Weapon raised, he stared at her, his body frozen in place but for the heaving of his broad chest. Studded leather bracers guarded his forearms, but the corded muscles of his upper arms were bare. The revenants’ claws had scored ragged furrows in his flesh.
Not just blinded by the frenzy of battle, she realized, but by pain. Viscous crimson matted his dark hair and lay thick over his clothes and skin. She couldn’t tell how much of the blood was his, but he hadn’t fought through the swarm of revenants and emerged unscathed.
Vela, help him. And Mala, too. She had defeated men of his size before—men who had been so certain of victory when they’d faced her, simply because of their great heights and the strength in their thickly muscled arms. She had defeated men more heavily armored than this one. But when battle-madness possessed warriors, it bestowed upon them a wholly different kind of strength, one that did not falter with injury. Pain fed the bloodlust and rage, and they couldn’t be stopped except by death.
The bloodlust had probably saved his life. Even Mala could not have survived so many revenants. Not alone—unless the madness of battle had possessed her, too. But if he came for her now, one of them would die by it.
Mala didn’t want to die. And she didn’t want to kill the man who had stood firm and risked everything to protect the people in the caravan. Such warriors were far too rare in these cursed lands.
“It is finished,” she repeated, more quietly this time. “Your sword has feasted on the flesh of every revenant at your feet, and those that made it over the barricade have been slain—”
“You have come.” His harsh interruption startled her to silence. “Finally come.”
He dropped his sword. Mala’s heart jumped against her ribs, and she started forward, thinking that she would have to catch him before he collapsed into the pile of corpses, but he began to wade through the carnage, instead.
Wading toward her—and the bloodlust in his eyes had been joined by fierce hunger.
“I waited for you, little dragon,” he said roughly. “Every night, I dreamed of you. And now I will have you.”
CHAPTER 2
No. Mala would not be had like this.
“Warrior, do not come closer,” she warned. “You’ve waited for nothing.”
“Nothing? No.” Triumphant laughter filled the warrior’s eyes and voice. “You have come and it is not the end.”
Easily Mala spun the haft in her palm and gripped her sword properly. “It will be.”
He grinned, his teeth white in that face of red. Bits of flesh and blood dripped in a trail behind him. “You know me, little dragon.”
Little dragon. He spoke the name as if to a loved one. Did he even see her, or did he see someone else? Was the madness putting a false vision behind his eyes?
Curse it all. Mala didn’t want to kill him. Yet if he took a few more steps, she would rip open his throat. It didn’t matter that he was unarmed. He was tall, towering over her, and his shoulders were twice the breadth of hers. Combined with the bloodlust, his strength and size made him as dangerous as ten men with swords.
She raised her blade and hoped either the sight of her weapon or the steel in her voice would pierce his senses before it was too late. “I don’t know you, warrior. But if you come closer, I’ll be on intimate terms with your still-beating heart.”
His grin faltered—as did his step. Hoarsely, he asked, “You don’t know me?”
So he had heard her. “I don’t,” she said.
He halted. Confusion darkened his laughter into a frown, then sudden awareness flared across his face in a painful spasm. Abruptly his fists clenched at his sides and he closed his eyes, as if shutting out the sight of her. His heaving breaths became slow and controlled.
The madness was passing, she realized—and he must be feeling his injuries. Mala’s tension eased, but although she lowered her blade, she didn’t glance away from him and didn’t drop her guard.
Finally she asked, “Are you yourself again?”
Mala didn’t know who that was, but she suspected it was not the man who had come for her with that wild and ecstatic grin. That suspicion was confirmed when he looked at her, and instead of laughter there was only the hardness of stone.
When he spoke again, his voice was as rough as the side of a mountain and as bleak as the cliffs. “How many?”
He did not ask how many revenants, Mala understood. This was every honorable warrior’s curse—to never remember the number of lives saved, and to never forget how many he hadn’t. The sounds of relief coming from within the barricade had given way to the grieving wails of the living and the agonized cries of the wounded. Now that the bloodlust was fading, he must hear them.