There must have been a traitor in his household.
The thought bounced uncomfortably around Stephen Rider's head as he and at least a third of his clann's men-at-arms combed through the forests of the single mountain on Rheidyr land. Stephen and twenty other men were mounted; the others were on foot. Ten men handled an absolutely huge pack of hounds, a pack swelled by the borrowing of dogs from all his neighbors.
Stephen was searching for his son.
There must have been a traitor, he thought again, grimly. How else would they have known the lay-out of his castle so well, known how to avoid the guards so handily?
How would they have known to perform their crime on that particular night?
Stephen and Ceri had gone out that night – barely two hour's ride by hovercraft. They'd been invited to attend a banquet to celebrate the engagement of Duke McGregor's eldest daughter to a nobleman – an 'outlander' noble, as people might say, since he did not hail from Planet Antir, but he at least came from the United Kingdom. 'Outlander' was not at all bad, nowhere as bad as if Laura had married a 'foreigner' – meaning someone from outside the United Kingdom. Inhabitants of the UK were very insular.
Laura McGregor was a good friend of both Stephen and Ceri, and so of course it was necessary that they attend. Adian, also a friend, was going too – and he was escorting someone, an event rare enough that it made his sister quite giddy with happiness. It was to have been such a happy night…
…Saber was left alone that night. Of course his parents had warned him about it, telling him he was a big boy now and should be able to drop off to sleep without them there. Adian and Stephen made a point of reviewing the placement of guards near Saber's bedroom. And Saber took it pretty well – though he did insist on an extra bedtime story the night before, since "I won't get one tomorrow."
That night, while his parents and uncle were celebrating at a castle far away, thieves came to Caer Rheidyr. And they took away not gold, not jewels, not data-discs (though they had left Ceri behind in a messy computer-room to see what files had been accessed) but the most precious thing they could have. His son.
They had planned it well, Stephen thought as he watched the dogs snuffle through the forest. There was only a small strike force, to lessen the chances of detection. They had been disguised in the non-descript clothing of villagers, so that no one would really think to question them once outside the castle as they would have if they'd been dressed in the body-armor of most soldiers and mercenaries – for they were too well-trained to be anything else – or even in the slightly predictable castle livery as costumes. They were in and out of the castle in only around thirty minutes, using a secret tunnel to get in and out. Caer Rheidyr was practically honeycombed with secret passages, as the first Rider had based it on a similarly honeycombed castle back on Old Earth. The tunnel they had used wasn't one of the 'deep cover' passages, the ones known only to those of the Rider blood and a select few of the Riders' most loyal men – still, the fact that they had used any of the tunnels, even one that was hardly secret anymore, signified that they had had inside help – and a fairly good brain to coordinate it all.
But, Stephen thought, still watching the dogs' fruitless search, they hadn't counted on their prey being able to fight back. They had found the guards posted near Saber's room bruised and bleeding, but apparently having put up enough of a fight to take down one of the raiders. The raiders had left their fallen comrade behind, not having the time or the manpower to carry his unconscious body with them. The man was currently in the deepest darkest room of Caer Rheidyr – the Riders never having built a dungeon, but finding that the cellar could function quite well as one for indeterminate periods of time.
And then to their further dismay, the raiders found that the little boy had heard the commotion outside the room and woken up. They burst into the bedroom to confront a small five-year-old boy backed into the furthest corner, brandishing a long aluminum rod that had once been part of a mop.
They had of course disabled the security cameras, but apparently they hadn't known enough to be aware of the new, hidden observation system that Stephen had installed into his castle – largely on the urging of security-conscious Adian. While waiting impatiently for the men-at-arms to assemble, Stephen and Adian had watched the tapes. The men had laughed at little Saber, until, stick-fighting using the sword techniques his uncle taught him, he had dealt a man – the leader, Stephen hoped – a painful blow to the head.
They had stopped laughing. The man who had been hit started to curse instead, gingerly touching his scalp and seeing blood on his hand.
Of course, in the end Saber was overpowered, thrown over a burly man's shoulder and carried off, kicking and screaming his face red the whole while. But the boy – and the guards – and the thick, steel-core doors of Saber's bedroom – had all together bought enough time so that the raider's plan was thrown off schedule. The alarm sounded had sealed off all the airports and spaceports for leagues around – for Stephen Rider was a powerful man, and the fact that he barely exercised that power just made it all the more potent when he did.
They had impounded a spacecraft that had been identified as the designated get-away vehicle of the raiders. This told them two things: one, that they had been planning to take Saber offworld; and two, that the raiders were now stuck on familiar land.
Stephen had been searching for two days. Adian, just as angry and terror-stricken as Saber's parents, led another force of Rider men to search the area south of Caer Rheidyr; Stephen was searching north. He had men in the air, using the very latest in sensor equipment to seek out any human signatures; he had men on the ground doing the same thing. Ceri, back at the castle, was downloading real-time movies of the lands around the castle through spysats, seeing if she could spot anything out of the ordinary. And of course, that ancient, and to Stephen sometimes more reliable, method of a search party complete with hounds.
Stephen raised his comm, checking in with Ceri and Adian. Neither of the siblings had found anything. Grimly, he turned back to his own party.
He would find his son.
***
Stephen did find his son, after checking out an abnormality that Ceri had spotted on the monitors. He found the raiders holed up in a small, ancient shack that, while rickety and leaky and certainly unsanitary, had somehow been rigged up by the raiders in the short time they were there to deflect sensor scans.
They stormed the house, so quickly and in such overwhelming numbers that the raiders (who had been sleeping; the one lookout had been sniped by Stephen himself, who was a crack-shot) had no time to do anything but sit up and look blearily around before being clapped into irons.
Stephen did find his son – and many the curses he laid upon the raiders when he did. Saber had been jammed into a closet (that leaked water; it had been raining recently) wrists and ankles bound tightly with rough rope – so tightly that he bled. A dirty rag had been stuffed into his mouth as a gag; his skin was pale and several bruises stood out lividly on that pale skin. Stephen panicked when Saber did not respond at first to gentle shaking and the loosening of his ropes – when Saber finally opened his blue eyes to his father's face, the dim smile and the way he dropped off almost immediately into an almost drugged sleep did not make him feel that much better.
When Ceri saw her son, she burst into tears – and not all of her tears were of relief. Adian had scowled and stalked off to speak with a policeman. Stephen did not know what the young blademaster had told the policeman, but he suspected it had something to do with the preferred handling of the raiders.
They immediately summoned Dr. Renn, who had grimly told them that aside from the signs of a beating (Ceri's eyes immediately filled with tears at the word 'beating'; she often enough saw her baby boy bruised and scraped, thanks to his habit of tearing around the castle and his training with his uncle, but the idea that anyone would deliberately try to hurt Saber was horrible) Saber also had a slight concussion, signs of starvation and, from the damp, cold conditions of the cabinet he had been stuffed in, the beginnings of pneumonia.
Saber lay on the bed, running a high temperature and wheezing for each breath. Stephen stood by his son's bedside, sadly running a hand through blond hair damp with fever-sweat. Renn had gone to fetch various antibiotics; if Saber's fever broke, he'd be on the road to recovery; if not, his various conditions would combine to something worse that could end in…end in something that Stephen was not willing to contemplate.
He clenched his fist, vowing with rage uncharacteristic to the normally even-tempered Duke that if his son died, he would make sure that each and every one of the raiders did as well – whether through the death penalty still legal in the UK or, if that didn't pass, through…other means.
He pictured Adian's face, the blond man's face angry and sad in equal amounts as he gazed at his nephew. If he did have to take justice into his own hands, he knew he had an ally.
AN: First update in, what, five months? Sorry…
Anyway, trying to update quicker. As you have noticed, this is a very Saber-centric story (what can I say, he's my favorite character) but other Star Sheriffs will be showing up in a few chapters. And thanks to the reader who pointed out that Saber's parents' real names are Edward and Mary; but I made up a whole history for him in my head. Ahh…think of it as an AU, why doncha? Actually, the first SRatSS fic I wrote already had Stephen and Ceri in them, so I kinda got fixed in the idea.
Ceri and Adian are Welsh names, by the way. Ceri means 'poetry' and Adian – which can also be an Irish name meaning fire – is a derivative of 'aden', Welsh for wings.
This is going to go very metaphysical in a bit…but after that it will start veering more towards the tone of the show itself. Hehehe…and I will actually start using canon references again. I've been ignoring that for a while, haven't I? It's been such fun making up my own planetary system and all the stuff that goes with it!
Oh yeah, a disclaimer: the people of my UK do not necessarily bear a resemblance to people of the real UK. I don't think that real British or Irish or Scottish or Welsh people really are as tradition-bound and insular as mine, okay? No offense is meant to any real UK people.