and I could bear her to the ground with—well, not with ease, but without getting too badly shredded.
“Submit,” I told her. And she did. Okay, that was getting spooky. I turned back to the melee, where Tara and the dowager were still two-on-two with the remaining wolves. I pounced on one and managed to hold her back for long enough that the two of them were able to bring down the other. With all four of the rescuees subdued, I made the titanic error of starting to feel good about our chances.
Which was when the wind started to howl, the snow started to come down in buckets, and the fucking ice statues started moving.
28
Running & Standing
It was me, Tara, the dowager and four half-incapacitated, semi-faery-controlled werewolves against what I suspected was about a hundred and thirty animated ice sculptures which I also suspected were real people who’d had the wrong side of a faery bargain.
Which, incidentally, was basically why I hated faeries. Vampires were evil, but they had a pretty simple MO—they vaahnt to suuuck your blaaahd and they’ll do whatever it takes to get to where they can do it. Even demons, which are probably number two on my list of preternatural entities the cosmos could really do without no offence, Ash, had a fundamental honesty about them that you had to respect. Their deal was clear: you get what you want now, I get to ruin your life and torture you forever. At least they didn’t pretend to be the good guy. But the fae were all ooh we’re so authentic and primeval, don’t you feel like we represent a primordial innocence that’s been stripped away by a millennia of so-called progress, come dance with us and stick it to The Man.
Except, actually, they were pricks. The sorts of pricks who’d not only turn you into a statue of living ice for eternity if you pissed them off, but also press-gang you into fighting intruders.
At least the ice statues were fragile, which made them easy enough to deal with. Though when a weeping man lunged for me with hands made of hoarfrost and the tears still visibly sculpted onto his frozen face, and I reacted by slamming what was effectively an ice-pick into his head and shattering it like emergency glass, I felt fucking terrible about myself. Unfortunately, that was exactly the kind of thinking that was going to get me killed because it was definitely just me, Tara, and the dowager running defence here. Whatever spooky faery shit I’d done to the two werewolves, and whatever presumably equivalent pack-alpha shit Tara and the dowager had done to the others, they seemed to have enough control of themselves that they were broadly in line with being rescued, but not so much that they were any use at all in a fight.
We pushed through the mob of ice-people until we hit the treeline, and then we ran like fuck. The snow became hail and then a freezing rain that fell as water but turned at once to ice when it hit the ground or the trees or your body.
Coming at last to the edge of the lake we half, ran half slipped, half—and yes I know that’s three halves but cut me some slack here—skated across the surface looking for the way out. Except the trouble with ice is it all looks the same even when it isn’t snowing. And cracks in it freeze over even when there isn’t a malicious faery lord puppeteering the whole process like an evil Jim Henson.
The six wolves scrabbled at the ice-sheet with their claws, but it didn’t seem to be making a dent. What we really needed was a hairdryer, but wouldn’t you know it I didn’t think to bring mine with me. Or ever own one, come to think of it. I slammed the iron dagger into the surface of the lake, hoping largely in vain that since it was technically faery ice it would have faery weaknesses. And it—well—it might have helped a bit? There were a couple of chips in it now at least, but the situation was looking perilously close to fucking hopeless.
I was beginning to have the frightening suspicion that this was a job for my mother.
We were further from the heart of the Cold and Dark now, which meant there was more chance of my being able to reach the Deepwild. I focused on the wolf’s blood in my mouth, on the parts of this place