The horse stopped backing up. Its nostrils flared; its legs trembled.
“Whoa,” she repeated. She breathed it over and over, like a prayer, as much to steady herself as the horse as she edged closer through the squelching, blood-soaked earth. A few more steps and she could reach the stirrup. A few more steps and they would be on their way out of the fray.
From behind her came the crack of a gunshot. She ducked from sheer fear, hands flying to her ears. The reins ripped from her palms, leaving a searing burn in their wake. The horse reared; a flash of red streaked its hindquarters. A bullet had clipped it, flying just feet past Nena’s ear.
The horse bolted.
“No!” she screamed. “No, stop!”
She was alone.
Shouting behind her. It wasn’t Spanish.
Two Yanqui soldiers rode toward her. One raised a saber; its blade gleamed red and wet. The other leveled a gun at her.
There was nowhere to take cover.
Boots struck earth to her right. Out of the corner of her eye, Nena saw a vaquero’s hat. Someone seized her by the upper arm and pulled her back. The flash of a pistol.
Bang. Bang.
The smell of fresh gunpowder bloomed before her. Two more bodies fell to the earth. Two more horses freed of their riders bolted into the smoke.
Néstor put her between his body and his mare Luna, shielding her from the battle. The front of his shirt was dark—but it was with sweat, not blood. Blood—his or not?—darkened one of his filthy shirtsleeves. But he was safe. He was standing. Thank God. His eyes swept her from head to foot, searching her—as she had searched him—for any sign of injury.
“You need to get out of here,” he said, shouting to be heard over the fray. “Come.”
He thrust his gun into its holster and, with a hurried tug of her upper arm, turned her around to face his black mare.
A leg up, and she was in the saddle. The stirrups were too long for her feet to reach, but there was no time to fix them. She gathered the reins and looked down at Néstor, who still stood at her knee, one hand on the mare’s shoulder. He was murmuring soft things to the horse; she couldn’t see his face because of his hat until he looked up at her. It was streaked with sweat and dust.
“Ride west,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the din. “Don’t take the ferries—there’s a retreat. People keep crowding them and drowning. West, the river is shallow—I heard the Yanquis say they sent spies to cross there.”
But smoke hung over the battlefield like a fog, impenetrably thick. There were no landmarks that would guide her the ten miles to the river. Not even the sun.
“I’m not leaving without you,” she said. “I can’t.”
She couldn’t. He was unarmed, defenseless. She would not leave him to be lost among the bloodshed, to be shot or trampled or worse.
“Come with me,” she said. “Can you ride behind me?”
His mouth opened softly; if he was going to reply, he never did. He turned on his heel and began running away from her.
“Néstor?” she called, panic rising in her voice as she gathered the reins. The mare, too, raised her head in alarm. She couldn’t lose him. She would not leave him.
Néstor leaped over a fallen body and kept running. Nena looked beyond him: a horse with no rider in its Mexican-style saddle was cantering right toward him. Néstor whistled, then, as the horse pricked its ears and slowed, he ran toward the horse and vaulted into its saddle. He collected the loose reins and thrust his heels down in the stirrups to gain control and turn his horse in a new direction.
“This way!” he called to Nena.
They took off at a canter. The mare was as eager to follow Néstor as Nena was—though she shied from cannon fire, she seemed to trust that they were on their way out of danger. Néstor rode directly beside them, so close he could reach out and grab the mare’s bridle if he needed to as they dodged Yanqui soldiers. The fray began to thin as they rode; soon, the bodies littering the ground in haphazard piles outnumbered those still fighting. Beyond, a wide resaca gleamed among tree trunks.
“What the hell?” Néstor said, softly enough that Nena almost didn’t hear it.
Directly ahead of them, a trio of slim forms crouched over fallen Mexican soldiers, cradling them tenderly. For a split second, Nena assumed the figures meant to carry the soldiers away, perhaps to a field infirmary.
Cantering closer revealed that she was dead wrong.
One of the crouched figures raised its head.
The humanlike figure wore no clothes. It was gray, its head hairless and mottled; its chin was slicked with fresh blood, which dripped down its neck and over a band of metal that lay like a collar around its throat. At its side lay corpses that were shriveled and dry, desiccated as if they had been under the desert sun for weeks.
The figure dropped the soldier it was holding. The corpse hit the ground with a sickening thud; its head fell back, revealing a bright, wet wound at the throat.
A second monster raised its gore-slicked head from its prey. It had no eyes, but she knew it was looking at them as it rose to its full height. Spider-thin limbs, bloated belly, thin chest. Face gray as the smoke and long, vulturelike claws slick with gore.
She needed to scream. She couldn’t. Her mouth was too dry, her throat tight with terror as her mare shied away from the monsters, ears flat against her head and whites of her eyes flashing. Néstor’s mount shied away as well.
“Madre de Dios,” he gasped.
He reached forward, seized Nena’s mare’s bridle, and spurred his own horse forward. Their canter quickened, then broke into a gallop. Shock followed Nena even as they left the monsters behind.
It couldn’t be real. It had to be a hallucination.
Hooves squelched in softer earth; they slowed to a canter.
The zacahuistle grass around the resaca was thick; their canter shortened and slowed to a trot. Néstor released the bridle of Nena’s mare and rode slightly ahead of her, though he glanced over his shoulder at her every few strides, as if to check that she was still there.
Néstor stood in his stirrups to see through the trees. Then he sat quickly, one hand flying to his pistols. “Carajo.”
“What?” Nena asked.
“When I say go, we cut through the shallows and keep galloping. Do not stop. You hear me?”
Nena’s heart quickened. “What?”
“Go.”
He spurred his horse forward, lurching into a dead gallop. Nena followed; she leaned forward in the saddle, knees and thighs tightening to hold her seat, as they burst through the last of the river grasses.
Shouting in English rang in her ears.
Bang. Bang.
A bullet zipped past Nena’s head. A brutal, guttural sound that was someone crying out in pain. Néstor fired back at a pair of Yanquis. Judging from the fleeting glimpse she had of their uniforms as they fell backward into the mud, they were Rinches.
Then she and Néstor were charging into the marshy resaca. Water rose swiftly around them, as high as Nena’s stirrups, then rushed into her boots. The water rose to her knees. Her mare raised her head to keep it above water as they moved forward.
“I hate this.” Nena’s voice pitched sharp; panic rose to her lips as a sob. “I hate this.”
“Me too.” Néstor turned in his saddle to look at her. He was just ahead of her to the right. “It’s going to be all right. Keep moving.”
Cannon fire thrummed in the distance. Nena looked down at the murky water. She imagined it coming up to her chest, her neck, over her face, choking her . . .
A fierce desire to turn around overcame her. She needed to get out of the water. She needed out.
“Don’t look down,” Néstor called. “Look at me.”
She forced her chin up. He kept looking ahead of them then turning his face back to hers. “We’re almost there.”
They weren’t. They were in the middle of the resaca. Water was dark and cold around her knees as the mare lifted her head further. A sick lurch; Nena grasped the pommel. The horses were swimming.