Cold Days

who I am. Let’s see who you are.” I took the staff and smote its end down on the ground. “Who are you!” I demanded. “You play in my head, you play by my rules! Identify yourself!”

In answer, there was only a vast roaring sound, like an angry arctic wind gathering into a gale.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I muttered. “You started this, creep! You want to get up close and personal, let’s play! Who are you?”

A vast sound, like something you’d hear in the deep ocean, moaned through the sky.

“Thrice I command thee!” I shouted, focusing my will, sending it coursing into my voice, which boomed out over the landscape. “Thrice I bid thee! By my name I command thee: Tell me who you are!”

And then an enormous swirling form emerged from the clouds overhead—a face, but only in the broadest, roughest terms, like something a child would make from clay. Lightning burned far back in its eyes, and it spoke in the voice of gale winds.

I AM GATEBREAKER, HARBINGER!

I AM FEARGIVER, HOPESLAYER!

I AM HE-WHO-WALKS-BEFORE!

For a second, I just stood there, staring up at the sky, shocked.

Hell’s bells.

It worked.

The thing spoke, and as it did, I knew, I knew what it was, as if I’d been given a snapshot of its core identity, its quintessential self.

For one second, no more than that, I understood it, what it was doing, what it wanted, what it planned and . . .

And then that moment was past, the knowledge vanished the way it had come—except for one thing. Somehow, I’d held on to a few crumbling fragments of insight.

I knew the thing trying to tear my head apart was a Walker. I didn’t know much about them except that nobody else knew much about them either, and that they were extremely bad news.

And one of them had tried to kill me when I was sixteen years old. He-Who-Walks-Behind had nearly done it. Except . . . from where I stood now, I wasn’t sure he’d really been trying to kill me. He’d been shaping me. I don’t know for what, but he’d been trying to provoke me.

And this thing in my head, the thing I’d named Sharkface, was like him, a Walker, a peer. It was huge, powerful, and in a way utterly different from the kinds of power I had seen before. This thing wasn’t bigger than Mab. But it was horribly, unbearably deeper than her, like a photograph of a sculpture compared to the sculpture itself. It had power at its command that was beyond anything I had seen, beyond measure, beyond comprehension—just plain beyond.

This thing was power from the Outside, and I was a grain of sand to its oncoming tide.

But you know what?

That grain of sand might be the last remnant of what had once been a mountain, but that which it is, it is. The tide comes and the tide goes. Let it hammer the grain of sand as it may. Let lofty mountains fear the slow, constant assault of the waters. Let the valleys shudder at the pitiless advance of ice. Let continents drown beneath the dark and rising tide.

But that grain of sand?

It isn’t impressed.

Let the tide roll in. The sand will still be there after it rolls out again.

So I looked up at that face and I laughed. I laughed scorn and defiance at that vast, swirling power, and it didn’t just feel good. It felt right.

“Go ahead!” I shouted. “Go ahead and eat me! And then we’ll see if you’ve got the stomach to keep me down!” I lifted my staff and golden white fire began to pour from the carved runes as I gathered power into it. The air grew chill with Winter, and frost formed on the razor-edged blades in my armor. I ground my feet into place, setting them firmly, and the glow of soulfire began to emanate from the cracks in the earth around me. I bared my teeth at the hungry sky, flew the bird at it with my free hand, and screamed, “Bring it on!”

A furious voice filled the air, a sound that shook the earth and sky alike, that made the ground buckle and the swirling clouds recoil.

* * *

And then I was back on the Harley, clutching Karrin’s waist in one hand and clinging to the Winchester with the other. The motorcycle was still in motion, but it wasn’t accelerating. It felt like we were coasting.

Karrin let out a low, gurgling cry, and suddenly sagged forward, panting. I pulled her back against me, helping her to sit up, and after a few seconds she gave her head a few quick shakes and snarled, “I hate getting into a Vulcan mind meld.”

“It hit you, too?” I asked.

“It . . .” She cast a look over her shoulder, up at me, and shuddered. “Yeah.”

“You okay now?”

“I’m starting to get angry,” she said.

A hideously mirthful sound spread over the air—the sound of the Erlking’s laughter. His great steed swerved in close to the motorcycle, and he lifted his sword in a gesture of fierce defiance. Then his burning eyes turned to me and he spoke in a voice that was murderously merry. “Well-done, starborn!”

“Uh,” I said. “Thank you?”

The lord of the goblins laughed again. It was the kind of sound that would stick with you—and wake you up in the middle of the night, wondering whether perhaps poisonous snakes had surrounded your bed and were about to start slithering in.

I looked back. The Hunt had spread out into a ragged semblance of its former cohesion, but even as I watched, the riders and hounds poured on extra effort to gather together again. I looked around but saw no sign of Sharkface.

I did see something else—V-shaped ripples coming toward us through the water. A whole lot of them.

“Here they come!” I shouted to the Erlking. “Good hunting!”

“That much seems certain,” he called in that same cheerfully vicious voice, and wheeled his horse to the right. Half of the riders and hounds split off with him, while the other half continued streaming after me.

I pointed at our target as the Erlking headed toward his. “There!” I called. “Let’s do it!”

The Harleytiger let out another snarling roar, and Karrin raced toward the second barge. Hellish shrieks went up from both groups of the Hunt—and the oncoming things in the water smoothly split into two elements as they came forward. We raced the enemy toward the barges.

This time we didn’t have surprise on our side. It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two since the Hunt had announced its arrival, but I saw figures stirring on the deck of the barge ahead of us.

“Gun!” shouted Karrin. “Incoming!”

Crap.

Out over the water like this, I didn’t have access to anywhere near enough magic to provide a continuous shield—and I couldn’t try to slap down individual bullets, either. By the time I saw the gunfire, the round would already be going through us. Which meant that this was going to happen the vanilla way, the way soldiers worldwide have done it for a few centuries now. Advance, advance, advance, and hope that you didn’t get shot.

Then Karrin snatched the rifle out of my hand and screamed, “Take the bike!”

I fumbled for a moment, but found the handlebars, reaching around her to make it happen. I gunned the throttle as Karrin raised the Winchester to her shoulder, half rose, and squinted through the buckhorn sights.

Flashes came from the boat, and something that sounded like an angry hornet flicked past my ear. I saw bits of spray coming up from the water ahead of us as the shooters misjudged their range, and I kept on racing straight ahead.

When we got to within a hundred yards, Karrin started shooting.

The old rifle boomed, and sparks flew up from the barge’s hull. She worked the lever action without lowering it from her shoulder and fired again. One of the dark shapes on the deck vanished, and two more flinched away.