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Dropping my mace, I rushed to Rhoslyn and lifted her up, slanting my mouth across hers.
She wrapped her arms around my shoulders, clinging.
“Go,” she said when I lifted my head. “I’ll be all right. Take care of yourself and don’t worry about me.”
She slipped from my arms and entered the building.
I waited until the bar banged into place before spinning and with my mace in hand, leaping onto Feyla’s spine. She took flight, soaring toward the ocean in a wild flurry.
At least a hundred dresalods floundered through the waves, rushing toward the shore. Others clambered up the smooth walls while those on the top shot flaming arrows down upon them. Some of the creatures fell while others climbed over them.
One of these days, we wouldn’t defeat them all. They’d overrun us, and it would be over.
Never, my heart cried. I’d battle each and every one of them to protect my mate and my people. Every person living in the city felt the same.
I guided Feyla down toward the shore, and as she flew just above a legion of dresalods, I slammed my mace through them, hitting one and then another. Before they could latch onto me with their claws, Feyla spiraled upward, taking me to safety.
She made one pass after another until my arm ached and my legs were covered with gashes from the beasts’ claws.
“More,” I cried, struggling to find strength within me to keep fighting. I’d never give up, never allow them past the wall.
A few scrambled up onto the top where orcs shouted battle cries and attacked. They drove them off, the creatures falling many stories to the bloody sand below. The carcasses piled up, and it was going to take days to remove them all.
I guided Feyla down for another pass, grateful to see no more dresalods leaving the sea.
How many times could we keep battling until there were none of us left? I didn’t want to think about that. All that mattered was killing one and then another.
As Feyla swept above the back of the last legion, I smacked my mace into as many as I could.
Something raked down my spine, and I cried out with pain.
I was dragged off Feyla.
I fell, landing hard in the sand.
Chapter37
Rhoslyn
How could I do anything but pace while Jaus and our entire city was in danger? It didn’t take much for the memory of the dresalod attack in the street to tell me what our brave warriors faced.
“There has to be a way to keep them from attacking.” Back in the fortress, we’d traded two women a year for the orc’s protection from the shaydes. It appeared the orcs protected everyone, even themselves. But this situation wasn’t sustainable. The dresalods reproduced too rapidly for us to kill them all. Eventually, they’d wear down our numbers and . . . I didn’t want to think of what might happen then.
The solution lay in driving them into the sea and making sure they never returned. But how?
I made the bed, cringing each time someone cried out from the sea side of the city. The whoosh of mounted voxes flying overhead drew my eye, and I watched them pass, rushing to the window where I clutched the sill while the mounted beasts flew down toward the shore.
A dresalod clambered up over the wall, where the guards attacked it, killing it but losing one of their own. The orc bellowed and clutched his abdomen where he’d been impaled while his friends dragged him away from the dresalod carcass. Someone helped the orc rise and took him down the inner stairwell. Did healers wait for him at the bottom?
I should be there with them, tending the wounded. It would occupy my mind and I’d feel useful. I was no warrior, so taking up a mace and leading a charge would only put me in harm’s way.
But healing . . . That was bred into my bones.
In the kitchen, I left a note for Jaus in case he returned before me. Then I gathered up the herbs he’d purchased for me, sighing at how few I had that could be used to treat wounds.
Lindenmint, of course. I crushed about half of what I had left and stirred it into boiling water, making a slurry much like the tea I drank each morning. Then I added more leaves until it formed a paste I could apply. I left it to cool and rushed up to our bedroom, where I found an old tunic full of holes and ripped it into strips for bandages.
Back downstairs, I rolled the bandages and tucked them into my basket, adding the few other herbs I’d used in the past to treat cuts and abrasions.
