Don’t get too worked up about the phrase cold iron. Sometimes people insist that it means cold-forged iron. It doesn’t. The phrase is poetic metaphor, not instructions for building a chemical model. Sufficient iron content is what does the trick.

If I was fighting the Sidhe, I’d want dump trucks of the stuff. And also the dump trucks. Plus any machines and tools that had been used to load said trucks. Hardly a shock, then, that Corb had so equipped his troops.

Mab had just wheeled in preparation to charge again when there was a deep, ugly note in the air, almost below the range of my hearing, the kind of sound that you hear during disaster movies that have a lot of buildings collapsing, and maybe during earthquakes.

At the same time, my wizard’s senses were assaulted by a serious, heavy-duty pulse of earth magic.

There wasn’t even time to shout a warning. I called upon the Winter mantle for strength and speed and dove at Mab. The unicorn whirled to try to keep her away from me at the last second but wasn’t quite quick enough, and its movement was impeded by several abomination statues.

I was airborne when I saw the attack coming—jagged spears of metal, made from what looked like rebar scavenged from the wreckage of demolished buildings.

There wasn’t one spear.

There weren’t a dozen.

There were hundreds.

If the Winter unicorn had not reared to protect Mab, I figure I’d have died right there. Instead, the creature’s body intercepted maybe a dozen of the spears. I had leapt so that my back and the spell-armored duster that covered it would be between the spears and the Winter Queen.

I hit Mab and carried her off the back of the doomed unicorn.

Two spears hit me. One of them in the small of my back, and one of them directly in the center of my right butt cheek. The damned things were heavy enough to carry considerable force, and while my duster stopped their jagged ends from spearing right through me, it couldn’t do nearly as much for the pain of the impact, and half of my body vanished beneath a cloud of tactile white noise as the Winter mantle masked the pain.

I came down on top of Mab and sudden, hot, scarlet blood sprayed against me.

I lifted myself off her rag-doll-limp body, even as I felt another powerful wave of earth magic building.

The Queen of Air and Darkness stared up at me with wide, glassy, grass green eyes.

Three feet of bloodied cold iron stood clear from the center of her torn, spraying throat.

“Butters!” I screamed.

I grabbed Mab by the nearest handle, her hair, and dragged her into the shelter offered by the body of the screaming unicorn thrashing weakly on the ground, just as another tsunami of metal spears flew our way.

I fell over her as much as I could and heard the spears thwacking into the unicorn, which ceased its thrashing and screaming, and into the earth all around us.

The haze was suddenly burned away in a circle around us as the Sword of Faith sprang to life, its fire singing in angry angelic chords. Butters advanced, whirling the Sword rondello style, slashing spears out of the air with shrieks of protesting metal.

He reached my side, threw himself down behind the dead unicorn, and took one look at Mab.

“Jesus,” he blurted. “Again?”

“Shut up and get it out of her neck,” I said.

“Harry, there’s no point.”

Mab’s green eyes tracked to Butters and narrowed.

“She’s immortal, dummy,” I snapped. “Get the rebar out of her and she’ll be fine.”

A dank, fetid wind that smelled of swamps and decomposition began to blow from the east. The haze around us began to clear.

“Dammit,” I snarled. “Don’t get cute with it. Just rip it out of her neck.”

“I could use a little help here.”

I checked behind us. I was staring at a bamboo forest of cold steel, rebar standing sharply up from the ground. Twenty or thirty of the Sidhe had been killed outright. The rest were nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t even feel the Winter forces under my command through the banner. The forest of steel had cut me off from them.

More whistles and explosions came from the fortress. We were taking heavy casualties, and I could feel the mortals who had followed me. We were down to five hundred and eleven men and women, all of them terrified, their heads down, praying for survival.

And I could see long, lanky shapes approaching through the haze, flickering bubbles of sorcery glowing around them.

A dozen Fomor sorcerers were walking straight toward us.

“I’ve got to talk to some people about some things,” I said. “You’re on your own, man. Hurry.”

Chapter

Twenty-eight

   Magical duels are about two things: anticipation and imagination. When you’re up against someone who literally wields the leftover power of Creation itself, they can bring forth damned near anything they can imagine with which to attack you. If you haven’t considered their attack and imagined a way to counter it, you lose. It’s that simple.

Fully a quarter of my training with my safely dead mentor, Justin DuMorne, had been in magical duels. The man had been grooming me to be his attack dog, and he played hardball. When it came to trading magical punches, I knew what I was doing. Anyone on the level of the Senior Council could probably hand me my ass, but they’d know they’d been in a fight, even so.

One-on-one, I was a beast.

Twelve-on-one, nobody is a beast.

I checked on Butters. He had extended the blade of Fidelacchius again, this time only a few inches, and was lifting Mab by her head. The head of the length of rebar had been shaped into a hooked point, like a harpoon, only duller. Had he tried to pull it out, he would have had to rip most of Mab’s neck open along with it, and I can’t imagine that would have been good for her combat effectiveness, immortal or not. Instead, he sliced it away as easily as a seamstress snips a thread, before beginning to lower Mab’s head again.

I let myself look concerned, drew in a breath and my power, and waited.

The Fomor Sorcerers’ Club chose to attack me when I looked distracted. I mean, who wouldn’t, but especially these jerks.

Predictable.

They lobbed those bilious green spheres of acid at me.

I spun toward them, my hand lifted, fingers spread, and pulled out an old one. I sent forth my power in the same moment that I drew on the silent gale of magic in the air, shouting, “Ventas servitas!”

On an ordinary night, the gale that my spell conjured would have been able to toss furniture around a room.

Tonight, I could have tossed furniture trucks.