one hand and flung it at me sidearm at the speed of a major-league fastball.

I brought my shield up in time, angling it to my left as I darted right. The car hit the shield, which flared into nearly coherent green-gold light. Broken glass and fiberglass and metal flew out from the impact. The smashed car spun wildly away, but even so, Isaac Newton had his two bits. I was knocked to my right, staggered, and had to put a hand on the street to keep from falling.

I recovered my balance, drew my blasting rod from my coat, slammed my will through it, and shouted, “Fuego!”

The raw energy of the terrified city supercharged my spell. The beam of molten-gold energy that lashed out from its tip, as bright as any arc welder’s fire, forced me to close my eyes and turn away from its intensity in the smoldering ember light of the burning city, and left a blazon of blue-purple light across the insides of my eyelids.

I blinked them open again frantically to find the Jotun eyeing me, with a large section of the mail over his heart glowing deep orange.

“A little flame like that?” rumbled the Jotun. “Against a son of Muspelheim?”

Dammit. Fire was my go-to exactly because it usually did the trick.

The Jotun snorted contemptuously. Then he swung his axe broadside at a building, which put up about as much resistance as dandelions do to machetes, and sent a cloud of broken glass and concrete and steel at me.

I lifted my arm to cover my face and brought up my shield. Broken glass rattled against the spell-armored sleeve of my duster. One piece got by and my ear suddenly went hot and tingly. The rest slammed into my shield and drove me back until I hit the hood of a parked car, taking my legs out from under me and sending me crashing to my back on the sidewalk.

My heart slammed with terror.

This wasn’t a fight; it was an earthquake—and I was running around in the middle of it like a damned fool.

Svangar took a couple of huge strides and the axe came down.

I braced the end of my staff against the hollow of my shoulder, the way I would have a rifle, and screamed, “Forzare!”

The air was too thick with energy that night. I’d given the spell a lot more than I meant to. The staff kicked back against me like a