Chapter Chapter Seventeen
Keiara ran on a straight course for the five men, howling at the top of her lungs as she screamed out her anger. She watched as all of them stopped what they were doing and looked at her. She saw three of the men’s eyes widen in shock and fear (which included a rather large man dressed in brightly colored clothes). The other two pointed rifles at her and started pulling the trigger. She watched the bright lines of red light coming toward her. She knew she was about to die, burned through by their weapons, but she wasn’t afraid.
In fact, she felt an almost weird pull at her mind. The pull persisted until it became something painful. She stopped suddenly, watching the red, killing light come at her. The sensation in her head intensified dramatically until her eyes watered. It felt like something was trying to get free inside her.
So she let it.
The world around her suddenly changed. Everything looked shimmery, like heat waves. Not only that but she also realized she could feel every last pulse of the soldiers’ killing fire. She could track them as they came at her, feeling their heat in the air.
Her eyes flashed with orange-red color and then she waved a hand through the air like she was swatting a bug away. It was a reaction based entirely off intuition and instinct. She didn’t know why she did it but as she did, every bolt of searing red light suddenly swerved away from her and buried themselves harmlessly into the sand.
As soon as she was safe and the killing light was gone, the pull on her mind left her, replaced by a massive wave of nausea and fatigue. She fell to one knee, gasping harshly.
How did I do that?
She looked up weakly as the people that had hurt Rone came up to her.
“Look at this, men,” the brightly clothed man said. “We found a prize.”
She glared at them all in anger but was too tired to try and run away. It was all she could do to keep herself upright on one knee.
“Why did you try to k-kill Rone?” she asked, her exhaustion making her voice unsteady. The big man blinked and looked at her.
“Tried to kill him?” he asked, one eyebrow raised while the eyelid on his left side twitched. “What do you mean by try?”
Sensing that the truth would be bad for Rone, she stopped talking.
“You mean he’s still alive!” the man thundered. “How is that possible? The drone…it taped his death. I saw it myself.”
He stalked away, a current of fear storming through him.
How am I going to survive Wilhelm’s wrath when he finds out that the brat Prince is still alive? I need something to redeem myself. But what? He turned back to the Terra girl. He needed answers and she was going to give them to him.
“Where-” Was all he managed to say.
A golden-furred monkey suddenly attacked them from out of nowhere. Its tiny claws dug into Lord Guilder’s cheek and raked bloody furrows down the side of his face. Blood came down in a sheet and the man yelled out in pain. The monkey jumped off him before he could grab hold of its neck and squeeze the life out of it.
“Get that monkey!” Lord Guilder screamed hysterically.
The other soldiers obeyed. Clouds of nanos flew into the air as each one created deadly-looking long knives. They used blades instead of guns because in such close quarters, they were more likely to kill themselves than the animal.
One of the soldiers swiped his arm out, so fast it was little more than a blur, and the monkey screamed. There was a thump as the little animal hit the dirt, but it didn’t stay down. It ran all over the place, climbing up soldiers and biting them. It jumped from one soldier’s back to Lord Guilder and sank its teeth into the fat man’s earlobe and ripped off a chunk. Howling, the Lord threw his hands back. The monkey tried to get away but the Lord’s speed surprised it. The man’s hands got hold of it and yanked it off his shoulder. Then he wrapped them around the monkey’s tiny neck. He applied pressure and strangled it.
He enjoyed hearing its breathless cries.
“There, you blasted thing. Die!” Lord Guilder screeched. His face was red and streaked with blood. His eyes were huge and filled with insanity.
“No,” Keiara slurred, her head still spinning with fatigue. She watched helplessly as the big man tried his best to kill it. To kill Gar. She had no trouble identifying him. “Stop.”
She tried to get up but she was still too tired. Whatever she had done to deflect the beams of light had completely wiped her out.
The monkey chittered, then his form blurred and Gar stood there. He was old for a warrior, but he was still built with plenty of muscle.
Keiara saw that his throat was red and bruising was starting to form there.
The second Lord Guilder realized what happened, he tried to back away, but Gar was faster. The warrior reached out, lightning quick, and grabbed the man by his throat. Lord Guilder let out a squawk and then his face started to go purple.
“Watch out, Gar!” Keiara screamed, her voice barely higher than a whisper.
Gar, nevertheless, heard her and whirled around, but he wasn’t fast enough this time. Keiara watched in horror as one of the soldiers stepped close to him and buried his knife in Gar’s stomach.
Gar’s eyes widened. He let go of Lord Guilder. The shock of the pain quickly wore off though. Gar looked at the man with a grim expression on his face. The soldier was trying to bury the knife in deeper. Gar brought up an elbow and smashed it down on the soldier’s collar bone. It snapped and the man went down. Gar pulled the knife free and buried it in his attacker’s neck. Then he stood back up. Blood was running from his wound and down his leg.
The other soldiers approached him more cautiously. They darted in only to feint away and let a different soldier slice into Gar’s unprotected side. He grunted when they would land a cut, but he was still miraculously on his feet. His face was pulled into a grimace of pain, but he didn’t let it affect his fighting.
The soldiers kept up their game, but Gar proved smarter. He watched a man lunge in and feint away, but instead of trying to attack him, Gar rapidly switched directions and grabbed the wrist of the soldier trying to stab him from behind. He yanked on the arm until it bent painfully and rammed it forward. The knife buried itself into the soldier’s own armpit, where his protective flak vest didn’t cover. The soldier grunted and sank to the ground.
A measure of hope surged through Keiara as she watched Gar fight. He was still standing and facing off against the soldiers, but he was also losing a lot of blood. He wasn’t going to be able to keep it up forever.
Keiara and Gar were both too focused on the soldiers, thinking them the more immediate threat. Gar grappled with another one, managing to knock his knife away. Then he grabbed the man’s head and twisted it with savage strength. There was a loud pop and the man crumpled to the ground, dead. Gar faced the last two soldiers, but as he did Lord Guilder reappeared with a small, black blaster in his hand.
Keiara saw it first and tried to warn Gar but she was too late. The man pulled the trigger three times and three holes the size of oranges appeared in Gar’s chest. He stared at them for a moment and then collapsed.
“No! Gar!” she yelled, crawling over to him. She turned him around so she could see his face but she knew it was too late.
Gar was dead.
She slumped over his body and cried.
Lord Guilder walked over to her, dug his hand into her hair and then yanked painfully. She let out a cry of agony as he dragged her back to the spot where they’d been digging.
“Now that we cleared that mess up, I find myself in a new one.” He threw her into the hole where they’d been digging in the sand to find Rome’s body.
Keiara couldn’t fight him. She slid to the bottom and rolled over, staring at the sky as emotions whirled around inside her. Anger, guilt, shame. Why had she run out of the forest’s protection? Now Gar was dead, she’d been captured by the enemy, and it was all her fault.
“Where is the Prince?” Gar’s murderer asked.
She looked at him and found him watching the forest carefully. She thought she saw fear in his eyes, or at least a measure of trepidation. He was worried more warriors would come pouring out, she realized.
“I don’t know. I left him here in the desert and when I came back, his body was gone,” Keiara said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then you are too stupid to recognize the truth when you hear it,” she snapped back.
Lord Guilder aimed his pistol and fired a shot close enough to her head to singe her hair. She let out a surprised yelp.
“Or,” he stated. “You are lying. If you had left him here, then how would you know his name?”
She didn’t answer. She just glowered at him.
“Now, I will ask you again,” he said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she spat. “I left him with a friend yesterday. When I got back, he was already gone.”
He eyed her, measuring the truth of her words.
“Where would he have gone?”
The other two soldiers suddenly appeared. One leaned in and whispered something to Lord Guilder.
Keiara watched the man’s face immediately go pale. Then color rushed back in and anger simmered in his eyes. He turned on the man and fired the blaster into him at point blank range. The killing light hit the man in the neck, where his throat was unprotected, and he went down in a boneless heap.
The other soldier, after seeing his comrade killed, pulled his own gun. A snarl of rage was on his face but he wasn’t fast enough. He barely had it out when a blast of killing fire hit him in the neck as well.
Lord Guilder stared dispassionately at their bodies.
“A shame,” he commented in a bored tone. “The Terra warrior was an able fighter. Just look what he did to all of these fine soldiers. It’s a good thing I got the drop on him.”
He was obviously talking to Keiara, but she was too dumbfounded to even say anything. He had just killed two of his own people. And for what?
“Why kill them?” she asked, disgusted.
“That fool told a very dangerous man that I had bungled my assassination of the Prince. And the other fool got angry when I killed him for it,” he responded, casually. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it. Their deaths don’t concern you. The only thing I want to know is where I can find the Prince. And if you don’t tell me, the next shot will go through your head. Maybe right underneath that expensive looking jewel you wear over your forehead. Tick, tock, dear. Time is wasting.” He pointed the gun at her.
“I told you, I don’t know where he is!” she yelled. “And I’m glad! I’m glad he’s gone. At least I’ll die knowing he’s safe.”
He stared at her for a long time. Then a wide, greedy grin broke across his face. Keiara found it to be the ugliest smile she’d ever seen
“I think I begin to understand here,” he said. “You have feelings for him, don’t you?”
She didn’t say anything. She just continued to stare at him defiantly.
“No. Don’t answer. It’s clearly written on your face, little girl,” Lord Guilder said, that greedy grin spreading wider. He put away his pistol and clambered down the side of the hole to where she was.
She tried to get up and run away but her full strength hadn’t returned yet. Her legs were still wobbly and didn’t want to support her weight.
Lord Guilder reached out a hand to her. She batted at it with weak arms, but it did absolutely no good. His hand latched onto her shoulder and pulled her up. He wrapped his arms around her and put his mouth right up to her ear.
Whispering, he said, “Let’s see if the Prince feels the same way about you.”
He hunted through his blueprints and activated his flightpack. Nanos surged into the air to create it. The burners fired and propelled them both into the sky.
Keiara’s stomach lurched painfully. She struggled, but it was useless.
The man wasn’t going to let her go.
****
Asher came out of the forest too late to save his sister. He yelled at her but the noise from the stranger’s machine blocked him out and neither of them noticed him. He’d first followed Keiara to Gar’s hut under his father’s instruction. Tarvo wanted him to watch over her and make sure she didn’t get into trouble. He thought he would find Gar and Keiara there, with Rone. Instead, he found two strange Rooks. Gar was gone. So was Keiara and Rone. He asked the woman and the girl where everyone was and both of them had pointed to the desert. A knot of dread sunk into the pit of his stomach when they said his sister had charged out there like an enraged bull.
No one had been able to stop her, they explained further. Gar went to retrieve her, but he wasn’t back yet. They told him they thought there was fighting but the figures had been too far away to tell for sure. He thanked them both and then climbed down the ladder to the ground. He wished, absently, that he had Blink, the name of the drone Rone gave him. But he’d hidden it back in Vitari so that no one would force him to destroy it or get rid of it.
He ran as fast as he could to the area where they’d found Rone. Before he even got close, two figures jetted into the sky. One of them was obviously Keiara while the other was a large man in bright clothes. He’d cried out, but he might as well have saved himself the trouble. Neither one heard him.
If only he’d been a little faster, he might’ve been able to fend off the Rook that had kidnapped his sister. But it was too late.
She was gone.
He turned around and found Gar lying face up on the sand. Three gory holes and a dozen or so cuts littered his body. He knelt down next to the fallen warrior and cried again. He’d known Gar all his life. He’d been a good friend to him and his family.
He put his hand to Gar’s eyes and gently closed them. Then he dragged the body to the forest, lying it down next to the tree that housed Gar’s hut. It was hard work (Gar weighed a lot more than himself) but he forced himself to do it.
He climbed back up the ladder and came through the trapdoor. He saw the woman and girl look at him. Their faces were pale and tears ran down their cheeks.
“Is he dead?” the woman asked. She’d seen the boy dragging a body back from the desert that could only have been Gar.
Asher nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. It took all of his force of will not to yell and scream at the two of them. Nevertheless, they both looked at him with evident fear.
“What are you two doing here?” he asked, his voice still filled with anger. They flinched when they heard it.
“Gar,” the little girl whimpered. She was openly crying now. “Gar was helping us.”
She tried to go on but couldn’t. Asher felt a little of his anger slip away. The girl was obviously devastated by the man’s death.
“Prince Rone and my son, Darvian, went back to Roanoke,” the woman said. “Gar offered to protect us.”
“From who?” Asher asked.
“From the Blak Army,” she answered. She was crying too, but her age gave her better control over her emotions. “They attacked Roanoke and killed many of my people. We escaped and fled here, as far away from them as we could get. That’s when we found Rone. He went missing a couple of weeks ago, but with the attacks and confusion, no one really noticed. He told us they tried to kill him too, but Keiara found him and nursed him back to health. Who are you?”
“My name is Asher,” he replied. “Keiara is my sister.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice warbling slightly. “I’m Zoie and this is my daughter, Aeri.”
He nodded to them, but the little girl looked away.
Zoie was concerned for her. The death of Gar was hitting her hard. She never really had to deal with death before. Her father was more than likely dead (a fact that constantly tore at Zoie) but she was sure the girl had built up the illusion that she would see him again. That he was still alive. The chaos and confusion when they fled Roanoke had left Aeri unable to really take in all the bodies lying in the streets. But now, to hear that someone she had truly liked was gone. It was too big for her to deal with.
“Stay here and stay hidden. There should be plenty of food. It won’t be long before a new guard is posted, however. A day. Two at the most. But I would suggest leaving before then. My people don’t like your kind. I don’t want to disappoint Gar by having either of you get hurt or killed,” he instructed them. Then he went to the door and pulled it open.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To tell my father what’s happened,” he replied. Then in a voice that seemed too old for him. “And then, we go to war.”
With that, his form shimmered and a hawk took his place. They watched him flap away, into the forest.