One of the women stabbed her spear at the Goat’s leg, but he snatched it and backhanded the rider off her horse, a booming laugh issuing from his cruel muzzle as she tumbled through the air.

He laughed and tore at the horses, the men, the remaining women. Blood spurted from ripped limbs, panicked shrieks echoed through the open air, horses cried and wheeled. One horse sprinted away from the maw, a headless torso bobbing in the saddle until it flopped to the ground.

“What—” Anji sputtered. “How—”

“He’s a berserker,” said the Ox overhead. “As likely to kill us as them. He’ll catch up when he shifts back.”

The screams of the dying were out of earshot now, but Anji glanced behind once more at the creature, now on its knees, throwing bloody ribbons of gore behind him. The horses were scattered, ruined bodies littering the ground around its hulking form.

Anji thought about the numerous vials in the bandolier and shuddered as the Ox led them over a rise and across the plain.

Chapter 20

20

Sheertop Cathedral towered on a lonely rock-strewn rise amid the vast, multihued plains. Its spire jabbed like a crooked finger into the deepening sky, the arcade underneath a black and tumbled ruin grasping at the hill’s edge. Tiny wooden frames littered the mound from base to crown, the dusty remnants of a settlement; thriving once, perhaps, but now gone to ruin.

They’d ridden all day, Anji catching snatches of fitful sleep, plagued with disturbing dreams of her parents and friends that forced her awake in a panting, sweaty tangle between the Ox’s bouncing legs. They’d been forced to slow the horse to a trot along the route, and once stopped to fill the Ox’s canteen at one of the many rivulets that veined Yem’s southern reaches like strands of hair. Anji had complained about her exhaustion, her sore limbs, and her hunger—but the Ox had offered neither response nor rebuke. She’d seemed interested only in answering Anji’s questions, of which Anji had only one.

“Will you please just let me go?”

The Ox had shaken her head, lifting her mask just enough to drink deep from the canteen before handing it over to Anji. “Doesn’t work like that,” she’d said, stuffing a wad of meat and white cheese into her mouth. “You and me? We’re not friends. I’ve answered your questions, listened to you chatter. You’ve got spirit, for what that’s worth. But you’re a regicide. You’ve an execution to face, and the One will see you face it.”