Skyrider of Renegade Point

by Erik Christensen

  A look of fear flashed across Bird’s face, although he did his best to conceal it. “What’s it to me if I die?” he asked.

  “You say that now,” continued Melissa. “But I’m sure you have family you’ll be leaving behind. And what if you get thrown into prison? You’ve got at least one death on your hands, so you’ll probably go away for the rest of your life. Isn’t there someone you’d like to see before you die? Someone you’d like to have visit you in prison? I can make that happen. Will can make that happen. And you can be certain the duke can. Let us help you. Who in the world do you want to see most?”

  Bird swallowed hard and hesitated. “My two sons.”

  “How old?” asked Melissa.

  “Twelve and ten.”

  “That’s too young to lose a father,” said Melissa, shaking her head with pity. “Don’t you want to give them the best option left to them? A living father in prison is better than a dead one.”

  Bird’s breath came ragged and heavy as sweat drenched his face and neck. Without warning, the intense rage melted away, and calm resignation replaced it. “You don’t understand,” he said in a soft voice, more to himself than the others. “He won’t allow it.”

  “Who won’t allow what?” asked William.

  Bird looked at Melissa. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you would have kept your promise. But I really don’t have a choice.” He lowered the knife toward Vincent’s chest, aiming for the heart. The duke struggled, but Bird was too strong, his arm firmly wrapped around his chest, holding him in place. “Leave now,” he said. “I won’t be taken prisoner, but if I have to die, so does he.”

  William leaped without thinking, the dull throb of his injured foot forgotten. He grabbed Bird’s knife-hand, wrenching it back as he simultaneously pushed the duke out of harm’s way. He held on with all his strength as Bird struggled to free his arm, knowing he couldn’t counter it with his sword in such cramped quarters.

  Bird was strong—stronger than William, but he didn’t dare ask Melissa to help, and Vincent had gone through too much already. He would have to trick Bird somehow. Bird pummeled him with his free hand, fighting like a cornered animal, forcing William to duck and lose leverage on the knife arm.

  William caught a glimpse of something through the porthole: a flash of green against the blue sky. With every last trace of power he had left, he twisted Bird’s knife arm, knowing what was about to happen. He suffered several blows to the head for his effort, but with seconds to spare, he spun Bird around, pushing him hard against the porthole.

  With a deafening wallop, the ship’s hull smashed in, timbers shrieking as they were ripped apart. Sunlight poured into the cabin through the gaping wall, blinding William as the wreckage crashed around him, clattering against the walls. A searing pain tore through his side, but he refused to be distracted, saving all his awareness in case Bird used this opportunity to attack—or escape.

  He needn’t have bothered. When the air cleared, all he saw in front of him was Clyde, sitting triumphantly on Bird’s mangled body. “No hurt Will,” he said to the corpse beneath him.

  Stunned, William looked around in panic. Vincent stood in one corner, unharmed, staring back with his mouth agape. William quickly turned to the other corner and breathed a sigh of relief when he found Melissa unharmed, but her face an ashen gray. A low moan escaped her lips, and grew slowly into a piercing scream as she gestured at William’s stomach with a shaking hand.

  “What?” asked William. All she could do in response was shake her head in denial. He looked down to where she pointed and froze, stupefied by the sight. A giant shard of wood as thick as a chair leg had punctured the left side of his gut, leaving a trail of blood oozing down his pant leg. He tugged the shard, steeling himself for an outpouring of blood, but it wouldn’t budge. Instead, it pulled his skin, along with what he assumed were muscle and innards. Suppressing a queasy feeling, he reached around to his back.

  The jagged, bloody end was sticking out the other side.

  He grabbed for something to hold onto. Vincent and Melissa climbed over the debris and caught him before he could fall, holding him upright as they looked at each other in dismay.

  “Hang on, William,” whispered Vincent. “Stay calm—you don’t want to lose too much blood.”

  William laughed, blood spurting from his lips. “Look where it hit me, your grace. Blood loss is the least of my concerns.”

  “No,” said Melissa, her eyes welling with tears. “No, this can’t be happening.”

  “Help me find a place to lie down,” said William. “I don’t think I can stand much longer.”

  Vincent kicked at the wreckage until he cleared a space. They slowly lowered him until he was lying on his uninjured side, and he breathed a ragged sigh of relief. He felt Melissa’s hand caressing his arm and he seized it, as Oz had done with his so recently. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Be still, darling,” whispered Melissa through her tears. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  Coughing wracked his body before he could answer. He caught his breath after a moment and answered, “Yes I do. I’m sorry for the time we can’t be together. We should have married sooner, but—”

  “Stop talking, Will. Save your strength. I hear the guards boarding the ship now. They’ll get you to the clinic and Maya will patch you up, good as new. I promise!” Tears flowed down her face unchecked, her eyes betraying her disbelief in her own words.

  He squeezed her hand with what little energy he had left. “I love you, Melissa. We were a great team. I wish I’d learned that sooner.” He turned to Vincent and gave him a weak smile. “I’m glad we found you in time, your grace.”

  “William, if I could trade places with you, I’d gladly do so,” said Vincent, his face a grave mask. “To have my life saved at the expense of yours is not a price I would have paid.”

  William coughed again. “It’s better this way. You know the truth about Zander Bertrand, and you can do something about it. I don’t have that kind of power. You can stop him.”

  “You’ve done a lot with the power you have,” said Vincent. “And you did it in the name of justice. Not many can say that.”

  William glanced down at the wound and gave an amused grunt. “Like father, like son, I guess.”

  His head fell to the floor.

  Chapter 35

  He woke, and tried to open his eyes, but the bright light forced them closed again. He groaned, more from grogginess than pain.

  “He’s conscious,” said an older woman’s voice, one he didn’t recognize.

  Someone pinched the back of his hand, and the pain cut through the daze. A voice spoke to him. “Will, can you hear me?”

  “Maya?” he asked. “Where am I?” He opened his eyes again, slowly this time, letting them get used to the light. Her face came into focus, minus the usual large grin. Instead, she wore a concerned, even worried expression.

  “At my mother’s clinic,” she said.

  “How did I get here?”

  “Never mind that,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  He mentally scanned his body, noting with surprise a complete lack of pain. “Huh. Better than I would have guessed. What sort of magic medicine did you give me?”

  She shook her head, her face grim. “Nothing.”

  He looked at her in confusion. “Wasn’t I injured?” he asked.

  Maya nodded gravely. “Badly. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “So why don’t I feel any pain?”

  Another face came into view, an older version of Maya, with the same dark skin and tight curls, wearing the same grim expression. “That’s what we’d like to know,” she said. “I’m Catherine Melchior, Maya’s mother. And you should be dead right now.”

  “Oh! Pleased to meet you, Dr. Melchior. To be honest, I was sure I was going to die. One or both of you must have done amazing work to keep me alive. You have no idea how grateful I am.”

  “Our work doesn’t
explain why you’re alive,” said Maya. “In fact, your survival defies explanation. You saw the wound that killed Oz; that was minor compared to yours.”

  “But Oz got stabbed in the lung,” said William. “I got hit in the gut.”

  Maya threw her hands up in exasperation. “With a jagged wooden stake three inches thick, Will! You were impaled straight through—I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “How about you start from when you got to the ship. I must have blacked out before you got there.”

  “I never reached the ship,” said Maya. “I saw your drone land on it, and I couldn’t figure out why until my own drone refused to go near it for another attack.”

  He felt a pang of guilt as he realized he’d forgotten about the injured dragon. “How is Adonis, by the way?”

  “I have no idea. I had my own patient to take care of.”

  He sat upright. “What? Is Melissa hurt?”

  “I meant you, numskull,” said Maya as she gently pushed him back onto his pillow. “Melissa’s fine. Everyone else is fine. You need to stay still until I’ve had a chance to examine you. In the meantime, let me tell the story.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  Maya heaved a sigh and continued. “I had no clue what was happening, but I knew you were outnumbered. I worried even more when Melissa jumped into the water, but what could I do? At least the guards were close by then. When Clyde crashed into the ship, I knew things had gotten even more serious, but I wasn’t about to follow Melissa’s example.”

  “I don’t blame you,” said William.

  “It felt like they took forever, but the rowboats finally arrived, and the guards started boarding the ships. I saw people waving from the hole Clyde made, but I couldn’t tell what was going on until they brought a boat next to it. When I saw you being lowered into it, I…” She paused to stifle a sob, quickly regaining her professional demeanor. “I’ve never felt so helpless as I did then. I saw how badly you were injured, but I couldn’t get to you. I was stuck in the air on a dragon with no way to land. I knew you had minutes to live at most, but I couldn’t do a thing about it.”

  “So how did I get back here in time? Even a dragon can’t cross the bay that quickly.”

  Maya shook her head. “A dragon couldn’t have landed on the ship even if they wanted to try—Adonis was in the only available spot, and the others couldn’t land on the water. But Melissa figured out a solution. Once you were loaded into the boat, she noticed the ropes they use to tow ships. She had Clyde fly up with one and waved at Jack to grab it as he flew by. Clyde flew up with the second rope for Rachel, and together the two drones towed the rowboat back to the harbor. No boat on Esper has ever traveled so fast.”

  William chuckled, shaking his head in admiration. “I wish I’d been awake for that. It sounds like quite a ride.”

  “One moment, William,” said Catherine. “Did it hurt to laugh just now?”

  William paused a moment. “No. A little stiff maybe, but no pain.”

  “Hmph. Go on, Maya.”

  “You should not have survived the boat ride,” continued Maya. “Melissa cradled your head the whole way, but you both got bounced around quite a bit. Even the guards who accompanied you got bruised from the ride. As sheltered as the bay is, the water can still get pretty choppy.”

  He scratched his head in confusion. “You keep saying I should be dead. So how am I alive?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out,” said Catherine with a frown.

  William looked back and forth between the two women, trying to read their expressions. “Why don’t either of you seem happy about this?” asked William.

  “We are,” said Maya. “But we’re also concerned. This makes no sense, and as doctors, it means something is happening to our patient that we can’t explain. I have a hard enough time admitting when I don’t know something, but this goes beyond the mere complexity of the human body. What happened to you is unnatural.”

  William shivered. “Let’s ignore that for the moment. What happened after we got to port?”

  Maya straightened her coat and continued. “You were carted here—not a long trip, but again, not one you should have survived. I flew directly here to prepare for surgery, so I didn’t get a chance to examine you until you arrived, but when I did, I knew it was even worse than I had guessed.”

  Catherine rose from her stool and approached the bed. “Thankfully, no one had tried to remove the object, otherwise you would have died from blood loss.” She pointed to his belly and continued. “Somehow, you lost little blood for such a major injury. But we knew from the entry and exit points that several major organs were likely damaged.”

  “I don’t remember any of this,” said William. “I should have been in agony. Was I unconscious for all that time? Or have I forgotten it all?”

  Maya shared a quick glance with her mother before turning back to William. “You’ve been in a coma for three days.”

  William’s jaw dropped. “Three days?”

  “Without so much as stirring,” said Catherine. “Also unusual in itself, but fortunate at the same time. Somehow, your body was in the exact state it needed to be—reduced blood flow, lack of consciousness, relaxed muscle tone. You were the perfect patient, aside from the fatal wound.”

  “Neither of you has told me what you did, though.”

  “We operated,” said Maya. “My mother was chief surgeon, and I assisted. The first thing we did was inspect the entry point, and the skin had already begun to grow around the wood, fixing it in place. That was both good and bad—good, because it kept contaminants out of the wound, but it also made our work more difficult.”

  Catherine took over. “We re-opened the wound, and the deeper we got, the worse it looked. The wood had not only nicked the spleen, it also tore a gaping hole in your colon. We couldn’t pull the spike out directly without doing even more damage, so we chipped away at it, removing a bit at a time.” She paused and sighed, glancing at her daughter as though seeking corroboration. She turned back to him and continued. “Here’s where it gets weird.”

  William’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean it hasn’t been weird until now?”

  “Weirder, then,” said Maya with the same incredulous look as her mother. “You have to understand, what we’re about to tell you is impossible, but we both agree it happened, so all we can do is tell you the facts.”

  “What happened?” asked William with a touch of impatience in his voice.

  “Your organs repaired themselves,” said Maya. “Not over the course of three days, but immediately, or fast enough for us to witness the progress. As fast as we cleared away debris, the tissue around it regenerated, as clean, strong, and healthy as you could ask for. Not even a scar. An entire section of colon regrew itself while I watched, and not one bit of fecal waste escaped in the process. Your spleen repaired itself in less than a minute. Your kidney looked like new mere seconds after we removed a splinter.”

  “How is that even possible?” asked William.

  “It’s not,” said Catherine. “But if I could wave a magic wand, I could not have imagined a faster or more complete recovery. I wish I could treat every patient this way, but even more, I wish I understood what happened. All I know for certain is that it wasn’t normal. Even your skin healed.” She reached over and pulled the sheets down, exposing William’s stomach. The skin was completely smooth, without any sign of an injury.

  William lay in stunned silence, searching his brain for meaning. “So why was I asleep for three days?”

  Maya sighed again. “I wish I knew. And that’s what’s bothered us most about this whole incident: the number of things we don’t know.”

  “I know even less than you do,” he said. “Like where my wife is, for instance. Where’s Melissa?”

  “Outside,” said Maya. “With the others. We kept them out while you were waking up, but if you’re up to it, I can—”

  “Yes!” said William. “For king’s sake, let her in!�
��

  Melissa rushed in the second Catherine opened the door. She hurled herself at William and crushed him with a hug, ignoring Maya’s protestations to be gentle with her patient. “I was so worried,” she cried as she covered him with kisses. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”

  “I’m fine. Better than I have reason to be. Speaking of which, I’m sorry I put you through this.” He reached up and stroked her cheek.

  She smiled through her tears. “Don’t worry—you’ll be punished accordingly. Are you well enough to see everyone else? I wish I could spend an hour or two alone with you, but it wouldn’t be fair. They’ve been worried sick.”

  William glanced at Maya, who looked at her mother in turn. “He’s your patient,” said Catherine. Finally, Maya nodded to Melissa.

  Clyde scrambled in first, running to the bed and reaching up to nuzzle William. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” said William. “No more smashing through walls, okay?”

  “Okay,” said the dragon in a sheepish voice.

  Jack, Rachel, and Charlie filed in after, beaming with relief. “You gave us quite a scare,” said Rachel as she squeezed his shoulder.

  “I told you he’d do something insane, didn’t I?” said Jack in a playful manner. “At least this time it wasn’t me who had to rescue you.”

  “You okay, Will?” asked Charlie.

  “Better than I expected, thanks to my doctors,” said William. “I’m glad you’re all well, but how’s the duke? I didn’t get a chance to talk to him much before I got injured. I hope the rebels didn’t hurt him.”

  “I’m well,” said Vincent as he strode into the room with a beatific smile and shook William’s hand. “Thanks to you and your friends, I was saved from a fate I don’t care to imagine. You risked everything on my behalf—I am forever indebted to you, William. You not only saved my life, but we recovered the gold as well, which means the citizens of Faywater Port and Marshland Crossing won’t be subjected to an economic crisis.”