Page 54 of Of Scale and Blood

An arrow. It was a fucking arrow....

I stumbled, coming down hard on hands and knees, sucking in deep breaths to battle pain and nausea. From high above came a bellow of utter fury. I immediately reached out to Kaia.I’m fine.

Not. You hurt. Men come.

Ofcoursethey fucking did. I sucked in a breath and tried to remain calm. To give in to panic, to act without thinking, would more than likely result in Vahree calling my soul to his kingdom.How many?

Two hands.

Twelve men. Fuck.

I twisted around and saw them, running through the ruins, coming straight at me. They were carrying regular swords and knives rather than the tubes, but given the number of them, it was a pretty good guess the end result would be the same.

Me.

Dead.

CHAPTER7

I come.I kill.

No, I growled.Remain high.

No, Kaia retorted.Run. I kill them.

You can’t?—

Net throwers destroyed. No archers. I kill these, you safe.

Safe being a relative term given the situation, but there was little point in arguing with her. She wasn’t listening anyway.

I forced my body upright, using the sword to help me balance. But the movement had another wave of agony pulsing through me, and sweat broke out across my brow. I had to do something about the arrow, otherwise movement was going to be impossible. I sucked in a deeper breath, then caught the end of the arrow to stop it moving and drew a knife. Then, before I could really think about it, I swept the blade down hard, slicing the shaft away from either side of my calf, leaving the bulk of it embedded inside. I had no idea what it might have hit—whether it was just flesh and muscle or something more serious like an artery—so it was better left in rather than pull it out and cause Vahree only knew what other damage.

And without the inner section sticking out and hitting my other leg, I could at least move around a bit easier.

But my attackers had passed the shattered remains of the metal tents now. I was out of time. I streamed fire at them, briefly scattering them, then turned and hobbled away through the wreckage of buildings and bodies, using my sword to steady myself over the rougher patches of ground. The back of my neck twitched, and the knowledge of impending doom rose, but I ignored them both and hurried on.

Then a fierce wind hit my back, sending me staggering forward. It wasn’t a storm of air caused by one incoming drakkon, but multiple. The men didn’t scream. They likely didn’t have time, because Kaia and Yara swept through them with deadly precision and killed them all.

A few seconds later, Yara appeared above, blood dripping from her claws and fierce waves of bloody satisfaction running through her thoughts. Kele was little more than a small knot of humanity sitting behind the young queen’s wing spine.What do now?

Join Rua and do a thorough sweep around of the entire area to see if there are any other pockets of riders or gold-clad ground soldiers.Destroy them if you find them.

As I said all that, I signaled to Kele, letting her know what was happening. She acknowledged, then asked if I was okay. I punched up a yes. She didn’t say anything—and I probably wouldn’t have heard it over the wind noise anyway—but tossed something down. As Yara banked away, I hobbled over to see what it was. A medikit. Thank Túxn for that.

I join,Kaia said.

If you move that wing about too much, you could permanently damage it.

Won’t.

I didn’t argue. It was still pretty obvious she wouldn’t listen. I hobbled over to the wall remnant to sit, then opened the kit. It not only contained all the usual pain tonics, numbing and antiseptic salves, and bandages needed to treat wounds in the field or keep them stabilized until proper medical help could be reached, but also additional bone straps, wound sealers, and some silk webbing. Even though there wasn’t much of the latter, the combination of the three should be enough to make Kaia’s wing strong enough for the flight home.

I carefully sliced open the side of my boot—I didn’t want to risk taking it off entirely in case my foot swelled, and the last thing I needed was to be walking around shoeless in a place like this—then did the same to the leg of my pants. The entry and exit points were small and neat, and very little blood oozed from either side of the wound. Hopefully, that meant nothing major had been damaged. I grabbed the antiseptic salve and carefully applied it. Pain surged, and I had to grit my teeth against the scream that rose up my throat. After several deep breaths that did absolutely nothing, I repeated the process with the numbing lotion. Unfortunately, relief wasnotinstantaneous; I knew from past experience it would take a good ten minutes to fully kick in.

It was the longest fucking ten minutes in my life.

Once the numbing salve had done its stuff, I tugged out the bandages and securely wrapped the entire bottom half of my leg, not only to stop the swelling but also to ensure the remaining bit of arrow didn’t move around too much.

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