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.
Mala’s blade wasn’t—and she was only a breath away. The revenant abruptly froze, its ragged ears flicking backward, as if the creature suddenly recognized the danger thundering closer.
Gathering her legs beneath her, Mala vaulted from the saddle. The revenant whipped around as she flew toward it, propelled by Shim’s speed. Teeth like daggers, the creature lunged. Grunting, she swung her blade with enough force to spin her body in mid-air, red cloak flaring open. Her weapon razed its emaciated neck, steel slicing through the gristle and slinging its stinking blood in a wide arc.
She landed hard halfway up the piled sacks of grain. Seeds spilled over her boots like sand. The revenant’s head rolled past her feet. Atop the stack, the youth stared down at her with the creature’s rancid blood splattered in a crimson path across his chest.
Mala leapt over the long-tooth’s headless corpse and scrambled up the pile. “Get down, boy!”
As if suddenly remembering the revenant stalking him from the cart, he paled and spun to face it, brandishing his small knife. Not getting down, as she’d told him to.
Curse it all. She snatched up a grain sack and flung it at the backs of his knees. His legs collapsed at the same moment the revenant pounced at his head. Mala braced her feet and greeted the creature, instead. Her blade rammed into its chest. Fetid breath gushed from its snapping mouth, only a handbreadth from her face. She ripped the steel through its heart.
With her foot, she shoved the creature’s convulsing body off her sword and stole a glance toward the cliffs. Shim had caught up to the revenant dragging the child. Most of the creatures still swarmed over the warrior and his horse—as if in the shrieking chaos of their numbers, they didn’t realize their opponent had already fallen. Mala didn’t know whether she had the rot in the revenants’ brains or the goddess Vela to thank for their confusion, but it meant that the caravan wasn’t yet overwhelmed by the creatures, and she could more easily cut down the handful of revenants attacking the travelers. When Shim returned, together they would slaughter the ravenous swarm, but the people within the barricade needed her help first.
On the ground, a gray-haired woman clutched a pitchfork in her wizened hands. Her shoulders butting up against the wagon’s side, the crone desperately held off a wulfen revenant, stabbing the tines at its slobbering jaws. Two shouting men clubbed a befouled spitting lizard, smashing the spines circling its leathery neck, though it was too late to save the woman pinned beneath its claws. Children screamed and scrambled and hid. A frantic horse pitched and bucked, striking a revenant in the throat, then a glancing blow to a fleeing woman’s hip, sending her sprawling to the ground. Everywhere Mala looked there was blood, and the air was filled with cries of terror and the stench of death.
No more. Gripping the hilt of her sword in two hands, she took a flying leap off the wagon and into the fray. A single blow cleaved the wulfen revenant’s spine. Rain pelted her face as she charged the next, meeting razored fangs with hard-edged steel, and the creature’s hot blood sprayed over her hands.
Each breath, each step, another swing of her blade. No slowing, no stopping. Too late, the revenants within the barricade understood that they’d pursued their individual prey too quickly, that they should have mobbed this new foe, but by the time the creatures began attacking her in twos and threes, they were the last—and two or three would never defeat her.
Sweat mingled with the rain and blood by the time she kicked away the final stinking corpse and faced the wagons nearest the cliffs. Around her, the travelers cried out in relief, but Mala could not join them. This wasn’t finished; the second wave of creatures should be coming. Yet no new revenants were storming over the barricade.
Did they still swarm over the fallen warrior? She couldn’t hear their shrieking now. Over the travelers’ din, all else was quiet.
Carefully, she slipped between two loaded wagons and glanced out. A revenant’s head flew past her shoulder and thunked against a buckboard. Astonishment pulled her up short.
The warrior still lived. Knee-deep in slaughtered revenants, his blade gory and his body soaked by the carnage. He chopped through the neck of the last and swung toward her, his face a mask of blood and the unseeing madness of battle still burning in his eyes.
And she was a stranger. Mala immediately spread her hands, the haft of her sword dangling from her loosened fingers, trying to present as little threat as possible.
“It is finished, warrior!”