The ghoul on my left was a shade faster than his two fellows, and I sprang to my left, drawing him with me, creating a little more space between him and his companions. As his clawed feet left the ground, I gestured with my staff, calling upon Winter again and shouting, “Glacivallare!”
With a shriek, a sheet of ice a foot and a half thick rose from floor to ceiling in a ruler-straight line cutting diagonally across the sales floor. The ice clipped the lead ghoul’s heels as it shot upward, slamming into the ceiling in front of the other two with an ear-tearing grinding noise.
My timing had been solid. It was a one-on-one fight again. I felt a surge of triumph.
That lasted for maybe a quarter of a second, and then the leaping ghoul hit me like a professional linebacker. Who was also a hungry cannibal.
He slammed into me hard enough to break ribs, and I had to hope that the crackling sound I heard was shifting ice. We went down hard, with me on bottom, my duster now sliding over the hard surface, dispersing some of the energy of the hit.
The ghoul knew exactly what it was doing. I’d tangled with them a few times before, and in a fight, ghouls are mostly all unfocused ferocity and brute strength, ripping and tearing at whatever they can reach. This one didn’t do that. He got both hands on my staff, wrenching it aside with that hunched, fantastic strength, and ducked his head in close, going for my throat, for the immediate kill. I knew enough about hand-to-hand fighting to recognize technique and discipline when I saw it. It was the difference in fighting a furious drunken amateur and taking on a trained soldier or a champion mixed martial artist.
Over the years, I’d picked up some technique of my own, from Karrin and the others. I provided an instant’s resistance against the ghoul’s wrenching of my quarterstaff, then released it as I doubled up my body, pushing the ghoul up as hard as I could with my legs, trying to shove him to one side.
I didn’t fling him off me or anything, but simultaneously taking his balance and giving him a solid impetus in a new direction let me dump him to the ice just as his jaws began to snap closed on my throat. I felt a flash of sensation there as his weight vanished, and I rolled frantically in the opposite direction, using the momentum of the push to get me going.
I came to my feet, a hair faster than the ghoul warrior, already reaching for a fire spell in my mind-but without the aid of my staff to focus the energy of the spell more efficiently and effectively, I was a shade too slow getting it together. The ghoul came back to his feet, his claws digging at the ice, and promptly came at me with my own damned staff, whirling it like he knew how to use it.
I let out a yelp and started dodging. If we’d been standing on the street, he’d have tenderized me into a pulpy mess that he’d barely need to chew. But we weren’t standing on the street. We fought in the frozen arctic air of the little store coated in Winter ice. The ice betrayed him at every movement, forcing him to constantly keep his balance in check, while to the Winter Knight it was as smooth and safe as a dance studio’s floor. I ducked around empty clothes racks, dumping a couple of them at the ghoul as he came at me, hoping to knock him down, and changed direction constantly, hoping to open the gap between us or force him to lose his balance. All I needed was a portion of a second to bring another spell into play and end the fight.
Problem was, the ghoul knew it. He came at me smart and fast and balanced, and as long as he could keep doing it, he had me in a stalemate. All he had to do was hold me until his friends either ripped through the wall or loped around it, and I was done.
Stars and stones, I was missing my force rings right about then. And my blasting rod, and shield bracelet, and every other little magical craft tool I’d ever designed. But when my lab and its accompanying gear had been destroyed, it had severely cut down my options on what I could manufacture-and being stuck out on the island the whole winter with harshly limited resources, limited by what my brother could round up and bring on a boat, I’d not yet had a chance to set up anything as elaborate and as extensively personalized as a new lab. I’d managed the staff and the wooden skull, working at a laboriously glacial pace, but practically all I’d had to work with was a small set of knives and some sandpaper left over from the construction of the Whatsup Dock.
Preparation! Dammit, Harry. The key to survival as a wizard is preparation!
I could hear sledgehammer blows being delivered to my ice wall, and though I couldn’t see it in the fog, I could hear the change of pitch in each impact, as the ice began to crack and shatter.
“Oh God!” Harvey shouted in a panic. I couldn’t see him either, and I’d forgotten about him for a second. He was probably right where I’d left him, within a few feet of the wall, and able to see exactly what was happening.
The other two ghouls were coming through.
Something inside me started screaming along with poor Harvey.
It was time for a desperate risk.
I abruptly shifted direction and charged the warrior ghoul.
My staff flickered at my head. I raised my left arm to block, trying to take the blow on the meaty muscle of my forearm. Though I didn’t feel any pain, the impact sent a flash of white light across my vision. My duster’s sleeve caught some of the blow, but not much. Its defensive spells were really meant to slow and disperse fast-moving objects like bullets, or to stop the penetration of sharp things. A big blunt instrument had no subtlety, but it was merry hell to defend against.
I found myself inside the quarterstaff’s reach, and promptly slammed my head against the end of the ghoul’s muzzle. He let out a yowl of surprise and anger, his forward momentum abruptly stalled, and I followed up with a one-armed push using every bit of muscle the Winter mantle could muster.
The ghoul staggered back several steps and then his feet went out from under him!
Hope sparked and kindled will. As the ghoul fell, I let out a triumphant howl of “Infriga!”
Winter howled into the little store for the fifth time in maybe sixty seconds, blanketing the fallen ghoul warrior in absolute cold and boiling fog. I panted frantically for a couple of seconds, until the fog boiled away enough to let me see the warrior ghoul in its frozen sarcophagus.
“Harvey!” I croaked. “Harvey, sound off!”
“Oh God!” Harvey sobbed. “Oh God!”
“Yeah, or that,” I muttered, and hurried toward the sound.
I reached him just as the other two ghouls pounded their way through the wall. Harvey let out a shockingly high-pitched squealing sound and scrambled in helpless panic on the slippery ice.
I raised my frost-coated right hand, gathered my will for another spell-
— and found a patch of white blankness in front of my eyes. I blinked and suddenly I was sitting on the ice next to Harvey, wondering how I’d gotten down there.
Winter, I realized. I called up too much power, too fast, with too little chance to rest. I’d burned up my reserves of magical energy, to the point where it threatened to rob me of consciousness. But even now, I didn’t feel magically exhausted.
Of course you don’t feel it, dummy. You’re the Winter Knight.
I blinked a couple of times, and then looked down at my left arm, which was sending me some sort of odd, pulsing sensation.
My duster’s sleeve was being distended from the inside by something pointy. It took me an effort of conscious observation and logical processing to realize that it was my own broken arm.
A seven-foot section of the ice wall suddenly shattered and fell to the floor with a groan.
I shoved myself to my feet with my good arm as the other two warrior ghouls came through the opening.
No magic.