Hunted(26)

He stood at the location the note had ordered him to go to. The message impressed that a brutal attack had occurred at this precise location tonight. But, as Ryon looked around, something didn’t set right.

The messenger who’d delivered the note, a young man who called himself Bernard, hung nearby kicking at the grass. He looked bored, toeing at the dirt by his foot.

Ryon read the missive again, verifying the location. This was the place. All that was here was empty space and one old, dilapidated cabin. Pulling out his silver knife, a foot-long blade curved to slice and cut an enemy, the blade felt at home in his palm.

No signs of an attack. No sounds from the wall or the cabin. Yet, his senses were on high alert. The hairs on the tops of his arms pointed to the sky like grass.

He entered the cabin.

The roof sunk in at the center and a damp, musty odor, like mildew and earth saturated the air. Some plant roots had grown up from the floorboards, splintering the wood. There was some old furniture, mostly broken chairs with three legs and a table collapsed against the wall, which remained. A dusty couch bore scratches from rodents burrowing inside it; old dishes caked with months of layers of dust still sat on the kitchen counter.

The cabin had never been demolished because of who used to live here. Karl Christensen. The man had been a hero to Ryon, to a lot of people. Good-looking, kind-hearted, he had all the leadership qualities to be the next general of the Armed Forces. Then, one day, he’d disappeared from his cabin. No one heard a sound, no one saw anything suspicious. And how could they when his nearest neighbor lived more than a mile away. No one wanted to live this close to the wall. Closer to the Avagarians.

The mystery of what happened to Karl has lived for the years he’s been missing. Was it two or three years now? Hell, he couldn’t be sure. And didn’t that stick him with a load of guilt. Was he dead? Or had he decided to leave the kingdom never to return?

Ryon didn’t feel so optimistic about whatever outcome came to the war hero Karl.

Ryon had his own theory and it had nothing to do with either of those ideas. He suspected the Avagarians had played a part. Maybe they killed him, but he doubted it. When the Ava’s attacked, they didn’t hesitate to murder people in their beds—even children—or burn down their houses. They were animals and they acted like it. If they had killed Karl—why not do it in his home? And they hadn’t looted anything from his cabin. Nothing had been missing. That left him with the idea that they hadn’t killed him at all—they’d either taken him or someone else wanted him dead and gone.

A few fresh footprints had disrupted a layer of dirt on the floor. Someone had been here recently, though that didn’t surprise him. It wasn’t unheard of for teenagers to come up here use Karl’s home as a hangout. Some people said they saw his ghost in the windows at night. Pure hogwash, but it kept an aura of mystery around his disappearance.

A floorboard depressed as the messenger stepped inside.

Ryon didn’t turn to ask the question on his mind. “Did the king say anything else?”

“Nay, he just gave me the missive, milord.” The messenger spoke with a commoner’s accent.

Scuffling noises sounded behind him and Ryon spun around, tense. But it was too late. The messenger bared his teeth in a nasty sneer, the pistol in his hand glinted in refracted moonlight coming from the sunken roof.

What the—

He didn’t get to finish the thought. Instinct and adrenaline took over. With an explosion of power. Life or death. Do or die.

And he wasn’t about to die. Not here. Not like this.

The messenger fired without warning. Ryon lunged to the side. For a second he thought he’d evaded the bullet.

But, then he felt it. The searing, tearing of flesh from his gut. It burned like a hot steel poker sitting in fire for an hour—that had been stabbed through him like a spear. He wanted to scream.

More bullets fired in his direction. At least the messenger couldn’t see well in here either.

The ringing explosion of shots echoed, blasting his eardrums until he couldn’t hear much of anything, save for the pounding of his blood in his ears.

A chaotic, rapid thud, thud, thud! that wouldn’t stop.

Dust kicked up from the uproar, a cloud of thick, sulfuric smoke billowing from discharged bullets. Using the dust bowl to his advantage, Ryon moved into the thick of it, squatting low next to the dilapidated, smelly couch. It offered meager protection. The messenger’s lean shadow filled the doorway, lighting him enough for Ryon to see his outline.

That was all he needed. Ryon held the knife by the tip of the blade, hours of training having prepared him. He was ready. He threw his elbow back, cocked.