Free Blood of the Redd Guard - Part Two by Dan Decker

breath, held it, and then released it. Panicking was the surest path to death. She needed to think.
    The evening had ended and Nelion was thinking of sleep when it had happened. One moment her apartment was serene and peaceful, the next it was overrun with hooded people. If she wouldn’t have let her guard down, she and the city guards might have done better, but it had been a long day that she’d thought was over.
    She had grabbed her sword from where it hung on the wall and attacked the closest man, scoring a slice across his chest. Her next swing would have taken him in the gut but a blow to her head from the side stopped her short and her sword was ripped from her hands. The next thing she knew, she was on the floor and the man she’d wounded was kicking her in the head.
    The invaders ripped her up from the floor, shoved a strip of cloth into her mouth, and tied it behind her head. Before the dense woven hood was pulled over her eyes, she saw that at least one of her guards was dead and the other two had serious wounds. Three against six were bad odds. One against that many was even worse.
    She had been grateful that General Adar Rahid had requisitioned guards to protect both her and Semal but she couldn’t help but feel responsible for what had happened to them. Either way, she would have been kidnapped. She could have done without the additional weight of guilt that came with them being hurt and killed.
    As they dragged her from her home, she remembered that General Rahid had been planning to send his own soldiers to relieve the city guards. She’d hoped that they were close, but it galled her to think that she needed to be rescued. It was better than the alternative, however.
    At one point, her captors discussed what to do about a city guard patrol that had turned onto the road. A blade was pressed to her side and she was told to be silent. As if she could have said anything anyway with the filthy tasting rag in her mouth. A moment later there was a laugh and one of her captors sounded relieved when he spoke with the guardsmen.
    More Kopal, she had thought and fought the sinking feeling she had in her chest. Any hope she had of rescue had evaporated by the time they stopped moving and tied her to the chair.
    Nelion wasn’t aware of how much time had passed since her capture, but she guessed it had been at least an hour. The events of the evening had helped her keep from thinking about Kyson or the man she killed, but now, her fear for her own safety wasn’t enough to keep her thoughts from turning to them. She pushed aside thoughts of the Kopal man she had stabbed in the back. She’d do it again if she had to, but she wasn’t ready to process that yet.
    She tried to avoid thinking about Kyson, but was unable. It wasn’t the first time that someone Nelion had known had died. She’d lost her father at a young age and she’d lost friends while in Korew army. Unlike so many things in life where the more you did something the better you became; dealing with grief never seemed to get any easier.
    Kyson had been a good man that she hadn’t known as well as she would have liked. She had noticed and appreciated his quiet unassuming manner, but she couldn’t go so far as to say she was interested. This wasn’t saying much because she didn’t find many men attractive. While some might have preferred a handsome face or a broad set of shoulders, she wanted a man like her father.
    He had had a quality of inner strength and control that her mother was fond of talking about, still years later after his death. It wasn’t that he was physically talented or charismatic; instead, his pride hadn’t usually got the best of him.
    In Nelion’s experience it wasn’t just a rare characteristic in men; it was rare in everybody and perhaps why her mother had never remarried. Her father had always given Nelion his full attention and talked to her as if she was an adult, even when she was a small child.
    While she hadn’t known