The Ippos King (Wraith Kings #3) - Grace Draven Page 0,158
where the venom had struck the fabric. Somehow, they'd have to immobilize that tail or he'd never get to the legs.
“Are you burned?” Anhuset flung herself back from the swipe of a pincer, knocking it aside with her shield for good measure. “Take the shield!”
Were he not shackled, he'd accept her offer. She was better protected than he in her armor while he wasn't protected at all. But the chains limiting the reach of his arms made the shield more of a hindrance than a help, and he needed both hands to wield the crow's beak with any efficiency. “Keep it.” He saw an opening on the scarpatine's left flank and took it, darting in to hack at one of its legs. He only managed to cut off the tip of one before the creature swung so fast, its movement lifted Serovek's hair away from his face.
The edge of its outside claw caught Anhuset on the side, hurling her off her feet to slam into Serovek. He hit the ground in a cloud of blinding sand and an explosive exhalation that emptied his lungs of air. He heaved a gasping Anhuset off him, caught the edge of her dropped shield and raised it just in time to block a strike from the powerful tail. The barb slammed into the shield and through it, driving it toward Serovek's chest. Splinters of pain shot through his bones as he strained to hold the shield away from his body and watched a drop of venom pearl at the barb's tip, hanging there like a deadly raindrop.
He caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye before another jarring shock juddered up his arms. He was slung to the side, the venom drop splattering in different directions. “Fuck!” he shouted as a sizzling heat blistered its way down his side. The world somersaulted in his vision as the scarpatine's tail, still stuck to the shield whipped one way, then the other. Serovek let go of the shield, waiting to drop and roll away as fast as he could.
Instead, his shackles clacked as they slid down the scarpatine's tail, taking him down as well. When he'd raised the shield to block the creature's strike, the chain connecting his wrists had looped over the tail, trapping him as surely as the shield still trapped the barb. The edge caught him hard in the shoulder twice and almost in the head once as the tail flailed and whipped, trying to arch over the insect's back so the pincers could grab what the tail had caught.
For all its size, the scarpatine wasn't strong enough to fling its heavy prey over its back. Serovek twisted the chain even tighter on the tail and dropped to his haunches, bent his knees and dug his heels hard in the dirt beneath the flyaway sand. “I have the tail down!” he shouted to Anhuset, who battled the pincers with the crow's beak he'd dropped. More venom splattered in a wide arc. “Climb it! Climb it!”
He didn't know if she heard him. The crowd's screaming nearly deafened him to everything except the skittering noise of numerous legs scrabbling through sand, the hard clicking of pincers, and the grating sound of insectile double jaws sliding across each other.
The muscles in his back, thighs, shoulders, and arms cramped as the scarpatine dragged him across the ground and tried to raise its tail. Its back was a landscape of square plates as hard as any armor he'd ever worn, protecting the creature's vulnerable insides. Beyond the view of Anhuset dodging the pincers, he saw the people standing in their seats, faces almost bestial in their zeal for the fighting. Anhuset suddenly swung out of sight only to reappear with a leap and stand on the insect's back.
She slid to one side, nearly losing her balance when the scarpatine arched, its body rippling under her feet in a roll of smooth armored plates. The movement threatened to wrench Serovek's shoulders out of their sockets and pull him to his feet. Anhuset widened her stance and held her balance. In one hand she gripped the crow's beak, in the other the leaf-blade spear. “Hold that tail,” she barked at him.”
“Not going anywhere,” he shouted back.
Her trust in his abilities humbled him, for she turned her back on the barb still impaling the shield. She almost lost her balance a second time avoiding the upward swing of the pincers as the scarpatine tried to reach its unwelcome