With a loud honk, the linen thief whirled and dodged into the grass, the red wattle waving like a flag as the bird raced through the tall stalks.
Beneath her, the horse’s muscles bunched. Maddek’s hard chest pressed against her back and she leaned forward, gripping the saddle tight as the Parsatheans surged forward as one.
This was not the first time they had raced together in this way. Yet before, wonder had filled Yvenne, exhilaration. Now only fear clutched her throat and pounded through her veins as she desperately clung to the pommel. Other warriors pressed in around them—the Dragon’s protection a shield of their own horses and bodies. Wind whipped tears from her eyes. She didn’t dare shift her weight and glance behind, probably couldn’t have seen anything past Maddek anyway. Only what was forward and directly to the side. She looked over as Danoh turned in her saddle to loose an arrow behind. An unholy screech answered as if the arrow had found its mark, but Yvenne could not imagine what creature might make such a terrible noise. Even the blood wraiths had not sounded so viscerally ravenous.
The linen thieves bolted out of the grass and onto the road ahead of Kelir. A scream of warning ripped from Yvenne, but the birds were not bent on attack. Balls of fluff were tucked beneath their small wings as they sprinted ahead down the road. Carrying their young away instead of trying to fight the revenants coming from behind—and that was more terrifying than anything else, that the predators even the Parsatheans had feared were fleeing the foul creatures.
Though he was directly behind her, Maddek had to shout over the thunder of her heart and the hooves. “Does Aezil want you dead?”
She shook her head. Her brother didn’t . . . or so she’d believed. As a bride and Nyset’s heir, she was more valuable to them alive. But if Aezil had sent these revenants after them, Yvenne couldn’t be so certain.
Her answer seemed to change the tension in Maddek’s form behind her. He didn’t shout again, yet must have communicated a command to the others because Kelir held up his fist in acknowledgment.
That order was apparently to find a defensible location. They splashed across a wide stream and Kelir came to a halt. All the warriors suddenly seemed in purposeful motion, the horses snorting and prancing in wide circles. Relief filled Yvenne when she saw Steel and Bone at Fassad’s heels.
Swiftly Kelir dismounted. “Put your bride on mine.”
Yvenne knew not what he meant, but she found herself placed atop Kelir’s horse a moment later.
“Stay mounted,” Maddek told her, though he and most of the other warriors were abandoning their saddles as well. “This gelding won’t bolt while we fight—but if we are overwhelmed, ride at speed until you find a village.”
Yvenne could do nothing except nod, her breath coming in heaving rushes. Her own horse and the others Maddek had bought were untrusted to remain steady while the revenants attacked, and only Toric and Danoh were mounted now. Yvenne was sitting amid the riderless horses, the Parsathean mounts on either side of her, the newer ones tied together in a snorting, nervous line.
Ahead, the warriors formed an arc across the road—preparing to fight any revenants who crossed the stream. The creatures would be exposed while fording the waters, so there could be no unexpected attacks from the grasses around them.
“Aezil will not risk his sister,” Maddek told them. “So he will fly the eagle in close to better control the revenants. We hold here until Danoh and Toric take Aezil’s eyes.”
By shooting the eagle from the sky. Still panting from that desperate ride, Yvenne watched the trails through the grass, counting more than a dozen now, some faster than others. Most warriors were not mounted to see. She had opened her mouth to call out a warning when Fassad gave it instead—alerted by the wolves, she realized.
The creature that burst through the grasses on the opposite side of the stream had once been a linen thief but was now a shambling horror within a loose rotting skin covered in ragged feathers. It darted into the stream, hissing wetly from a gristly throat, slowed by the knee-deep water.
“Fassad!” Maddek said.
The warrior’s arrow pierced its skull with a fleshy thunk. Another revenant erupted from the grasses—a louth. The same sort of creature that had rooted harmlessly near Yvenne’s head that morning, diseased and flying toward them on its splayed feet. This time Banek’s arrow felled it while crossing the stream.
“He is raising more corpses from nearby,” Kelir said grimly. “Even a revenant louth is not fast enough to have caught up to us.”
And could not have been one of creatures that had been behind them at the edge of the linen thieves’ territory.
The eagle soared nearer, and Yvenne watched with held breath as first Danoh and then Toric loosed arrows. Danoh’s sharp curse followed when they both missed—though not by much. Yvenne’s heart thundered as they tried again before the eagle circled north, away from the stream.
More revenants approached, and she bit her tongue to stop from calling out the warning, knowing it wasn’t needed and might be a distraction. Each of the warriors faced where the wolves indicated . . . but no revenant burst through.
“It stopped at the edge of the grasses,” Yvenne called out. She saw the uneasy glance Kelir and Maddek shared then. “What is it?”
“Your brother has realized that we will defeat the revenants easily if they cross one at a time.” It was Banek who answered her. “So he will gather them there until he can make them attack in great numbers.”
“He is no experienced sorcerer,” Kelir said, with a glance at Yvenne. “Is he?”
“I do not believe so. I never felt this magic when he lived in the citadel in Syssia—and he only took Rugus’s throne a few seasons past.”
“Then he will not find it easy to hold the revenants here and reanimate more and chase our archers.” Maddek looked to Toric and Danoh. “Ride.”
Both warriors looked pleased by that command. Together they charged north through the grasses and Yvenne followed their progress as it abruptly shifted east—across the stream again.
The eagle made two tighter circles above a rock covered by a swarm of birds before angling east. At first Toric and Danoh seemed to be heading in the wrong direction, not toward the eagle at all, until Yvenne realized they were cutting across the wide circle Aezil’s familiar was making.
“How many, Yvenne?”
Maddek’s voice brought her gaze swinging back to the grasses across the stream. She was the only one with a view over the tall stalks now. “I think . . . eight or nine wait.”
Grimly he nodded. “That is my count. They are not quiet in their approach.”
“At least a dozen more are coming.” Approaching from the wide expanse of grasses, the trails they made far apart yet clearly converging in this direction. Nervously her gaze shot back to Toric and Danoh, who rode not far from some of the revenants’ trails, but the creatures seemed not at all interested in the riders galloping through the grasses. She didn’t know if her brother hadn’t noticed the Parsathean archers or if he simply couldn’t split his focus in that way.