Night Shift (Kate Daniels #6.5)(96)

“Three,” she said softly. “Two men and one woman. Two others will only survive the night with Nemek’s blessing. There are a few who might lose a limb, or who might not rise from their sleep until many days have passed, but they will live. Some livestock will have to be put down before the revenants’ poison transforms them.”

Hoofbeats neared. Shim. Mala glanced at the stallion. Sweat lathered his flanks and crimson spattered his legs. Nearer to the cliffs, a revenant lay pulped on the ground, and the woman with the bloodied shoulder was carrying the sobbing child back toward the caravan.

She looked to the warrior again. He was watching her with an unwavering gaze, the whites of his eyes a piercing contrast to the red masking his face. A thick and tangled beard hung to his chest and dripped blood onto his molded leather breastplate. If he wore a crest upon his armor, the gore concealed it.

The blood couldn’t conceal the rips in his woven tunic and slashes in the winter furs belted over his loose brocs. What hadn’t been protected by armor had been shredded by the revenants’ teeth and claws. Though she couldn’t see the flesh beneath his clothing, the muscles of his legs and back must have been gashed as badly as his arms.

That might be why he hadn’t yet taken a step since the madness had passed. He had to be in agony. “Have you anyone in this caravan who will see to your wounds, warrior?”

He abruptly looked away from her. “No. I only ride alongside them.”

As a hired man. But she’d already guessed as much. Though a few travelers had peered over the wagons, none had called to him with concern. They’d only been making certain that the revenants were dead.

So she would tend to him, warrior to warrior. Not yet. He still hadn’t moved—probably because he didn’t know if his next step would bring him to his knees. Mala’s pride would have pinned her in place, too. If he had to fall, best to give him privacy to do it.

She turned away. “I’ll see to the livestock.”

No response from the warrior. Instead his penetrating gaze returned to her face, and he silently watched as she gestured Shim closer and retrieved the single-bladed axe lashed to her saddle. She pushed the handle into her belt, then dragged the tack from Shim’s sweating back.

“Scout the entrance to the maze to make certain that no other revenants are lying in wait,” she told the stallion. “Then take your ease. I’ll rub you down when we’ve finished here.”

With a nicker and a soft butt of his head into her chest, he trotted off. Glad to be away from the stinking pile of revenants, most likely. Probably glad to be away from the wailing humans, too.

She glanced at the warrior. Shadowed by heavy black brows, his dark gaze followed the stallion before he suddenly turned his head, searching the ground. He stilled again when his gaze lit upon the heap of corpses, and all expression wiped from his face, as if a cold wind had scraped across a bare rock.

His horse, Mala realized. His mount’s body lay beneath the carnage. Perhaps he’d been attached to the animal, and perhaps it had only been useful to him—but a hired warrior was only worth as much as his steed, and if his mount died, often several seasons passed before he could earn enough to buy another. Sometimes years.

Mala only had to look at this warrior’s face to know the gray horse’s death was a devastating loss . . . and to know that he would not welcome her sympathy.

Her chest tight, she strode around the wagons, the red cloak sweeping out behind her. Ahead, two men squabbled over a limping ox. A gray-hair held a butcher’s blade. The younger barred his way. They both fell silent when Mala pushed past them, and she ended the argument with a swing of her axe. Another valuable animal dead—but this one not a complete loss.

She pointed to the teeth marks on the ox’s flank. “Cut away the poisoned flesh. The remaining meat can be saved.”

Without waiting for a response, she sought the next infected ox. The old butcher followed her—his knife sheathed now, and his gaze on Mala, not the animal. “It has been many years since anyone wearing the questing cloak has passed through Blackmoor.”

Probably not since Anumith the Destroyer had razed Vela’s temples and slaughtered her oracles. A full generation. Mala did not say that in her homeland of Krimathe, old men such as he were just as rare. The Destroyer hadn’t left any young men alive, so there were none to grow old.

She only said, “I am not passing through—and don’t eat this one.” Teeth clenched, she silenced a bloodied and bleating goat. The animal’s eyes had already begun to redden; the poison had infected its brain. “What fouled these creatures?”

“A tusker,” the old man said.

Her breath stopped in her chest. A long-haired mountain of an animal, tuskers were strong and aggressive, with enormous jaws guarded by long, razored tusks. A beast, if ever there was one. “Possessed by a demon?”

“It is.”

Then unlike the revenants, the tusker wasn’t poisoned. A demon’s evil inhabited the beast’s flesh, instead, giving it terrible strength beyond its own. Because a demon had great power, but like a god, it needed flesh to use that power. Unlike gods, however, the demon didn’t work through the living or the willing; demons possessed dead flesh, which could give no consent—and could not withdraw it. After a demon inhabited a body, its corruption fouled all that it touched. The possessed creature could only be stopped if its magical protections were breached and the demon within slain, or if a sorcerer released it from the flesh.