She slipped around his broad shoulder—and sighed. Just as she’d thought. He wouldn’t let anyone attend to him, but he couldn’t reach his own back.
Mala held out her hand. “The salve,” she said.
He began to turn. “Don’t risk—”
She jammed her thumb into his torn flesh—a bite wound, already swollen and red. Every muscle in his back went rigid. His breath hissed.
“I am not tending to you,” she said. “If your Lord Barin sees this, then it will be said that I am torturing you. Can you withstand it?”
Mala knew he could, because the evidence on his back told her he’d withstood far worse. Not just the revenants’ claws and teeth, but more old battle wounds, and the pale stripes of a whip. Had he been enslaved? If so, he must have been young. The edges of the scars had softened with age.
From what she could see, it was the only part of him that had softened. The rest was hard. So very hard. “The salve,” she repeated.
Jaw clenched, he lifted the pot over his shoulder, as if to pass it to her.
“Hold it there for me,” she said and dipped her fingers in. His back stiffened again as she smoothed the cream over the bite.
A frown darkened his blood-masked face as he looked over his shoulder. “That is not torture.”
She hadn’t said it would be painful. Her hand slicked forward around his side, her fingers skimming the skin at the edge of his belt. His big body tightened all at once, thick muscles straining. A laugh rumbled from him, cut short by a groan, then he hung his head and was silent.
Mala grinned and soothed salve across parallel slashes low on his back, then slipped her hand beneath the furs to test the hardness of his ass.
Like glorious steel.
“If you didn’t stink of revenant, I’d taste you all over,” she told him.
A rough sound reverberated through his chest, like another laugh that was strangled before it emerged. Hoarsely he asked, “Will you have me? Will you destroy me completely?”
“I cannot,” she said with real regret.
“Then your touch is torture enough.” A shudder ripped through him, then he stilled again. “Will you give me your name, red one?”
“Mala.” High Daughter of the House of Krima, second in line to the Ivory Throne, and one of Vela’s Chosen. “And yours is Kavik.”
“Only to those who’ve known me longest.”
“And what does someone call you if she’s known you a day?”
His hesitation told her that he took no pride in his current name. “I would have you call me Kavik.”
So she would. “Why do you only escort them as far as the river?”
“The revenants attack anyone leaving this land, but they don’t follow any travelers beyond the bridge.”
“You expected to fight them.”
“Yes. But never so many before.”
“How many times before?” She recalled the bones and shattered wagons littering the sides of the road—and how they’d been weathered and old. “When did you begin?”
“I returned to Blackmoor five summers ago. Since then, those people who want to leave this land come to me.”
Most of those bones had been there longer than five years. So Kavik had stopped the revenants from slaughtering the travelers. Yet the creatures still continued to attack—and though other people risked their lives to leave Blackmoor, he had come back.
But Kavik didn’t give her a chance to ask why he had returned. He slowly tensed again, but not by her touch—instead he was frowning at Shim. “Your mount was bitten.”
Mala had already seen to the shallow wound on the stallion’s chest. But that likely wasn’t what concerned the warrior. “He won’t become a revenant.”
Disbelief filled his voice. “He’s one of the Hanani?”
A descendant of the god Hanan, who had not only speared his cock into humans but had also fucked every animal he encountered, no matter how big or small. Those born of his seed were often gifted with abilities beyond the natural. Shim was far stronger and smarter than any other horse she’d ever encountered—but most Hanani animals didn’t associate with humans. Shim’s herd had resided in the highlands west of Krimathe.
“He is,” Mala said.
“He allows you to ride him?” Slowly he turned to face her, his shadowed eyes searching her features. “You must be favored by the gods.”
“No. I am only favored by one horse.” And only because Mala was patient and stubborn, and she’d promised Shim that he would stomp on many men’s heads during their travels.
“And a goddess.” His gaze fell to her cloak. “You are a Narae warrior?”
One of the wandering women who served Vela and enforced her laws. Those warriors wore dark crimson cloaks—and most traveling women who claimed to be Narae were not, but simply used the cloak to protect themselves from assault. A bandit couldn’t risk being mistaken, because any man who attacked the wrong woman wearing a crimson cloak was a dead man.
But this man knew Mala wasn’t a false warrior. “No. I travel on my sacred quest.”
“From Vela?” The words were rough. When she nodded, his eyes closed. “Did she send the quest to you in dreams?”
“No, warrior. She speaks to some that way. Not to me. I visited a priestess, instead.”
Her reply seemed to open some torment within him, and for an instant the agony in his gaze was deeper than any wound he’d received. Then his face hardened, as did his voice, though the grittiness remained. “And she sent you here?”
“Apparently I am to find the demon tusker.”
The scar in his cheek whitened. “She sent you to die?”
“I hope not.” Mala trusted the goddess hadn’t. “Have you faced it?”
“Yes.”
“And lived?” Perhaps it wouldn’t be as difficult a task as Mala feared.
“Barely. Many of the men I fought with did not.” His gaze searched her face again, his jaw clenched and his nostrils flared, and Mala realized that he was stopping himself from forbidding her to go. He must have realized that she would, anyway. “Keep away from it, if you can. No blade or arrow can breach its hide and I’ve seen warriors cut in half by a blow from its tusks. Find some way to kill it from a distance.”
Mala didn’t intend to kill it, only to tame it. But she wouldn’t explain now. “Where will I find it?”
“It usually comes down from the mountains when the goddess turns her back.”
During the new moon—and the next was almost a full turn away. “Then it seems I will be in Blackmoor for a while. Perhaps I’ll see you again, warrior.” She hoped to. “Who should I ask for if I wish to find you?”
Eyes like stone, he took a full step back from her. “You would do best to say you have never spoken to or helped me.”
Perhaps. But she didn’t like that he retreated from her now, so she would see him again. “I don’t always do what is best. I only do what must be done.”
Kavik didn’t immediately respond. Instead he looked to the wagons when a hail came from that direction—the caravan was preparing to leave, and Mala still needed to give the salve to Telani and her injured boy.
He drew back another step, his gaze still on her. “Don’t drink or bathe in any of the rivers and lakes beyond the maze—they’ve been fouled by the demon. You’ll only find safe water in the wells dug in the city and villages.”
So that was why he would need the wineskin full of it. Mala didn’t. She would not always be in the city or villages if the beast was in the mountains, but she didn’t travel without protection. “Whilst I quest, Vela will bless and cleanse it for me.”
Though only if Mala asked. And if she was foolish enough to drink without asking, then she would get what she deserved.
Eyes like stone, Kavik shook his head. “The goddess has abandoned this land.”
“I am here, warrior.”
“That only means it is almost the end,” he said, and his voice was that of a man who did not dare to hope anymore. He only braced himself for worse. “Try to avoid the notice of the warlord.”