Bounty (30 page)

Moonlight illuminated the pocketed clearing, giving the place an ethereal quality. The effect failed to make it any less of an ominous site to approach, but it did make it easier for Godren to survey the area while remaining safely cloaked on his end. He paused when he was close enough to pinpoint the figures guarding the yard, appraising them. They were indeed amply armed, but he disregarded that minor detail as soon as he’d completed taking inventory of their weapons, and recklessly just made toward the side where he planned to break in through the window whether they spotted him or not. He told himself it
was
a precaution, because its purpose was to avoid the more heavily-guarded front and back. He admitted to himself that it was reckless, too, but easily justified that by not caring. All that mattered was that he reached the princess, and as soon as possible. Then he would shield her any way he had to in order to spirit her out, even if they wailed on him the whole time. So long as Catris was behind him, he could handle facing anything. Pain was not an issue, and the indifferent confidence that came from that would at least prove to be a stumbling block to his opponents, if not a brutal inspiration to the extent he would go to best them on top of fighting defensively.

Brute force was his plan.

Just march up, burst in, take her, and plow your way back out,
he told himself.
You won’t feel a thing, and the sooner she’s out of there, the better.

Just shy of stepping free of the trees, though, he cut his purposeful march short. For one of the abductors prowling the yard drew one of the reported ‘mystery weapons’ into sight, and, recognizing the exclusive dart gun that belonged to Mastodon’s circle, Godren watched the scenario before him erupt into complications.

26: C
omplications

W
arring thoughts assaulted him as he was forced into hesitation.

Mastodon’s men had the princess of Raven City
.
His allies… He was about to attack his allies
.
Why now? Why did they want her now?
Did Ossen attacking him over her have anything to do with it?
Had it made her too much of a complication
?
Was it unconnected, something purely ambitious?
Should he cover his face now, or was he already in too deep for that to matter?
Would they still recognize him? Would they care? Did they
expect
him? Or Ossen? If they’d hurt her…
How could he go back after this?
Bastin had said ‘rumor has it she’s being held in the Crowing Woods’…
Did he not know?
Were some of them being kept in the dark?
What did Ossen think?
Would he have reason enough to come to Catris’s rescue? Gods, Mastodon’s men had the princess of Raven City…

Then he cut his thoughts loose and tied them off. Up until then he hadn’t cared who Cat’s abductors were. Now was no time to start. He hadn’t cared what happened to him, either, so there was no sense hesitating because the situation suddenly risked Mastodon’s wrath, or other complications involving her operation. Especially if the princess’s abduction had anything to do with eliminating her as a complication between Mastodon’s employees, Godren was grossly responsible and unable to let matters continue on the path they had taken.

If his twisted position in the affair was meant to escape its reckoning, then let the darkness hide his features. If not, he would merely have a lot to answer to. With that decision, he faltered no longer.

It was Rand and one of his own contracted men who guarded the cottage. At least they wouldn’t be
as
quick to recognize him, Godren thought as he continued moving toward the side of the cozy dwelling. They were thankfully not as familiar with his face. He broke from the trees with that piece of encouragement to drive him, surging into a swift rush across the yard.

He made it to the window before the hostile guardians of the royal scandal snapped gazes on his presence and launched themselves at his advance. By the time he’d bashed the fragile window in with an elbow, they were upon him. The obstructive corner of the cottage that Godren strove to put between them with his initial outburst successfully forced a problematic angle to discourage fire from the dart guns, and by the time they rounded the wall they didn’t want to take the time to stop and aim. At that point they just charged in to confront him.

Ripping fistfuls of shattered glass out of the jagged frame, Godren spun and slashed the obtained shards at his assailants. A flurry of blows and slices played out all in the moment they met, and then Godren forsook protecting his body to latch onto the top of the window frame behind him, hauling himself off the ground and planting his boots solidly into each assailant’s chest as he pulled himself through the window.

He didn’t look at his hands as he dropped himself inside the musty cottage, knowing how bloody they would be and not wanting to acknowledge it. Rounding the instant his feet touched down on the floor, he cast his eyes about for the princess. Shards of glass crunched under his boots, masking other noise at first, but then he stepped free of it and caught a soft chafing sound from the corner shadows. A silhouette was tied up there.

Good. Now he knew right where she was, and motion was a good sign. With that knowledge, he was free to take care of her abductors. Just as one was hauling himself through the window to come after him, Godren embraced the element of surprise and dove back out, right into him, toppling him to the ground. The other one pounced while Godren’s back was vulnerable amid his landing, but Godren wrenched around before the man could land and clouted him across the skull with the weight of the heavy clamp that was attached to his arm. Being numb, he threw a lot more force into the blow than what he would have if the pain had been able to register and discourage him, and was rewarded as his victim stumbled back in a stricken daze. A bleeding gash shone in the moonlight down the side of his face.

Tousling on the ground, Godren and his immediate assailant fought for a dominant stance. With no regard to pain whatsoever, Godren threw blows with his fists, elbows, head, and the harsh trap that clung to him with such severe companionship. It carried with it the element of surprise, a solid, callous part of him that his opponents did not expect. When they expected nothing more than a muscled forearm in the face, they received the ruthless, jagged edges of an unseen contraption instead.

Then, recovered, the second abductor was rejoining the skirmish. Godren jumped to his feet before he could end up pinned by two forces, only to allow them to access weapons now that he had disengaged himself from the fray. They came at him with knives, which he blocked with his bare hands and arms because of the superior accuracy of wielding his own limbs in comparison to that of a blade he had merely trained with. Normally one did not have the luxury of using one’s own limbs as weapons, unable to disregard the pain it called to them so completely, but he was rather a different case and found it fascinatingly more effortless to fight with something he had mastered even since before he could walk.

In the filtered moonlight, he saw brief glints of something enter their eyes as he went at them with such galling method, and he took advantage of their clutching perception by doubling his painless efforts. They didn’t hesitate, exactly – they were ruthless, brutal men themselves, trained to fight with the dedication of fearlessness regardless of circumstances – but they wondered. They questioned.

Being one of Mastodon’s chief favorites, Rand was especially adept in the field of combat. Godren could not discern his opponents’ features in the violent dark, but when he successfully took out one of them with a series of progressively un-thwarted blows, he knew the one left standing had to be Rand. He did not let that discourage him, though – nor did he pause in any kind of respect for that fact. If he’d being going up against two already, there was no sense in pausing just because eliminating one of them named the remaining one a figure he should think twice about ever crossing. That was silly. He’d been doing fine so far; after all, eliminating one when he was outnumbered meant he was winning, regardless of who he was left to face.

With the encouragement that his job had just become easier, Godren attacked Rand with the same amount of fervor he’d used against them both, holding nothing back, dipping into the reserves of false confidence that coated his being and throwing himself at his foe with a savage passion of everything that was bottled up in him and everything he had fooled himself into believing. The illusions he embraced and the truths that provoked the deepest recesses of his soul, all channeled into one burst against a single, unfortunate man at the mercy of his deep wrath.
Let this also serve as defiance against Mastodon’s bonds,
he thought in some back corner of his mind, appreciating the ironic opportunity. Then all intelligent thought blurred into the whirlwind of adrenaline and illusion that drove him, and he tapped into an almost supernatural rank of motivation there in the safety of the forest of his enemies – and harnessed something so unstoppable for a few brief moments that, when the moments passed…he stood lost, blinking, shaken by what had possessed him as his enemy of a moment ago lay utterly beaten down at his triumphantly rooted feet. Without much ado except the blur of hazy blows he seemed to have delivered in the heat of an impassioned moment, Rand lay dominated like so much unruly clay at the mercy of his brutal hands.

Swallowing and coming back to himself, at least for the most part, Godren blinked away what had just transpired by his own unorthodox conjuring and set his mind back on track: it was time to free Catris. Stepping over the unconscious body of his opponent, he pulled himself back through the window and moved through the shadows to the occupied corner, only then employing his knife so he could cut the princess’s bonds. As they fell away, she tore off her own gag and got right to her feet. Godren rose to his height a little more slowly now that the action was past; though he didn’t feel pain, a heavy wave of weariness was beginning to swamp his adrenaline. He wondered how much blood he was losing.

The princess paused to meet his eyes in the dark, wondering at his lack of enthusiasm to hurry away. She looked startled but fierce amid the crisis that surrounded her, no doubt shaken but provoked, and despite her bedraggled appearance she still carried an overriding air of sophistication about her.

Faintly, guardedly, Godren nodded in greeting. “Princess.”

“Ren?”

Without further explanation, Godren took her by the elbow and steered her toward the door. Dismissing an explanation, she got a hold of herself and submitted to his direction, eager to be free of the scandal. Switching the lock and throwing back the latch, Godren shoved the creaking door open and pulled the princess out into the yard. They made for the company of the trees, not exchanging any words. Catris glanced at the two forms lying crumpled on the ground near the window, but said nothing of them as they left the cottage behind.

Only when they were immersed in the trees a ways did Godren speak. “Did they hurt you?”

She blinked once, but that was all it took her to collect her thoughts. “No. They only manhandled me.”

“Did they say what they wanted?”

“Only that they wanted me to ‘cool it’, sit still, and cooperate.”

Godren slowed and hovered, drawing her to a stop beside him, and carefully surveyed the trees. “Did they know a safe way through the traps?”

“We didn’t spring anything, but I was blindfolded. There’s no telling which way we came.”

He could feel her eyes trying to appraise him through the dark while they paused there. She grew slightly rigid beside him, grim in her assessment.

“That your concern is for me is…galling.”

He didn’t look at her. “Why should it be?”

“Why are you still on your feet?” she rose a countering question.

“Because you’re not safe yet–” As he shifted, a resulting twang snapped from the trees, and he cut off to knock Catris out of the way. They were only lucky the traps were so old, the tension poising the arrows rusted and relaxed, and that he had time to throw a reaction her direction before one of them was swiftly taken out. The arrow merely tore across the princess’s throat in result, leaving a shallow cut – and leaving her swiftly humbled to silence, his point proven. A scare ran through Godren at the blunt close call, and he clamped his mouth shut and renewed his vigil to get her out of the vicinity. Completely quenching the matter of her question, he pulled her close to him, shielding her the best he could, and began scouting his paranoid way through the trees. “If you hear anything – anything at all – dive for cover, your Highness. Even if it’s behind me. Do you understand?”

She didn’t agree, but when he looked at her she met his eyes and didn’t argue, either, still duly humbled and hopefully duly submissive in extent.

When a flurry of ravens rustled by overhead, she obligingly ducked into him and put his fears of her defiance at rest, and he ducked his head in turn, knowing the birds were probably Mastodon’s spies and still concerned enough to guard his identity from them.

He pressed on in the general direction he had come in from, hoping he’d already sprung most of the traps in the area. The Princess stuck religiously but un-fearfully to his side; humbled but seemingly nothing more than that. He admired her bravery, wondering if it was courage or some quality of selflessness.