“Help me and I will kill it!”
He whirled on her, eyes on fire. With steely arm he snatched her against his side, tucked between his body and his shield. “Banek!” he roared. “Take my bride and—”
“Maddek!” She reached up and jerked at his beard, slick with the blackened blood of revenants. “I am Nyset’s heir. The goddess Vela looks through my eyes. She will guide my aim. But I need your strength.”
His head snapped down, his dark gaze searching hers. Only a breath passed before he was suddenly behind her, all around her. His left hand gripped the bow beneath her grip, his fingers closed over her fingers, and it was as if his hands were hers when they pulled the bowstring together.
The creak of the wooden bow as it bent was the sweetest of music. She recalled Banek’s tale of Queen Venys, the stolen iron, and a beast felled with one arrow. The whiptail was many times larger than any kergen but surely had the same vulnerability.
“The eye?” she asked, because Yvenne believed it would be the same but could not be certain. Yet Maddek always saw every weakness.
“The eye,” he replied.
The whiptail thundered toward them, quaking the ground. She only had to look at her target and knew the aim was true, and as if her fingers were Maddek’s, he released as she did. The vibrating pting of the string filled her heart with such happiness that the slash of pain across her forearm was nothing. Never had an arrow’s flight seemed so swift and true. With held breath, she watched it streak upward before plunging into the whiptail’s infested eye.
For a long moment, she feared it might have been only another bee sting to the great beast. Another step the monster took, then another, and then suddenly it pitched forward. Almost slowly it seemed to fall, an endless beat before the impact of the enormous body shook the ground beneath her feet and blew through the grasses like a putrid gale storm, bending the stalks in a wave along the stream.
Sheer silence reigned for a moment. Silence from the warriors, from the revenants, even the buzzing of the insects quieted.
Then another wet growl sounded, and Maddek shifted his grip on the bow. “You used the wrong arm,” he told her.
And indeed she had, notching the arrow and using the grip most familiar to her, though her fingers were missing. But now he switched their grips, his right hand holding the bow beneath hers and supporting her missing fingers, his left hand assisting hers in notching the arrow on the string.
“The eye again,” he said when a miren revenant began fording the stream.
It mattered not that the target was smaller and guarded by armored spikes above the eye. Again Maddek’s fingers released when Yvenne’s did, and her arrow found its mark. The miren dropped dead halfway across the stream, submerged in the bloodied waters with the bodies of other revenants.
A whoop sounded from Kelir, and breathless laughter from the other warriors, and her own joy almost burst her heart.
“The next is a horse,” Maddek said. “The eyes are at the side of its head and not the front.”
“How can you tell what it is?” Yvenne could see nothing coming, could only hear it crash through the tall stalks.
“The rhythm of its steps,” he told her, and she could hear it now, too—a pattern that had become so familiar during this journey. “We are directly in front, so it will turn its head to better see us. Let loose the arrow then.”
She did, and the charging beast plunged to the ground. Immediately she turned toward the sound of more hooves pounding through the grasses.
This time Maddek halted her aim. “That is Danoh and Toric.”
Both riding, Yvenne was relieved to see. But behind her, Maddek stiffened.
“Were you bit?”
A bloody gash on Toric’s leg was already reddened and swollen. The young warrior nodded, though he was grinning as he held up a spotted pelt. “Though I have a new fur to wear.”
Danoh stared at the fallen whiptail with furrowed brow, and then she eyed Yvenne with Maddek behind her, their hands still ready on her bow. Any question she might have had was answered when another revenant burst from the grasses and together they loosed a bow that pierced its eye.
Laughing, Ardyl dipped the blade of her glaive into the stream to wash the steel clean. “Maddek’s bride was not boasting! With practice, she will be the finest hunter with bow and arrow we have ever seen.”
From her perch atop the horse, Danoh looked out over the grasses. “That is the last one—or at least the last one near enough to see.”
A maelstrom of conflicting emotions filled Yvenne. Sorry there were not more to kill and exhilarated by what she and Maddek had done and glad the danger was over—then utterly surprised when Maddek’s massive arms suddenly wrapped around her, and she felt the press of his face into her hair.
Holding her so close, so tight. As if she were more to him than a vessel.
Then his voice sounded low and harsh in her ear, hot with anger. “You vowed to follow orders that would keep you safe, yet you disobeyed.”
Hurt speared through her. “I vowed I would not fail in my duty toward you and your Dragon. Killing the whiptail kept us all safe.”
“Your duty is not to protect us.”
With aching heart she argued, “It is a queen’s duty to protect—”
“You are not their queen yet, but only my bride. When you have strength of your own, you may kill all the whiptails you like. Otherwise you will stay on the horse.”
Abruptly he let her go, then lifted her astride Kelir’s gelding again. His face was grim as he looked to Toric. “There will be more coming. We must find a more defensible camp. Can you ride hard now?”
The young warrior nodded.
But he would not for long. Not with the revenant’s poison within him.
Maddek turned to Kelir. “Do we have any of Nemek’s potions with us?”
Made by that god’s blessed healers, and which might draw out the poison to prevent the dangerous fever. The scarred warrior shook his head. His gore-painted face a mask of tension, Maddek glanced up at Yvenne. She knew what he silently asked.
Throat tight, she said, “I have none, either.” And warriors did not wish for what they did not have.
But this time, they all did.
CHAPTER 21
YVENNE
They had ridden quickly that morning, but it was nothing compared to the pace they set for the remainder of the day. Three times, revenants caught up to the riders. The creatures were no longer under her brother’s control but were still fixated on the humans as prey, their scent easy to trail on the road—and unlike the horses, the revenants never needed to slow or to rest.