37. Ballroom Dance IV
It was an impressively terrible throw.
The jar, embarrassingly far from my intended target, burst on impact with the ground and exploded in a magnificent array of golden hues. It at least drew the rotsbane’s attention. It jerked around and scurried back a carriage-length, tracking the explosion as it faded into the distance.
“What was that?” Ciarán hissed in my head.
“I’m bad at throwing!”
“Then let me do it!”
“Fine!”
I wasn’t sure what Ciarán could do from inside his prison carriage, but a shiver ran down my spine and the near-constant buzzing at the back of my head snapped into sudden clarity as Ciarán’s every thought became known.
Two on the engine…one ahead, another approaching from behind…at least three—no, four—running alongside.
Something took control of my arms, and they worked outside of my bidding to launch another bottle.
This one sailed directly towards the rotsbane with perfect aim, and the beast lunged to snap its jaws over the glass.
Golden light and metal shards burst through its skull, and I slid across the roof to avoid the shrapnel as well as the second rotsbane that leapt at my back.
Metal disappeared from beneath me as I slipped over the edge of the roof, but I caught myself on a metal ridge and watched the second rotsbane soar overhead. It landed in the dirt with a wailing grunt and receded into the distance.
I clung to the side of the carriage, still unsure how I’d moved like that.
Because it hadn’t been me in control.
“Your arm strength is abysmal.” The words came out of my mouth, but I hadn’t been the one to speak them. My body kipped upwards, and my arms pulled me back onto the roof.
“What the hell is happening?!” This time, it was me who spoke.
“I’m not entirely sure,” my body replied. My fingers flexed, and I forced them back into fists. “If I had to guess, I’d say we’re both in control of your body.”
“You—” I cut off, realizing. “Ciarán, are you moving my body?”
My body moved through a quick series of fighting forms that I definitely did not know.
“Yes, Blue.” Ciarán’s words rolled off my tongue. “I am.”
His half-formed thoughts, laid bare, spoke plainly at the back of my head.
No precedent for this—definitely not proper—we were connected before, but did Ergoth—Don’t think about Ergoth. If it keeps us alive until morning, then fine—Tiernan killed the rotsbane on the engine—two more on the left side—This might actually work because—
“I’m a better warrior than you,” Ciarán said through my mouth. “Sit back. Let me take care of this, and then I’ll let you have your body back.”
“You’ll let me have my body back?” I parroted. “You are a guest in my body, and I’ll kick you if I feel like it.”
“And do you feel like it?” Ciarán purred in my voice.
Two new shadows appeared to run alongside the train.
“Nope. Go crazy.”
Ciarán pulled two more bottles from the backpack and launched them into the dark. The new rotsbane leapt for them and then burst.
A memory flashed in my head of a dark-haired woman standing between me and a towering rotsbane. I sat in the snow, small and helpless, as the woman—Ciarán’s mother—fired a metal arrow into the beast’s open mouth.
It was Ciarán’s first encounter with a rotsbane.
The memory dissipated as his thoughts turned away from his mother and to the rotsbane running along the other side of the steamcart.
A bright blast near the engine drew my attention, and I snapped my head to look.
“Eyes on the rotsbane, Blue! I told you to sit back!” Ciarán twisted us back around to face the rotsbane nearest us and held a glowing bottle up.
A second, larger explosion near the engine echoed across the carriages. Ciarán stumbled backwards, and the bottle slipped from our hand.
“Watch out!” Instinct procured a flaming blue Skal-shield into my hands as the bottle shattered on the roof.
Golden light burst outwards, and metal bits peppered the carriage. The blow forced me back, and a sheet of metal ripped from the carriage in the explosion. It bounced off my shield, and then spun into the dark of the night.
A rotsbane gave a ghastly wail and leapt for the hole left in the metal. The entire carriage shuddered as the monster rampaged inside, tearing through barrels and sucking down Skal.
“Dammit!” Ciarán regained control to bring me back to my feet. He launched a new bottle over the edge.
The remaining rotsbane caught the bottle in its mouth and then collapsed to the dirt in a burst of gold.
“Hey!” Ciarán yelled at the rotsbane in the carriage through the gaping hole in the metal, waving our glowing shield. “Up here!”
The monster continued ripping through barrels, uninterested in us.
“You’re going to need more than a Skal-shield to get its attention,” I said. “We can drop one of the bottles—”
“And set the entire carriage on fire? It’s full of Skal!”
“Do not interrupt me with my own mouth!” I snapped, and Ciarán took off running across the carriages towards the engine. “What are you doing? If we let that rotsbane destroy Tamora’s Skal supply, she’ll never give us that boat!”
“I’m working on it!” He solidified my shield into a spear, and the glow dulled into a metallic shine. The pressure from the volcanos pressed just a little more against whatever tether connected me to the earth, but they remained dormant.
“Careful,” I warned. “My magick—”
“If we get ripped apart by rotsbane, the volcanos will blow anyway.”
“Did I not just say not to interrupt me?”
Tiernan destroyed a rotsbane as we arrived at the engine, but a second one reared behind him. Ciarán launched us from the lip of the carriage roof and let the spear fly. It lodged itself down the rotsbane’s throat, and my body dropped into a forward roll as we hit the platform.
Ciarán stood to my feet and stalked over to the twitching rotsbane to pull the spear out of its mouth as it disintegrated into shadowy steam.
“The Grimguard has been teaching you tricks,” Tiernan grunted behind me.
I felt my face pull into a smirk.
“He is a very good teacher,” Ciarán said, and I replied, “Oh, shut up. He’s okay at best.”
Tiernan frowned, but Ciarán was on the move again, this time charging at Stanley where he stood between Tiernan and the door to the carriage.
Ciarán brandished the spear at his neck. “Inside. Now.”
“Wren—” Tiernan started, but Ciarán shushed him.
“Either I ash you just to get you out of the way,” Ciarán warned Stanley, “or you go inside. Now.”
Stanley took an uneasy step back towards the door.
“That’s it,” Ciarán prompted. “Now faster. I want to see you run.”
Stanley slipped back into the carriage, and Ciarán gave chase.
“What are you doing?” Tiernan yelled after me.
“I have no idea! I’m sorry!” I called back but let Ciarán hound Stanley through the carriage until he stopped at the far door.
Stanley slammed against the metal, a hulking mass of tattoos and bloated muscles, and turned to watch me bear down on him with my spear still in hand.
“I didn’t say to stop!” Ciarán thrust the spear forward, and Stanley ducked through the door to avoid its point.
“Are you insane?” Stanley screamed, sprinting down the length of the next carriage with me in pursuit.
“Ask me again in a couple minutes!” Ciarán laughed.
Stanley didn’t hesitate at the next door this time but kept running.
And kept running to the carriage beyond that one, and beyond that, until—
He ripped a door open to a rotsbane towering inside the cramped space, its shoulders hunched near the ceiling and its head in a barrel of Skal.
“Brought you a snack!” Ciarán called.
“What’re you doing? It’ll kill me!” Stanley tried to push behind me, but Ciarán shoved him towards the rotsbane.
The beast whipped its head towards Stanley, and the barrel on its head shot off to slam into a wall.
“I just needed to get its attention,” Ciarán crooned. “Good news. I think it likes you.”
The rotsbane’s mouth unhinged, and it gave a whining squeal as it dove for Stanley.
Ciarán loosed the metal spear, and the rotsbane’s head snapped backwards with the force of the hit at the back of its throat. We shoved past Stanley to retrieve the spear from the dying rotsbane.
“See? You just have to trust me. A little trust goes a long way.” Ciarán pushed my hair back from my face as we turned back around.
Stanley, however, had turned passive, staring straight ahead, unseeing, as another rotsbane tore through the carriages behind him.
“Stanley!” I yelled, but my warning fell on deaf ears as the rotsbane took him in its four claws.
I threw the spear through Stanley’s muscled back before the rotsbane could devour his consciousness, and the rotsbane screamed as the point embedded in its chest.
Stanley dissolved into ash. He’d be waking up back at home, safe and undevoured by the rotsbane that now staggered back into the open space between carriages.
The wind pulled at the shadows that hung off its form, and its sunken eyes flickered in their sockets.
A twitching, shadowed claw ripped the spear from its chest and threw it into open air, away from the train, leaving me defenseless between a feral rotsbane and a room full of Skal.
“Sorry,” I breathed. “I didn’t think, I just—I don’t know.”
“It’s fine,” Ciarán assured me. “You saved Titus.”
I ceded control back to Ciarán, and he wielded an empty Skal barrel ahead of us as he charged at the rotsbane where it stood in the space between carriages.
Its top set of claws reached around the barrel to rake across my shoulders, but Ciarán managed to maneuver the rotsbane to the side. Its back foot slipped from the narrow platform, and it tumbled from the train with a shriek.
Ciarán climbed us back to the roof despite the screaming pain in my shoulders, pulled a bottle from my backpack, and chucked it into the night.
The rotsbane leapt from the shadows where it had been running along the train, and with a snap of its jaws, it burst in an array of golden light and glinting metal.
We bent over, catching our breath and trying to ignore the pain burning in my shoulders.
“Do you think Tiernan’s alright?” I asked.