Allegiance

TWENTY-SEVEN

The trading post was doing a brisk business. It swarmed with people of all ages. Young and old browsed the offerings of stalls packed with fresh produce and fish. Neat rows of sea bass were displayed in one booth, under an overhang protecting them from the warming temperatures. Buckets of live shrimp and lobster made up the next stall. Antennae stuck above the rims, waving back and forth as if beckoning potential customers.

A woman with a hatchet cut the head off a chicken that continued to squirm and flap on her chopping block. Another seller handed lettuce and radishes to a sky person who had come to shop.

Rhino looked away, distracted by thoughts of Sofia. She was still alive out in the wastes, and he held on to hope that she was going to come home safely. If he wanted to see her again, he needed to focus.

Just focus on the plan.

They had already modified it once after coming up a ladder to an interior passage guarded by a patrol of grunt Cazador warriors. That forced them into the open trading areas. Rhino tried to stick close to a group of scribes and monks wearing the same clothing as the Barracudas. The sky people in the crowd, wearing longer clothing to cover their sensitive skin, also helped them blend in.

But Rhino didn’t like being out in the open with the masses. His size could give him away, even without his armor. At least, he had managed to fit his double-headed spear in two pieces beneath his robe. Carrying it would have gotten him a lot of looks and whispers.

The scribes went left down a passage, and Mac led the team into another alley. He navigated the familiar corridors for the group, and Felipe followed, grinning. The young man was happy to be away from Elysium for a few days and eager for his first kill.

Rhino kept a reasonable distance, and X trailed just behind, head down.

They worked their way through the third floor, toward a stairwell that would take them down to the outer booths of the main trading floor. Most of the cages here were empty today, but several contained indentured servants who hadn’t sold in last night’s auction.

A group of potential buyers had already gathered to inspect them. The skinny men were going to be a tough sell. In this shape, they wouldn’t make good laborers or warriors. If they were lucky, they would end up on a fishing trawler or working in a garden.

Mac entered a stairwell and led the team to the first floor, and from there to an alley between some of the less popular booths. It was close to the area where Rhino had found him a few days ago.

Signs hung from the bulkheads and shop fronts in the next passage, which intersected with another alleyway. Mac stopped to buy a skewer of seasoned shrimp. He bit one off and handed the skewer to Felipe, whose sharp teeth stripped off another shrimp.

“They got shine here?” X asked, stepping up beside Rhino.

“Not the type you’re probably used to.”

“If you’re talking about wine, you’re right,” X said. “Tastes good, but it’s basically old fruit juice if you ask me.”

“I’m sure we both will need a drink or ten after this is over.”

“But can you keep up?” X raised a brow. “Nah, highly unlikely.”

You’d be surprised, Rhino thought. He felt relieved that the king wasn’t holding a grudge, but now was not the time for jokes.

Mac took them past tin-roofed shacks to a corridor the size of an old-world street. Shop fronts framed both sides on the first level, but the three floors above were mostly apartments and single-family dwellings.

Open shutters revealed potted flowers and herbs growing on windowsills. An elderly woman sucked on a cigarette, watching the Barracudas.

Rhino spotted Isaiah through an open window, wearing a hood that shadowed his eyes and covered his greasy hair. He nodded as Rhino passed underneath.

Ahead, Mac opened a hatch to an interior hallway. As the four men entered, Rhino got a view of two Praetorian Guards standing sentry under a crooked wooden sign that read, “The Purple Pearl.”

Though helmetless, the Cazador soldiers wore full armor and held spears. Swords hung from their belts, and red capes draped their shoulders.

Rhino recognized both scarred faces and steeled himself. These warriors knew how to wield sword and spear. The men inside would as well, but they would be no match for Isaiah’s arrows, the Immortal, and the Barracudas.

Mac and Felipe stopped just before the intersection with the next alley. After sneaking a glance around the edge, Mac held up three fingers, indicating the number of Praetorian Guards at the back entrance of the Purple Pearl.

Rhino squeezed past Felipe. “I’ll lead the way,” he said. Opening his robe, he pulled out the two shafts of his double-headed spear and joined them together with a click.

Mac hit a button on his cane, bringing out the blade, and X unsheathed his sword.

Rhino gave the nod. This was it. Time to kill that bag of shark chum.

Felipe came strolling around the corner—just a guy heading for the brothel.

“¡Alto ahí!” shouted one of the three guards.

Footsteps clanked on the metal deck, and two guards strode through the intersection, spears in hand.

“Hey, bub,” X said. “That whorehouse clean?”

Both guards stopped and peered into the shadowed alley. Rhino thrust his spear through the chest of the guard on the left, and X slashed the other across the neck. Blood spurted out, painting both Rhino and the king.

Felipe had turned and came running back. He threw both of his daggers. Rhino heard a muffled cry, then another thud.

By the time Rhino rounded the corner, the third guard was dead, and Felipe was wiping the two knives on his tangerine cape.

Mac moved ahead of the group, pulling out a key to the back entry of the brothel. He unlocked it and gently pushed the door open.

Rhino’s spear tip went inside first. Felipe drew a cutlass and went next.

Candles lit the corners of the dark room, illuminating a dozen stalls cordoned off by drapes. An empty desk and two couches occupied the front of the room. Curtains covered the only window, and the metal front door was closed.

By now, Isaiah would have taken down the guards in front and would be on his way to help. That meant they had only one Cazador left to kill.

The Barracudas filed inside the brothel. Rhino used the tip of his spear to pull back a drape of the first space on the left, while X did the same going the other direction.

Rhino found a mattress and bedside table but no Vargas.

Rhythmic grunting came from across the room, and Mac pointed his cane at a draped stall.

Nodding, Rhino took point, X on his right flank.

Killing a man while he got his rocks off wasn’t the bravest way to do it, but it would save a lot of problems later on, and Rhino didn’t feel any compunctions whatever. Ending the threat Vargas posed would save many lives, and when Sofia did return, they would be closer to the freedom they both had dreamed of. His heart thumped at the thought of seeing his woman soon.

He approached the drape where the grunting was coming from. Reaching out with his spear shaft, Rhino prepared to pull it back with the blade, but movement just behind the bottom of the drape stopped him. He could see boot soles in the half inch of space just underneath. Not just one pair.

“Back!” Rhino shouted.

He ducked as several arrows burst through the drapes and cut through the air. With his spear, he swiped under the curtain hard enough to sever a foot.

An agonized scream rang out as the drapes of other stalls opened. Cazador soldiers poured into the room, raising swords and spears.

Two men rushed out of the room in front of Rhino, and he swung his spear, taking a head off clean. Then he back-stepped away from the wide swipe of the other soldier’s sword. The man stumbled out of the enclosed space, right onto Rhino’s spear.

He had taken three Cazadores out of the fight in twice as many seconds. When he turned to help his team, everything seemed to slow down.

X and Mac fought back to back in the center of the large room. Both had arrows sticking out of their robes.

Felipe had lost his cutlass and threw one of his daggers into a soldier slashing at him with a sword. Then he sidestepped a low jab from a spear and stabbed the wielder twice in the neck.

The front door swung open, and in rushed the two Praetorian Guards Rhino had seen out front earlier. Following them in was a third man with an arrow nocked on his bowstring. He aimed it at Rhino and let fly.

The shaft caught Rhino in the shoulder. Adrenaline kept the pain at bay, but he did feel the deep cut of betrayal of his old friend and trainer.

Isaiah took another arrow from his quiver and shot it into Rhino’s other shoulder. At this range, he shouldn’t have missed the heart. That told Rhino the old man was disabling him so Vargas could finish him off.

Screaming in rage, he thrust at a Cazador soldier who came from the side with sword upraised. The spearhead ripped through the man’s exposed chest, opening him from navel to sternum.

The two Praetorian Guards moved in front of Isaiah to intercept Rhino, and Rhino jabbed at the one on his left. The soldier tried to parry but hadn’t given himself enough room. He backed into Isaiah, knocking a third arrow from his bow.

Rhino impaled the guard, through the stomach and out the back. He jammed it farther, hoping to get Isaiah on the same skewer, but his wily old mentor had jumped away.

As the other guard drew back his sword to strike, Rhino clicked the button in the middle of the shaft and twisted, disconnecting the two halves of his spear.

Leaving the top three feet of spear stuck through the first guard, he thrust the other half up under the second man’s chin, through his palate, and into his brain before he could bring his sword around.

Rhino was down to the knife on his belt, but instead of drawing it, he pulled the arrow from his left shoulder. Isaiah was renocking the arrow that the staggering Praetorian Guard had knocked loose. He managed to bring it up and release it, but nerves must have thrown off his aim, and the arrow sailed past, an inch from Rhino’s face. Rhino used the opportunity to slam into Isaiah and knock him to the ground.

“No!” Isaiah yelped as he squirmed under Rhino’s weight. “Rhino, please, don’t!”

Rhino wrestled Isaiah onto his back and raised the arrow he had plucked from his shoulder.

“No!” Isaiah yelled again.

With both hands, Rhino jammed the bolt into the center of his chest. He heard a satisfying crunch, then gurgling as blood filled Isaiah’s lungs.

“Why?” Rhino grunted. “Why did you betray me?”

A voice in Spanish answered, “Because I paid better.”

Rhino turned to see Colonel Vargas sitting on a bed in one of the small rooms, watching with a bemused smile.

The fighting outside the stalls had all but ended. Six Cazador guards stood in the open space, their weapons pointed down at X and Mac, who lay on the floor, bleeding from the arrows and sword and spear wounds.

Felipe was the only one still on his feet, fighting two soldiers near the back exit. But he was down to one dagger, and both men had swords. He kicked the leg out from under one soldier, ducked the other’s sword stroke, and jammed his knife into the face of the downed man.

Then he punched the second guard in the temple and jumped on him, knocking him down. His sharpened teeth clamped down and ripped the man’s throat out.

Vargas gestured toward the young warrior. “I want that one alive,” he said.

Two guards left X and Mac to help subdue Felipe. They tackled him to the floor, but he fought on, biting and head-butting. A third soldier finally went over and hit him in the head with his sword hilt.

Rhino remained on top of Isaiah, knowing that he would soon draw his last breath here in this grubby brothel. In trying to ambush Vargas, they had walked right into a trap. All because of the waste of air that now lay trapped and dying under Rhino.

Isaiah’s lungs rattled as they filled with blood. Rhino finally pushed off him and stood. Unsheathing the long blade on his belt, he bent down and sliced his old mentor’s throat from one earlobe to the other.

Isaiah looked up at him, but Rhino didn’t give him the honor of looking into his eyes. He wiped the blade on Isaiah’s robe and turned to Vargas, who finally stood and walked over to Mac and X.

“I’d say you fought bravely,” he said. “But trying to kill a man while he’s fucking is below cowardly.”

Vargas drew his sword and angled the blade at the king’s neck. An arrow stuck out of X’s right arm, and another protruded from under his collarbone.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” X growled.

Vargas smiled. His bulging eyes flitted to Rhino. “Since you showed me such respect by trying to kill me with my pants down, I won’t give you the honor of a good death.”

He gave a nod, and two of the men guarding X and Mac moved cautiously toward Rhino, while a third stepped away from Felipe.

Rhino threw off his robe, and the men stopped as if daunted by the sight.

“¡Mátenlo!” Vargas yelled.

The men advanced, and Rhino held up his long knife. Both shoulders throbbed from the arrow wounds despite the adrenaline rushing through his body.

He deflected the first sword blow, but the next two left a long, curving gash across his ribs, and a deep cut to the opposite hip. He staggered backward.

“no!” X yelled. He fought to get up, but the Cazadores clubbed him back down with their spear shafts and kicks to his gut.

Rhino locked eyes with X just before the three soldiers swarmed. They weren’t cautious, however, and moved with haste. He jabbed his knife into the mouth of a man in the act of stabbing Rhino in the belly. The other two men stabbed from the side, finding little resistance.

The man Rhino had killed slumped onto him, and Rhino held on to the corpse as the other two men stabbed again and again. The heat turned to ice.

Pushing the corpse off him, Rhino then grabbed one of the swordsmen by the neck. The other guy jabbed Rhino’s belly again, but before he could pull the sword out, Rhino reached down with his other hand and grabbed the man’s arm and held it.

Rhino crushed the windpipe of the soldier he was holding and dropped him in a heap. He punched the remaining guard in the face, crushing his nose, then dropped to his knees with the sword jutting from his gut and an arrow in his shoulder. He knew that his many wounds were too deep and too many to survive. He would never see his sweet Sofia again. All he could do now was try to save his king and his men.

Only four soldiers remained in the room—easy odds if he weren’t bleeding like a speared Siren.

Vargas gave the nod to finish off Rhino. The first warrior approached uncertainly, eyes wide with fear. He brought his sword up, but before he could deliver the final stroke, Vargas ordered him to stop.

X mumbled something that sounded a lot like “Go fuck yourself.”

The guards, who had stopped beating him, gave him a few more kicks to shut him up.

X still managed to nod at Rhino, and Rhino nodded back.

“I changed my mind,” Vargas said. “I do want to be the one to kill you.”

He walked over and raised his sword in both hands, his crazed eyes looking as if they might pop out of his skull. And then, to Rhino’s astonishment, one did.

Vargas crumpled to the floor as X turned a small pistol on the other guards.

The crack of gunshots filled the room, and one after another, the remaining Cazadores fell. Mac thrust his sword cane into the groin of the last soldier, and Felipe got up and ran over to Rhino.

Blood pooled around his body as the young warrior tried to stop the flow. X and Mac scrambled over to help.

Rhino looked at Vargas’s ruined face and cracked a smile. His eyes went back to X, who could only see out of one eye.

“King Xavier, tell Sofia she will always be my queen,” Rhino said. He slumped to his side, but X caught him under the arm.

“Breathe, General,” X said. “You’re going to be okay; just stay with me, and don’t stop breathing. You’re a beast, man. These are just little flesh wounds.”

Rhino smiled one last time at the man he respected above all others in this world.

“I wish I was immortal like you, King Xavier, but alas, I’m just a man,” Rhino said, his voice growing faint. “I will always serve you. Even in the next life, I will be watching over you while you fulfill the prophecy.”