He stared at me for a blank second of incomprehension. “What?”
I showed my teeth in a wolfish smile. “You underestimate people.”
While I’d drawn the Scarecrow’s attention and eye, Charity had slipped around behind it, silent as a puff of smoke. As I spoke, she lifted her sword and swept it down at the appendage holding her daughter. The steel blade hissed and flashed and seared its way through the limb holding Molly.
The Scarecrow reared its head back in a sudden howl of rage. Molly’s body bucked in panic as the severed limbs contracted on her throat. I lifted my staff and snarled, “Forzare!” Unseen force lashed out, caught up Molly as gently as I could manage it, and flipped her tail over teakettle away from the creature. No sooner had I moved her than its stumpy arm swung down to smash into the ground where the girl had been sitting.
The Scarecrow turned to grab at Molly, but Charity stepped into its path, cold steel gleaming, her eyes harder and colder than the black ice of Arctis Tor. She faced the thing squarely and snarled, “You will never touch my daughter again.”
The creature roared in fury and rushed Charity. I whipped up my blasting rod and snarled, “Fuego!” A lance of flame as thick as my wrist lashed out from the tip of the rod—and died two feet away from it, the burning energy of the magical strike swallowed by an unfathomable ocean of cold, cold power. I had hoped that I could get in a shot while the Scarecrow was distracted, but I had already decided on what to try next if I couldn’t.
I stuck the blasting rod through my belt, whipped my staff up to point the tip at the ground beneath the Scarecrow’s feet, and shouted, “Forzare!”
Invisible force lashed out and struck the black ice under the Scarecrow like a mortar round. It threw the creature ten feet into the air, spinning end over end. Deadly chips of black ice flew. As the spell’s energy roared out of me, I staggered and almost lost my balance. My vision tunneled for a second or two out of pure exhaustion. I’d been pushing too hard, for too long, with no rest. The magic I’d been using had drained my reserves entirely. The human body has limits that cannot be circumvented, and I had reached mine.
Charity rushed forward before the Scarecrow could rise. Her sword hacked down at it in elemental brutality, and the Scarecrow’s blood and woodlike flesh sizzled on her blade. But she didn’t kill it.
The Scarecrow regained its feet and lashed an arm at Charity. She swung her sword to meet it. Cold iron bit into faerie flesh, drawing forth another explosion of brilliant, liquid flame. The creature screamed, a sound louder than any living thing I’d ever heard, and its backswing slammed into Charity’s limp right arm. The impact tore a grunt of pain from her and flung her several feet through the air, but the Scarecrow paid for it. Coming into contact with Charity’s mail burned it again, and its furious howls redoubled.
It lifted a foot to stomp down on the helplessly writhing Molly, to flatten her like an aluminum can.
It was the kind of thing that draws suicidal levels of chivalry from me. I ran for the Scarecrow, ditching my blasting rod on the way. I took my staff in both hands, slammed it down like a pole-vaulter, and launched myself into the air, both feet aimed at the Scarecrow’s back. I hit the thing with considerable force, but I’d been too tired to manage it as precisely as I wished. The blow only staggered the creature, and I bounced off it and flopped onto the icy surface of the parapet.
I had bought time enough, though, for Charity to regain her feet and charge forward with her blade, diverting the Scarecrow’s attention from her daughter.
Before I could regain my feet, the Scarecrow snapped a foot at me in a clumsy, unbalanced kick. It landed with only a fraction of the force it might have had. Even so, that was enough to send me sprawling ten feet away and maybe crack one of my ribs. Pain washed through me and I suddenly couldn’t get my lungs to take in enough air.
The Scarecrow stretched out an arm toward Charity, and ropy-looking vines shot from the ends of his arms, flickered across the ten feet between them like lightning, and wrapped her sword