Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

His boots tore up a furrow of turf as wide as his foot and six inches deep, sending a spray of soil, pebbles, and spring grass flying up in front of him in a bow wave for better than fifty feet and bringing him to a stop in the entrance to the main healer’s tent. He whirled, called fire back into his sword, and then the vord Queen slammed into his chest, driving him into the tent and through the large support post just inside the entrance.

Tavi slapped one speed-blurred, dark-nailed hand aside as the vord Queen swept it at his throat, dropped his sword, and seized her by the hair with his other hand, rolling as they both hit the ground and putting her in front as their momentum carried her into the side of a filled metal healing tub, slamming his own heavily armored body into her slender form.

Water exploded up out of the tub as their impact crushed its nearer side flat against the other. The Queen let out a huff of expelled air. The pain he’d been holding off with metalcrafting until perhaps five or six seconds ago suddenly smashed into him in a wave, and he remembered that he had let go of the crafting that was slowing the toxin coursing from the agonizing wound in his belly.

She came rolling to her feet, never stopping her motion, bounding on all fours like something more feline than human. Fire-spheres charred half a dozen healers and two wounded survivors of Riva to so much meat. A young woman in healer’s garb and a silver discipline collar was the next target. But Foss threw himself in front of her, giving her a powerful shove that sent her tumbling head over heels away from him—and then he was enveloped in another blast that left little more than blackened bones and melted steel in its wake.

The vord Queen hissed and gestured again—but Tavi suddenly recognized the young woman Foss had died to protect as Dorotea, who, in another life, had been the High Lady of Antillus.

Collared by her own allies, commanded to do no harm, the woman had been serving as a healer in the Free Aleran since its inception. Her personal ambition had been a cancer that the collar had neatly amputated, and she had done more good in her months as a slave than she ever had as a Citizen. A watercrafter skilled beyond anything that a Legion could hope for, she had doubtless been called in to treat some difficult or delicate harm suffered by one of the survivors.

Her lips spread in a snarl as another sphere of fire bloomed practically upon her, and the earth itself heaved and bucked into a dome that shielded her from the blast. A second motion sent the contents of two healing tubs abruptly hurtling toward the vord Queen like two enormous, transparent stones. The blasts of water smashed the vord to the ground.

Dorotea cried out in sudden agony and clutched at the silver collar at her throat, her body contorting.

Tavi ground his teeth and forced steel into his limbs, his mind, dismissing the pain as something unimportant. The former High Lady had pushed the vord into an open, unoccupied space to one side of the tent. Tavi lifted his sword and sent a thunderbolt of seething fire, whiter than the light of the sun, writhing into the form of some vast and deadly serpent, lancing toward her.

The vord Queen’s smile was gone. Her glittering black eyes widened as the sun-fire streaked toward her. She crossed her forearms in front of her with another brassy scream, and the blast of fire struck her, burning again at Tavi’s vision with a furious light bright enough to blind him though he had closed his eyes to shield against it.

He opened them again, peering.

The entire side of the tent was gone in a great, gaping circle, the canvas charred to fine ash, cut as neatly as with shears. The ground all around the blast area was several inches lower than it had been a moment before and smoothed to glowing glass.

Except for one small circle around the vord Queen. She stood up slowly, uncrossing her arms, and that gleeful smile spread over her face again as she stood over Tavi. Though her tattered old gown was singed black over most of its surface, she was apparently unharmed.

He let out a panting snarl and fought his way up to one knee, sword in hand.

“I came here only to weaken you, Father,” the Queen said in a purring voice. “This was more than I dared to hope for. Perhaps there is such a thing as good fortune, after all.”

A movement sent a fire-sphere toward Tavi. He caught it on his sword, willing the weapon to absorb the heat, to make it burn all the more brightly—but the effort made his vision tighten down to a narrow tunnel. His heart was racing, faster than he’d ever felt it. He couldn’t breathe . She was coming, so fast , faster than he could see, even clawing for the speed of windcrafting, and he couldn’t get his sword to move —

Maximus slammed into the vord Queen with a roar of pure rage, his armored body hurtling into her, a self-contained avalanche of steel. He carried her past Tavi and through a second upright, shattering it to kindling, and bringing two-thirds of the remaining canvas of the large tent down upon them all like an enormous, smothering blanket.

Tavi lifted his sword and cut an opening almost before the canvas could settle. He stumbled upright, through the opening, only to see the vord Queen neatly duplicate his maneuver using her talons, drag a metal tub out with her, and slam it with savage force onto a thrashing lump beneath the canvas—one that sagged and abruptly went still.

The vord turned toward Tavi, a wild grin twisting her lips, showing him teeth that were very white, with threads of green-black running in crazed lines over their surfaces.

Tavi lifted his sword, calling more heat to it, more light furiously shining forth. He couldn’t move. His body was shaking, too weak. He knew that he now stood nearer death’s door than he ever had before, though his furycraft allowed him to stay on his feet.

“Your grandfather,” the vord Queen said, “died just that way. Defiant to the last, his sword in hand.”

Tavi showed her his teeth, and said, “This isn’t a guard position. It’s a signal fire.”

The Queen tilted her head, her eyes narrowed, and a steel balest bolt hit her in the ribs, just below her left arm. It didn’t pierce her pale, seemingly soft skin, but the sheer force behind the bolt struck her from her feet and sent her down. She was up again almost instantly. Thirty yards away, all but invisible in the dark and the mist, Fidelias dropped his balest—and swung a second such weapon, already loaded, from his back, lifting it to his shoulder to shoot as he shouted, “Go!”

Windstreams rose in a howl as the Knights Pisces came streaking past Fidelias, thirty strong, some of them passing only inches over his head. A solid wall of wind preceded them, slamming into the vord Queen, forcing her back and away from Tavi like a leaf driven by a gale.

She looked at them for an instant, unimpressed and unafraid, her smile undiminished.

Then she let out another brassy, mocking laugh and bounded away, toward the northeast. She leapt into the air, gathering up a windstream of her own that ripped every tent within fifty yards from the earth, vanished behind a veil, and was gone in a howl of cyclonic thunder.

Fidelias tracked the movement with the second balest but didn’t shoot. He came sprinting toward Tavi after that, as the Knights Pisces streaked forward in pursuit—but the men didn’t go far before pulling up and spreading into a defensive formation over the camp. Tavi sagged in relief. If they’d followed her out there, she would surely have torn them to shreds.

“Your Highness,” Fidelias breathed as he reached Tavi. He set the Canim weapon down and began to examine Tavi’s injuries. “Oh. Oh, bloody crows , man.”