Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(8)

While I was casting that, Horus looked down briefly at his wound and screeched. His voice modulated into some kind of low-frequency chirps after that, either cooking up a heal or a buff or something to snuff me. I didn’t want to let him finish.

The neuromuscular boost snapped through my body like a tuning fork and I lunged forward, fully expecting to be parried by the scepter this time, and I was: Horus could definitely sense it somehow, despite my camouflage. But I followed up with a straight kick to the gut and that got through easily, forcing the breath from his lungs and cutting his chant short. He reeled back, stunned, and I pressed my advantage, kicking him right in the beak since his head was lowered. Horus squawked, reared, and nearly fell over backward, and I grinned as I realized what it meant: He could somehow sense my sword but not the rest of me. As long as I kept the sword away from my body, he couldn’t see my attacks coming. His first well-aimed strike at my head had been an excellent guess based on how I’d held Fragarach in my right hand.

I took too long to process that, however. Horus recovered and cried out, swinging his scepter in a twirling pattern very similar to the sort of thing that I now teach. I was still about seven centuries away from my martial-arts training in China, however, and I hadn’t seen that before. I backed up, thinking of how best to disrupt his flailing offensive and regain the advantage. If I could successfully interrupt him, he’d be vulnerable for a precious half second or more. Maybe. I didn’t know what counters he might have, honestly, and I felt outclassed.

But since he was focused on the location of my sword, I feinted right with it and then, as he swerved that way to knock it aside, I kicked from the left side. My foot caught his forearm and did interrupt the twirling, but the scepter slid through his hand to lengthen out at the top, and he whipped it in a vicious backhand swing that I couldn’t avoid. It caught me just below the collarbone, and I grunted and staggered back until stone stopped me.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a mere wall: I’d been driven back into the ultra-warded door of Seshat’s chamber. I don’t know if it was Horus’s intention to do that, but it made him look damn clever.

My muscles spasmed and pain lanced through all my nerves as I collapsed to the ground, Seshat’s defensive wards lighting me up in spite of the supposed protective bindings woven into my torc. Ogma had said they might be only partially effective, and I screamed the Irish equivalent of “Fuck partiaaaal!” as I rolled away in a sort of fetal position to open up some distance between myself and Horus. I was practically back at his chamber door when I felt I could function again, and I realized that had it not been for the torc’s half-assed protection, Seshat’s wards might well have killed me instantly.

Horus certainly seemed to have expected it, for when I came to my feet, he was still where I’d last seen him, blinking in confusion. He clearly had driven me into those wards on purpose, and perhaps now he was feeling a measure of the uncertainty I was feeling: How in nine hells was I ever going to win this?

My personal calculus determined that it couldn’t be won but only escaped. He was a superior martial artist and not dependent on a limited supply of strength. I reminded myself that I only had to get past him, not destroy him.

He had no defensive martial screen in place now, so I charged, right arm held far out so that Fragarach would draw his attention and he’d therefore misjudge my center. He raised his scepter and brought it down in a two-handed swing just to the right of my body as I launched myself at his face, left foot extended for his throat. I withdrew my right arm as he committed, and his blow whiffed past my right side while my heel connected with his throat. He made a short choking noise and fell back, my foot planting on his chest as he fell, and I kept running for the exit.

Not that I got away without injury. He stabbed out blindly over his head with the scepter, and the sharpened steel crescent punched into my lower back just above my left ass cheek. I muttered a binding to keep all my blood inside and leave nothing for Horus to use later: It drew all the blood from his blade back into my body.

If adrenaline can add any speed to limbs already quickened by bindings, then it surely did at that point. I was down the hall and up the ladder before you could hum the triumphant opening bars to Star Wars.

But there was a figure waiting for me at the top, between the stacks, every bit as surprised to see me as I was to see her: Seshat, keeper of knowledge, whose wards had nearly snuffed me.

I knew who she was because she matched her hieroglyphic representation: a sheath of cheetah skin draped over her body and a headdress featuring seven points. Like Horus, she had a clue that I was in front of her, despite my camouflage. She hissed, muttered something in ancient Egyptian that I didn’t catch, and thrust a hand at me.

I felt as if I’d been thirsty for years—all the moisture of my throat sucked away and my breath choked off besides—but I spun around clockwise and ran past her to the stairwell that would lead to the ground floor and freedom. I sheathed Fragarach on my back, hoping that the leather might somehow have a cloaking effect on the Egyptian gods’ ability to target me. Nothing else hit as I ran, and I was able to reach the ground floor and even make it outside before I realized that I had been severely handicapped.

I breathed, “Thank the Morrigan, Brighid, and all the gods below,” once I thought myself safe, except that I heard not a syllable of it.

“What?” I said, except that once again there was no sound.