Title: A Quarter South (6/7)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: AU; there’s something strange about the prince’s new bodyguards.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Or read at AO3

Please be certain you have read the previous chapter. Warning for violence.

Scotty had hustled the prince back to a relative corner of the mill for safe-keeping. “Don’t look so glum,” he said. “This isn’t the world ending.”

“You should’ve gone with them.”

“It is always better when somebody stays behind in these situations. Otherwise who’ll bury the dead later if need be?”

Leonard thought that was a rather morbid outlook on life. “So you aren’t keeping watch over me?”

“Well…” Scotty scuffed a boot in the dirt. “You do have the look of a man fixing to make some trouble. And I was given my orders.”

Crossing his arms, the prince huffed. “Sulu and Kirk… they’re much too at ease with issuing orders!”

The bandit started laughing.

“I made no joke!”

“That sounded like one to me, Sir Prince! You’ve done nothing but order this and order that since you showed up!”

“I’m—” Leonard stopped from saying a prince and gave it some thought first. “—entitled,” he finished a little lamely.

“You’re just brought up to think you are.”

His brows came down. “Are you… Are you implying I am spoiled?“

Scotty held up his thumb and forefinger with only a tiny space between them.

“I am not!”

“We’ll ask Kirk when he gets back.”

“Let’s not,” snapped the prince. “I have a bone to pick with him.”

“Oh, aye. Is that why he calls you Bones?”

“If you start that, I will skin you alive.”

“I wasn’t planning to, believe me, lad—threats or no threats.” Scotty shivered and turned away.

“Wait,” Leonard said to him. “I do have an idea.”

The bandit sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“It’s an important idea.”

“I’m listening.”

“Spock… Spock could be alive, but Jim might not find him before…”

Scotty nodded, his expression serious. “So you want to find Spock first so that Redjac doesn’t kill him to drive Kirk mad?” he guessed.

“Yes, essentially.”

“That is a bad plan.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s bad or good, only that it’s important.”

“Why,” the man wanted to know, “is Kirk’s Hawk important to you?”

Leonard opened his mouth but found he had no immediate answer. He swallowed and hedged, “He’s important to Jim.”

Scotty didn’t look convinced but he also did not pursue the matter. He only said, strangely enough, “If you belong to Kirk, he won’t leave you behind, that’s for certain.”

Leonard considered this, and something Jim had said to him once. “He feels his responsibilities keenly, I understand.”

The man nodded. “He does. In his nature, I suppose.” Then he blew out a loud breath. “All right. If we’re going to do this fool thing, we need weapons—lots of weapons—and a mount.”

“You’ve another horse, don’t you?” Leonard pointed out, remembering vaguely that there had been at least five of them in a single file from the river.

But Scotty made a face. “Yea and nay.”

“Well, it can’t be both, man!”

Scotty beckoned for the prince to follow him to the spot where the horses had been tethered next to the mill. The donkey was there—and so was another horse. A female, he saw right away, and bony. Much too bony. He wondered why they weren’t feeding her well when the other horses had looked to be in good condition.

“She was Garrovick’s favorite,” the bandit said, approaching the mare to lay a hand on her flank.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing but age.”

Leonard noticed then some of the spots where the color of her coat had faded.

“Don’t think she’s got many years left in ‘er, honestly, but the lad wouldn’t hear talk of putting her down. She doesn’t carry anything heavy if can be managed.”

“So she couldn’t bear two full-grown men.”

“No,” Scotty acknowledged. “Now this one,” he indicated the donkey chewing a mouthful of grass, “he may be small but he’s sturdy!”

Leonard was dismayed. “I am not riding a donkey.”

“Then you’ll be walkin’.”

“But donkeys are slow!”

“That’s a sad misconception you’ve got there, princie. They’re not slow—they’re as fast as they want to be.”

Leonard didn’t see the difference.

“But,” Scotty said, looking mischievous all of sudden, “I’ve got a trick.” He ambled over to a sack on the ground and pulled out something.

“A carrot?” the prince questioned dubiously.

Scotty grinned. “Aye, a carrot!”

~~~

Leonard felt this was rather embarrassing but didn’t want to admit so out loud. He honestly hoped no one saw him in his current predicament.

The donkey clip-clopped at quite a jaunty pace through the high grass. Every so often, the donkey shook its head vigorously and gave a snap-snap-snap of its wide teeth, as if it couldn’t believe it had yet to reach the carrot dangling in front of its face.

That would set Scotty to giggling like a little child, who would then drop the carrot lower before the donkey to entice him to “hurry up ‘n get that dang carrot!”

Never again, Leonard swore, would he believe a bandit when said bandit claimed to have an ingenious plan!

At least they had thought to bring along a few of the leftover weapons. Leonard had put a small dagger in his boot but otherwise left the bigger items attached to the donkey’s saddle. Scotty rode in front of him with a quiver of arrows and bow slung over his back.

A mile from the windmill they topped the rise, swung right along the slope, and began their drop to lower ground.

“There!” Leonard called to Scotty, pointing towards a thin cloud of smoke hovering above a small gathering of young trees. When they were close enough to see the remnants of a fire by the copse edge, a guard came out of the trees on horseback.

Scotty sucked in a breath and, before Leonard could think to ask what he was about, had loaded his long bow and taken aim. That man too had a bow-and-arrow but he was not quick enough to dispatch his before Scotty fired. The man’s horse broke its gallop and reared in fright, throwing the struck man to the ground.

They reached the fellow in time to find him struggling against his own blood to breathe. The arrow had pierced his throat at a severe angle but had not broken the neck bone. As Leonard knelt down, he saw there was nothing that could be done to save him. He pulled out his dagger and, holding it aloft in one trembling hand, saw the undisguised fear in the guard’s eyes.

He hesitated too long. Scotty took the blade from him and killed the man.

“Better to do it quick ‘fore they have time to think too much,” he said afterwards, wiping the dagger clean on his sleeve.

“If you hadn’t shot him, he wouldn’t have died.”

Scotty gave him a frank stare. “Twas him or us, Prince.” He turned away to consider the spooked horse. “She will never let us catch her.”

Swiftly, regretfully, Leonard rose from the body. “It matters naught. It is not a horse we are after.”

They were close to the skirmish between Redjac and Kirk. Leonard could hear it: the shouts, the ring of weapons being drawn, the squeals of horses jerked around and spurred forward. Once in a while he saw a rider swing up to the top of the rise before rushing down its side again. Then he forgot about the danger altogether as he spied a figure half-hidden in the shade of a tree.

Redjac had left him slumped against the trunk, or he had dragged himself there from wherever else he had been kept. There was no way to know.

Leonard did not remember shouting or running. He only knew as he touched Spock and the man half-collapsed across his lap that by some miracle he was not dead. Scotty had started to follow but stopped for some reason and turned about in a circle with a nervous air.

“You fool!” Leonard chastised Spock softly, cupping one pale cheek.

The pulse was thready and weak. Worse yet, the skin was sweat-slick with fever.

A sudden grief took a hold of Leonard. He wanted to yell at Spock for letting this happen, for not trusting him to care for his wound. Instead Spock had undertaken this dangerous mission when he was already at risk. Had Redjac captured him before or after the infection had set in?

“You utter fool,” he said again, and with his thumb swiped away the dirt from a cheekbone.

Spock stirred at the touch.

“It’s all right,” Leonard told him gently. “You’re safe now.”

Conscious or nearly unconscious, Spock seemed to care nothing for himself. He made a weak attempt at getting up and, realizing that he could not, whispered Jim’s name.

Leonard gripped his shoulders to hold him still. “Hush,” he ordered, “and let me help you.”

Spock stubbornly pushed at the prince’s hands.

Leonard said the man’s name with both exasperation and concern. “You are ill, and you are in pain! It does no good to injury yourself further.”

Spock had slit his eyes as if he had a difficult time keeping them open. “Jim… is not… safe.”

“Jim Kirk is the Devil himself. He will survive.” Leonard began to lift the edge of Spock’s bloody tunic. When the man’s fingers caught his wrist in the act, Leonard only said, “Let me” and the hand reluctantly released him.

Then he peeled back the shirt and examined the wound on the left side. It was a gash that ran from the hipbone to the end of the lowest rib but was not deep in the flesh, like Spock had twisted nearly out of a sword’s reach. Still, the gash would have bled profusely if not stitched. Spock’s blood-stiffened clothes were a testament to the fact.

He knew then that Spock was going to die if he laid here much longer.

The prince’s lips went tight with anger as he thought of Redjac discarding the man so easily.

“C’mon,” he muttered, “up,” and slid an arm under Spock’s shoulders. He grunted from the effort of lifting the man, who was far heavier than he looked. Having little choice, the prince barked out Scotty’s name and told him to abandon the lookout so they could situate Spock on the donkey.

Scotty made a face at seeing Spock’s weeping stomach wound. “Though I could say I’ve seen worse, he’s in a bad way. You’re sure you can heal him?”

“I’ll try.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“By Christ’s blood, would you shut up and lift him already? And mind his wound!”

“Quit fussin’!” the man puffed. “Urgh, my back… He’s as bloated as a week-old corpse!”

“I do not… thank you for… that comparison, Sir Scott.”

“Ah ha! So you aren’t dead!”

“It… would seem so.”

Leonard ignored this reunion of Spock and Scotty and circled around to the donkey’s head. “Listen up, you mangy beast,” he said to it in his sternest tone. “I’ll have no disobedience from you!”

“Hey,” complained Scotty, coming to the donkey’s defense, “you can’t speak to Keenser that way!”

“I will speak to this donkey however I please—and you had better lead him well. Do not let him throw Spock!”

Scotty’s expression changed. “Then you mean to stay behind?”

Leonard cast about and pointed. “I’ll catch that horse!”

“You must be mad!”

“Even a stout-footed donkey cannot carry three men,” the prince reminded the bandit firmly.

“Then I’ll stay. Ye gods, I’d be a dead man walking if I left you behind!”

“Nonsense!”

“You’re right—there’s no sense about it. Kirk is that smitten.”

Leonard opened and closed his mouth.

They both turned at Spock’s weak cough, who clutched at the saddle’s pommel and said, “I can… walk.”

This annoyed Leonard greatly. “Shut up, Spock. We’re saving you.”

Scotty went around to the donkey’s opposite side and drew out a long blade from a side sack. “Here, at least carry this.”

Leonard took it with reluctance. “Scotty—” He swallowed. “Scotty, I cannot kill a man.”

“You only think you can’t,” the bandit said. “Never mind. Just take it. If Kirk is after my head, at least I can argue him down to a hand or a foot by sayin’ you were armed before I deserted you.”

Leonard’s grip tightened on the sword hilt. “You are not a deserter, Sir Scott. This is a direct order from a man of royal lineage: leave me.”

Spock tried to slide sideways out of the saddle but Scotty mounted behind him and righted him again. “Don’t think about it,” he warned. “If I left you both, I’d have to change my name, my face, cut off my balls and live as a woman. Even then, he’d find me.”

Leonard choked back a laugh but quickly sobered. “Waste no more time with your idle chat. I will not go back on my decision.”

“Fine, you daft bastard.” The bandit pulled at Keenser’s reins and turned the donkey about with agonizing slowness. “We’re going, we’re—”

“Hikaru! Look out!“

A scream, not a shout. Chekov’s voice. Wheeling, Leonard saw why. At the top of the rise, one of Redjac’s men just beaten back Mitchell, and was continuing a fighting withdrawal towards a clump of bushes where Sulu was staggering to his feet beside a slain horse. What the prince didn’t see was the man who had flanked wide to the east and was now rushing towards the three of them from behind.

It was Spock who noticed him and cried Leonard’s name.

Leonard jerked the sword around in a wide sweeping arc, and the man ducked under it, lifting a crossbow. The target was not Leonard, but Spock.

The prince froze. In the blink of an eye, he followed out the rest of the inevitable consequences and, very slowly, lowered the tip of the blade.

The crossbowman motioned him to throw down his weapon.

Spock’s knuckles turned white against the pommel. At his back, Scotty had neither moved nor apparently dared to breathe.

Leonard released the sword. It clattered to the ground.

The crossbowman smiled, and the prince realized he was going to kill Spock anyway.

Then there was a sound, a whistling, and a flash of sunlight on metal. In the next instant, Redjac’s man staggered to the side and collapsed, giving them all an excellent view of a familiar hilt protruding from his upper back.

Leonard gaped and turned in the direction from whence the dagger had come. Jim stood in his stirrups, red with exertion and fury. His hair was matted with blood on one side, and there was a spray of it across his face which could not have been his own.

“Jim,” Spock said, almost brokenly, lifting up a hand.

Jim and the mare came the rest of the way to them.

No one stopped Spock this time from dismounting. Wherever the man had found the strength, Leonard applauded him for not collapsing the moment his boots hit the ground.

One moment Kirk and Spock were separated by a small distance; the next moment they were not. Jim held onto Spock more tightly than Spock held onto him but it spoke volumes, Leonard thought, when Spock leaned down to rest his forehead on Kirk’s shoulder.

The prince dropped his gaze so he wasn’t staring outright. Slowly, cautiously, he made his way over to them.

Jim spotted him first.

“He needs careful handling,” Leonard said. “He’s fevered.”

Jim dropped a hand to the back of Spock’s neck and gave a slight nod. Then he shifted Spock’s weight, to bear most of it, which meant the man had all but fainted against him.

Leonard retrieved the mare, murmuring a word or two about how glad he was that she still lived, and led her over to the men. “Redjac?” he questioned when he was close enough.

Jim’s expression tightened. “Missing. But his men are captured or… slain.” He winced as if he hated to say the word to Leonard.

Leonard ducked his head. “Let’s get your man on this horse. Don’t take him back to the mill. Head for a town with an apothecary.”

“Bones…”

“I’ll return with Scotty.”

Jim leaned Spock against the horse but looked like he did not want to let the man go yet at the same time desired to reach for McCoy. “Bones.”

“Please don’t argue with me this time, Jim,” Leonard insisted, voice strained as he looked up. “If you let Spock die, I’ll never forgive you.”

Jim swallowed hard but reluctantly nodded. “Sulu will—Sulu needs you, I think. Stay with him. Promise me that, Leonard.”

Leonard promised.

Jim turned to Spock and stroked his face, then leaned in and spoke into his ear.

Spock gave the faintest of nods without opening his eyes. Together they managed to help him mount the horse. Jim swung up into the saddle behind Spock.

He didn’t ride anyway as quickly as Leonard expected him to and once—just once—Jim twisted around in the saddle and glanced back at him.

Leonard’s heart hurt.

And it also trembled just briefly with happiness.

~~~

Jim had been correct in that Sulu needed Leonard.

“Keep him down,” the prince told Chekov and Scotty.

Sulu wasn’t saying much now but as soon as they began to put his shoulder back into place, he would be cursing in their faces and trying to buck them off like a wild beast.

Leonard pressed his mouth into a thin line, gently positioned his hands at the right places—and jerked the arm.

Sulu came up off the ground as the joint made a sickening pop.

His curses were impressively vicious, thought Leonard.

“There,” he said when the man went white and slack under them. “All done. How’s it feel?”

Sulu formed a pitiful fist and said, “Fine.”

Leonard let out a low laugh. “You mean, weak. Any numbness?”

“No.”

“We’ll stabilize the arm, so try not to jar it for the next week at least.”

Sulu grimaced. “I have to bear my sword.”

“Learn to use the other arm, then,” Leonard said without sympathy.

Sulu eyed him. “You are not a pleasant healer.”

“Have you ever met a pleasant one?”

Wisely the man did not answer that.

Leonard spent the next half-hour binding Sulu’s arm; it was a slower process than it should have been because Chekov kept getting in the way each time Sulu winced. At last Leonard had to order Scotty to drag the young man off and put him to work doing something more useful than hovering.

“The boy likes you,” he remarked to Sulu when they were alone.

“He’s too young not to know when he should and should not be loyal.”

Leonard observed Sulu with interest. “You’re young yourself to be so cynical.”

Sulu just stared at him.

The prince made a hmph and rolled up the extra linen he didn’t use to store for later. Then he set it aside and dropped his hands to his knees. He wanted to know, “Why aren’t you protesting my stay? Kirk’s gone, so you don’t have to allow it.”

“Kirk being gone means nothing. I’m down a man, and you’re tolerable. It’s an easy decision to make.”

He wasn’t entirely convinced. “Most of the time you look like you want to run me through. Why is that, by the way?”

Sulu met his gaze and held it. “You’re too soft for this life.”

“I know that,” Leonard answered quietly. “But I don’t see how I have a choice anymore.”

“What if you return to your kingdom?”

“I die.”

Sulu dipped his chin. “That is a misfortune—but one you might not share alone. You should consider that, Prince.”

Leonard tried to ask what he meant but Sulu ignored him and left their conversation unfinished.

~~~

Chekov was friendlier, Scotty was less manic, and Sulu had revealed that he had layers (and additional mysteries) beneath his tightly controlled exterior. But Mitchell left Leonard pitch-kettled: he was surlier now with Kirk gone than he had been when Jim was around.

That didn’t leave the prince feeling good about his predicament at all.

The day of the battle with Redjac’s men was quickly waning, and Leonard had to figure out where he fit into Sulu’s band of men. He knew he should think of it as temporary but something told him it could just as easily became permanent. After all, he had no good reason to assume Jim would return with Spock.

Except, his traitorous brain pointed out, the way Jim had turned back to look at him.

Leonard shook that thought off as a dog trying to rid itself of a flea. Unfortunately it kept coming back to bite him.

“Damn it,” he fussed at himself, and scrubbed at his face.

When his hands came away dirtier, he scowled in disgust and made the announcement that he wanted to bathe.

“Where?” Scotty replied, looking about then pointing at the horses. “In the trough bucket?”

“The river, you fool,” the prince shot back and started in that direction. He stopped, of course, when he realized he had never been to the river and therefore did not know how to get there.

Sulu rose from a bale of hay where he had sat down some time ago, looking tired and gray, and said, “We’ll all go.”

Chekov smelled himself.

Scotty muttered that water was evil.

Mitchell wordlessly stalked off ahead of them.

To Leonard’s dismay, the river was more akin to a little creek. It went no deeper than the ankle of his boots. “Garrovick drowned in this?” he muttered to himself as he waded out to the middle. He was crouched, splashing water over his face and neck and into his tunic when someone gave him a shove from behind that almost toppled him over.

“Hey, you!” he snarled.

Chekov dropped into a frog-squat beside him. “Pavel,” the youth said.

“Hey, you, Pavel,” Leonard amended, “didn’t I warn you to keep away from me?”

“But I no longer want to ransom you!”

“Wonderful,” muttered McCoy. “Now hop along.”

The young man blinked at him.

Leonard went back to ridding himself of his filth and ignored the annoying man.

“We must bury our friend,” Chekov said suddenly, still watching the prince. “Already ze animals bother him.”

Leonard wondered if Chekov was trying to ask for something without outright asking for it. “What do you need?” he questioned.

Blue eyes skipped past him and wandered to the edges of the creek. All at once they looked much too old to belong in such a young face.

“I’m sorry you lost him,” said the prince. “I’ve… known death before, with my family. It isn’t a good, or simple, feeling.”

“He was not my family.”

“But he might have been your friend. Friends are family too.”

Chekov looked at him again. “Do you remember your family?”

“Yes.”

“Do they remember you?”

That seemed a strange question but Leonard again answered positively.

“Sometimes family does not want to remember.” He gave a small nod, as if affirming something with himself. “But it is good what you said about friends. Friends you choose for yourself.” Chekov offered him a bright smile then. “I choose you, my prince!”

Leonard said hesitantly and with no small amount of apprehension, “Thank you?”

“Come,” the young man beckoned him, splashing a little water at Leonard in the process, “we bury our friend Garrovick!”

Leonard watched Chekov wade out of the creek, and after some thought followed him.

~~~

The burial ceremony was solemn only in that Chekov hummed a dirge and Scotty had drawn the leather patch back over his eye—this time the opposite one. They looked to Leonard to say a prayer for the man’s soul and he was fairly certain he botched it when he murmured, “It is said he was a good man but by trade he was also a bandit and so, Great Lord, I doubt you will meet him in Heaven. Amen.”

There was no point in making a grave when they had no tools for digging. They debated at length on burning the corpse on a pyre (which would require effort to build) versus piling stones upon him (which would also require effort); and at one point Scotty tried to roll Garrovick into the creek to “float him on the Styx.”

“First of all,” Leonard remarked, “I am duly shocked that you are learned, Scotty, particularly in Greek mythology, and secondly that creek is too shallow to float anything but an actual stick.”

“Then we make him into the size of sticks and float all of him.”

“Clearly you are not learned in logic,” muttered the prince.

Sulu settled the affair by bring a small skin from the donkey which Leonard soon discovered contained a yellowish oil. He poured it over Garrovick and had Chekov set a flame to him. They all crossed themselves and watched for a while to make certain the fire did not spread through the grass, except for Mitchell who had been keeping at a distance since they arrived at the river.

“What ails him?” Leonard asked Sulu.

“Killing affects men in different ways” was all Sulu replied before walking away.

Leonard snuck a glance at Mitchell but could not imagine Mitchell was sensitive at all about ending a life.

He decided to think on it no more.

~~~

There is something to be said for surprise attacks—and that is that one should never see them coming.

But they all saw Redjac.

They couldn’t not see Redjac, who stood in front of the windmill and watched them return from their jaunt to bathe and send off the dead.

He did nothing when they slowly their pace. He did nothing when Sulu drew his sword with his uninjured hand. He did nothing when Leonard called him vile names and said he deserved the coldest cell in the darkest dungeon for laying a hand upon Spock.

“Well,” demanded the prince, “what have you to say for yourself, villain?”

Redjac glanced up to the sky and rocked back on his feet. “I say I am an innocent man.”

Leonard was certain he was not the only one gaping at this useless pig-swill. “Innocent! Were you innocent when you handed me over to that swag-bellied scut?”

“Ah, Mudd. I hear his trading activities are being investigated. Yet another misfortune I owe Kirk,” Redjac said, eyes glinting.

“You should be grateful to have your life,” Leonard said flatly, “although I do not know how you can live with such a despicable self.”

“I did appreciate your way with words, friend. Such a shame it’s come to this.”

Every armed man lifted his weapon in warning but Redjac himself was unarmed, barring his words.

Leonard withheld his remaining questions and accusations, opting to stand aside so that Sulu could decide what to do with their enemy.

“Why is it that you’re here?” Sulu asked.

“Yeah,” added in Scotty, “’cause you couldn’t be dumb enough to come here to die.”

“I am here because my… mission went array, and that I do not like.” Redjac looked at each of them in turn, and Leonard had to wonder what it was he was looking for. “You’re missing a man… no, two men.”

The prince frowned.

Redjac lifted a finger. “Kirk, obviously. His little pet doesn’t count. Is it too much to hope they are dead?”

Leonard clenched his teeth. “Can I punch this ass?”

Chekov offered to hold him.

Redjac lifted a second finger and, this time, smiled at Sulu. “And one of yours. Now that one I know is dead.”

It was Scotty who leapt forward with a growl. Leonard caught him and forced him out of reach of Redjac.

Sulu stepped closer to him, however. “You killed him.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“By your own admission—”

“Always with the fools,” the man sighed. “You’re supposed to ask me how I know what I know, friend.”

Sulu paled and flushed at the same time. With a sudden clarity, Leonard recognized the implications behind the taunt. It made him think of his stepfather, an honorable man at court and a traitor behind closed doors.

But it was Mitchell’s reaction that solidified fact from fiction: with a snarl and against orders, he knocked Redjac to his knees and yanked back the man’s head with the clear intention of decapitating the man right there.

“Gary!” Sulu bit out in shock.

Leonard came forward, asking too softly, “Why?”

“This trickster means to confuse us!” Mitchell cried at them. “He killed Garrovick!”

Leonard held up a hand to stall a response from the others. “I asked why. So you don’t misunderstand my question, I will clarify it: why did you betray us?”

Mitchell stared at him.

“It is because of Jim?” the prince guessed. “Did you intend for Redjac to aid your own revenge by having him kill Kirk for you? So you struck a deal with him and lied to us afterwards?”

“Slander! Sir, that is a foul lie!”

Leonard looked at the man without sympathy. “I suppose you told Redjac he could deal with the rest of us however it pleased him, with the exception that you lived through the skirmish. How… cowardly,” he finished, disgusted.

Redjac began to laugh, so much so that he shook from it. For a moment Mitchell appeared unable to decide what to do with Redjac since his betrayal had already been revealed. In the end, he shoved the laughing man aside and went for Leonard, the curl of his lip indicating very clearly what he planned for the prince.

Sulu moved fast for an injured man.

At first Leonard thought Sulu meant to stall Mitchell’s violence—but then he saw the droplets of bloods landing on the ground between them. Sulu stepped back, and Mitchell collapsed. He had stabbed him with Chekov’s pick-blade, with no warning, no mincing of words, no sound.

As they looked on, Mitchell gave a tiny, shocked croak and died.

“Well done,” approved Redjac. “Straight through the heart. I could use a man of your skill.” His eyes glittered queerly. “But you wouldn’t consider it, would you? You are too much like Kirk.”

“It is one thing to rob a man of his wealth but worse yet to rob him of his freedom and his humanity.”

“What about robbing a man of his life?” countered the flesh-trader, looking past Sulu to the prince. “What say you on that score, McCoy?”

“I say I’d rather be dead than left to butchers like you.”

Redjac lowered his head. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, to be dead…”

And he lunged from the long blade still in Mitchell’s grasp, coming to his feet with a cry.

In that moment as Sulu threw himself forward to block a beheading arc and his weak sword-arm hindered him, Leonard saw what was to happen. Redjac knocked the man backwards and down and moved in swiftly with a violent low thrust, lunging forward with all the weight of his fury behind his arm.

The prince blinked, and then was between them. The steel pierced leather and skin and muscle and drove through his gut. He was nearly jerked off his feet with the force of it.

Sound ceased. Redjac’s face hung suspended before him, twisted with raw, ugly hatred and an uglier need to kill. Leonard had never seen the like of it in all his years.

The driven sword moved with his falling weight as he sank to his knees. The crack of them hitting the ground was his first returning sensation.

Desperately, he held himself upright, sitting on his heels, so as not to wrench the sword blade around in his flesh. The hilt and a handspan of bright blade hung below his downward-turning gaze, driven at a crooked upward angle into his stomach just below and to the left of his navel. The point seemed to come out somewhere to the right of his spine, and higher.

He tried to hold very still, but Redjac jerked the sword out with a terrible twisting motion.

Leonard was too disconnected to scream; instead he released a little gasp, like Mitchell had.

Gut wound, he thought. I will be dead in three days.

Then he started slumping sideways and passed out.

Epilogue

Related Posts:

• A Quarter South (7/7) – from July 5, 2014
• A Quarter South (5/7) – from July 4, 2014
• A Quarter South (4/5) – from June 23, 2014
• A Quarter South (3/5) – from June 17, 2014
• A Quarter South (2/3) – from June 9, 2014

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