Cold Days

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. More gunfire came from the boat-panic fire, splashing wildly everywhere and mostly nowhere close to us. Whoever was over there, they didn't like getting shot at any more than I did.

As we closed the last yards, Karrin fired three more times in a rapid, assured pace. I couldn't see whether she hit anyone else until we went roaring past the barge, no more than ten feet away, when a man holding the distinctive shape of a shotgun rose into sight. Karrin was covering the barge's stern with the Winchester when he popped up. The old gun roared again, and the gunman fell away and out of sight.

We raced by unharmed, but the enemy gunfire had done its work. The riders and hounds of the Hunt had been distracted by the flying bullets, and they didn't do nearly as much damage to the barge as in the initial attack. Even as I watched, more and more figures with guns appeared on the barge and started shooting.

I checked the oncoming rush of Outsiders.

We weren't going to sink the barge before they got here.

"-to sink it!" Karrin was shouting.

"What?"

"We don't have to sink the barge!" she shouted. "It can't move on its own! We just have to kill the boat that's pulling it!"

"Right!" I said, and leaned the Harley into a turn that would take us arching back toward the barge-this time at its front, or prow, or bow or something, where a rig containing a tugboat a bit bigger than the Water Beetle had been built on.

It also brought us closer to the oncoming Outsiders, and I couldn't tell which of us would get there first. As I sped up, Karrin dug into the compartments on the Harley, reaching around me, then said, "Hold it steady!"

Then she stood up, and I couldn't see a damned thing-but I did see the way she pulled the pin out of a freaking hand grenade, and let the spoon spin off into the night. The Harley buzzed past the tugboat's rig maybe ten feet ahead of the Outsiders, and Karrin gave the grenade a rather feeble little flick as we went by. I heard it smash into glass, like a stone thrown against a window, and then we were past the barge, and a huge sound thudded through the air, like an entire library of books all dropped flat at the same instant, and an incandescent white light flared from the tug.

I looked back over my shoulder and saw that the tugboat was on fire, pouring out thick black smoke and leaning sharply to one side. Murphy saw it, too, and let out an ululating war cry before she sat back down and pushed my hands off the handlebars, reassuming control of the Harley. "Two down!" she said. "One to go!"

I looked back behind me. The Outsiders had begun swarming at the barge, and one of them actually came out of the water at one of the rearmost riders of the Hunt-this horrible thing that was all pustules and multiple limbs with too many joints. As it leapt, the rider raised a shadowy bow and loosed a darkling arrow. It struck the Outsider and burst into red-amber flame the same color as the burning eyes of the Hunt. The Outsider let out an unearthly wail and plunged back beneath the surface.

"Come on," I said to Karrin. "Head for the other boat."

"Should we?" she asked. "That Erlking guy seems a little . . . do-it-yourselfy."

She was right about that. Like any of the other seriously powerful beings of Faerie, the Erlking had a strong sense of pride-and you crossed that pride at your own risk. If I showed up and the Erlking thought I was making the statement that I judged him unfit to finish the task, it could come back to haunt me. On the other hand, I'd already insulted him once and there was a lot on the line. "If he didn't want me making calls like this, he shouldn't have let me shoot him and take over his Hunt," I said. I turned to beckon the riders and hounds behind me and shouted, "Come on!" My voice came out as both my own and in the howling screech of the Hunt, the two interwoven, and the rest of my group joined in the shriek and formed up around the Harley as it raced across the water, toward the third barge.

Where the fight wasn't going well.

There were several long, straight streaks of molten steel where the Erlking and his riders had struck the barge's hull, the edges marked with flickering tongues of eerie green fire, but they had not torn a hole in it like we had the first barge, either, and the Outsiders had gotten to this barge faster than they had to mine. Even as we approached, I saw a racing hound of the Hunt vanish in a spray of water as things, plural, too twisted and too confusing to count, surged up from below and began to drag the hound down.