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Action, adventure, a little romance and a twist. What more could you want? R&R Please! |
| Waking up for the third time that week with Mia at his side, he laid there, listening to her deep breathing and steady heart. It was calming. Last night’s events slowly played back to him. Lord Vaunder. The boys. Stones. Tomas. Mia. I really am acting like a Lord. It hadn’t fully sunken in until just then. Bloody Lord. I wonder if they gave me some land to go with the title. But then, that’s just it. It’s just a title, isn’t it? I’m just her flaming pet now. Mia stirred slightly, murmuring his name, before settling back into him. Fast asleep. She looked peaceful. ”…I will share you with Celia…” Is that it? Is that why I feel guilty when I’m with Mia? Could a man really love two women? Love… Do I… ”Relax love…” Yes, she had called me that. John hadn’t had much time of late to really evaluate where he was and where he was going. Thinking back on it, he felt silly for believing he could warn the leaders of the Summit, behind Tekal’s back, by using two of his friends’ fathers. Only Kalian and the Empire had a true ruler, the other two lands were too divided. Ghourd had the Nine Lords while Capri had their Three Kings. And Dylon… Dylon’s father was only a merchant of Capri, not even a Kings. He was loosing his confidence in the absurd plan they had concatenated. It was half assed and desperate at best. Kings… Mia’s father was the long forgotten Fourth King of Capri? So he must be a Hunter as well if he is still alive. Would Celia agree to be a Maiden? …What am I thinking? No woman would agree to that--especially on the terms we had left on. She probably still thinks I can’t trust her. But can I? The portal to the stables, it doesn’t make sense. Damnit, she has to be alive. John suddenly realized Mia’s breathing had increased slightly, as had her heartbeat. He looked down to see her looking up at him, a frown creasing her lovely features. The maelstrom of thoughts that rattled his brain was clear to her eyes. Not wanting to meet her eyes, he found himself looking at his two Tekal knives propped up against the wall. For some reason, Boria came to mind--when he had killed the first Slayer there. Celia had looked at him as if he were a demon. John closed his eyes and sighed. I’m a mess. “What’s wrong, love? I thought you were pleased.” John smiled weakly. “Aye. You are all-a-please’n. I didn’t even know a woman of your stature knew such things.” She buried her face into him, hiding her reddened cheeks. He still didn’t understand one thing. “Why?” Mia pulled away from his chest. “Why what?” “Why do you love me?” “That’s a silly question.” “Considering everything, I don’t think so.” “And what is there to consider?” “Well… For starters, I don’t have two pennies to my name and I have a face that makes babies cry.” “You’ve just became a Ce’lian Lord and, if you haven’t looked in the mirror lately, your scars are going away.” John growled at her. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” His eyes snapped to the front door. Mia sighed. “Are you going to wallow in self pity or are you going to accept the fact that a girl like me cou--What’s wrong?” John cursed himself for taking off their mindlinks. They had wanted privacy last night. “Stay here.” His sixth sense was tingling. John rolled out of bed and dropped to the floor soundlessly. He hadn’t gotten halfway to his weapons when the door blasted inward. The energy from the blast dispersed into the room like fireworks. Four men all dressed in black, with scarves hiding their faces, could be seen through the dust. Naked, and without a weapon, he did want any Vanguard would do in his situation. He charged. Okay, maybe all Vanguards charged in any situation. Minor character flaw. He leapt through the doorway and was upon them instantly. They cried out in surprise as he punched the nearest one of them, only to disappear as he reached for his new power. John didn’t know what he would have done if he were in their shoes. Getting your ass kicked by someone you couldn’t see would have scared him witless. While it was four against one, The Way’s close quarter hand-to-hand combat was nothing short of fierce and dirty. Elbowing another man in the throat, he kicked another’s leg out from under him. Head butting the fourth, he attacked the one he had punched to begin with. With the shock warn off, the men still standing went for their weapons. Untrained, they didn’t realized that the hallway limited their sa’dkas--at least he hoped. Leveraging this belief to his advantage, he racked his first attacker and withdrew the man’s da’kkas as he fell away from John. Spinning, John killed his second attacker with a quick thrust up under the man’s covered chin. Ducking a cut that would have departed his head from his shoulder, he rammed the third man through. It was about that time the tide started to turn. They weren’t mere mortals and they certainly weren’t as green as he had hoped for. John hit the nearest wall with a loud crack. A new player to the fight had backhanded him and hard. To his shock, they were stirring up the settling dust to highlight his invisible figure. Recovering quickly, he parried a blow but wasn’t fast enough to block a cut that sent welting pain across his thigh. They were going to wear him down. Blocking another thrust, he tried to counterattack but was forced to block a stab that would have impaled him to the wall. Feeling trapped, he used the wall and launched himself into the nearest assailant. Tackling the man to the ground with the force of a battering ram, John rolled off him. Unfortunately, he didn’t roll fast enough. Pain shot through the entire length of his spine and was immediately followed by the warm sensation of blood. Whirling, he backed himself into the other wall only to get pinned by two da’kkas; each slicing into his armpits as they buried themselves into the stone wall behind him. The damn guy he had run through before had already healed and yet another man dressed in the same fashion appeared. Five men total, not including the one he had killed. Shit. Frustration took over him, closely followed by panic. He wished he could control his spirit at will. John knew if he had Accelerated, and used his spirit like gauntlets, he would have defeated them easily. John tried to move but one of the men forced his forehead back into the wall, making a dent in the stone wall. Dazed by the blunt head trauma, and surprised his skull hadn’t cracked open like a melon, he watched the two blue eyes of his headache through the settling dust. They were hard and cold. Lazily, John focused on the man behind the blue eyed man and saw two emeralds starring right back at him. The Caprian man pulled back his elbow in a preparation for a thrust--a long knife held tightly in his hand. He aimed to impale John’s eye and, more importantly, his brain to the wall. Mia screamed wordlessly from beyond. “No! Run,” John gasped. He painfully watched the knife plummet down toward his eye. He wanted to think his life flashed before his eyes but it didn’t. He only felt the caress of the blade against his eyelashes before he was saved. Mia slammed into his executioner with a fierce cry, and then the four other assassins mysteriously dropped lifelessly to the ground. And then Weryn appeared in his vision like a knight in shining armor. Grabbing the two da’kkas that had him pinned to the wall, Weryn yanked them free. Gasping in pain, John dropped to the floor and regretted it immediately. The cut along his back was on fire and the one on his thigh was only a hair less painful. “Major, are you okay?” It took John a moment to realize it had come from Weryn. The man had actually used his title. “Dodged the Soul Taker--yet again,” he said between gasping breaths. “I’ll live.” Four other men that John hadn’t seen before appeared behind Weryn. Seconds later, Will and Akara came to a halt in front of them. Blood peppered their livery. Looking more closely at Weryn and the four new men, he saw fresh blood stains there too. “How many?” “We’ve counted thirteen in total so far, including these six meat bags. They scaled the wall sometime during the night, killed a handful of guards. If it wasn’t for Donnie’s team, I don’t think we would have made it.” “Thirteen?” Mia asked as she knelt in front of John, wiping away some of the blood with the hem of her old white robe she had pulled out of from nowhere. “She has a sick sense of humor.” It was a lot. But they had more pressing issues to worry about. “Were there any riders or pigeons heading out last night?” “No,” It was Will who answered. “We made sure of it. Besides, even if someone had gotten past the watch towers, survived the cold, and gotten word of our location to Tekal… they still wouldn’t have had time to organize and deploy men within a day of our arrival.” John nodded at the teenager’s analysis with approval. Now that he thought on it, the kid could very easily be older than he. “You know what this means,” Weryn said. “Aye. They either have Cedrick or Waylon… or both.” At the sound of a door closing, they all turned to see Nina gaping at John. Before he could open his mouth, Lord Vaunder and ten men appeared with their weapons bare. One look at the bodies, half the men sheathed their weapons. John slowly stood up. His wounds already stitching together. Vaunder gaped at him and John had a feeling it wasn’t because he was naked. “I’m afraid they know we are here. I’d advise you to forgo the Summit and to get your family to a safe place--preferably one that they won’t expect,” Turning, he started for his mutilated bedroom door, the last of his cuts closing in on themselves. “I won’t back down from a fight,” Vaunder whispered before John crossed the bedroom’s threshold. Pausing, he sighed, “I know. It was only a hope.” He turned to Weryn and the others. “Lieutenant, prepare for departure. We are leaving.” Please be alive, you two. Ghidean was a small town with barely a hundred people to collect taxes from. It was the ideal spot to hold a secret meeting between nations. Why they chose the winter season to meet was beyond John. He felt like he’d freeze to ice if he didn’t move his body, even with the heavily fur lined long coat he wore. They had reached Ghidean sometime after noon and had been circling the town for the past hour, combing the forests for any soldiers who were hiding. Since Ghidean was in the Ghourd lands, John had a feeling that the traitor was one of the Nine Lords. Technically, Ghidean was just within Lord Vaunder’s providence, which raised a few red flags in John’s mind. Surely he isn’t the traitor. “Major, we found the barn,” Akara said over the mindlink. Everyone had started calling him by his military title since Weryn mentioned it--which was fine by him since he didn’t care for the ‘Lord’ one. He did feel guilty, though, for taking over Mia’s position as their leader, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, she enjoyed it. John was beginning to believe the woman liked being subservient. Since Mia had seemingly given over her command to him, Donnie and his team started reporting to him as well. During their trek to Ghidean, Mia had explained to him that the rebels were divided into three Clans. The ‘Chief’ John had heard before was a title for the leader of a Clan, like Mia’s father. Each Clan had a different view on how they should live. The Dayton Clan believed that they should join Tekal but only after the Fourth Triangle was removed. Fugia Clan was a lot more passive; they wanted nothing to do with Tekal while the Pusien Clan wanted everyone associated with Tekal dead. Mia had told him that Dayton and Pusien were at odds with each other but nothing that had led to bloodshed--yet. In Dayton Clan, they divided up the Hunter’s into teams of four, mobilizing them as scouting parties to track Tekal movement. The Slayer’s in the Dayton Clan had a more supportive type role, like protecting the safe houses. The recent ‘demonic activity’ was actually Clan Pusien’s doing, or so they believed. Mia had told them that the Pusien clan knew that Tekal was up to something but, just how much, she didn’t know. “Anyone there yet?” “No sir. Captain is securing it as we speak.” “Major. We just completed a survey of the land. There are only the four camp sites. All of them are the right size.” It was one of Donnie’s men. He had appeared in front of John and Weryn like a ghost. It was a little unnerving to John that he couldn’t hear him until only after he ‘de-cloaked’, as they called it. Donnie’s team weren’t on the same mindlink circle as Mia’s, so they had to do it the old fashion way. John was afraid that the traitor would bring more than a brigade to the Summit by hiding them in the surrounding forest. They would have to keep an eye on the forest the closer that time came. “Good work. Let Lieutenant Donnie know that the barn has been found and that they could use his help securing it. We are expecting company so keep sharp.” At least, he hoped that the ‘company’ was friendly--one worry that had gnawed at him on his ride to Ghidean. If they had been tortured into giving up their location in Ghourd… “Yes sir.” As the nameless man disappeared back into the forest, Weryn said, “What’s the plan?” “We have today to prepare. Noon tomorrow the Summit will begin,” John said, more out of thinking aloud than for Weryn’s benefit. “Let’s go meet an old friend.” John had wanted to go with Mia but she had insisted that he stay with the horses, where it was warm, and where he had a strategic view of Ghidean. Each of the nation’s brigades had set up camps from the direction that they had come from in relation to Ghidean. Cloaking, John led Weryn down the hill and towards the south side of the town. The camp site to the 1st Brigade of the Vanguard was bustling with activity. Getting past the sentries had been a challenge, even with their invisibility. Footprints were still left and tree branches still moved; but once past the three rings of defense, John and Weryn were able to easily navigate the site since the ground had long been turned to harden mud. The camp was divided into three distinct groups, one for each Battalion. After reading the various flags, John was able to find the 1st. Since the tents’ marking had nothing to do with rank, a trick that hindered assassins from finding the ranking officer easily, John had to eavesdrop to find Rand. When he heard Tesa’s name in the crowd, he tried to locate where he had heard it from. Hearing everything in a league was great until you had to find where you heard it from. Weryn, who John had told him to listen for the few names he knew would be near Rand, tapped his shoulder. “I found Giles.” “Where?” Weryn pointed at a tent and John encouraged him to lead the way. Halfway to the tent, John heard Tesa’s voice. “Come on Giles, all we’ve been doing this past moon is securing the camp. Let me do some recon work. I know they are doing the same to us.” “You heard the Sarg. L.T. doesn’t want to risk it and until the Cap gets here, are hands are tied.” So Rand picked Giles as his Under. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Weryn inspected the tent flap but there was no way around to getting in without being noticed. John pushed it aside and they both walked in. As expected, both Tesa and Giles were sitting at a table, warming themselves to a portable iron furnace. “Where in the seven bloody hells did that wind come from?” “Giles…” Both John and Weryn’s foot prints were making impressions on the carpet. “Since when did Under-Sergeants get carpeted tents?” John asked with half a smile. Both of them shot to their feet, startled. “Sarg?” they both said as one, looking down at the ghost footprints. John de-cloaked as did Weryn. “Major now, actually.” His two old File Leaders blinked, and blinked again. “Mother of Gods! John!” Giles cried. “Silence,” John snapped. Weryn went to the tent flap and peered out. After a minute of waiting he said, “Clear, sir.” Tesa looked from John to Weryn. “I don’t understand.” “You are the only two that know I’m here and it needs to be kept that way for now,” John said. “I need to get Rand in here.” “You--You just appeared,” Giles rubbed his eyes and then looked down at his cup. John had a feeling it wasn’t water. “Are you a ghost?” Grinning, John pointed to Tesa with his chin. “Would a ghost know you’ve been trying to get into her pants since you first met her?” Tesa arched an eyebrow at Giles and the older man went pale. “You bastard, I told you that in confidence!” “Well now you know I’m not a figment of your imagination. Get Rand in here but don’t tell him why.” Hesitating, Giles finally nodded while carefully not meeting Tesa’s eyes. When the tent flap settled upon his departure, Tesa reached out and touched John’s face. “You’ve--changed. Happier.” Smiling, he nodded. “Aye. For now at least. How’s our men?” “Getting old, fat, and toothless,” she said, returning the smile. “Poor bastards. Oh, this is Lieutenant Weryn. Weryn, my File Leader from another life. Tesa” Her eyes widened at the man’s green eyes and red hair but she politely traded grips with him. Her eyes turned to John with a look of wonder. “What have you been doing all this time?” “You know. The usual. Getting shot, punched, stabbed… pretty much getting my assed kicked.” John followed her eyes to the three gold stripe pin on his right shoulder. “How…” “Giles and another man is coming.” He turned just in time to watch the flap open. Rand was demanding what he was doing when he suddenly stopped. Giles pushed him all the way in and closed the tent flap. “John?” the one word told John volumes. Awe, surprise, happiness, and fear. The last part he had come to expect. Rand had become comfortable and happy with his new promotion. “Major John now,” he said in a way of making it clear he wasn’t back to take over his old position. “Major?” His eyes went involuntarily to the three golden stripes. “Well, Lord Major John Ce’l of the Vanguard if you want to get technical.” His three old friends gaped at him. It was really starting to get annoying. “Anything else?” Rand asked a little unsteadily. Giles snorted, “You should have been here when he came in.” Tesa glared at him for silence and the US smartly did. John thought Tesa liked him just as much as he did behind all the hardness. It made for a great show. “The Summit will most likely be attacked tomorrow.” “How do you know?” Rand pushed suspiciously. “After surviving a thirteen man assassin team to get here to warn you guys, I’m fairly confident.” “You didn’t answer the question.” “Do you know what Tekal is?” “No… should I?” John wanted to growl. “No and it would take too long to explain. What you do need to know is that one of the nations will betray us tomorrow and there is an enemy that a conventional army can’t kill.” “What? What do you mean can’t kill?” “Just worry about the person who is going to betray us. When it hits the fan tomorrow, the Vanguard might have to fight one of the other camps.” “Why aren’t you going to the L.T. with this?” “You know as much as I do that he wouldn’t believe that I’ve been adopted into the Ce’l House, by Lady Tyrn no less, and promoted up five ranks from where I had been previously--out ranking him. General Briar will be here tomorrow with the Lady which gives us no time for the bureaucratic bullshit if we are going to prepare for it. Lord Vauder from the Ghourd camp should be arriving sometime tonight. He will let the Ghourds know about a possible attack and as for the Capri camp--I don’t know if we reached them. The idea was to flush out the traitor by alerting everyone of it before She shows up but it’s a stretch to begin with.” “She?” “Just trust me on this.” Rand only paused a second before nodding. “Fine, what do you want me to do?” “I’ll leave Weryn with you. I need you to take him to the Kalian camp and under strict secrecy. Weryn has a note I need signed, he can do the talking. I need someone who has enough rank to gain entrance to their fortified camp but not enough to draw attention.” “Master. Dylon is here and he brought his father.” Growling, John said aloud to the room, “Hold that thought." To Weryn he said, "When is she going to stop calling me Master.” Weryn laughed. “When you marry her, sir.” Turning to Rand, Giles whispered, “I think they have lost it,” |
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