Page 172 of Of Bargains & Betrayal
We never had weaponry of that power in all my years in the military.
What the fuck had my brother done?
“GET IT OUT OF HERE!” came another bellow.
The archers of the eighth were scrambling back to the still burning projectile, throwing bright orange flames I hadn’t seen in ages, when it exploded.
BOOM.
Screams and shouts barely registered in the explosion that left my right ear with a high-pitched whine and sent Sasha and I sheltering against each other as bits of flaming, tar-covered splinters shot past us.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
My heart and stomach were both lodged in my throat, and I was moving before I’d processed much else. Sasha grabbed my arm, though, and wrenched me back. “Don’t break formation.” She winced at a blood-curdling scream. “We do not leave our posts unless the tenth or twelfth go down.”
Even though I understood formations well, I still despised them.
A few of the eighth’s archers had to be dead, with how devastatingly still their smoldering bodies were, while others screamed as they fought the burning tar off their bodies, oblivious to the aid trying to be rendered to them by their flanking squads.
Bile burned at the back of my tongue, and I took a deep breath. The smell of burned flesh was tapping into a place in my mind I wanted no part in visiting at that moment.
“I thought nothing could get through the ward?” I said between breaths that had turned more into gasps than anything. “Maksym said he secured it.”
“Nothing without his blood can.” Sasha hadn’t stopped surveying our surroundings, peeking through the crenel as she spoke with me. “But the projectiles from these fucking war machines are a different story.”
How awfully convenient that was.
“FIFTH AND TENTH BALISTAS!”
I braced myself as chains clanked from inside the battlements below us.
“FIRE!”
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.
