Wasteland King (23 page)

J
eremiah Gallow, film-eyed and spine-straight, clamped his knees tighter on the corpse-charger's sides. He lifted a gloved hand, his armor running with that peculiar swirling foxfire glow of dead bodies exhaling in a swamp, much as the marks on his chest and arms were writhing underneath. A cold clarity settled on his shoulders, and the Sluagh… stilled.

Every mist-described head turned unerringly in his direction, every shrouded ungainly beast-mount halted, a statue of terror in the middle of cringing, shivering Summer sidhe or grinning, victory-certain Unseelie.

Summer was routed. Jeremiah, the ice-burning dream of revenge swirling around him, found he could think again. Running with the Sluagh was just as exhausting as running
from
them.

Slowly, so slowly, he became aware of something
else
. A red flame, still and quiet, not far from him. No, not red. Gold. Or both, a sword of burning purity trembling at the edge of an abyss. The Sluagh hissed as one, jealous of its new master.

Had it always been so simple? You just made up your mind, and
did
. No second-guessing, no self-loathing, all that vanished in the ice. He had simply decided that running was no use, he'd been doing it all his life, and if it was going to work it would have by now.

It was, perhaps, the only way to master the unforgiven—and unforgiving—dead. No wonder Unwinter couldn't have told him. It was one of the stupid-simple things you had to learn on your own, usually when you'd tried every other avenue and come up blank.

He wanted to say her name, but if he did, they might descend upon her. So, instead, he filled his lungs, fighting the constriction of his ribs as the chill mailed fist of their expectation tightened around him.

You will not have Crenn, you will not have me, and you will not have Robin Ragged.

“You have hunted your fill,” he heard a distant, dreamy voice say. The edges of each syllable cut screaming mortal air, reverberated through the Veil, and he realized the words were his own.

I sound like him. Like Unwinter.

The Sluagh struggled against the pressure of his will, and it was hard to contain them. The final test, not just to master the Hunt and lead it but to send it away when he decided enough had been done. Gallow could let them run until they spent their fury, however long that took, traversing moonless nights with the cavalcade, more surely their slave with each death meted out.

Well, what's to stop me?

Daisy's pensive, worn, mortal face.
You ain't as bad as you think you are, Jer
. Except he was, and hating himself for it would serve nothing. There wasn't room in this fight for that luxury.

Robin's voice, a golden wall descending from nowhere, sweeping aside the Unseelie. His own words to Summer.
A Half girl truer than cold iron itself, who makes you look the faithless hag you are
.

Last of all, Alastair Crenn, slumped wheezing against a graveyard wall, prepared to die alone. Would Jeremiah be half as brave in his position?

Half of this, half of that. Time to see what I can make whole.

“You have hunted your fill,” he repeated, now conscious of making his tongue move, his lips, his lungs forcing air through his throat to give the words to resisting air.

The Sluagh roiled, restlessly, one or two slinking closer to his corpse-charger, stretching out their mutilated smoke-clad hands. Their aching roared through him, the sullen pointless rage at the indignity of everything, of life itself, and wasn't that the heart of the joke?

He could control them, because he had felt that rage. Was made of it, down to his very core.

His breath crested at the top of the inhale, every mist-shrouded spirit straining against his control, and he spoke the final word.

“
Begone!
” Jeremiah Gallow, once-Armormaster, now Lord of the Hunt, cried.

A
great silence hung over the smoking, misty battlefield. Crenn kept going in the direction he'd seen Robin take, nervously edging past motionless Sluagh and motionless sidhe, both side's troops caught suspended as if in crystal. Stabbing drow and leering trow, fleeing dryad and falling troll, their blades flashed in the stillness.

Everything had turned to very clear water, hard to force his way through, but something had ignited in him. It was very much like the kindling of his sidhe side, the first few breaths of a different air intoxicating and punishing at once.

There were other flickers of movement. A green flash, as Summer's Jewel threaded with more hair-fine cracks. A slinking shadow, dark-haired, with a strange reddish light filling the grooves in his armor, a hurtful glitter in his right fist and his hair full of fire.

It was Braghn Moran, his face a mask of effort, none of the smiling sidhe beauty left. He was aiming for the same thing Crenn was—a black velvet cape-coat, a ragged mass of slightly curling redgold atop it starred with flash-frozen mist-moisture, a faint hint of her cheekbone sweet enough to make a man's heart cry for mercy. She was turning her back on the shrieking scarecrow that had been Summer, and pixies hung around her, their blue globes clean and distinct. Pepperbuckle, caught in the act of glancing up at his mistress adoringly, looked sleepy, his blue eyes half-lidded.

Braghn Moran lifted the glittering knife, and Crenn strained afresh against invisible bonds.
No. NO!

The stasis broke. Time snapped like the gut-strings of a lyrebird hung to dry and fingered by a harsh hand, and—

Crunch
. He hit Braghn Moran hard, and the glitterblade went flying. The knight hissed, staggering, and Crenn's dual blades flashed, the left one laterally in the songstrike, meant to fold your opponent over like a just-finished minstrel bowing to his patron. His right blade halted, Crenn straining his entire body to the side, his much-abused mortal boots finally disintegrating under the strain and icy pavement burning his feet. That blade descended with as much muscle as he could put behind it at this angle, and he was vaguely aware of Pepperbuckle's coughing growl and Robin's short, surprised gasp.

The stroke was clean, and Braghn Moran's flaming, severed head landed with a heavy thud. Rot flashed through his slumping body, a high jet of unstained blue ichor curving in a strangely perfect arc before splatting.

Robin, paper white, whirled and dove for the painful-bright glitterblade. She almost reached it, but a great cold shadow fell over her, and Unwinter's boot descended just before her seeking fingers.

“
Robin!
” Crenn yelled again, and the thought that he was about to throw himself at Unwinter passed through him in a brief flash before burning into ash.

The lord of the Unseelie bent. One gauntleted fist scraped slightly as his fingers closed around the hilt, and the other reached down… and offered itself, spreading, to Robin Ragged.

“
My lady,
” he said, with cold solemnity, and Robin flinched. Crenn's feet, flayed by the frozen-sandpaper concrete, left bloody marks; he almost fell.

The Sluagh made a vast noise, a hot wind tonguing a wet cornfield. Rustling and rubbing, the sigh rose, and Crenn realized two things—Unwinter was drawing the Ragged to her feet, and the Sluagh were fading.

And another thing made three. Bloody prints steamed on the concrete, and he winced as lightfoot chantment bloomed instinctively underfoot. It wouldn't kill him, but the healing would be goddamn uncomfortable.

Unwinter paused, glancing over Robin's head at Alastair Crenn. The bloody sparks in the dark covering his face glinted, swelling with cruel amusement, and the darkness slid aside to reveal the haggard, weary visage of a sidhe lord. Fine black cracks spread up his left cheek, hard black pinprick-bumps at their intersections.

Plague.

Robin let out a sobbing noise. Pepperbuckle cowered behind her, and Crenn almost tripped over the hound as he reached them, his arm circling Robin's waist, dragging her back.

Unwinter smiled, more grim amusement stretching his thin mouth. “
Be still, Hunter of Marrowdowne. I mean the Ragged no harm
.”

“My Lord—” Robin's voice broke on something like a sob. The pixies buzzed angrily, one or two of the bravest darting for Crenn. She struggled in his grasp, but only briefly. “Unwinter…”

“
Peace, little bird
.
This death is not yours to mete.
”

Clanking, creaking, clattering, the sound of dropped weapons. Many of Summer's sidhe took this opportunity to flee; Unwinter's scurried in pursuit, silently or with bloodcurdling yells. The fullblood highborn of Summer, their fine golden armor spattered with all manner of ichor, blood, and foulness, mingled with the armed Unwinter knights who had ridden with their lord since the Sundering, his faithful few.

They made no move to aid their mistress, those day-armored lords. Those who had not heard Ilara Feathersalt had been told in murmurs of that lady's testimony, how Eaakaanthe of Summer had sent her lover through the Veil for white shadowberries, and how those berries, crushed, went into unsuspecting First Summer's cup, filled by her favorite handmaiden.

Summer's twist-writhing faded as his shadow fell over her. She was as withered as any Twisted jennygreen now, and the Jewel cracked further as she shook her raddled head, great strings of cloudy hair spread over mortal concrete. She drew in tortuous, echoing breaths.

Robin Ragged twisted in Crenn's arms. She looked up, and the flash of surprise crossing her face tore at him.

Who did she think was rescuing her? Gallow? Probably.

Light bootsteps, a distinctive gait. Jeremiah Gallow appeared, walking slowly, as if his joints pained him. His dark hair held a pale streak over his left ear now, where the first Sluagh to reach him had hit. A silver medallion glinted against his red leather armor, and he halted, gazing at Robin. His irises had lightened, no longer green but almost colorless, his pupils dark wells in the middle.

Even if he'd survived, the Hunt had marked him. That strange, light gaze rested on Crenn briefly, and comprehension filled Gallow's features for a moment.

Silent, Unwinter gazed down at his love, who had been so blithe and merry when the world was new and mortals only a bad future-dreaming. He sank down, one knee touching the concrete, and the Unseelie knights knelt with him. After a moment, the Summer knights did as well, paling as they realized what they were witnessing.

“
Eaakaanthe
,” he breathed, and for a moment an appleblossom breeze touched the battlefield, whisking past the dead or dying, ruffling a flash of mortal red tucked in a tiny declivity shielded by frost-blackened bushes. “
I loved you too well
.”

She reached up to him, and a faint ghost of her beauty returned, transparent. “My… love…” she whispered. “Mercy…
mercy…
” A kittenish expression on that ravaged, bruise-cracked face, and those who knew Summer's fickleness held their breath, wondering if it would stay Haarhnhe of Unwinter's hand.

He smiled, wearily. It was a gentle expression, for all his gaze boiled with scarlet. A single thread of crimson touched his plague-blackened cheek, welling from his eye.

She beckoned. “A… final… embrace?” A hungry glitter in her black, black eyes, and the Jewel made a high groaning noise, a pine in strong wind just before it shatters.

“
We already had one, Eaakaanthe.
”

And Unwinter's arm flashed as he drove
Glaoseacht
, the Fang of old, into Summer's chest. The Jewel shrilled, bursting free and rolling across the cold concrete, and Unwinter tipped his head back, his throat working.

Summer's black eyes closed. Dry dust crawled through her hair, cupped her scalp, raced up from her tender, bony feet, and the Fang, driven into the ground underneath, flashed once more.

Alastair Crenn forced his arms to loosen, and he let Robin Ragged go.