What the hell have you done? #2
Twin booms rang out as vibrations carried up through my legs, and the sound of metal bolts whizzed through the air beyond the wall.
I took a few more deep breaths, trying to still the utterly frantic rate of my heart.
The last thing I needed was to fucking keel over because I, a cavalry soldier with a decade under my belt, couldn’t handle the tension of actual combat.
“Shit, here comes another, I think.”
I shifted onto my knees and up into a proper crouch like Sasha to peer out with her. I quickly spotted one of the Odessan trebuchets as it released its flaming payload, and a cloud of smoke filled the surrounding air.
CRASH.
This one struck the ward stone and sent a sliver of relief through me. Another callout came for the ballistas to ready themselves, and I waited for them to discharge before I asked, “Why aren’t we returning more fire? We’re just sitting here like cattle ready to be slaughtered.”
Sasha opened her mouth, but a bolt came streaking through the crenel opening between us and sent both of us back on our asses.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed.
“I’m awake now, I promise.” Sasha pressed a hand to her chest with a breathy curse. “We return equal fire only, unless there is a complete shift in strategy. Which would involve, well…”
I fixed the shifter with a stare, and she sighed.
“It would involve us gearing up to wipe the entire Odessan camp by drawing them to the stone and raining organized hellfire down on them while the infantry plane steps in behind.” Sasha winced. “Which are not our orders right now, for the record.”
I scrubbed my fingers over my brow and sank back against the stone wall.
The true, loss-of-life battles that comprised strategic warfare was not something I was ever ready for, and I’d known it all long. My irrational and cocky exterior aside, I’d never killed another mortal soul before Gallan and I had been attacked by the sick shifters in Embervale.
My entire military career spanned lengthy patrol assignments and stations at outposts and villages that saw little conflict.
I’d subdued more than a few unruly drunks, landed a few purposeful arrows to shoulders or knees to send a fleeing thief onto their arse, but disarming injuries were as far as things ever needed to escalate.
“Anna, I’d look bright if I were you.”
“Anna? It’s Enora.” Even though Sasha was looking out the crenel opening, I glimpsed the roll of her eyes. “Do you see something?”
“You don’t feel it?” She cast me a skeptical look, but I shook my head. “A healthy amount of magic just kicked up in the air, and I don’t think it’s ours, but I could be—”
“SCOUTS UP! ARCHERS READY!”
Oh, fuck.
That had to be why gooseflesh just rippled up my arms.
Sasha was on her feet already, as were at least half of the archers from each squad, with an arrow knocked, ready to be drawn.
The cloth wrapped around the lower shaft of her arrow yielded to a flicker of nytefire with no need to be lit in the brazier.
Like the other archers still kneeling up and down the wall to either side of me, I grabbed an arrow from my quiver and settled into a better crouch as I waited.
“ARCHERS UP!”
We all stood, knocking our arrows and taking our places beside our partners at the edge of each opening. If I hadn’t firmly clamped my jaw shut, there was a concerning likelihood I’d be muttering prayers to gods I’d never paid any heed to.
That, or I was dancing dangerously close to the edge of turning my stomach inside out.
“SCOUTS AND ARCHERS, DRAW!”
I gave my bow a set of warming half draws before I dipped my arrow in the nytefire brazier, knocked it, and drew the string back across my chest with a satisfying whine. Sasha and I fit perfectly side by side in the opening, war bows loaded, not a single fucking target in sight.
The plateau ahead was still empty, with no sign of movement coming up from the camp below the ridge. Even the flaming, tar-coated boulder they had fired at the obelisk was just smoldering pathetically at its base now.
I cast Sasha a sidelong glance that apparently explained the confusion my mind was fraught with.
“Wait.”
A single, tense word.
I waited. Flexed my fingers around the bow arm.
Gave the arrow a little laxity before I drew it again.
It felt good to have such a well-crafted bow in my hands after what had to be months—if only it wasn’t because I was about to open fire on my people.
“FOLLOW MY MARK!”
I didn’t dare voice it, but what fucking mark?
My eyes scoured the plateau, lit by sparse sunlight trying to break through the cloud cover, searching and searching and—
An oily glimmer formed on the plateau, maybe a few hundred feet ahead of the wall, and I narrowed all my focus on it as the first order came.
“SCOUTS, FIRE!”
Bowstrings snapped and arrows flew, just as a ripple of sickening magic tore through the air.
An entire Odessan archer squad appeared, armed with bows and ballistas, right where the marker had just been. The initial wave of Grimmorian fire landed just as Odessa’s squad tried to fire off their first assault, sending their green and tan-clad soldiers rolling and diving away.
“ARCHERS, FIRE!”
Hesitation seized my fingers, staring down at the frenzied group wearing the uniform I once did, but I forced them to free that arrow, sending it soaring with a second volley.
The stretch of plateau became a blur of arrows tipped with blue and red fire. Shouts alternated from the commanders as we sent wave after wave, ducking and dodging from behind merlons, and Sasha cast me more than one utterly enthralled grin.
Waves of aetheric shields flared up on Grimmoria and Odessa’s lines, knocking out scores of arrows before they could make their marks.
The ballistas on either side let out groans and metallic clanks as they fired their bolts.
Rock crumbled as the wall took hits; soldiers screamed and shouted on either side as arrows and metal and fire met flesh.
I kept up with the increasingly scattered volleys and muddled shouts of commanders, but I just couldn’t find a sliver of rationality to hold on to.
Maybe it was because of how my hands were shaking, or how my stomach had worked itself up into a knot.
Maybe I was just fucking terrified and looking for a reason to bail, to stop blindly firing into swathes of my own countrymen.
But with the magic on both sides, I couldn’t see a point to it at all.
How fucking long would it go on for? Wave after wave of arrows, half blocked by shields, the rest scattering among stone, grass, and living beings.
Barrels of arrows were already being hauled up to the walkway by short creatures with legs like deer that I didn’t have time to marvel at up close.
And behind us, I glimpsed a trebuchet being rolled into position, its arm already cocked back and likely entirely out of sight for the Odessan squadron.
It was going to ravage them.
The massive wooden frame gave a defeating creak as the counterweight was released, and a boulder was sent streaking over the wall in a blaze of radiant blue nytefire.
Tan and green uniforms gave out shouts of warning, and some had enough wherewithal to dive, but a devastating number didn’t.
Screams rang out as the boulder made impact, taking out a full section of the archers and burning others.
Our commanders yelled out for more staggered volleys, and the remaining Odessan squad came back with another wave.
I readied my next arrow, dipping its cloth into the nytefire, and took a deep breath before I—
Thunk.
“Oh, fuck!”
Sasha staggered past me and sank to her knees with a slew of other curses.
I let my arrow fly and dropped with her.
Her hand was braced on the stone beneath us as she hunched over and grasped at her chest, blue-black blood dripping down her arm from an arrow embedded square in the hollow of her shoulder.
Goddess above.
I did not have enough robust medical training to deal with this twice in one day.
“Here, let me. Stop fucking—ugh!” Sasha wouldn’t stop squirming and reaching for it, letting out low bellows of pain like she’d been gutted. “It hasn’t gone all the way through, Sasha. We need to—”
“I. Can’t. Breathe.”
She was panting and wheezing, clawing at her chest, and the undertone of warmth was leeching from her skin at an alarming rate.
I helped her onto her side to get a better look and hopefully ease a bit of tension on her chest, but she kept gasping as arrows whizzed through the surrounding air, and the commotion of archers in action made it hard to hear much else.
Where the arrow landed shouldn’t have punctured her lung, not unless shifters had wildly unusual physiology. A painful shot to the muscle and sinew of her shoulder, sure, probably made worse by the serrated arrowhead still lodged inside, but it shouldn’t have caused—
Fuck. Fuck. The arrowheads were made of bright iron.
It was going to kill her.
“Sasha, I need to get this out right now, okay? I’m going to push it through and then break it off. It’ll do too much damage if I pull it back like this.”
Sasha nodded, even as her lips took on a tinge of blue and her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
We’d run out of time for me to second-guess what I was doing.
I straddled her hip so I could brace her lower body with my thighs as she lay on her side and gripped the curve of her shoulder with one hand to keep the rest of her steady. Offering her a count would’ve been considerate, but she was on the verge of losing consciousness.
Gripping the arrow shaft, I gave it a shove with all my might, fighting through the resistance of muscle and flesh and goddess knew what else.
My confidence waned as Sasha let out wheezes of suffering and jerked under me, but I didn’t stop pushing.
Finally, resistance gave way, and the arrowhead popped through the back of her shoulder, tearing straight through the thick canvas of her uniform.