The Destroyer Book 3 (67 page)

"To clean the duchess's room, of course." I smiled over my shoulder and then walked into the adjacent room as confidently as I could. Nadea followed me without looking and I closed the thick oak door behind her. I listened to the other room for a second and was surprised that the Elven didn't follow us. She probably thought I was a mere human servant who wouldn't dream of defying my new masters.

Once I had determined that they weren't going to follow us I turned to Nadea to explain my plan.

"I thought you were dead, again." Her arms wrapped up around my neck and her mouth whispered the words in my ear. I felt her warm breath on my face and smelled the scent of her hair and skin. My arms circled her lower back and I pulled her slender body against mine. For a few seconds I couldn't think of anything besides how much I wanted to make love to her. There was a bed in the room, a monstrous four post contraption that could have penned an angry stallion if boards were added to the sides. It would have been wonderful to pick up my friend, carry her the thirty feet, throw her on the bed, and have my way with her. Alas, my animal brain recovered from its luxuriant fantasy and recalled the task at hand.

"I said I would return to you. I've come to rescue you," I whispered back, remembering the last time we saw each other in Fisherman's Gorge. Nadea had wanted me to stay in the camp, but I argued that her father and Jessmei needed me. My voice was quiet enough to keep the Elvens from hearing us. Or so I hoped.

"What do you mean?" She pulled away from me, her face painted with a puzzled expression.

"We are going to escape the castle. The army is departing east to your father's keep."

"No. No. No." She shook her head and her dark brown mane swirled around her shoulders and cascaded down her lower back like the sunset over a waterfall. She normally kept it tied up in a ponytail, but tonight it was loose. I noticed now how each thread of hair on her head had a faint metallic sheen. "I surrendered. It's over. We lost. There is nowhere to run."

"Your father's castle is on the cliffs of the Teeth. We can defend against the empress from there. We can also escape into the Losher lands if we need to."

"They will hunt us down. They are too powerful. I've thought about this Kaiyer. There is no way we can win at this point." She crossed her arms.

"I will change more of your troops and train them. I spent my life fighting Elvens and I can show your people what to do." I struggled to keep my voice low.

"It is too late. The empress has us cornered."

"There is always a way to victory. We have to get you and Jess out of the castle."

"She is here?"

"Somewhere. I believe your father is just across the hall."

"My father?" Her eyes glistened slightly and for a second the strong woman in front of me became a girl that missed her parent. I could relate to the feeling. The loss of my brother and father still made my heart ache, thousands of years later.

"We will kill these guards, retrieve your father, find Jessmei, and then flee the castle. We have horses prepared and can--"

"Ahhh shit!" Greykin's voice boomed in the room next door with the accompaniment of a broken glass.

"You poured wine all over me, human!"

"The wet and annoyed look suits you, Ancient. Maybe if you hadn't gotten in the way of me feast you wouldn't have suffered from the wrath of this glass."

The two began to argue and Runir jumped into the verbal fray to point out that the guardswoman was quite clumsy. Nadea and I turned our attention back to each other knowing that we only had a few precious seconds to conclude this discussion.

"I will speak to my father; we will listen to your plan and then make a decision." Nadea's words were backed by iron and she moved past me to open the door. "We can't risk offending the empress without a complete understanding of the consequences."

"Have you met with her yet?" I rested my hand on her arm to keep her from opening the door. The contact of her skin felt like warm sunlight baking my cold and tired body.

"No. I was told tomorrow at the earliest. They showed me respect when I arrived though, so I am going to demand to walk across the hallway and see if you are correct about my father. Then you can explain the plan to both of us."

"Fine, I will need to tell you both something else as well," I said through gritted teeth. Nadea wanted to see her father and at this point, nothing I could say or do would stop her. She was as stubborn as I remembered Shlara being. Just like me.

The argument next door was becoming more heated and I heard Runir moving toward our door to block the guard from entering. I moved my hand to my back and made sure the small dagger there was loose in its sheath under my shirt. If the guards denied us access to Beltor it would get messy. I hoped Nadea could at least get to the door down the hallway before the guards tried to stop her with force. Then I could kill them without risk of one escaping and sounding an alarm.

"I am going next door," Nadea said to everyone in the room as soon as she opened the door. She slid around the tall blonde man and went to move past the guards that he had been blocking.

"No. You are to stay in your quarters," the guard with the blue hair and eyes said.

"Is my father in the room down the hall?" Nadea took a step toward the Elven and the table with the uneaten plate of food.

"You can ask the empress tomorrow when she sees you." The Elven crossed her arms and rested the palm of her right hand on the pommel of her sword. The other guard still stood in the entryway to the suite but also rested her hand casually on her blade.

"Are you going to draw your swords?" The duchess glared at the two women and stepped toward them. I wondered how much she had practiced with the Earth in the time we had been apart.

"The empress wishes you alive, human." The blue-haired Elven inched a few steps closer to the side of the table away from Nadea and then nodded with her head nonchalantly over to where Danor, Greykin, and Runir stood. "But one of them can be killed easily. Don't test our resolve."

"He must be there or you would have answered differently. I will see him now."

"No, human. You will not." The guards drew their swords from their scabbards. To me, it was a slow movement that I could have interrupted with a simple push on their arms, but it probably seemed fast to Greykin, Runir, and Danor. The Elven guard in the hallway stepped a few feet into the suite but still blocked the exit. I heard a hurried set of footsteps make their way toward us from the other room.

"There is no need for weapons. Just let me see my father." With the swords drawn, the room suddenly felt too small. The Elven closest to us with the blue hair could move a few feet and cut down any one of us. Unfortunately, if she actually chose to attack the three men on the other side of the table there was little I could do about it without harnessing magic.

Every heart in the room beat furiously.

"No. We have our orders." She looked at me. "The servants shall leave your room now or I will remove them. You will stay here until the empress sees you. Another outburst like this and I will either remove or kill your friends." The two other guards came to stand in the hallway. It was only a matter of time before the woman who used to guard my door recognized me. Then I would be forced to act.

"The empress promised me autonomy with her people. Do your actions mean that she lied to me?" Nadea was getting angrier. I could imagine her frustration. It had been a year since she last saw her father and the knowledge that he was in the next room must have been agonizing.

"You can address her directly tomorrow." She looked to me and narrowed her eyes. "Leave now."

"Let's go," I said to Danor. Then I stepped around the table and walked toward the Elven with the blue hair. She glanced at me for a second and then turned her attention back to Nadea.

"Are you done whining, human?"

"I will inform the empress of your actions," Nadea seethed at the blue-haired Elven.

I had walked past the last guard in the room and was a few feet from the doorway the other two Elvens were guarding when Nadea said the words. The woman on the right glanced to me as I neared her and then her eyes registered the recognition that I feared. Her mouth opened in surprise, but my dagger was already leaving the sheath tied sideways in the small of my back. I made a quick shuffle forward and twisted my body, whipping my hips and arms around to slash at her. My weapon was short, only five inches of blade, but the ferocity and speed of my attack separated her head from her neck like a butcher would handle a chicken.

The other Elven reached for her sword, but my left arm was already traveling away. None of these warriors wore helmets, so when my elbow collided with the side of her face it shattered skull and teeth, like a rock tossed through a red windowpane.

The other two guards were in the process of turning around to see what the noise was behind them. I dashed through the doorway and rammed the dagger in my left hand deep into the back of the closest Elven. The stab went between her ribs, splitting her slow beating heart in twain. It would probably take her brain a few seconds to realize that she was dead, and by then I would have killed the blue-haired Elven who turned toward me.

In combat, even the smallest mistakes could cost you everything. When battling with an O'Baarni or an Elven, mistakes compounded quickly. Actions that took a human a second to execute only took me an eighth of one. My warriors had to think quicker, respond faster, and plan their fighting tactics five steps ahead of their opponents. So far I had been disappointed with the prowess of the empress's troops. Yillomar had apparently been one of their best warriors, even skilled enough to beat the current O'Baarni crop, yet I defeated him easily. Could it be that the science my generals and I perfected had somehow been lost in these five thousand years? The stakes were much lower for my current brethren and the Elvens. Competing in a series of games for fame, instead of training for survival, must have dulled their skills.

My thoughts turned back to the blue-haired guard as she turned the wrong direction to face me. I was behind her, to her right, yet her sword was in her right hand. The novice would have turned as she did, clockwise toward me, but this allowed me to trap her weapon against her body as she twisted and slam the dagger into her right eye socket. Had she known better and spun counterclockwise, she could have addressed me with the point of her blade. It may not have mattered ultimately, but it was the finer techniques, committed to memory over thousands of repetitions, that separated the master warrior from the novice.

"What did you do Kaiyer?" Nadea's voice was frantic.

The four bodies fell to the floor at almost the same time, but I was already back to the second guard. Her body twitched a few times while her brain tried to rearrange itself. After a few seconds, her limbs stopped moving and I confirmed she was dead. Then I looked at the hallway. The first guard's blood splattered all over the side of the wall and pooled on the tile beneath her body. I had moved fast enough to escape the initial artery spray, but my left hand was covered with it from when I stabbed the third guard.

"One of the women in the hallway recognized me." I grabbed the first guard and dragged her body into Nadea's suite.

"Why did you kill them?" Nadea's face was red and she crossed her arms tightly across her chest.

"Do you want to see your father or not?" I shot back at her.

Her meeting with the empress was fast approaching and the outcome of that meeting would determine the fate of every human being on this planet. Nadea could not enter into that negotiation unaware that the empress was her mother.

"Yes of course I do. Your actions will strain the beginnings of our relationship with the Elvens." Nadea's voice had calmed down and I heard her move toward the doorway.

"These Elvens aren't your friends. They've killed many of your people and mine. They may approach you with an open hand, but it will only last until they have gotten whatever it is that they want from you. Then you will be slaughtered or enslaved, just as we were." I finished moving the second body inside and retrieved the head of the first Elven, throwing it on the pile of bodies that was now in Nadea's room.

"Get your possessions and go to the other room. Don't step in the blood." I grabbed one of the scabbards off of a body and tied the belt to my waist.

"You got it, lad," Greykin said before he stepped around me. Runir and Danor quickly followed after they too took weapons.

"I did not even see him move," Danor whispered once they made it to the hallway.

"You are right." Nadea sighed and the tension in her shoulders melted away in acceptance. "It used to be that I wanted Nia to overcome these invaders. When we were turned away at Brilla, I realized that we were in danger of losing our entire populace. The empress's deal seemed more attractive then. I knew how horrible these Elvens were, but I thought that the empress's forces would be different."

"Let's go see if your father is in that room. Then we will talk. If you decide to stay here that option will still be open for you." I moved over to the table and wiped the blood off my hands with a white cloth napkin that hadn't been used yet.

"If he is being kept in Maerc's room, there are hidden passages leading out of that suite and into the bones of the castle. We can leave without raising detection." Nadea walked out and I followed closely behind her, being careful to avoid the blood on the ground. The Elvens would still be able to find me by smell because of the trace amounts on my hand, but if my friends didn't have any on them, it would make their tracking harder.