The Destroyer (38 page)

"Wait!" the king yelled. "Let the girl go and take me instead." He walked toward them.

"Oh no. That isn't the plan, human King. Our empress specifically said to either kill this one or bring her back. She has other plans for you." She looked to her companions and said, "Close the door," in their language. They pulled the massive pieces of wood closed between us.

"Get everyone on the exit roads out of the city!" Maerc screamed at the assembled guards. "I need to know exactly where they are heading." They saluted and ran down out of the room.

"Runir! Take your men and either find Kaiyer's body or bring him back here." He pointed at the handsome blonde man who nodded and dashed out the door.

Greykin, the duke, the king, and the queen formed a tight circle where they appeared to be discussing what to do. The king put his arms around his wife as she began to sob.

I ran up to Nadea, she looked at me with panic and concern.

"Have you seen Kaiyer?" she asked.

"No. I was just going to ask you the same thing." I noticed she was soaking wet but I didn't ask what had happened.

"When did you see him last?" Iarin asked her as he walked up behind us. She paused for a second.

"I walked with him to his room and then the alarm sounded. We ran toward the Royal Quarters and he saw an Ancient dashing up the stairs. He told me that he would meet me here after he killed the Ancients. That was maybe a quarter of an hour ago."

"It figures that your hero isn't here when we really need him," the prince said behind me. He stepped into our small circle with his chest puffed out and nose twisted in disgust. "Now my sister has been captured. None of this would have happened if you hadn't brought him here." His words dripped with contempt.

Nadea’s arm shot out like a crossbow bolt and the heel of her hand caught Nanos flat in the nose. He screamed in pain and shuffled back, tripping over his purple cloak and falling on his ass. Nadea's face turned from anger, to fear, and then to triumph within a split second.

"You bitch!" the prince gurgled as he tried to stem the tide of red snot that poured from his face onto his crushed velvet shirt. "You broke my fucking nose!"

"Nadea!" her father yelled from the side of the room where he spoke to the king. She crossed her arms and glared back at him.

"He's lucky that I only broke his nose. I'm going to go find Kaiyer." She looked at Iarin and me. "Let's go."

"No you aren't," the duke interrupted her. "Greykin is going to escort you three back to your rooms. And then soldiers are going to guard the doors until we are sure that the Ancients are gone." Greykin walked up behind him with a frown. He looked just as happy to hear the new order as Nadea did.

"We need to find Kaiyer." She tossed her head and her ponytail trailed a line behind her.

"No. You have to do what I say. Kaiyer can take care of himself." The duke nodded to Greykin.

"Let's go,” the large man said under his breath. Forty guards had filtered into the room and were receiving direction from Maerc as we were leaving. A handful of them followed behind us as we made our way back to the rooms.

"This is bullshit Greykin," Nadea said to him as we walked.

"For once I agree with you, but it's not my place to question your father and the king. If I had my way, I'd be on a horse right now chasing after those snide little bastards that kidnapped Jess." His voice sounded like rocks falling down a cliff.

The alarm had stopped ringing, but Nadea seemed to grow angrier each step that took her closer to her room.

"Are we just supposed to sit here and wait?" she asked Greykin when the four of us and our guard escort made it to the hallway by her quarters.

"Yes," he said as he sat down in one of Nadea's chairs. Her tables were loaded with maps, books, scrolls, and writing implements. The big man dropped his axe and shield on the rug and then put his face in his hands.

No one spoke. Iarin walked to the corner of Nadea's room where the fireplace was and got one started. His face was worried and pensive.

"It wasn't your fault Greykin," Nadea whispered. She walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

"It was though," the big man sobbed through his hands. "They moved so quick. Before I could even react they had grabbed her. I felt powerless. I kept telling myself that I might be a little slower, a bit weaker than last year, but I am still good enough to protect the king's most valued treasures. Tonight I was proved wrong." He cried again. I had never imagined Greykin like this. He seemed broken and beaten.

"We'll get her back," Nadea said as she looked over to me, her face pained. I felt my eyes start to tear up. Jessmei's smiling face twisted into one of horror in my memories. How would we ever get her back? What would the empress do to her? Would they use her as leverage against the king? Would they do some of the horrible things Kaiyer told me that they did to human female slaves? My body shuddered in nausea as I thought about Jessmei being raped.

"Why wasn't Kaiyer with you Nadea?" Greykin asked suddenly. He looked up from his sitting position and I could see the tear marks on his face. His face was so ashen, his cheeks resembled wet stone walls.

"He ran after one of the Ancients we saw on the way to the room." Nadea frowned.

"If only he had stayed with you, this wouldn't have happened." Greykin's face looked achingly sad again.

An oppressive silence sat in the room. The only noise was the sound of the fire cracking and the light breeze pushing against the window. Iarin was sitting down, slumped against the wall by the fire. Nadea had moved to her bed and sat on the mattress. Her fingers absently twisted through her dark hair while she stared at the ground in concentration.

Greykin stood up and exhaled deeply. "This isn't Skinny's fault. It isn't my fault. This is the empress's fault." He looked around to each of us. "Runir is going to be looking for Kaiyer, but let's go help him. Maybe Skinny will have a plan to get her back. We can't just sit here and be idle. Then they will surely win. Jess needs us now and we must push forward."

Iarin got up with a smile and nodded, eager for action. While I wasn’t as anxious to put myself back in danger, the inaction was torture, and even I felt restless and agitated simply waiting in the room.

"Okay. Let's check the tower he went up first," Nadea said as she stood. The life had definitely returned to her eyes. "I think the whole point of this night was to kidnap Jessmei. Why?"

"Can they use her as leverage against the king?" I asked.

"Why didn't they just kill the king?" Greykin said. He bent down and picked up his axe and shield.

"That would probably galvanize our forces against the empress. She has plenty of humans, but I don't think she has many Ancients in her force. Or at least, the reports seem to indicate that she doesn't have an army of them."

We began to walk toward the door and then a knock sounded loudly on it. Greykin took a step in front of Nadea and raised his shield.

"Enter," he spoke deeply.

The duke walked into the room. His face was a pale mask of defeat and sadness.

"I have terrible news," he said. Ice hit my stomach and numbness spread through my legs. What could qualify as terrible relative to the other horrors that had occurred tonight?
Kaiyer is dead
was the only thing I could think. Our hopes of winning this war against the Ancients were lost.

Nadea crossed her arms. I could see her hands clench into fists as her body tensed. The four of us looked at the duke, prepared to hear the news. He took a deep breath before he spoke. He looked ten years older than yesterday.

"We got a report from our home," the duke looked to Nadea. "Losher's army has traversed the mountain and sacked the keep. The runners don't think there are any survivors. They barely escaped themselves. There are over twenty-five thousand troops in Losher's horde. They are marching here. They will be at the capital within the month." Nadea gasped and began to sob. She had a few friends here in the castle, but I knew that she had grown up and lived most of her life in her father's keep to the east.

"How the hell did they get over twenty-five thousand troops?" Greykin asked in astonishment.

"I have no idea. I only had five thousand guarding the pass. The reports my spies sent me as recently as two weeks ago said that they were bunkering down in preparation for the winter." The duke took another deep breath.

"How many troops do we have here in the capital?" I asked.

The duke looked at me and then to Greykin and Nadea.

"More than half of our troops are assisting in the North. Some are guarding our southern border. We will probably be able to gather ten to fifteen thousand at the most before Losher's mass gets here."

"So you're saying that we are fucked then?" Iarin called from the back by the fireplace.

"The walls of this city have never been breached, but being under siege will be a challenge. Still, I have no doubt that we will emerge victorious," the duke said. I felt my hopes dash. He had to say that we would prevail, but it sounded impossible. First the Ancients and now this threat from the East? News of Kaiyer's death would have only been marginally worse.

It looked like we would all die much sooner than expected.

Our Elven taskmasters realized that Thayer and I were bitter enemies, and today we had made quite a show of aggravating each other. It started in the morning, when he finished his set of squats quicker than I and spat on the back of my head. I tackled him to the ground and broke his nose, again, before the rest of our training partners pulled me off of him. Half an hour later when he was practicing a sword drill against another opponent, I strategically tripped him from behind. When he got off the ground he screamed curses against my mother and they had to pull the two of us apart. We shot fiery hot glares at each other the whole day, but they kept us from training with each other.

There were six other groups like ours, each with about twenty empowered humans. It was Laxile's latest play to assimilate more tribes into their power base. Humans had been used as ground troops for hundreds of years in the Elven squabbles. If properly trained, a team of two or three humans could kill one of the monsters. Other tribes began to create small human armies and moved them against their opponents with as much emotional attachment as a piece on a game board.

We were different. Stronger and faster. We used their magic, only to heal ourselves, but it meant that we could learn combat skills without fear of death. Instead of the two or three humans needed to kill one Elven, it would take two or more Elvens to kill one of us.

As the day faded to dusk, I scanned the hill where our masters frequently stood to oversee their cattle. Once, a few years ago, when I first moved here after my brother and father's murder, I had seen her ride by on a magnificent gray warhorse. Her hair flew behind her like a flag that had been lit on fire by the sun. My heart stopped beating and my vision clouded, but then she was gone. She didn't look down into the training grounds at me, and I never saw her again.

Something hit me from behind and my spine bent backward as I flew forward five feet into the mud. I pushed myself up quickly, spitting dirt and water out of my mouth. It had been Thayer of course, and our training partners had already moved between us. I punched the one in front of me and he screamed as his jaw broke and he collapsed to the dirt. I kicked another one and the air went out of his stomach. Hands grabbed me from all sides and pulled me to the ground. Thayer screamed words about raping my eye socket, but it was hard to hear over the shouts of the other men.

"What is going on here?" the voice of our specific Elven trainer yelled. It was the one that ran me through with his sword. I smiled slightly at the sight of the silver-haired man. I never learned his name but could almost feel my hands closing around his throat and strangling the life from him.

"They are at it again," one of the men said on cue.

"Master, they've been bickering all day," another followed the script.

"We can't train like this. We have to stop what we are doing every half hour to break them apart."

"Very well," the Elven said. His silvery hair laid back in a braid. His cold gray eyes judged each of us. "I've grown sick of both of you. You have been compromising the training of my other slaves for too long. Take them to the Ring."

Hands grasped my arms, twisted me around and began to drag me away from our training site, toward the Ring. I couldn't see Thayer through the crowd but I heard him yell at me still. I looked up on the ridge and saw a group of a dozen Elvens walking down to the other side, to the Ring. Perfect, we would give them a good show.

The Ring was a large semicircle of dirt, mud, and gravel. A shoulder high fence of stacked logs surrounded the circle and observers could watch people battle on the inside while sitting atop the barricade. I saw other groups of humans jogging over from their respective training camps. We didn't have much interaction with the other teams, but Thayer and I were infamous for our combat prowess and hatred for each other. This wasn't the first time we had been in the Ring to fight for everyone's amusement.