“Get me out of here,” Allyn said in a panicked voice.
Shea slung one leg over, landing on her feet. The beast was a big one. It would take both of them to move.
Shea set the sword down and reached to grab a piece of the beast, straining to lift it.
A growl sounded from above. Shea stiffened and looked up, spotting a grindle on the same stairs she’d have to climb. She let go of the creature she held.
“What are you doing?” Allyn asked. “Help me.”
Shea didn’t answer, her attention locked on the beast in front of her.
It crouched, legs bunching beneath it.
Shea reached for her sword, only then noticing it had fallen off the cart. Too far. She knew it even as she lunged towards it.
The beast leapt.
Reach, she screamed at herself.
Steel whistled through the air, a short ax burying itself in the beast’s head. The grindle collapsed to the courtyard already dead.
Shea grabbed her blade as she gained her feet in the next moment.
She turned to look behind her at the person whose timely intervention had saved her. Fallon glared back, his expression unhappy. He was caked in blood and mud with a small wound on one arm.
“You’re not supposed to be down here!” he shouted as he reached her side. The men he’d brought poured past him and onto the wall above. Two of them stopped to help Allyn out from under the beast.
“Everyone else was busy. I did what I had to do,” she told him, her sword at her side.
He gave her a dark look but didn’t argue. In the end, all that mattered was that she was alive and had managed to hold the west wall long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
“How’re the rest of the defenses?” Shea asked.
His face was grim as he looked over their heads at where his men and women fought. “Not good. We’re getting hammered.”
“Can we last?” she asked.
The dark look in his face was all the answer she needed.
“They’ve pulled back for now. It’s given us a chance. We’re preparing to destroy the bridge,” he said.
She contained her curse. Things really had gotten bad if he’d decided on that course of action.
She nodded to show she understood even if she wasn’t necessarily happy with the news.
Shea spotted Trenton over Fallon’s shoulder. His gaze held outrage, the expression equaled only by Fallon’s moments before. Shea gave him a chin nod. His face became even more morose.
“We agreed you wouldn’t get involved with the fighting,” Trenton said once Fallon had shifted his attention to a beast that had strayed too close.
“Things happened,” Shea replied in an irritated voice. Now that the immediate danger had passed, her ribs hurt and the scratches and minor wounds she’d sustained in the last hour were beginning to sting.
“I would have remained with you had I known you were going to get involved,” Trenton said through gritted teeth.
Underneath the anger and frustration from her guard, Shea thought she detected something more. Worry. It was what enabled her to keep from snapping, the situation fraying her temper more than she’d like to admit.
“I know,” she said. “Believe me, this wasn’t planned.”
If it had been, she would have more than a six half-trained people with her.
