The Blacksmith Queen (The Scarred Earth Saga, #1) - G.A Aiken Page 0,113
over, expecting to see the man going after the girl. But he didn’t have the chance.
Keran was standing in front of him, blocking his way out.
Her face covered in blood, she gazed up at the man until she finally spit at him. Samuel thought she’d only spit blood to blind him but then something fell to the floor and Samuel quickly realized that it was a tongue. She’d bitten that first soldier’s tongue off.
Keran slapped the blade out of the blond man’s hand, hooked her leg around his, and yanked him to the ground. Then she grabbed him by the collar and began hitting him in the head. Blow after blow from her fist. Over and over until she’d destroyed the man’s face.
Another soldier attacked her from behind but Samuel got to his feet and pulled his sword. He blocked that soldier’s blow at Keran’s back and pushed him away. He then went on the offensive, striking at the soldier again and again until he’d backed him out the door and kicked him down the stairs.
Turning, he grabbed Keran’s axe.
“Here,” he said, forcing the weapon into her hand. He had to do it in order to get her to stop hitting the blond man, who was clearly no longer breathing. “Take this. There are more.”
“Oh.” Keran smiled at him as if her face and hands weren’t covered in other men’s blood. “Okay!”
Some of the soldiers attempted to escape with a few screaming girls through the hallway.
“Take the women to safety, Samuel,” Keran ordered. “I’ll get the rest.”
Samuel probably shouldn’t leave her alone to fight but when he looked down at the blond man with the crushed-in face and the other soldier choking to death on his own blood and without his tongue . . . he assumed she’d be fine.
* * *
Gemma paused in the middle of the town to watch her centaur compatriots fight the mercenaries. Rapidly shifting from human to centaur and back again so they could confuse their opponents, they avoided direct assaults to important body parts. But as fascinating as that was, Gemma had to move. She grabbed an abandoned sword from the ground and pointed it at a group of soldiers attempting to drag off some women who’d been trying to use the sudden battle to escape.
“Leave them!” she ordered and a few of the men snickered at her. “I said leave them!”
“Or what?” one of them demanded, facing her. “What will you do, nun?”
Burying the tip of the sword into the ground, Gemma grabbed the collar of the white robes she wore and ripped out and down.
The man stumbled back. “War Monk!” he screamed. “WAR MONK!”
* * *
Quinn heard the soldier’s scream and turned to see a battle unit release the women they’d been dragging away and run. From Gemma Smythe.
“You really love doing that, don’t you?” he had to ask, briefly ignoring the fighting going on around him. “Scaring the unholy shit out of them when they see what you really are?”
She looked at him over her shoulder, the smile on her face pure sin. Which was kind of strange since she was a monk and all.
Yet it wasn’t that she simply scared her opponents away. He saw that now when she caught the handle of a war hammer aimed at her head—one not nearly as large as her sister’s hammer—without even looking at her attacker.
Yanking the war hammer and its wielder close, she rammed one of her short swords into the soldier’s belly, then slashed him across the throat before shoving him to the ground.
“Are you fighting, Brother?” Laila called out to him. “Or watching the woman?”
“Can’t I do both?”
“No!” his kin yelled at him.
Surprised by his siblings’ intensity, he twisted around to see more mercenaries—a lot more—racing into the town on horseback.
Quinn’s stomach dropped. “Oh, shit.”
* * *
Keeley lowered her head and readied her weapon. The prince had walked out of the hall but with a cry, he tumbled back in. The lead demon wolf knocked him to the ground.
“Get it off me!” Straton screamed. “Get it off me!”
One of the men ran to Straton’s side and kicked the wolf off. He rolled across the floor but, as Keeley would expect, righted himself quickly enough and charged back. Straton stood and pulled his sword. He slashed down, hitting the animal in the head.
“No!” Keeley screamed out, hitting two of the soldiers that stood closest to her and running. But another soldier caught her and held on.