It’s hard to think when someone’s trying to kill you. We human beings aren’t wired to be rational and creative when we know our lives are in danger of a swift and violent end. The body has definite ideas of which survival strategies it prefers to embrace, and those are generally limited to “rip threat to pieces” or “run like hell.” No thinking need be involved, as far as our instincts are concerned.

Our instincts were a long time in the making, though, and the threats that can come after us now have outpaced them. You can’t outrun a bullet, and you don’t go hand-to-hand with a gunman unless you’re certain you are about to die anyway. Speed and mindless aggression weren’t going to keep me alive. I needed to figure a way out.

I felt another bullet hit the lower part of my coat. It caught spell-strengthened leather and tugged it forward, just the way a thrown rock might have done. Admittedly, though, the rock wouldn’t have made that angry-hornet buzzing noise as it struck. I dumped a garbage can over behind me, hoping it might trip up the gruffs for a second and buy me a little time.

Hey, you try coming up with a cogent, rational course of action when you’re running down a frozen alley with genuine fairy-tale creatures chasing you, spitting bullets at your back. It’s way harder than it looks.

I didn’t dare turn to face them. I could have raised a shield to stop the gunfire, but once I had stopped moving, I figured odds were fantastic that one of them would just hop over me like a Kung Fu Theater extra, and they’d come at me from two directions at once.

In fact, if I were them, and had tracked me to that alley…

The chattering gunfire from behind me ceased, and I realized what was happening.

I raised my staff as I neared the far end of the alley, pointed it ahead of me, and screamed, “Forzare!”

My timing wasn’t perfect. The unseen force I released from the end of the staff rushed out ahead of me, an invisible battering ram. It struck the third gruff just as the fae-thug stepped around the corner, a massive oak cudgel readied in his hands. The blast didn’t hit him squarely. It would have thrown him a goodly ways if it had. Instead it caught the right side of his body, ripping the cudgel away from him and sending the gruff into a drunken, spinning stagger.

I don’t know much about goats, but I do know a little about horses, having taken care of my second mentor Ebenezar McCoy’s riding horses on his little farm in Missouri. Their feet are awfully vulnerable, especially considering how much weight they’re putting on such a relatively small area. Any one of a hundred little things can go wrong. One of them is the possibility that some of the surprisingly frail little bones just above the back of the hoof could be fractured or broken. A pastern or fetlock injury like that can lame a horse for weeks, even permanently.