Dimly, I heard other horses screaming, tripping not only on my wall but on one another now, but I had no idea how well the spell had worked on the rest of the Sidhe warriors. I was too busy ducking Talos's first swing and backing out of range of the next.
Meryl stepped between us and caught Talos's sword in the X formed by her axe and machete. She strained against Summer's Lord Marshal, leaning her whole body into the effort, muscles quivering. I'd felt exactly how strong the changeling girl was, but Talos simply pressed against that strength, his face composed, slowly overcoming her.
"Why do you do this, changeling child?" Talos called. "You who have struggled against Winter so long. It is useless. Stand aside. I wish no harm to thee."
"Like you wish no harm to Lily?" Meryl shouted. "How can you do that to her?"
"It does not please me, child, but it is not for me to decide," Talos answered. "She is my Queen."
"She's not mine," Meryl snarled, and drove her forehead forward, into Talos's nose. She struck him hard enough that I heard the impact, and it drove the faerie lord back several staggered paces.
She didn't see Slate come up from the ground a few feet away and make a quick, squatting lunge at her flank.
"Meryl!" I shouted into the tumult. "Look out!"
She didn't hear me. The Winter Knight's sword bit into her just below her lowest rib, and she took more than a foot of frost-covered steel, thrusting up and back. Slate's sword tore through her and came out through her jacket and the flatware coating it, emerging like some bloody blade of grass. She faltered, her mouth opening in a gasp. Both axe and machete fell from her hands.
"Meryl!" Fix screamed nearby.
Slate laughed and said something I couldn't hear. Then he twisted the blade with a wrenching pop and whipped it back out. Meryl stared at him and reached out a hand. Slate slapped it contemptuously aside and turned his back on her. She fell limply down.
I felt the rage rising and climbed back to my feet, gripping my staff in both hands. Slate reached down and dragged Talos up from the ground with one hand.
"Slate!" I shouted. "Slate, you murdering bastard!"
The Winter Knight's head whipped around toward me. His sword came up to guard. Talos's eyes widened, and his fingers made a series of swift warding gestures.
I gathered my rage together and reached down into the ground beneath me, found the fury of the storm within it that matched my own. I thrust the end of my staff down into the misty cloud-ground as if I'd been driving a hole through a frozen lake, then extended my right hand toward the Winter Knight. "Ventas!" I shouted. "Ventas fulmino!"
The fury of the storm beneath us reared up through the wood of my staff, electricity rising in a buzzing roar of light and energy coming up from the ground and spiraling around the staff and across my body. It whirled down my extended right arm, a serpent of blue-white lightning, hesitated for a second, and then lashed across the space between me and the tip of Lloyd Slate's sword, fastening onto the blade, and bathing Slate in a writhing coruscation of azure sparks.
Slate's body jerked, his back arching violently. Thunder tore the air apart as the bolt of lightning struck home, throwing Slate into the air and hurling him violently to the ground. The shock wave of the thunder knocked me down, together with everyone else in the immediate area.
Everyone except Talos.
The Lord Marshal of Summer braced himself against the concussion, lifting one hand before his eyes as if it had been a stiff breeze. Then, in the deafening silence that came after, he lifted his sword and came straight toward me.
I reached for my blasting rod, on the ground not far away, lifted it, and threw a quick lash of fire at Talos. The Sidhe lord didn't even bother to gesture it aside. It splashed against him and away, and with a sweep of his sword he sent my blasting rod spinning from my grasp. I lifted my staff as a feeble shield with my left hand, and he struck that away as well.
Some of my hearing returned, enough for me to hear him say, "And so it ends."
"You're damned right," I muttered. "Look down."
He did.
I'd drawn my.357 in my right hand while he'd knocked the staff out of my left. I braced my right elbow against the ground and pulled the trigger.
A second roar of thunder, sharper than the first, blossomed out from the end of the gun. I don't think the bullet penetrated the dark faerie mail, because it didn't tear through Talos like it should have. It hit him like a sledgehammer instead, driving him back and toppling him to the ground. He lay there for a moment, stunned.
It was cheap, but I was in a freaking war and I was more than a little angry. I kicked him in the face with the heel of my boot, and then I leaned down and clubbed him with the heavy barrel of the.357 until his stunned attempts to defend himself ceased and he lay still, the skin of his face burned and blistered where the steel of the gun's barrel stuck him.
I looked up in time to see Lloyd Slate, his right arm dangling uselessly, swing the broken haft of a spear at my head. There was a flash of light and pain, and I fell back on the ground, too stunned to know how badly I'd been hit. I tried to bring the gun to bear again, but Slate took it from my hand, spun it around a finger, and lowered the barrel toward my head, already thumbing the hammer back. I saw the gun coming down and saw as well that Slate wasn't going to pause for dramatic dialogue. The second I saw the dark circle of the barrel, I threw myself to one side, lifting my arms. The gun roared, and I waited for a light at the end of what I was pretty sure would be a downward sloping tunnel.
Slate missed. A ferocious, high-pitched shriek of fury made him whip his head to one side as a new attacker entered the fray.
Fix brought his monkey wrench down in a two-handed swing that ended at Lloyd Slate's wrist. There was a crunch of impact, of the delicate bones there snapping, and my gun went flying into the water. Slate let out a snarl and swung his broken arm at Fix, but the little guy was quick. He met the blow with the monkey wrench held in both hands, and it was Slate who screamed and reeled from the blow.
"You hurt her!" Fix screamed. His next swing hit Slate in the side of his left kneecap, and dropped the Winter Knight to the ground. "You hurt Meryl!"
Slate tried to roll away, but Fix rained two-handed blows of the monkey wrench down on his back. Evidently, whatever power it was that let Slate shrug off a bolt of lightning had been expended, or else it couldn't stand up to the cold steel of Fix's weapon. The little changeling pounded on Slate's back, screaming at him, until one of the blows landed on the back of his neck. The Winter Knight went limp and lay utterly still.