So, when the Mad Horde King steered his pyroki towards the edge, I said, “Please, I don’t want to go in there.”
He said nothing, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, and soon I was craning my neck up to look at the line of trees that guarded its entrance. The glimmering, shifting waves of the sunset were soon blocked out by the shadowed canopy of their vine-laden branches.
“Kakkari writes our destinies before we are ever born into this world,” came his voice. It was…surprisingly soft. “You should not be so afraid all the time.”
I swallowed. I didn’t think I believed that. Because if that were so, Kakkari was a cruel goddess. How could I think anything different when she had already written my father’s death, my grandmother’s death, both of whom had only given their love to their family? What of the countless deaths of our villagers? They’d been senseless, gruesome murders. Or of the terrible things that my sister had to endure at the hands of her Ghertun sibi?
“You think if I’m meant to die today, then nothing I do will matter?” I questioned.
“Lysi,” was his clipped response.
I was strangely annoyed, hurt even, by the sentiment. Those emotions loosened my tongue and I asked, “Then how do you think Kakkari wrote your end?”
He chuffed out a breath, the arm that braced my back tightening. “Most likely in battle.”
“Because you were born for bloodshed and war?”
His red gaze flashed down to me. I didn’t expect the delight in his gaze. The malice there.
“Lysi,” he purred. “Why else would I be in this world?”
“You think you’re only a killer?”
He grunted but didn’t reply.
“And yet, you are a leader,” I said softly. “A Vorakkar. If you were only meant to kill, why would Kakkari not have simply made you a warrior? Why craft you into a king?”
I didn’t need to use my gift to know that my words struck him. His jaw tightened. His eyes flashed.
He growled, “You know nothing, vekkiri.”
I didn’t understand him. Not at all.
Below us, his pyroki stilled.
The horde king froze.
My heart rate suddenly ticked up, my spine tingling. Danger? Unconsciously, my hand curled around the furs of his cloak, pressing closer to his body.
“Be very still,” he rasped into my ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his hand go to the hilt of his sword.
“What is it?” I whispered, hardly daring to breathe.
“Jrikkia pack.”
I didn’t know what that was but I cast my gaze wildly around the clearing. We hadn’t ventured far into the forest, but far enough that it was dark and cold. That was when I noticed it was dead silent. There was no sound, no insects buzzing or wildlife scampering across the floor or creatures crooning in the trees.
That was when I saw them. Black, unblinking eyes that glittered like jewels from the darkness. A set of eyes that made my heart speed, that made me want to recoil in horror.
They were just ahead of us. The horde king had said there was a pack? Which meant there were more?
A slight whispering sound across the forest floor came from our right. Before I realized what was happening, the Vorakkar unsheathed his sword and, with a quick blurring arc of his arm, plunged it into the head of a giant black beast that had leapt towards us out of nowhere.
I cried out in alarm. And then I heard the pyroki below us make a horrible keening cry before we were both thrown off its back. Another of the beasts had attached itself to the pyroki’s flank, digging its massive clawed talons into its side, and the impact had dismounted us.
When I fell, I hit the ground hard and all my breath rushed from my lungs. I gasped, trying to get air, my gaze flying around the clearing, trying to see how many there were.
“Get to the tree!” the Vorakkar ordered, already rushing towards his pyroki, who was trying to buck the black jrikkia off its flank. The horde king swung his bloodied sword at the beast and cut through the joints of its claws, which were still imbedded in the pyroki. A loud, anguished growl echoed as the jrikkia thudded to the ground and then the Mad Horde King plunged the tip of his sword into its head, its body going slack.
When I looked back to the pyroki, two of the dismembered claws were still hanging from its flank. Black blood poured from the horde king’s creature,