This was Mala. Only Mala.
A revenant slashed at him from behind. Still staring, Kavik swung his sword in that direction, and still didn’t look away even when the stamp of hooves sounded beside him and the revenant’s brains splattered his boots.
The demon roared, its terrible jaws opening wide. Nose wrinkling, Mala closed her eyes and turned her face away.
“By Temra’s fist,” she breathed. “It smells worse than revenant.”
Kavik’s wild laugh broke from him. She laughed, too, then shook her head.
Determination set her face. “I still don’t know if we can kill it. But perhaps I can make it easier to try.”
Adjusting her grip on the tusks, she looked back at the demon. Slowly, she began to twist. The demon screamed, its head turning to the side.
A crack split the night. Not the demon’s neck. The tusks. Gritting her teeth, Mala drew back her fist and swung it down hard against the flat blades. Those tusks had rammed through stone, had withstood sharpened steel.
They didn’t survive the hammering of Mala’s fist.
All at once they snapped, the long blades coming away in her grip—and releasing her hold on the demon tusker. Kavik shouted and rushed at her. With a roar of pain, the demon charged. Stumbling back, she desperately swung the long bladed tusks.
The ivory cleaved through its neck even as Kavik slammed into her, yanking her out of the demon’s path. Its charging body tripped over its own head and fell, plowing into the ground. Still moving.
Mala pulled out of Kavik’s arms. With a ringing battle cry, she stalked forward and shoved the blades through the demon’s chest, through its heart.
The body tried to get to its feet. She stared at it, chest heaving.
Suddenly laughing again, Kavik suggested, “The head?”
Shaking hers, she stalked toward the body and slammed her foot against the end of the bladed tusks. The ivory splintered. She ripped one away, a shard as long as a sword, and stabbed it through the demon’s eye.
It fell quiet.
They waited, watching. Still nothing. Mala murmured, “It wasn’t ten thousand warriors.”
Kavik looked to her and she met his eyes, hers wide and disbelieving.
“It wasn’t ten thousand warriors,” she said. “That’s not what she promised me. I assumed it would be. But it was the strength of ten thousand warriors.” She looked at her hands. “The durability, too. Those blades should have cut through my hands.”
“And the weight,” Kavik said. “It couldn’t move you.”
She glanced up. “You moved me. But can I—”
Striding forward, she tried to lift him. Then again, wrapping her arms around his waist and grunting with the effort. When she made a sound of frustration and stepped back, Kavik gripped her waist and lifted her easily, bringing her up to his mouth.
Smiling, Mala slipped her arms around his neck. “She also said ‘when you most need it.’ I apparently don’t need it against you. Or the revenants.”
When she’d been thrown from Shim’s back. Kavik could still see the revenants swarming over her. “No,” he said roughly.
Her hands cupped his jaw. Softly she kissed him, then slid back to the ground. She turned toward Shim. “You’re all right?”
The horse responded with a stamp of his foot. Yes.
“He’s limping,” Kavik said and the stallion pinned his ears back and bared his teeth at him.
Mala stroked the stallion’s neck, soothing him. “Can you call the other horses? We should stay through the night and make certain all of the revenants are dead.”
Through the night. Sudden overwhelming emotion filled Kavik’s chest, and he turned away, staring at the demon’s body. He’d thought this would be the end. But there would be a tonight. A tomorrow.
It hadn’t been the end. At least, not his end.
And what Mala had assumed Vela meant wasn’t what she’d received at all.
His gaze moved to the ivory shard embedded in the demon’s eye. In that temple so many years ago, when he’d sought Vela’s help, he’d asked for the strength to defeat Barin—or the knowledge to do it.
Mala had received strength. And Kavik had been a fool about many things. He would not be a fool about this.
VELA looked fully upon them when Mala rode with Kavik to the citadel gates. Unlike the first time she’d come here, the gates were closed—but Selaq had already told them they would be. With eyes closed, the innkeeper had looked beyond the fortress’s walls and told them the citadel guards waited in the courtyard, two hundred strong.
When Barin had learned the demon was dead, the warlord should have hired ten thousand.
She dismounted. Of heavy blackwood and reinforced with iron, the gates were a formidable barrier, built to withstand battering rams and armies mounted on tamed tuskers and three-toed beasts. But she thought that a demon tusker could have probably broken through it alone. And so could she.
Raising her foot, she slammed her boot into the gates.
The barrier exploded open with a shriek of iron and rain of splinters. Mala strode through with axe and sword in hand and met the stunned, fearful faces of the citadel guard.
“If you know what is good for you,” she shouted, “you will move aside and create a path!”
The guards shifted uneasily, looking to each other. Mala spotted Heddiq mounted on a horse at the opposite end of the courtyard. With a grunt, she whipped around and threw her axe.
The heavy weapon flew end over end, spinning above the heads of two hundred guards and smashing through Heddiq’s face. With a thunk, the blade embedded in the stone wall behind him—with Heddiq’s helm pinned between. His body toppled from his horse.
Two hundred guards moved aside.
There was only silence as Kavik joined her, and together they walked to the keep. Mala opened the doors with another kick.
More dedicated guards waited inside. Kavik met them with his sword, and Mala didn’t need her strength now. She fought beside him until the last guard fell to the floor, and walked with him to the great hall.
Mala didn’t have to smash those doors. A tall, wiry man stood outside them, keys in hand and tears in his eyes. The marshal, she remembered.
She strode into the great hall and called, “I have brought my beast, Lord Barin!”
In his robes of yellow and gold, the warlord stood at the center of the hall. No courtiers sat at the tables now. More guards waited—but Barin held his hand up to them, and his smile was still amused.
“Did you think killing the demon tusker would be the end of me?” He laughed and looked to Kavik. “Come and see. There is still no sword that can harm me.”
Mala glanced at her warrior. When she had first encountered him at Selaq’s inn, just after he’d learned of his taming, Mala had thought she’d never seen such cold hatred and rage directed at her.
She had never seen him look at Barin. Vela had gifted her with the strength of ten thousand warriors, yet if ever Kavik had looked at her like that she would have fled for her life. He was death itself, not silver-fingered Rani come to gently carry a warrior into Temra’s arms, but ragged screaming death, contained within sheer muscle and bleeding from his savage stare.
Yet Barin did not flee. Not as Kavik stalked toward him, his steps fluid and strong, his sword held loosely in his grip. The warlord even spread his arms wide, robes falling open and baring his tattooed chest.