The Sovereign's Slaves (Narrow Gate Book 3) Read online

  “Don’t apologize to the beast, boy,” the Sovereign shouted, spittle flying from his mouth in thick strings. “Apologize to me! I’m the one you have inconvenienced, not that miserable beast.”

  The red dot quivered upon his chest as the Sovereign shook with rage, balancing precariously with one hand atop a tracken’s head.

  Mathew closed his eyes and said a silent prayer to his Creator, the One True God. He prayed that, in his final moments, he would be able to give Kara, the other Strays and the freed tracken a chance at survival.

  He opened his eyes again, this time glancing at Kara. “Do the right thing, okay?”

  She looked horror stricken at his words, and her mouth fell open as she realized his intent. Just as she started to object, he pulled the device used to control the tracken from his pocket, pointed it toward the beast supporting the Sovereign and pressed the button on the side.

  The beast screamed in pain and leapt sideways as its body gyrated with the sensation, and Mathew cringed at the sound, knowing that he’d caused its horrendous agony.

  The Sovereign tottered sideways, the support to his balance now gone, and Mathew felt a searing pain shoot across the top curve of his bicep, up across his shoulder and onto his scalp.

  He flinched away from the pain, falling sideways.

  The controlled beasts behind the Sovereign screamed too, yowling in agony. They began to attack whatever was near them, which just happened to be the Enforcers and the Sovereign.

  Mathew fell to the floor, releasing the button, unable to cause the poor beasts any more pain. The burning pain grew worse, and he felt the device drop from his hand.

  Pandemonium broke out in the room. The freed tracken leapt forward to knock the Enforcers and the still-harnessed tracken to the floor. Kara rushed forward too, and through a haze of pain, Mathew saw her leap upon the Sovereign.

  The man and girl when down in a heap upon the floor, and the burning pain in Mathew’s arm and shoulder lessened as the thin tentacle of red light was knocked away from his body.

  He shook his head to clear it, and then managed to lever himself shakily to his feet, slightly amazed at still being alive. Pain pounded ferociously through his shoulder, but worry for Kara’s safety drove him along. He tottered toward Kara as fast as his feet would carry him, which didn’t seem to be fast enough since he was dizzy with pain.

  Reaching her, he tried to help her hold the Sovereign’s wildly thrashing Old Tech limb to the stone floor, but his shoulder and arm were afire with pain and he could manage little more than draping his body over the Sovereign’s still flesh-and-bone arm.

  “Bring me something to bind him with!” Kara shouted at one of the Strays.

  To his surprise, Mathew saw Maude’s daughter rise to her feet and strip off a ragged rope that she’d been using as a belt to hold her loose clothing to her waist.

  Kara took the offered rope and struggled to tie the Sovereign’s hands together as he tried to fight them both off.

  The man was slavering with anger, muttering curse words as spittle flew from his mottled lips.

  One of the Strays stepped forward a little, edging close to Mathew.

  “Take care of his eye,” the filthy boy whispered. “Don’t let it rest upon you.”

  Mathew didn’t ask why. He struggled to pin the Sovereign’s upper arm under his knees and used his hands to force the Sovereign’s face to the side as Kara finished binding the man.

  “Find us something to bind his eyes with, then,” Kara said to the boy, breathing hard with her exertions to bind the man’s metal wrist.

  The Sovereign managed to free the hand not trapped under Mathew’s knees for a moment, using it to lash out at Kara and deliver a hard blow to her face. Kara gasped in pain and teetered backward as blood began to flow from the gash that the metal fingers had made upon her cheekbone.

  To Mathew’s surprise, Jack rushed forward to help. Then the girl joined in. Soon, all of the other Strays were jostling forward, seeming very eager to help truss up the Sovereign.

  “Quick, help remove the devices from the other controlled tracken while Tiber is here to aid you,” Mathew yelled to the other Strays in the back of the group as the Sovereign was quickly restrained and trussed up, hands bound together.

  “Hurry!” a Stray shouted from near the door. “More Enforcers are coming!”

  After she finished securing a blindfold made of tattered cloth across the Sovereign’s Old Tech eye, Kara bounded to her feet. The man thrashed upon the floor when she rose, but the other Strays seemed to delight in the Sovereign’s helplessness and moved in closer to hold him down.

  “Do they have any more tracken with them?” Kara asked, rushing to help the other Strays free the remaining tracken of their control harnesses.

  “No,” the Stray said. “These are all of them. I heard the Master say so in the throne room.”

  “Where are the rest of the Strays kept?” Kara asked.

  The boy’s sad gaze travelled the room, taking in all who were there, then he looked at the floor.

  “This is all of us now. There were more before. The others he killed in the throne room when he saw with his eye that you had escaped his Enforcers once more,” the boy whispered. “He brought the rest of us along to use against you both as leverage if you would not tell him the secret of the device that he wanted from the boy’s father.”

  The Stray’s gaze darted to the side and he licked his lips nervously, then gulped before finishing speaking. “He planned to hurt us, in front of you, until you told him.”

  Mathew was horrified. He looked around at the bedraggled group. There weren’t more than twenty-two Strays in the room, including Jack and the tiny girl. The tracken easily outnumbered the orphaned children.

  He felt sick to his stomach when he thought of the slaughter that must have taken place in the throne room, the needless suffering and death.

  “He killed them in front of you?” Mathew asked, astounded by the depths of the man’s evil. “Just because he was angry at me? At us?”

  A tear tracked down the boy’s filthy cheek and he nodded. He met Mathew’s gaze then and his eyes expressing the depth of the horror that he’d seen in the throne room.

  Mathew felt the responsibilities for their deaths settle upon him like a heavy mantle. If only he had known about the Sovereign’s eye sooner. Perhaps he could have done things differently?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “That’s the last one,” Kara said, holding a bloodied wire in her fingers. She stood behind the last of the tracken that had been previously been harnessed. The animal was no longer held to the floor by a free tracken. It sat on its haunches, looking dazed and disoriented to be pain-free for the first time in its life.

  “We have to hurry,” the Stray near the door said. “They’re coming!”

  “What are we going to do with them?” Mathew asked, gesturing to the Enforcers who were still pinned to the floor by their former animal slaves, and to the Sovereign, who was pinned to the floor by his former child slaves. “We can’t kill them, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.”

  Kara agreed. “You’re right, we can’t.”

  “But, he killed the rest of the Strays!” The thin, high voice came from a child of perhaps seven. He stood near the Sovereign, glaring down at the man who still lay trussed up and struggling upon the floor.

  “But, your Creator, the One True God, does not want us to kill for vengeance,” Kara told the boy. “In order to find and enter the Narrow Gate, we must always strive to do the right thing.”

  The boy shook his head. “The Narrow Gate is a myth. We should kill him so that he can not kill any more people.”

  Again, Kara shook her head. “No, we disarm them and leave them locked in this room, but we won’t be killing anyone, no matter if they deserve it or not.”

  “But...” the boy began to protest again, but Mathew saw that Kara was having none of it.

  “We have to leave, or risk being trapped in
this room by the rest of the Enforcers. The Sovereign was responsible for my mother’s death, though inadvertently, and he was directly responsible for the death of the dear woman who helped me to escape the Gate. I understand your need for vengeance, but, trust me when I say that the Narrow Gate is real, and so is the need to do the right thing.”

  Mathew’s shoulder was throbbing fiercely with pain, but he managed to move near Kara’s side.

  “She’s right, we have to leave,” he said. “All who wish to come with us should know that the journey is dangerous, but there is a safe place, with plenty to eat, in the city, and we will take you there.”

  He wobbled towards Kara, his shoulder on fire and his vision blurred with a haze of pain. He was surprised when he felt a light pressure at his shoulder.

  Turning, he found Zandra at his side, and she was crying over his injury, her tears falling like rain into the deep, seared gashes that ran along his arm, shoulder, neck and into his scalp.

  “Thank you,” Mathew breathed, relieved to feel the pain begin to lessen immediately. “Thank you for your care, Zandra.”

  The beast sniffled, letting a few more tears fall, then gently licked his cheek and stepped back to be nearer her leader.

  “They’re almost here!” the Stray at the door hissed, right before darting out the door and into the long stone hallway.

  “Quick, everyone gather what weapons and Old Tech that you can from the Enforcers and follow me,” Mathew said as he followed Kara out of the door.

  She took up a position facing the corridor, her shield device once again held in hand, activated and aimed at the approaching group of some twenty Enforcers.

  Mathew saw a few of the Strays scurrying from Enforcer to Enforcer inside the room, hurriedly removing weapons and Old Tech devices from their pockets and persons as the tracken continued to pin the Enforcers to the floor.

  In seconds, all of the Strays were all scurrying for the door, leaving the Sovereign unattended upon the floor, where he writhed trying to escape his bonds.

  When the Strays had cleared the doorway, Mathew heard Tiber chuff once, loudly. At the signal, all of the other animals abandoned the room, leaving the Enforcers and Sovereign behind as the tracken fled swiftly out the double doors, following the orphans out into the hall.

  Mathew quickly moved to close the huge doors and drop the thick wooden bar into place to seal the Enforcers inside.

  “What are we going to do about them?” Mathew asked, seeing the troop of other Enforcers approach beyond the transparent shield.

  “We’ll have to run for it,” Kara said.

  Behind them, a small voice spoke up, “If you follow me, I can take you to the stables. If we free all of the horses too, the Enforcers won’t be able to follow.”

  It was Maude’s daughter. She stood there calmly waiting for them, as if the danger that approached them now in the form of the Enforcers was nothing out of the ordinary. Mathew wondered what the girl had seen in her time as a Stray that had given her the ability to be so calm under pressure.

  Kara nodded and backed toward the girl.

  The troop of Enforcers was almost upon them as the others who were locked inside the room begun to beat upon the wooden barrier, trying to get out.

  Kara backed up further, quickly heading away from the approaching Enforcers and the set of double doors.

  Mathew matched her pace, wondering how they were going to outrun such a large group of armed men.

  Suddenly, with only a quick rumbing of sound in warning, the wooden doors and the stone around their frame exploded outwards into the hall, followed immediately by a blinding white flash of light that momentarily seared through the hallway. The flying debris from the wood and stone struck the foremost of the Enforcers in the hall, knocking them flying backwards and pelting the rest of their group with chunks of wreckage.

  The force of the blast pushed up against the shield, pushing so strongly against Kara that she stumbled backwards a few steps. Dust and flying splinters filled the air in front of the shield, and Mathew took this as their cue. He grabbed Kara’s arm and hauled her backwards into the group of Strays and tracken milling about behind the shield device.

  “Time to run!” he shouted.

  Kara released the button to deactivate the shield, and they were all deluged with a shower of grit and falling debris. They turned and ran, following Maude’s daughter down the corridor as it quickly filled with choking dust.

  In seconds, the tiny girl was leading their large group around a corner at a fast clip. Chaos reigned behind them, but no shots were fired from the Enforcers. They were still dealing with the effects of the explosion.

  If not for the shield device, Mathew knew that their group would be just as badly disoriented and injured as the troop of Enforcers. The device had protected them from the worst of the flying debris.

  The girl followed the corridor another twenty feet or so, then veered off, turning into an open doorway that led into a massive kitchen.

  The kitchen was filled with the Sovereign’s servants, all bustling about busily preparing food. Several gasped in surprise as the girl burst into their midst and was quickly followed by a large group of bedraggled Strays and freed tracken.

  “Follow us if you want to be free of the Sovereign!” Mathew shouted as he fled through the kitchen.

  Startled faces watched him as he and Kara ran by, but none tried to stop them.

  “Come on! We are leaving GateWide!” Kara shouted, urging them to follow.

  More gasps erupted around the room, and Mathew heard several whispered words, snatches of conversation.

  “Leave GateWide?”

  “Crazy Strays!”

  “Wilderness beyond the Gate…”

  “Look out for the tracken!”

  Only three of the servants, all older women, followed them as they fled out of the rear door of the kitchen and into the night. Much to Mathew’s disappointment, the rest stayed behind.

  A huge stone stable loomed behind the House in the darkness. The night was so dark that Mathew could barely see the shape of it in the gloom. The group of Strays and tracken converged upon it and several of the older Strays immediately began removing the horses from the stables and either saddling them or turning them lose. Pandemonium ensued as everyone dashed about in a flurry of activity.

  Just as Jack led Gallant and a small filly from the stable and into the courtyard, Mathew rushed through the confusion of horses and children to help.

  “How many horses are left inside?” Mathew asked as he took the reins from Jack as the boy passed both pairs to him. Mathew guessed that the boy meant for the horses to be their mounts on the way out of GateWide.

  “Two, one for me and one for Maude’s daughter,” Jack said as he dashed back inside.

  “Get on the horses,” Mathew shouted to the milling Strays. “We have no more time for saddles and such. The Enforcers are right behind us.”

  The Strays began to mount the horses, a few of them even helping the three servant women get mounted, but there were far more horses than children, Mathew saw.

  “Free the rest of their bridles,” Kara said as Mathew tossed the filly’s reins to her. “We will release them into GateWide. Releasing them into the wilderness would only provide a feast for the Fidgets.”

  “Fidgets?” one boy whispered. “Those are real?”

  “Who cares? It’s better to risk the wilderness and the Fidgets than to stay here and be punished by the Sovereign,” an older girl yelled.

  Mathew couldn’t agree more.

  He leapt onto Gallant’s bare back, checked to see that the others were doing the same and then nudged the horse with his heels. The animal leapt forward, heading for the end of the courtyard where it opened out onto the streets of GateWide.

  Kara was at his side on the little filly, and the rest of their group of Strays, servants and tracken followed closely behind.

  When they reached the streets, several of the tracken leapt forward, ta
king the lead, Tiber at the head of the group.

  No citizens dared to try to block their path, knowing as they did the vicious nature of the Sovereign’s tracken. There were few people about as it was, since darkness still cloaked the settlement.

  They headed toward the Gate at a gallop and Mathew belatedly wondered how they would manage to get the massive structure open when they arrived.

  As the horses thundered down the road, surrounded on all sides by the sure-footed, stealthy-pawed tracken, Mathew heard a shout behind them. He turned to look, and saw that the Enforcers had made it out of the House, and were now in pursuit, on foot.

  The riderless horses had followed the group of mounted Strays from the courtyard, and now thundered along behind them, as if they had been too long directed to follow the lead horse, and could not depart from the behavior now. Not a single horse had remained inside the courtyard to be used as a mount for the Enforcers.

  In their headlong rush toward the Gate, the journey seemed much shorter than the walk to the House had taken, and soon they were all skidding to a stop in front of the massive structure.

  Gallant was breathing hard beneath him as Mathew looked up to study the closed Gate. He’d never before contemplated, or even cared, how the huge structure was opened and closed each day. But now he wished he’d paid attention.

  Was the Gate pushed open from the ground, or was it controlled by some mechanical means from the two small guard towers that stood to each side?

  “They’re coming!” one child screamed fearfully.

  “Open the Gate,” another cried.

  Mathew leapt from Gallant’s back and rushed toward the enormous wooden crossbars that held the Gate closed.

  Kara joined him, and they both began to push at the bars that held the Gate closed, trying their best to lift them from the iron brackets attached to the wooden panels of the Gate.

  Tiber soon joined them, as did the other tracken, each pushing their massive heads beneath the bar to lift.

  To Mathew’s complete surprise, a man sidled up to his side, cloaked and hooded, and began to help push at the bar too.