Page 174 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

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.

Sasha sucked in the biggest breath I’d seen her take since she got hit, but it was still a struggle.

The arrowhead was a fucking nasty thing too. Dark metal, as I knew it would be, but with far more teeth than the few simple serrations I ever saw in the Odessan arsenal. These had vicious, hooked teeth that would’ve left Sasha torn to shreds if we’d tried to rip it out. The wooden shafts, though, were still as simple—and mediocre—as ever. Dry, alpine weather usually left them a bit brittle, and a few hours in Grimmoria’s humidity had done nothing to lessen that.

It cracked into splintered ends as I broke the head off it and chucked the piece of bright iron back over the wall.

Sasha was breathing better now through gritted teeth, and she cast me a withering look as I wrapped my hand around the wooden shaft again. “Ready? We’ll go on three.”

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“One. Two—” I hauled it back through her body as she let out an agonized groan and rolled onto her back. I moved with her, still straddling her hips, and slammed my hand over the wound as dark blood wept up from it.

“Fuck,” she rasped. “At least—” Wheeze. “—buy me a—” Groan. “—drink—” Wheeze. “—first.”