This thing was power from the Outside, and I was a grain of sand to its oncoming tide.

But you know what?

That grain of sand might be the last remnant of what had once been a mountain, but that which it is, it is. The tide comes and the tide goes. Let it hammer the grain of sand as it may. Let lofty mountains fear the slow, constant assault of the waters. Let the valleys shudder at the pitiless advance of ice. Let continents drown beneath the dark and rising tide.

But that grain of sand?

It isn’t impressed.

Let the tide roll in. The sand will still be there after it rolls out again.

So I looked up at that face and I laughed. I laughed scorn and defiance at that vast, swirling power, and it didn’t just feel good. It felt right.

“Go ahead!” I shouted. “Go ahead and eat me! And then we’ll see if you’ve got the stomach to keep me down!” I lifted my staff and golden white fire began to pour from the carved runes as I gathered power into it. The air grew chill with Winter, and frost formed on the razor-edged blades in my armor. I ground my feet into place, setting them firmly, and the glow of soulfire began to emanate from the cracks in the earth around me. I bared my teeth at the hungry sky, flew the bird at it with my free hand, and screamed, “Bring it on!”

A furious voice filled the air, a sound that shook the earth and sky alike, that made the ground buckle and the swirling clouds recoil.

* * *

And then I was back on the Harley, clutching Karrin’s waist in one hand and clinging to the Winchester with the other. The motorcycle was still in motion, but it wasn’t accelerating. It felt like we were coasting.

Karrin let out a low, gurgling cry, and suddenly sagged forward, panting. I pulled her back against me, helping her to sit up, and after a few seconds she gave her head a few quick shakes and snarled, “I hate getting into a Vulcan mind meld.”

“It hit you, too?” I asked.

“It . . .” She cast a look over her shoulder, up at me, and shuddered. “Yeah.”

“You okay now?”

“I’m starting to get angry,” she said.

A hideously mirthful sound spread over the air—the sound of the Erlking’s laughter. His great steed swerved in close to the motorcycle, and he lifted his sword in a gesture of fierce defiance. Then his burning eyes turned to me and he spoke in a voice that was murderously merry. “Well-done, starborn!”

“Uh,” I said. “Thank you?”

The lord of the goblins laughed again. It was the kind of sound that would stick with you—and wake you up in the middle of the night, wondering whether perhaps poisonous snakes had surrounded your bed and were about to start slithering in.

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.