Saved By The Warrior Hero Page 19

  And whoever had betrayed us to the Rutharians—the blood of those who had been aboard that shuttle was on that traitor’s hands now.

  I felt partly responsible for this, especially as Gallix broke our shuttle out of formation and slipped into the darkness while the shuttles that Kloran commanded from the forward position took heavy fire. I should have tried harder to discover the traitor in our midst—but of course, I had been too distracted by Alyse to truly focus. Being distracted by Alyse was quickly becoming the story of my life—now, more than ever.

  Luckily—for us, at least—distraction of a different sort was finally working in our favor. We took no fire as we landed behind the outpost. Though we exited our shuttle ready to go in guns blazing, there were no soldiers for us to fight. No shots fired in our direction.

  In fact, the darkness that surrounded us was surprisingly quiet. Only in the distance could we hear the sounds of the battle raging overhead—like far-off thunder promising a hard rain soon to come.

  “Right.” Haelian scanned the darkness ahead of us, then nodded at our little group. With Kloran leading the main assault, we were only five in total. “Coplan, Ronan, Nion—with me. Gallix, stay with the shuttle. If anyone other than the four of us or the human female attempts to board, shoot them in the face.”

  “Gladly.” Gallix cocked his blaster and grinned sinisterly. “The pleasure will be all mine.”

  Ronan guided our way. We only encountered three Rutharians as crossed into the base’s perimeter. Each we came upon, we took out soundlessly from behind.

  The battle raging overhead may have been expected by the Rutharians, but no one on the base would have any idea that we were infiltrating it. We slipped in through a side door—which Apex had promised to leave unlocked for us—like a sharp knife through a bared throat.

  Effortlessly.

  We met Apex just inside the door. It was hard to tell how long he had been waiting for us—based on the look of near-perpetual annoyance on his face, it might as well have been months.

  “Down the stairs just here.” Apex led us to a dimly lit staircase. “Take the first left at the bottom and open the door at the end of the hall. You will find your female captive there—but I warn you. She is not well, and she is in chains.”

  “My thanks, Apex,” Haelian said. “Coplan—with me. We will recover the female. She is not likely to have a translator chip, so I will use as much human-speak as I can while Coplan attends to any immediate medical needs. Nion, Ronan, guard our position here at the stairs and down below, at the first left.”

  Haelian and Coplan filed down the stairs, weapons at ready. I moved to take the lower position just behind them, but Apex grabbed my arm and held me back.

  “Let Ronan do it,” he hissed in my ear. “You have other business to attend to.”

  “My brother’s killer—he is here? You are sure of it?” Given everything else that had happened since Apex and I had last spoken, I had done all I could to keep my thirst for vengeance from my mind.

  There had been more important things to consider of late. But now, if what Apex said was true—

  “He is here. Just up the servants’ staircase there.” Apex nodded to a second staircase on the other side of the hall we stood in. This one wound upward in a narrow spiral. “His quarters are within. He rarely leaves them anymore.”

  “Even during a battle?” It did not make any sense. Surely the brute that had killed Hyian would be eager to bring about more Lunarian bloodshed given the chance.

  But Apex shook his head. “As I have told you, Nion. He is a drunk. When he killed your brother, he may have been a mighty warrior—but now he is fat, drink-addled. All but useless.” Apex took my blaster from me and handed me his knife instead. “I will hold your position here until you return.”

  “Thank you, my friend.” I said the words genuinely, though they only made Apex scoff.

  “Do not get sentimental, Nion. You still have a life to take tonight.”

  As I climbed the winding spiral of the stairs, my heart pounded hard in my chest. Since Hyian’s death, I had dreamed of this moment. I had wanted it more than anything. I had enlisted in the military in the hopes that someday, I would come upon his killer.

  In my fantasies, this moment had taken place on the battlefield. The killer would recognize me as Hyian’s kin by the color of my hair, the point of my nose. He would fight his way to me to make some comment about Hyian. About how he had died. Or perhaps I would spot Hyian’s braid tied to the hilt of the killer’s blade—a trophy.

  In my fantasies, the killer died slowly. Slowly, and always on the edge of my knife—the only piece of my brother that I had left.

  But before we had even located Hyian’s killer, the fantasy had already been spoiled. My knife had slit the throat of Alyse’s captor instead. When I had chosen to carry Alyse away from the room she had been caged in, I had not even thought of it. I had left the blade behind on the Rutharian king’s ship.

  But it did not matter. Not truly. I had Apex’s blade now. It would have to do in my knife’s place.

  As I came to the top of the stairs, my heart raced faster than ever. Even if the killer was a drunk, he had still been strong enough once to take Hyian’s life.

  I hoped, for his sake, he would be strong enough still to put up a fight—and sober enough to understand the reason he would die tonight.

  As I entered the killer’s room, though, I found that Apex’s warning rang truer than I had expected. I looked upon the man who had killed my brother, only half-conscious in his bed, and wondered if it was even worth killing him.

  His lips were slick with drool. His eyes were glassy, glazed over and unfocused. As I approached him, his gaze flickered lazily back and forth. He must have thought there were four of me. The room stank with the sourness of cheap drink, the staleness of discarded bottles, the bitter acid of the vomit that stained the killer’s shirt.

  Just like that, the last fragments of my revenge fantasy were shattered.

  This Rutharian had been a killer once, yes. He had stolen my brother’s life away. Brutally. Senselessly. Horrifically. Countless others, I was certain, had died similarly by his hand. Across every spare surface in the room that was not littered with empty bottles, I could see his trophies piled high. Lunarian daggers, swords and blasters. Fragments of Lunarian uniforms. And yes—locks of hair, sawed off of his victims once he had finished his awful work.

  But now, I did not know that if I placed Apex’s blade against the killer’s throat, he would even be capable of struggling to stop me from killing him.

  Could I truly kill someone who could not even pull themselves up out of bed unless it was to acquire more drink? Someone who was not even able to clean his own sick from his chest?

  It was then that I spotted a streak of green among the piles of his trophies. The same green as my own hair. The killer made a small noise as I pushed the pile aside to uncover the rest of the braid, but he did not move to stop me.

  When I pulled the braid free, I knew it to be my brother’s. Just as Apex had promised me—there it was.

  What I did not understand was how the killer who lay in the bed across the room could have possibly played into the rest of Apex’s story. My brother’s braid had been buried in the rest of the killer’s trophies, and the killer stank as though he had not left his room in some time—least of all to drink and brag in local cantinas.

  Likely, I could now see, that story had been a lie.

  In the moment, though, it did not matter.

  My fantasy for revenge had been spoiled, yes—but I still had a job to do.

  “I am Nion of House Nothing,” I told the man as I approached him. “They call me King-killer. The blood of your former leader was spilled under my blade. Do you understand?”

  The killer did not leap up or roll away. He did not scream for his guards or snarl insults at me, either.

  He simply nodded as his eyes struggled to focus on my own.

  I lifted up H
yian’s braid. It was thin and fragile-looking with age, frayed badly at one end and curled below the leather hair tie at the other. I could still remember the day my mother had gifted that leather lace to him. She had tied it into his hair and beamed at him with such pride, I had envied him for weeks after.

  At least now, I would be able to return it to her. It was not much, but it would have to be enough.

  “Do you recognize this braid?” I asked the killer next as I took another step forward. “It belonged to my brother, Hyian of House Nothing. He was brave and loyal. Funny. Clever. The best man I have ever known. Do you remember taking it?”

  Again, the killer nodded. It was hard to tell for certain whether or not he truly understood my words, but I thought I saw some small spark of intelligence still flickering in the blacks of his eyes.

  I could not be sure, but I had a feeling he knew what was coming.

  I had a hunch he knew why I was here.

  “You killed Hyian. You slaughtered him. His body was in such a state when he was recovered, it was not even fit for our mother to gaze upon. Because of you, I will never see my brother grin again. I will never again hear him laugh. He will never marry. Never father cubs. Because of you, my mother lost her firstborn son without even a chance to tell him goodbye.” My voice shuddered on my final word, but my resolve remained firm. “Do you understand?”

  The killer’s hand twitched—not for a weapon, but for the bottle at his side. Slowly, he raised it to his lips, drained the last dregs of it…then nodded.

  I loomed over him now, Hyian’s braid in one hand, Apex’s knife in the other.

  “Did he…did he die well?” I choked out. I should not have asked it, and I only expected lies in return, but I had already been denied a glorious vengeance.

  I simply could not help myself.

  To my surprise, the killer gave a nod.

  “He…did,” the killer rasped. “Brave. As you said. Laughed at me. Made me… want to hurt him more. Wanted to make him cry out. But he never did.”

  “I am here to kill you,” I told the killer. Tears seared my sinuses, but I would not let them loose. Not now. Perhaps not ever. “Tell me your name, so I may give it to my mother when I return home with word that my brother’s death has been avenged.”

  The killer closed his eyes and drew in a deep, trembling breath. The smell of ammonia rose up from the bed as a dark, damp stain crept across the lap of his trousers. Piss. Whether it was from his drunkenness, or from fear, it did not matter.

  “Kal-avat,” the killer breathed. He did not meet my gaze as I lowered my blade to his throat.

  He squeezed his eyes shut as tight as they would go.

  His eyes did not open again.

  I met Apex and the others at the base of the steps just as Haelian and Coplan emerged from their own set of stairs. Haelian shot me a confused glance as I came off the final step. His eyes tracked the blood that dripped from the knife in my hand—but if he had a problem with what I had just done, he did not mention it.

  Good. There was nothing that needed to be said.

  “We need to leave immediately.” In Coplan’s arms, he held an unconscious human female as he spoke. She was dark-haired with long, thick eyelashes. A metal collar with a broken chain still hung around her neck, and despite the way Coplan had done his best to tuck his jacket around her small body, it was obvious that they had found her nude. “She is badly malnourished, and her breathing is weak. I do not know how much longer she has. We came for her just in time.”

  We returned to the shuttle at a sprint, shooting our way out at anything that moved in our way as we went.

  I should have been playing the death of Hyian’s killer over and over in my head the entire way back. Relishing it. Savoring the fact that Hyian had died a hero, brave and strong, and Kal-avat had died drunk in a puddle of his own piss, too weak to even save himself.

  But instead, my mind was on Alyse. Even as I had taken Kal-avat’s life, I had not been able to focus on him. Only her.

  When I returned to the ship, I would tell her of the way Hyian and I had chased each other through the trunks of the gilly-trees when I had been but a cub. I would tell her of how he had helped me train for the fighting pits when he returned from battle. He had taught me all he had known.

  I would bed her, if she would have me. In the wake of this battle, I needed her touch badly. With her lips against mine, I could forget for a moment the lives that had surely been lost to Rutharian missiles while we had staged the rescue of the female in Coplan’s arms. With her body beneath me, I could try to make amends for the horrible things that the Rutharians had done to the poor humans they captured.

  With her hand in mine, I could ask her to marry me. I could not give her much, but I could be a good father for our cubs, I was quite certain.

  And someday, when our cubs were grown and chasing each other through the gilly-trees… Someday, I would tell her of how I had killed Kal-avat. It was not something that I had walked away from proudly, though Kal-avat had known why it had to be done.

  I would tell Alyse, and I would kiss her, then I would call our cubs inside to eat dinner and I would drink an entire bottle of starshine.

  And after that…

  After that, I would not think of the matter ever again. Only of the way Hyian had laughed at me on the day I had lifted my first sword. Of how he had disarmed me of it in under a minute flat. And of how I could raise the cubs that Alyse and I shared to be more like him.

  Strong. Clever. Brave.

  Brave enough to laugh at death itself while it stared them in the face.

  When our shuttle slipped inside the Avant Lupinia again, the ship was engulfed in chaos. Other shuttles, some with holes blown clear through them, skidded in behind us as though they could not have flown even a few feet further. The warriors that staggered out of them were nearly all bleeding or burned—sometimes both. They helped each other limp toward the medical bay.

  I wrapped my arm around the first wounded warrior I came upon and guided him to the ward myself. I suspected I would find Alyse there, doing her best to help Healer Adskow cope with the casualties.

  But though I searched for her white-blonde curls in desperation, she was nowhere to be found.

  “Adskow.” I caught the healer by his elbow as I settled my new warrior friend down on a cot. “Have you seen Alyse?”

  Adskow shook his head. “I wish I had, though. Her help would be most useful right now. If you find her before I do, send her my way.”

  I knew I needed to go back and help more of the wounded—and to find Kloran for a debriefing after that—but an awful feeling had knotted itself into my stomach. A feeling that I could not shake.

  Alyse was a healer—a good one. She enjoyed her work and would have understood how much she was needed to tend to the wounded in the wake of the battle.

  It did not make sense as to why she would not have been in the medical bay to help.

  I rushed to her room as quickly as I could. What started as a jog ended in a sprint. She was not there, though. Not on the bridge, either.

  I had just begun to fear that she had been taken—stolen away again, and our cubs along with her—when I heard a voice coming from behind the closed door of the communications room that stopped me in my tracks.

  Not Alyse’s voice. A male one. Snarling, impatient—and positively furious.

  “You are stalling, Leonix!” The voice was familiar. Whoever it belonged to was shouting loudly enough, I could hear it clearly through the door.

  “If you want to speak with Lady Idria, call her yourself,” I heard Leonix snap back at him—just as loudly.

  “Connect the call or I will shoot the human. Do not think that I won’t.”

  Inside me, my emotions up until that point had been pulled tight and thin as an old bootlace.

  But at those words—shoot the human—that lace snapped, and so did I.

  The door to the communications room buckled beneath my boot before I e
ven realized I had kicked it. Blood swirled inside my skull, hot and heady. The rage I felt was blinding. Intoxicating.

  Distantly, I was aware of the surprise on Ero’s face when he turned to me. His eyes had not even had time to shift colors. I had not given him a moment to even consider what I was about to do—what he had brought upon himself.

  There simply been the dull clang of the door hitting the wall, then the hiss of my blade as it slashed through Ero’s throat. After, as he lay on the floor at my feet, I heard a sick gurgle that reminded me of the exact same sound Var-arak and Kal-avat had made upon their own deaths.

  It was strange, almost, that in dying, there was truly no difference between a Lunarian traitor, a Rutharian killer, and a Rutharian king.

  “Nion!”

  In my rage, I almost felt as though my spirit had left my own body. Perhaps Hyian’s spirit had inhabited me in that moment instead, acting for me. Seeking one last glory of his own. But Alyse’s voice drew me back to my senses.

  As she threw her arms around me and pressed her body tightly against mine, I finally felt whole again.

  “Nion…” She drew away from me again far too soon. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I am…what?” I glanced down at my shirt in confusion and found a slowly budding blossom of fresh blood. At first, I thought perhaps my stitches had torn open again—but thanks to Alyse, those had healed weeks ago. And even if they hadn’t, they were on the other side.

  “You’re injured, Nion. Ero must have…he must have shot you. You’re bleeding.”

  “Well…yes. I suppose I am.” I blinked and patted at the wound. As soon as I touched it, though, I felt lightheaded immediately. “I suppose I do that a lot.”

  “Come on.” Alyse slipped her arm around my waist and helped me stagger out into the hall. By the time my body finally registered the pain of my wound, Leonix had stationed herself at my other side.

  I was grateful for them. Now that I could feel the wound, I could feel how much it hurt.

  And it hurt. A lot.

  “It is…good to see you again, Alyse,” I grunted, trying my best to make casual conversation as I choked back my pain. “I was starting to regret not saying goodbye.”