Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(115)

Behind Lara, Freydis and her shotgun vaulted off the ship and onto the shore, the Valkyrie following her boss into battle.

Except it wasn’t a battle.

It wasn’t even close.

I made a gesture, hissed part of a word, and the soft ground beneath Lara’s feet abruptly gave way and then snapped back, sending her into a sprawl in the air. She hit the ground, and the brush and grass of the island wrapped her swiftly and completely.

I made a swatting gesture with my right hand, sent out a mental command to utilize some of the waiting energy of the island, and a hickory tree that towered above the landing site abruptly swept down like an angry giant and slammed an enormous branch into the ground a few feet in front of Freydis. The impact knocked the Valkyrie from her feet—and at a second gesture the tree hit her hard enough to send her flying back into the water of the lake.

I turned back to find Lara tearing her way wildly out of the grass and brush, and I had to lift both hands and expend a mild effort of will to have the ground simply swallow her to the neck.

Lara struggled briefly, savagely, and silently, her silver eyes bright. It took her about half as long as it would have taken me to realize the hopelessness of her position. The struggle ceased then, and she went cold and so still that her head might have been something severed from a statue rather than part of an actual near-human being. Only her eyes moved, tracking me. There was nothing playful in her expression now. It was like looking at the eyes of a big cat. An angry one.

“That wasn’t necessary,” I said, turning to track Freydis’s progress in the water. My intellectus was a little fuzzier out there, like peering through smudged glass, which was probably the penalty for my merely human brain struggling to be aware of the constant shifting of every individual molecule of water in the area.

I found Freydis just as she kicked off the bottom of the lake, churning the water into swirling helixes with the power of her limbs as she stroked for the surface, and flew out of it with enough momentum to clear the railing of the Water Beetle—and collide with Murphy on the deck.

“No!” I shouted, and with an effort of will and another flick of my wrists, a pair of trees bent and reached for the ship, wood straining, limbs creaking with threat.

Freydis was fast as hell—and Murphy didn’t even try to fight her. The Valkyrie got behind Murphy, close, one hand on her waist and another on her throat. I knew how strong she was—she could just rake a pound of meat out of Murphy’s neck with a flick of her wrist. Freydis’s eyes were bright and cold. “Back off!” she screamed.

The power of Demonreach was vast and terrible—and not much good for surgery. The only chance I’d have would be something that killed Freydis so fast that she didn’t have time to react, and the Valkyrie was damned quick. I’d be aiming trees (for God’s sake, I should have practiced smashing things with trees) at targets on a floating, bobbing platform, and an inch’s difference in any direction could mean Murphy’s life or death.

So I backed off, the trees groaning threateningly as they retreated.

“Trade time, seidrmadr,” Freydis called to me. “Yours for mine.”

“Why should I?” I called back.

Freydis tightened her hand, and I saw Murphy tense up with pain.

“This is not the fight that is destined to be her last,” the Valkyrie called. “Unless you make me kill her.”

Murphy simply lifted her arms. There were a couple of clinking sounds, and a pair of metal bits flew up from her hands and arched out to either side of the Water Beetle, landing in the water with little splashes.

They were little metal handles. Soldiers called them spoons.

Murphy was holding a live grenade to either side of their heads.

Freydis’s eyes went very wide.

“Frags,” Murphy said calmly. “Your move, bitch.”

There was an instant of frozen silence.

“Gods, that’s hot,” Freydis said, and blurred as she dove over the railing, hitting the water like a thrown spear.

Murphy turned and pitched the grenades over the far side of the Water Beetle. She had to lob one of them underhand, with her wounded arm. They hit the drink maybe seven or eight yards out, and a couple of seconds later they went off with a roar of displaced liquid that sent a geyser of water twenty feet in the air.

I ignored that. The frags were no danger to anything when they were surrounded by that much water, and instead I tracked the evasive Valkyrie, until I found her.

I raised my voice and called out to where Freydis had tried to swim silently back to shore in the shadows and shelter of some huge old shaggy willows. She came out of the water and picked up a rock and was about to start through the trees and rocks on a least-time course for the back of my skull.

“Hey, Red!” I called. “Your client is fine, there’s no reason to fight me, and if you make me spend what’s left of my money on weregild for your boss, I’m going to be really annoyed.”

Freydis paused in the darkness in confusion. I didn’t blame her. There was no way I could have seen her from where I was standing, no way I could have heard her stealthy movements. But while I stood on Demonreach, I was as aware of the island as of my own body. I could have chucked a rock, bounced it off a couple of trees, and landed it right on the Valkyrie’s head.

Sometimes actions speak louder than words. I lifted a hand and willed the earth of the island to cooperate. Freydis found herself sunk to her waist in the ground in the space of a heartbeat. I heard her let out a short choked sound.