Chapter Nine
Rescue?

"I'm your dream, make you real
I'm your eyes when you must steal
I'm your pain when you can't feel
Sad but true

I'm your dream, mind astray
I'm your eyes while you're away
I'm your pain while you repay
You know it's sad but true
Sad but true"

Metallica: "Sad But True"

All seemed quiet and peaceful in the clearing as the sun went down, then twilight gave way to the inky darkness of night and the stars became slowly visible one by one. Camp fires were stoked to cook the evening meal as the guard rotation changed in the Black Dragon mercenary camp. The outgoing perimeter guards had nothing new to report to their counterparts taking over the watch, other than their Kobold "allies" gave them the creeps, popping up at odd intervals from out of nowhere shortly after sunset and that they weren't being paid enough to be camped out in the these gods forsaken haunted woods for days at a time.

Soldier's gripes that would have been almost amusing to Kevin Ryan in his tree-stand hiding place waiting for the watch to disperse. His charcoal gray cloak serving both to keep out the evening's chill and to break up his silhouette. He and Beckett had drawn the detail of dispatching the perimeter guards as soon as they changed the watch. With his vision switched over from normal sight to infravision he watched the relieved guard stride into camp, knowing the human's night vision would be gone the minute he came within sight of the camp fires.

Ryan slipped his cloak from his shoulders, slid soundlessly to the ground and slit the nearest guard's throat with his dagger. As the man dropped to his knees his compatriot was dispatched with equal efficiency by the same dagger thrown with uncanny accuracy, cutting deep into the man's neck. Though Ryan found such killing deeply distasteful, it was necessary to prevent the perimeter watchmen from sounding the alarm for their plan to work. The best he could do to salve his conscience was to send them to the void as quickly and painlessly as possible.

From Esposito's blunt objections earlier it was clear to him that Beckett might had deeper concerns about this method of killing than he did. If so, he would perform the dark deeds himself and not speak a word of her "weakness" to anyone. It needed to be done to have tactical advantage over their more numerous highly trained enemies and there was no time for hesitation or squeamishness on her part. He did not think less of Beckett that she found herself unable to dispatch someone this way. Sometimes he wished he still couldn't, either. Not everyone had it in them to look another person in the eye and slit their throat, but the war against the Drow had made him learn to do things he'd never thought himself capable of before he'd answered Corellon Letharian's call a century ago.

When he was finished with his grim business, he dragged the bodies back into the bushes where they would not be immediately found and covered them with branches before collecting his cloak and padding silently into the darkening woods with a whispered prayer to Corellon Letharian for forgiveness, not for their sins but his own.

With no perimeter guards to raise the alarm, the mercenary camp never saw the attack coming. One moment, the wooded clearing was was quiet, but for the ghostly song of night-birds or the chirping of crickets, and the next... bedlam! Fire rained down from the sky, exploding upon contact with tents, campfires and mercenaries alike. Castle held nothing back as he launched fireball after fireball, then drew his sword and marched into the camp right at Beckett's heels.

Bursts of fire and electricity flew from the fingertips of his left hand and Armageddon flashed in his right as he gave himself fully to the flow of battle, burning, shocking or cutting down anyone who rose between him and the small stockade in the center of the camp. By the time he reached it, the door promptly exploded outward in a shower of splinters, followed by the charred corpse of a man who had obviously stood between his daughter and her bid for freedom.

Moments later she was in his arms and from the haunted look in her eyes it was clear that she hadn't meant whatever spell she'd hit the man with to detonate with such force, only to slam him through the door. 'The likely result of using impure, cobbled together spellcasting components,' Castle's own circle training supplied in the back of his mind. He pulled Alexis in and swallowed her in his embrace as she launched herself into his arms.

Cole Maddox watched the father/daughter reunion from across the clearing.

Though Castle's more forceful rescue attempt had not been anticipated, his orders were still the same. He cranked and locked his crossbow then selected a bolt that wouldn't pass through the redhead's body and injure the vessel of his master's ascendance.

"Richard Castle must not be harmed," the voice in the mercenary's head whispered as he took aim, insistent and uncompromising. "The girl must die in her father's sight. That which sleeps within him must be awakened".

Kate caught sight of the man with the crossbow out of the corner of her eye, and with a cry of warning shoved Castle and his daughter out of the path of the bolt at the last second, taking it in her own shoulder instead, which spun her about and dropped her to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.

"Kate...no!" Castle screamed and a barrier he had not known existed shattered and his eyes went completely black. Raw, unfocused elemental power burned in Castle's veins, surging though his muscles and nerve endings With a twitch of his left hand, Maddox was wrenched from the ground where he stood, his crossbow flung across the clearing burned and melted beyond recognition as nearly the clearing burst into flame.

Castle released Alexis, simultaneously unleashing a vortex of energy with their group in the center that tore into every mercenary in the clearing, igniting a firestorm that charred even the surrounding trees. A pure expression of Richard Castle's rage.

Castle clenched his fist and every bone in Maddox's body was first broken then crushed as if squeezed in a giant vise. When Castle opened his fist, what was left of Cole Maddox exploded into a bursting fireball one hundred feet above the clearing, every shred of his body burned to cinders and scattered to the four winds.

Everything in the camp, but for the spot on which his companions and daughter stood, staring at him with mix of awe and fear had been charred and twisted beyond recognition by his display of raw, terrifying elemental power, even the dead bodies smoldered where they fell.

With both his rage and power expended, Castle dropped to his knees then pitched forward face-first onto the ground.

"Dad!" Alexis shouted as she knelt beside her father, rolled him over and pulled his head onto her knees, his eyes once again blue as they stared sightlessly up into hers, her vision swimming with tears "Dad, snap out of it, you're scaring me!"

"Whatever that was, he seems to have expended himself," Ryan stated flatly as he knelt over Kate to examine where the bolt stuck out of her armor. Shoving cloth dressings around Kate's wound to staunch as much of the bleeding as he could, dragging a moan from her lips. "Lieutenant Beckett might make it if we can get them back to the tower."

When nobody else seemed to break out of their trance, Ryan rose and shoved Esposito violently, slapping his left bracer against the larger man's armor.

"Guardsman!" He shouted in Esposito's face "We have wounded, let's move!"

Esposito shook off the daze he had been in and lifted Kate into his arms to carry her from the field. Though Castle was still in a murky haze, with Alexis' help Ryan was able to get him up and the group of companions moved out as quickly as they could.

Ryan had noted signs of Kobold activity in the area, but from what he had overheard earlier, it would seem their partnership with the Black Dragon mercenaries - if there had ever been one - was either fraught with discord, or they were at cross purposes under the direction of a third party. That there was no sign of any attempt on their part to come to the mercenaries' aid during the attack led Ryan to believe that either was likely, as it was clear they had kept the mercenary camp under close scrutiny.

He wanted to get Castle's daughter, Esposito and and his two helpless charges as far from the camp as possible before they decided to investigate in force now that the loud noises had died down.

As the group struggled out of the clearing, Ryan put his fingers to his lips and let out a low, but clearly audible whistle. Seconds later a charcoal gray horse with a black mane Esposito had never laid eyes on before emerged from the shadows. This was not the mount that Ryan had departed New Amsterdam astride, that much Esposito knew for sure. Even without the saddle, bridle and armored livery it was clear this was no ordinary mount, but a warhorse of proud and almost noble bearing.

Her name was Nightshadow. Ryan remembered the day she had chosen him as her rider nearly a century ago, their bond cemented in battle. She would follow him until he died and then drift back into the woods from whence she came. Until then she would never be far from him.

Ryan helped Alexis settle her father to the ground while Esposito improvised a travois from branches along with their cloaks. Ryan then secured it to his faithful mount, while whispering in her ear in Elvish. It was clear she was accustomed to such work as she took to it without so much as a wicker of complaint as first Castle then Becket were lowered into place.

Ryan helped Alexis onto Nightshadow's back and they moved out again, this time at a much improved pace with Ryan and Esposito on full alert with weapons drawn, their eyes on a swivel for pursuit. The closer they got to their improvised bastion in the Tralgar ruins, the clearer it became that there would not be any.

Lanie had descended upon Beckett as soon as they were in the doorway and barred the door. She indicated for Esposito to carry her wounded friend upstairs to the relative privacy of the officer's quarters where she had him hold Kate down while she removed the crossbow bolt. Lanie noted the odd smell as she finally worked the broadhead bolt free of her armor without jostling the point too much and noted how Kate had been taken down so easily.

Poison.

Kate's leather armor had kept the bolt from penetrating fully which had spared her the full dose, or she would have been dead before she'd hit the ground. Clearly this bolt had been meant for someone not wearing armor, had a bodkin point been used, it would have gone right through.

"C'mon Kate," she muttered, "do not die on me! Stay with me! Stay with me!"

Lanie whispered prayers to her god and her whole countenance began to glow as she muttered the litany of healing spells while she applied poultices to draw out the poison and had Espo prepare a brand to cauterize the wound. When the blood around the wound ran clean again, Lanie nodded and he applied it where specified.

"Stay with me! Do not die! C'mon, girl!"

Kate's piercing scream could be heard throughout the tower.

Castle was lost in a dark haze, a place of shadowy forms and half forgotten images flitted in and out of the shadows, none remained still long enough or visible enough for him to see clearly.

The cacophony of myriad half heard echoes of indistinct voices occasionally became clear enough for him to were too many voices, he couldn't keep them clear in his head. He tried to wake up, tried to shut them out but there were too many... until a hazy, indistinct form slowly coalesced, gaining form from the shadows. Chestnut curls and penetrating green eyes that seemed familiar but not, but her calm even soft voice silenced the others.

"For the dark son born of light to prevail," Johanna Beckett whispered to him softly, "The Black Death must rise again..."

He heard a dragon roar, saw a flash of light and then the dream was swallowed by darkness.

Castle sat bolt upright so quickly he nearly toppled his daughter from the side of the cot on which he lay. He saw Kate on another cot nearby, nearly serene in slumber covered by her cloak.

"They brought her down an hour ago," Alexis whispered, "Sister Parish said Lt. Beckett needs rest and to be kept warm and asked me to keep an eye on her while she rested."

Castle nodded and sipped from the flask of water Alexis offered him.

"I don't know what came over me back there, Pumpkin," Castle whispered, "I'm sorry for scaring you... but when Kate went down... something just snapped, I can't explain it."

"I wasn't going to ask," Alexis whispered.

"You weren't asking very loudly," Castle replied, softening for his daughter, before pulling her to him and kissing the top of her head. "I am so proud of you."

William Bracken sat back in the chair overlooking his still wondrous treasure hoard with tremendous satisfaction, The deed was done.

The power that would be his salvation had been reawakened, he could feel it in the overcharged firestorm that Richard Castle had created.

Tomorrow would be the last day.

When the next night fell, precisely one hundred years from that fateful cursed night, the spell that had robbed him of his true self would finally be broken and BahorAgyrtCiym, the Black Death would rise again.

William Bracken laughed.

**Author's Note** Uh oh... if Bracken is happy, then what evil plot could possibly be in store for our intrepid band of heroes? I guess you will have to stay tuned for the next thrilling installment of DRAGONSLAYER!