Page 62 of Captive
The sound of vampire guards crashing through the tunnel system grew louder. Oakspear settled into his stance, the same one Boarstaff had seen him take a hundred times in training. Immovable. Final.
"Move!" Thornmaker shoved Boarstaff forward. "He's buying us time. Don't waste it!"
They ran. The child pressed her face against Boarstaff's neck, her wooden doll clutched between them. Behind them, the clash of weapons echoed through the tunnels. Oakspear's war cry rang over everything else, a sound of defiance and fury. Then the wet sound of blade meeting flesh, again and again.
A scream, not Oakspear's voice but close. Then another. He was taking them with him.
Then, abruptly, silence.
Boarstaff stumbled, nearly fell. Thornmaker caught his arm, pulled him forward.
"Don't stop," Thornmaker’s voice rang tight with his own grief. "Don't make his death meaningless."
"It smells wrong here," the child whispered, her small hands gripping Boarstaff's armor. "Everything smells like dying."
"We're leaving," Boarstaff promised, forcing the words past the tightness in his throat. "Soon you'll smell real trees again. Real grass."
"I remember grass," she said, wonder creeping into her voice despite their desperate situation. "Papa showed me once, before. It was green and soft and it smelled like... like growing."
The tunnels continued to twist and turn, always ascending. When they finally burst through an access hatch into the open air beyond the citadel's outer wall, Boarstaff did a quick count. His heart confirmed what he already knew.
Twelve warriors had entered. Eleven emerged, but one would never make it home.
No one spoke Oakspear's name. Not yet. There would be time for that later, if they survived.
They ran through the forest as afternoon shadows lengthened. The warriors moved in grim formation, several sporting wounds but all still able to run. The brass-tipped arrows that pursued them at the border fell short, the vampires unwilling to chase too far from their citadel in daylight.
The sun was setting by the time they finally approached the village. The child had fallen asleep against Boarstaff's back during the final stretch, exhausted by terror and drugs still in her system. She woke as they neared the gates, peering around with eyes that held too much knowledge for her years.
"There are so many," she breathed, taking in the gathering crowd. Warriors moved along the walls, children played near the Heart Tree, smoke rose from cooking fires. Life, organic and unprocessed. "Are they all like you? All... not brass?"
"All real people," Boarstaff confirmed softly. "Like you."
Guards emerged from concealed positions, weapons lowering as they recognized their warchief. Relief changed to confusion at the human child, then to growing alarm as they counted the survivors.
"Send word to the council," Boarstaff ordered, his voice steady despite everything. "Prepare the healing house. We have wounded."
A scout looked back toward vampire territory. "No sign of pursuit since the border." His unspoken question hung in the air, what happened to the others?
The entire village had gathered by the time they reached the Heart Tree. Children peered around adults' legs at the human child. Warriors studied the survivors, reading the story in their wounds and who wasn't among them.
The council waited at the Heart Tree's base. Rockbreaker stepped forward. "You return with the child. But at what cost?"
"Too high," Boarstaff replied quietly. "But necessary."
Rockbreaker's gaze searched behind them, looking for familiar faces that would never return.
"Oakspear stayed behind," Boarstaff said, the words like ground glass in his throat. "To ensure our escape."
Silence fell over the gathering. Not just a warrior lost, but their warchief's former lover, his second-in-command. The price of one life, but one that had meant everything.
"And the vampire?" someone called out. "Where is Sebastian?"
"He came for us," Boarstaff said simply. "Fought his own brother to buy our escape. Without him, none of us would have returned."
The child stirred in his arms. "Sebastian saved me," she said quietly. "He promised he would."
"Where is Sebastian?" Rockbreaker's voice cut through the moment. "The prisoner escaped while you were gone. The bindings released him, and he overpowered the guards."
