Keiran was fighting to keep his tenuous grip on his human side, knowing his instinct to kill Danier would cost Thana her life. He was at a loss for what to say, only looking over at Jerris for a moment then the general again.
“Get out of my way, and let me pass,” Danier demanded, his expression growing dour. He slowly moved to sheath his sword then picked up his horse’s reins. “They are watching, and I would hate for them to see anything too upsetting.”
The vampire was frozen in place, unsure of what to do. If he let Danier go, he would never be given Thana back, yet there didn’t seem to be any other options available to him. He looked at Jerris, frowning with his brows knit.
The redhead looked back at him in return, seeing it was very much the real Keiran again. He offered a small shrug, not any better equipped to remedy the situation.
Keiran drew a long breath before looking at Danier. Though he didn’t sheathe his blade, he stepped out of the way, his eyes averting to the side.
The general gave a smirk and kicked his horse, starting forward. He laughed to himself at the pathetic weakness of the Tordanian King. “Don’t follow too closely. My men wouldn’t want to see anything suspicious.”
Jerris sheathed his blade and turned to watch the general moving away from them. “What in the hell do we do?”
“I don’t know,” he replied quietly, starting to walk back toward his own horse. “I wish your father was here to advise me.”
Jerris couldn’t object to that statement and went over to Patrice. He mounted and rode alongside Keiran. They followed in the general’s wake, at what they assumed was a safe distance.
The three Sadori ships were considerable in size and brightly painted in rusty red and blue. Keiran had never seen anything quite like them. Their long prows were swept upward, and the aft portions of the boats panned out flat and wide against the water. There were massive silk sails on each of them, in the same colors as the painted hulls.
Though the current of the river moved northward toward the sea, those multiple enormous sails would allow the ships to pass southward against the current and away from Tordania.
Even though they were still tied to the docks, Keiran’s hope of saving Thana began drifting away. If he didn’t think of something soon, the woman he loved would be taken, and he would have no way of knowing where to.
Jerris started to panic as well. It was one matter to face off against six men at a time, but they were now nearing the docks that were loaded with Sadoris. They seemed to take little notice of the Tordanians, however, being too busy readying for their hasty departure.
The guard also gave thought to the soldiers behind them. He wondered if they’d all been taken by the Tordanians, or if they would come racing up behind them. The notion of being caught between that mob and the men on the docks got the better of him. He’d allowed Keiran to get into a bad spot, and he wasn’t happy in his own lack of foresight.
As the general neared the docks, some of his own guards came forward to stand before the Tordanians, motioning for them to not come any closer. Keiran and Jerris reined their horses to a halt and watched helplessly as Danier made his way to the ships. He rode his horse right up the loading ramp of the one Thana was aboard.
Jerris turned and looked back, however, when he heard yelling and hooves galloping. The brief fight up on the mountain was over, and the remaining Sadoris were making a fast retreat, being chased by Keiran’s men.
Jerris looked nervously at Keiran, realizing his fear was materializing. “We need to get out of the way so they don’t cut us down as an afterthought on the way past.”
The vampire didn’t seem to hear, his eyes set forward on Thana. He was having a massive anxiety attack. The rest of the world was shut out to him. His chest was tight, and he was barely able to breathe, his entire body shaking in the saddle.
Seeing that Keiran wasn’t responding, Jerris reached over, grabbed one of Porter’s reins and started to lead the paralyzed king out of the fleeing army’s path.
“Come on, I don’t want to die like this!” the redhead said, urging both Patrice and Porter to move quickly.
Keiran’s eyes never moved from the ship as he was pulled off the road and out of the way of the coming mass of soldiers. He pulled himself back into reality when he saw his own men nearing behind the retreating Sadoris.
Keiran raced to the middle of the road before his men, raised his arms, and screamed at them to stop. He wasn’t about to have Thana die because his men were eager to take down the Sadori survivors. “Halt! Don’t follow them!”
Everyone pulled up, horses and men stopping before him. The soldiers didn’t know why he was halting their advance, but they had to obey. They watched as the Sadoris pulled off further, going to the ships.
All the men on the docks hastily started to move onto the boats. Several of their horses were abandoned at the river’s edge as they clamored aboard.
Keiran turned back around to watch this, his heart sinking. Thana was pulled away from where he could see her, and he dreaded she was being thrown over the opposite side of the ship. Danier appeared soon after, however, holding the girl by her right arm, a knife in his other hand.
The vampire rode slowly closer toward the river’s edge, signaling everyone else to stay behind. He didn’t imagine Danier would kill her just because he got closer as long as he did so alone. He moved within twenty yards of the water, the boarding planks of the ships being withdrawn and ropes cast off from the loading docks.
Thana spotted Keiran down below and tried to fight her way free from Danier but found herself tightly restrained. While she’d been able to see the men in the distance from her vantage point, only then was she able to identify Keiran.
“Keir! Don’t let them take me!” she screamed out. Thana was in a panic of her own, horrified she may never see him again.
There was nothing he could do. Tears burned in his eyes despite his fury, his hands knotted tightly around the reins he held. He wasn’t sure if he should even dare to say anything to her, not wishing to aggravate the general.
His eyes closed, and he did his best to try and push something intangible toward Thana, despite the distance between them.
I will come for you.
If the girl picked up on it or not, he couldn’t tell. She gave out another pained cry as the ships started to move away from the shoreline and out into the current.
Danier passed Thana off to some of his men, and she was taken below deck. He knew that with her stowed deep inside the ship, Keiran wouldn’t dare order it set on fire. The sails caught the counter-current wind, and it pushed them upstream.
Keiran slid off his horse and ran the remaining distance to the water’s edge. If he thought for a minute he had the swimming skills to catch up with the ships, he might have dove in at that point. He remembered what the cold river had done to him just a few weeks before, however, and he wasn’t about to risk it.
Jerris saw Keiran heading for the water and signaled his horse forward, afraid the young king was about to do something utterly foolish. “Keir! Stop!”
Though he tuned out Jerris’ words, Keiran did stop before too long. Standing in the water, he stared at the ships as they gathered speed and moved away. He screamed out Thana’s name once before falling to his knees in the icy water and twisting his hands up into his hair. His anxiety came to a head, and he was unable to function any further.
Jerris ran over and splashed into the water to reach his friend. The water that got into his boots was cold enough to instantly hurt. He wasn’t sure how long Keiran would be all right kneeling like he was, with the frigid water lapping up to the center of his chest. He stooped to grab Keiran up under the arms and started to pull him back to the bank.
Behind them, the men who had accompanied Keiran and Jerris were cheering and celebrating. All they knew was the Sadoris had been successfully ousted from Tordania, making their mission complete. Though lives had been lost, it hadn’t been many on the Tordanian side o
f the equation, and the entire episode had only taken a few days. The invasion hadn’t been well planned, and the Sadoris hadn’t brought enough men along. Still, it was an ego boost for the Tordanian military, its first engagement in many years.
None of them knew what was going on with their king and his guard down at the riverbank. While some of them were privy to the Sadoris having Thana as a hostage, none understood what role she played in the king’s life. They continued to congratulate one another and celebrate despite the misery taking place at the water’s edge.
Keiran didn’t fight Jerris’ attempt to pull him out of the water nor did he help. The redhead dragged him onto the beach before falling down, and he and the vampire collapsed into a heap. Keiran’s eyes were open and stared up at the clouded sky, tears running back from his eyes.
Jerris shivered badly, soaked from the river. He sat up and looked over at his friend, noting the complete lack of color in his complexion and hypothermic shaking.
“I failed. She was the one most important for me to protect, Jerris,” Keiran said, slowly letting his eyes close.
The young guard hauled himself up to his feet and looked out at the ships for a moment before he turned his attention back toward Keiran. He couldn’t rightly relate to what Keiran felt at the time, and the vampire wasn’t projecting his emotions despite the intensity of the situation.
Jerris was at a loss for words about the subject so did the best he could. “Come on, let’s get warmed up then we can think things over.”
Keiran slowly sat up, his head swimming. He still had trouble breathing, and though spectators would have assumed his shaking was from the cold, it wasn’t entirely so. There was a strange numbness in his limbs, and a profound dizziness set in. Keiran could only equate it to what he felt when he’d been shot through the heart during the assassination some weeks before.
“I failed her, Jerris. What am I going to do now? I can’t lose her like this!” he said.
“There’s nothing we can do right now, Keir. We can’t go charging after them into their own country. We don’t have the men, and you can’t possibly expect to sacrifice an entire army to retrieve one woman.”
The vampire slowly tried to stand up, staggering to the side. He ran his hands down his face to brush away any evidence of his crying before setting his gaze on the guard. He wanted Corina at that moment.
Keiran closed his eyes. “It’s my responsibility, not my army’s, not yours.”
“You are absolutely not going across that river alone!” Jerris said back, taking a step closer. “Damn it, Keir, it would be suicide! I’m sorry we lost her, but there’s nothing we can do about it. The country has no heir and needs you. I’ve stood by and even participated in enough of your risk taking that could have cost Tordania her leadership, but I will not stand by and let you do this. My father won’t, either. You don’t even know where they’re going to take her when all is said and done!”
“To hell with this then,” Keiran mumbled, turning away from the river and slowly starting toward his horse. He let his wet cloak fall to the ground behind him as he moved away.
***
Thana had been thrown back into her small room below deck after they’d embarked. In the darkness, she’d made her way back to the bunk and sat.
When she’d first been pulled away from the deck and was unable to see Keiran anymore, she’d been wracked with sobs of panic and hopelessness. Once alone, she’d forced herself to regain some composure. Though tears were still in her eyes, she donned a stoic expression. While she believed Keiran would do something to try and save her, the young woman realized her rescue was just as much her own responsibility.
She admonished herself sharply for following the war party in the first place, instead of going north as Corina had suggested. The time for that was over, however. It didn’t matter anymore how she’d gotten into her present situation. It was time to contemplate getting back home.
***
The Tordanian soldiers ended up settling into the remains of Lodain. It would be their main outpost for the time being to insure the Sadoris weren’t going to return. Their Sadori prisoners up in the mountains would be brought down to the town once the roads cleared up enough to allow them to travel. A Tordanian ship would be coming up the river within a few days, allowing those prisoners to be sent back across to their homeland.
Lodain had faired a little better than Edinau. Since the invaders hadn’t wanted to risk setting the coal storehouses ablaze, they’d held off on their usual tactic of immolation. As such, most of the structures had been left intact. The people hadn’t fared as well, however.
As in Edinau, the Sadoris had initially kept some Tordanians alive to use as slave labor. Once the majority of the coal had been cleared from the town, however, most of those slaves had been executed.
Out of the scores of citizens of Lodain, there were few survivors. A few dozen men moved amongst the soldiers, glassy-eyed and unwilling to talk. They were all in a profound state of shock from the horror of watching hundreds of their countrymen slaughtered and thrown into the river for disposal.
They quietly accepted the food offered to them from the Tordanian soldiers, not having eaten much since the invasion. Though saved from death at the hands of the Sadoris, none of the survivors would ever really recover.
The entire town was masked with the reek of death. The corpses of the slain hadn’t all made it down the river. Some had washed up on the banks just north of Lodain, the wind carrying the stench of their rotting bodies back into the town.
The soldiers struggled to deal with the situation as well. With most of them being too young to have seen any previous military action, the sights and smells of it overwhelmed them. While there had been plenty of dead left up at Edinau, many had been burned to ashes, and the others were frozen solid under the snow and not yet decomposing.
Still, they worked at the grim task of collecting the dead for mass cremations as there were too many to bury. Many of the survivors eventually volunteered to help as well, seeing it as a way to give back some dignity to their fallen friends and family members.
Kanan came down from the mountains to rejoin Keiran and Jerris by nightfall. The Sadori prisoners had all been consolidated in Edinau for the time being. There was some good news as nearly three-hundred people had been found alive up at the mining sites.
The Sadoris near the mines had been caught off guard, dulled down like their compatriots by the cold. The Tordanians had made quick work of liberating the mines, aided in large part by the Tordanians being kept as slaves there. Though hungry and exhausted, they’d turned their mining tools against their captors, and the Sadoris had been overthrown in short order.
The elder guard opted to leave Keiran and Jerris to their own devices, busying himself with talking to the military officers and helping to make their plans for the region. He’d been deeply hurt to hear about Thana being taken away, but he didn’t see a reasonable means of going after her.
Keiran had gone completely silent, refusing to talk even to Jerris. He’d wandered off to claim a small house and sat quietly before the fire there.
Even if Keiran wasn’t willing to speak to him, Jerris had remained loyally at his side until night started to press in. He supposed he needed to talk with his father about the events of the day if Keiran couldn’t.
By the time Jerris found him, Kanan had settled in another building. The elder guard sat with his arms across his chest, listening as Jerris recounted the events of the entire day, nodding occasionally in response.
Jerris finally reached the end of the story, moving into his thoughts on Keiran and Thana. “I don’t know what to do. I know he’s torn up about losing her like that, but surely we can’t go after her. Invading the Sador Empire for one woman would be suicide.”
“That is correct. We would lose hundreds of men if not more for her. Keiran must know we can’t justify that. We are just as ill-prepared to survive in their land as they are in ours. Even sending
just a small team in… my God, we’d stand out amongst their population terribly.” Kanan shook his head and drew a long breath. “I know he’s hurting. If she was dead, there would be closure to it. You know as well as I do he’s sitting there by himself, imagining all the worst-case scenarios possible. He’ll do so for the rest of his life, knowing him. Time will simply have to work it out for him, but I’d venture to say he’ll be brooding for a long, long while.”
Jerris stared down at the floor, eyes narrowed in thought. “I know him, and he won’t let it go. He never lets anything go. While I liked Thana, too, I just… Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s thinking or going through because he won’t talk to me.”
“Do you think he’s going to do something stupid?”
“In what capacity? I doubt he’d know how to go about killing himself given his condition, old man.” Jerris looked over at his father with a quirked brow.
“No, not that. I don’t think he’d go that far,” Kanan replied, giving his son a sharp look. “I was meaning more along the lines of him running off to try and get her back himself.”
Jerris glanced over his shoulder, gnawing at the inside of his cheek. “He might, I don’t know. The Keir I’ve known most of my life would try.”
Kanan’s eyes narrowed questioningly.
The young guard sighed. “He’s changing. I know he’s been through an awful lot these past few weeks, but the vampire I’ve seen him become since his assassination—I don’t know who that really is yet. Something else takes him over or at least challenges him for control. Part of me worries he’ll head over the river, become that other being possessing him and kill everyone in the Sador Empire. I have a real fear he’s going to snap and never go back to being himself.”
Kanan gave one slow nod, recalling the look he’d seen in Keiran’s eyes when they’d sparred last. His son’s fear didn’t seem unfounded. “And what if he does? I never thought I’d say this about Keiran, but if he decides to go and gets angry enough to force his way, we can’t stop him. No one aside from Athan Vercilla can. When he gets going, he’s unstoppable. Head of the Royal Guard or not, there’s nothing I can do to keep him from going if that’s what he ends up wanting to do.”
The Queen Maker Page 16