Tabitha did her best but was soon bloodied up and down her legs. The air turned with the smell of it; first a sharp note and then it became impossible to escape.

I coughed and spluttered.

And then the wall collapsed completely, like a dam bursting. Out and out it poured, whatever had been behind, dark as pitch but flowing like wine. It crashed onto the trail and, at last, I managed to regain some control of my mount. I turned us as quickly as I could from the disappearing track and blundered into the woods.

Thorn-filled bushes and low branches grasped at me, more than one taking its own little piece. Tabitha was evidently already too cut and bruised to care. We were away from the flooding torrent, at least. But there was no river there. And the smell. There could be no mistake it was blood, but old and thick and wasting.

Deeper into the woods, we were guided by what little light pierced the canopy. It was an old part of the forest. None of the tall, regimented pines that grew by the fort flourished here. Instead it was home to the bitter and twisted trees, the names of which were lost to common folk. Trees that man had yet to put to use. Or, most men.

Tabitha would not slow. Her breathing was like a broken bellows, wet and wheezing with it. I fared little better. The ground rose to a small clearing. On the opposite side, just for a moment, I saw something – someone – on the branch of a tree. A flash of flesh in the moonlight. As impossible as I knew it to be, I saw they were lying naked there, at least twenty feet from the ground. An arm dangling. And then, at a gallop, we passed directly below. A smell cut across the blood and leather and horse. A cloying, tacky smell of burning wax. There, then gone.

She screamed.

Grating and high, then at once low and guttural, my horse screamed. A sound like no other. Its rhythms harsh and wrong. Such pain there; a pain devoid of comprehension. She bucked and tossed her head, slowing, as if to dislodge something. I leaned down, near her now frantic eyes.

Her lip had split. Drawn back over her teeth, I could see a tear in her upper lip as if it were cheap fabric. Juddering and jerky, the tear grew an inch as I watched. Then there was another. And another. Up past her nose, now. Flesh peeled back under its own weight. How she screamed.

Helpless to help her, I tried to dismount but she would not let me. Perhaps it was pure panic, or perhaps she did not wish to suffer alone, but she picked up her pace once again. Could she outrun it, as she had the breaking wall? The wall that tore and cracked like her muzzle.

But it didn’t stop. All up her face bloodied strips of her fell away, revealing muscle and bone and teeth. Huge teeth, so far back I had never seen them before, now lined red. With every toss of her head more of her was lost.