And perhaps one hired soldier. A mercenary, maybe, or a roaming warrior who earned his coin as he traveled. A dark figure mounted on a gray horse, he halted on the side of the road, as if studying her as Mala studied him. He would see no more detail across the distance than she did—Mala would be a red-cloaked figure atop a brown horse—but the color of her cloak would tell him enough. Only those who quested for Vela wore such garments.
For good or ill, the cloak always drew notice. The goddess favored and protected those who served her, and seeing Mala inspired in some strangers the hope that the terrors wrought by Anumith the Destroyer were coming to an end. But Mala had also encountered those who had challenged Vela’s protection, most of them determined to prove that the goddess was weaker than the demons and demigods they worshiped.
Mala wore those challengers’ teeth, too. She hadn’t even needed to call upon the goddess to defeat them. When she’d faced groups of more than three or four, Shim had come to her aid, instead.
Now she told him, “Be easy, friend.”
The appearance of these strangers was an unexpected boon. Shim would have a fresh trail to follow through the maze, and if they weren’t averse to talking, Mala could learn more about the beast she’d come to find.
As the stallion started forward again, Mala’s attention returned to the mounted warrior. He’d ridden to the tail of the caravan, waiting near the crevice as the last of the travelers emerged. Mala frowned. Instead of walking at a steady pace, now they rushed ahead. The caravan had stopped, the train breaking apart as wagons and carts drove off the sides of the road and clustered into a group.
Circling, she realized. Creating a defensive wall. Against what?
The warrior’s gray horse pranced uneasily. Steel glinted at its side. His rider had drawn a sword, and he backed his mount away from the crevice.
Shim suddenly pitched to a halt, ears laid flat against his head and nostrils flaring. Mala’s thighs gripped his sides, her body swaying with the abrupt motion. Furtive movement drew her gaze to the cliffs surrounding the maze’s entrance. Shadows crept across the bleak stone face.
Dread filled her stomach. Revenants.
The creatures would rip the humans apart.
“Shim!” she cried, crouching low over his neck and gripping his thick mane in her left hand.
The stallion surged forward. The beat of his hooves quickened, each powerful stride cleaving the distance. The wind and rain blasted Mala’s cheeks and whipped tears from her eyes, but she kept her gaze on the slinking shadows. While unmoving, they had only appeared as crags on the rock face, but their hunt betrayed their positions. Almost three dozen of the creatures. Once, they might have been goats or dogs or ponies. Befouled by demons, revenants only faintly resembled the animals they’d once been—and most animals couldn’t have traversed that sheer cliff face, yet they slithered across it like sinuous spiders.
Still four sprints away. Each sprint measured the distance that a good horse could race without flagging, yet Shim was still gaining speed. Few mounts could have matched his swiftness or endurance.
But they wouldn’t be swift enough. The revenants were gathering high above the warrior’s head, beyond the reach of his sword or spear. If they charged him one at a time, he might stand a chance. But that wasn’t how revenants fought. They would strike all at once to overwhelm the strongest foe, then individually pick off the weaker prey. Only when the slaughter was finished would they return to devour their kill.
Hold them off, warrior. Unslinging her bow, Mala didn’t tear her gaze from the man who faced his oncoming death with his sword held firm. Stay alive as long as you can. I am coming.
The warrior continued backing his mount farther from the cliff, gaining more distance and more time to prepare for the creatures’ inevitable attack. Behind him, other men and women abandoned their attempts to corral panicking livestock behind the safety of the wagons. It didn’t matter. Whether running free or tied to a cart, the animals would find no protection after the humans fell, and their barricade would not stop the revenants.
Perhaps the travelers’ arrows would. Three figures had clambered atop the wagons with bows in hand. Others stood with pitchforks and scythes. The mounted warrior raised his sword high in the air. The archers aimed at the squirming mass of gathered revenants and drew back their strings.
The warrior swept his blade forward. The archers loosed their arrows.
Like pus from a lanced boil, the revenants burst away from the cliff and poured down its stone face in a dark flood of teeth and claws.
Mala’s heart bolted against her ribs. “By Temra’s fist, Shim—faster!”
Flying couldn’t be faster, yet Shim’s huge body surged ever harder as the wave of demon-fouled creatures swamped the warrior. The gray horse reared, forelegs striking. For an instant, its rider was raised above the swarming mass. His sword flashed in powerful strokes.
He was still swinging his blade when the revenants overwhelmed his horse and pulled him under.
Teeth clenched, Mala held back her shout of rage. Silver-fingered Rani would soon carry that man into Temra’s arms—and the revenants’ blood would soon spill in a river over Mala’s feet.
Only two sprints remaining. Still too far for her arrows.
A revenant slipped from the writhing pile atop the fallen warrior and streaked toward the wagons. Another followed. Another.
Screams pierced the distance. Terrified women, men, children. The revenants’ skin-crawling shrieks and howls joined in. As if to escape the horrifying cacophony, a frenzied ox fought against its harness, whipping its hooked horns from side to side. The wagon behind it jolted forward. Suddenly unbalanced, an archer standing on the driver’s bench toppled to the ground and scrambled underneath a nearby cart. A revenant followed him. More of the creatures climbed over the sides of the barricade and slipped beneath the wagons.
Pulse pounding in her ears, Mala counted the beats as Shim’s swift strides carried them nearer to her arrows’ range. Only a few more breaths.
A revenant bounded from the left side of the barricade, dragging a small child by the arm. A screaming woman ran after him, her shoulder stained with blood. The boy was still moving, toes and knees digging at the ground as if trying to find purchase on the rain-slicked earth.
Swiftly, Mala sat up. Her wet bowstring released with a taut flict, spitting rainwater over her wrist. The arrow fell short of the revenant—and the next would only fall shorter as the foul thing raced toward the cliff.
She crouched over Shim’s neck again. “Carry me to the caravan!” she shouted into the wind. “Then save the child if you can!”
At a full gallop he approached the wagons. Arrow notched, Mala searched for a target, but the barricade blocked her view of the people and revenants within the circle, and she dared not loose her arrows on the creatures fighting the humans atop the wagons. While riding at this speed, her aim was not so true, and she might hit the travelers, instead.
Her blade would not miss. Slinging her bow, she reached for her sword and fixed her gaze on the nearest wagon. “That one!” she cried.
Without slowing, Shim struck a course that would take her past it. A yellow-haired youth crouched atop the sacks of grain stacked high on the wagon’s bed. With a small knife, he slashed wildly in the direction of a revenant stalking him from a nearby cart, as if to keep it at bay. At his back, another revenant scaled the side of the wagon in a single leap. Once, it might have been a long-toothed snow cat. Now nothing remained of its thick white fur, and its blood-blackened hide hung loosely over emaciated flesh. Jute sacks ripped open beneath the creature’s talons as it clawed its way closer to the boy. Alerted by the noise, the youth spun to confront it, his eyes wide and his mouth a pink rictus of terror. His blade was shorter than the revenant’s canine teeth.