Or he would carry her forward, because as he surged to his feet Kavik lifted her from the ground. His mouth found hers, so sweet and rough, and her tears would not stop falling.
Abruptly he tore his lips from hers and stepped back, fingers lightly brushing her shoulders, then her arms, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go but was afraid to touch her. “Your tears, Mala.” His voice was agony. “I forgot your mark. Did I hurt you?”
She had forgotten it, too. And there was no pain at all, as if the burning, swollen mask had peeled away.
But she had no time to wonder over it. From behind her came Shim’s urgent whinny, and a moment later, a thunderous roar echoed across the moors. Kavik stiffened against her.
Dread settled in her stomach. “You know that sound?” she asked, and could barely make out his nod through the dark.
“The demon tusker,” he said.
WITH Mala beside him, Kavik raced to the top of the next hill and looked north. Her path from Perca hadn’t lain along the roads, yet he knew this land, and a village didn’t lay far distant. If the demon tusker passed it by, he and Mala might not have such a dangerous fight on their hands.
Dread filled his chest when he saw the flames flickering in the distance. “It’s at the village,” he said.
“Then we will be, too. Shim!”
His heart clenched. He wanted to tell her to let him go alone to help the village, but knew she would not remain here any more than he would.
The gelding waited down the hill. Kavik started toward it, but halted as heavy hoofbeats drew alongside him.
“Kavik!” Mala called from atop Shim. The hood hid her face, but the light of the distant fire made her into a dim silhouette, her hand extended toward him. “Shim is strong enough to carry us both, and he’s faster. On your gelding, it will be over before you arrive.”
He only hesitated long enough to glance at Shim. “You agree?”
The stallion snorted and Kavik swung onto his back as lightly as he could without a saddle. As soon as he settled behind her, Mala’s small form crouched over the stallion’s neck.
“Go!”
The stallion surged ahead. Only Kavik’s light grasp on Mala’s hips saved him from tumbling over the horse’s rump. He leaned forward until his chest pressed against her strong back. The sides of her cloak flared out like wings as they raced across the hills, Shim’s hooves like rolling thunder. Her hood flew back.
“Mala!” he shouted into the wind.
By the slight turn her of head, he knew she listened.
“If this is the end, it’s not because I was with you! It’s because of the demon and because I pissed in her offering bowl!”
The vehement shake of her head whipped her braids against his face. “It’s not the end,” she shouted back at him. “Because if I’m the one to herald it, then I want to be the one to end you!”
Grinning, he squeezed her waist. “Don’t try to fight the demon! Just guide the villagers to safety, if you can! If they can’t reach the southern gate in the wall, make them climb over it. Then they need to run out over the hills, away from the demon’s sight!”
The demon rarely followed. It only attacked what was in its path. Her nod told him she understood.
“There will be revenants!”
She tensed against him and nodded again just as the demon bellowed, a deafening roar that drowned out the drumbeat of Shim’s pounding hooves. The stallion carried them over the next hill.
The village lay directly ahead. Its northern wall had been destroyed, the mortared stones lying in shattered heaps. Houses nearby burned, the thatched roofs blazing. Indistinct figures darted through the dense smoke that choked the northern half of the village and had begun billowing south along the road. Human screams mingled with the revenants’ shrieks.
“People will be hiding in the houses!” Kavik shouted. Almost a hundred and fifty lived in this village. “They think they’ll be safe if the demon doesn’t destroy their building. But the revenants will hunt them down.”
“Can we draw the revenants?” Mala called back to him.
So she was already thinking the same as he. The creatures might be searching individually for prey now, but they would converge upon a stronger foe.
“Take me to the northern wall!” The demon tusker had already broken through—moving south. The demon likely wouldn’t turn around, but the revenants would still come for Kavik. “I’ll draw the revenants. You stay on Shim! You can move through the village and help any people you can, but if the demon comes at you, let Shim run! You can ride back around to help them from another direction!”
She nodded, and her hand reached back to grip his thigh. “My heart is yours, Kavik!”
Fierce love grabbed hold of his chest. But before he could reply, her fingers abruptly clenched. A gust of wind blew through the billowing smoke and revealed the demon tusker.
Given a choice, Kavik wouldn’t want to face a tusker even if the animal hadn’t been possessed by a demon. With legs like thick tree trunks, a hulking back, and heavily domed head, the bulls were aggressive and territorial—and big, often growing as tall as the mammoths that roamed the far southern steppes. Unlike mammoths, however, a tusker didn’t wear a pair of long tusks beside its prehensile snout. A tusker’s snout and the tusks that flanked it were shorter. The primary tusks jutted straight out from beneath the jaw like a pair of flat blades. The animals used them to slash through thick branches and vegetation as it foraged, and as defense. He’d seen a tusker cut a hunter’s horse from beneath him by swinging those tusks like a scythe.
The demon’s possession transformed an already-dangerous animal into a monstrous terror. The tusker’s long red hairs had been shed from its hide. Bloated white skin stretched tightly over its enormous frame, as if the burning evil inhabiting the creature expanded its body to an ever-greater size to contain the demon inside it. Each of its tusks had elongated and sharpened, and its jaw could unhinge to reveal jagged teeth unlike any natural tusker’s.
And unlike a tusker, the demon didn’t lumber. It stalked the ground swiftly, silent when it wasn’t roaring. Now it slipped through the smoke like a wraith and vanished from their sight again.
Through the dark, he spotted a handful of villagers scrambling over the eastern wall. No one had yet fled through the southern gate as Shim raced north around the village. “Check the southern gate first! Revenants might be blocking escape!”
Nodding, she squeezed his thigh and released him. Throat tight, Kavik pressed his face against the back of her neck and breathed deep. Mala. No longer in red. But he’d been on his knees. Now there was only the end.
He would still fight to his last breath against it. Never would he leave her alone, forsaken. He would never leave her side.
Shim rounded the northern wall. Fire raged in the nearest houses, throwing wavering orange light through the wall’s shattered remains. With his sword, Kavik pointed to the breach. “There!”
The horse slowed as he passed it. The shrieking howls of nearby revenants sounded as Kavik swung to the ground, landing amid the broken stones. Without stopping, Shim continued on, and Kavik stole a last look. His gaze met Mala’s. She’d glanced back over her shoulder, her face lit by the burning houses behind him.