Redemption Run

Chapter 14

We were back at camp in a matter of minutes. As I looked around at the camp, seeing people check on each other and themselves, to make sure everything was okay, there was still no sight of the boys.

"Where could they have gone?!"

As the words left my lips, another chill ran down my spine. Rhys looked at me, and judging by the widening of her visible eye, she had realized the same thing. I broke into a dead run to the tent, hearing the sound of Rhys right behind me.

I scrambled into the tent calling out, "Baugh?! Jagos?! Where are you?!" Only to find, much to my horror, that the tent was empty.

"Where are they?" Rhys said as she entered the tent, "They should've come back to the tent when things started getting hectic!"

"Moor-acu... are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Felice asked.

"Oh no..." I whispered.

I turned to Rhys.

"They didn't come here to kill," I said, "They came here to capture, and they did just that. First they got you, and then they came back for the boys."

"The boys..." Rhys whispered, "Why would they kidnap the boys? This seems so... convoluted, sending two different troops for two different sets."

"Trade? Revenge? Spite? All three?" I said, "None of it matters, what matters is we have to get them back before anything happens to them."

"You said it." said Rhys. She took one step, then another, then collapsed, holding her side.

"Oh god!" I said as I helped her onto the cot, which thankfully hadn't been burned, "What happened...?"

As I said that, I saw a red stain pooling on Rhys' side, under her shirt.

"You hid a wound from me." I said in the most deadpan, matter-of-fact voice I could muster up.

"I thought we had bigger things to worry about," Rhys said back in an equally deadpan voice, as if she weren't bleeding heavily from the side. I didn't even have to do anything, since Felice took over my hands and practically ripped Rhys' shirt off to get to the wound and heal it with the last of the bottle of Nectar in my pocket.

"You can't worry about anything if that wound gets infected," Felice said, "You could get seriously ill, or..."

She wouldn't say the word, but we knew what she was thinking.

"I'm sorry." Rhys said, "But right now, we need to focus on the boys! What happened to them!"

"I think I know." Vionna said, "There seemed to be a lot of people that attacked for them to all have come from one carriage. They must have sent another one, and that's the one your boys were put in."

"But that doesn't answer where they've gone!" I said.

"I... I think I've caught their scent," said Vionna, "I've got something. It smells like... fruit?"

"That's Baugh!" Rhys said, "He's had that smell since we met him!"

"I can track it down." Vionna said, "Easy."

"I'm coming with you." said Rhys. She tried to sit up, clutched her side, and immediately laid back down with some help from me.

"No, you're not going anywhere with that wound still healing on the inside. I'll have to take care of this one."

"You're not doing this alone," said Vionna, "I'll help you. Those kids started calling me 'Aunt Vi,' I'm not going to let anything happen to them either."