I clutched my bag close to my chest and pulled back my hood. “Don’t you recognize what I am?” I was hoping my eyes would be enough of a warning. Most people feared the Upaka.
“What you are is alone, and completely surrounded.” He smirked. “Now are you going to hand over that bag, or am I going to have to pry it from your dead fingers?”
This was just my luck. I hadn’t made it a single morning inside of Aramoor and already I was being accosted by a gang of rabid hooligans.
“You take another step and you’ll be sucking soup for the rest of your days.”
Toothless stared at me and then turned to the others, confusion written on his face. They seemed to share his bewilderment. A few of the kids shrugged and the large boy turned back around. “What?”
I rolled my eyes with a frustrated sigh and pointed at my mouth. “Your teeth. I’m going to knock out the rest of your teeth.” Not only was I being robbed, I was being robbed by a gang of imbeciles.
His puzzled look quickly turned to anger.
I responded by tightening my fingers around the leather grip of my dagger. My eyes darted from one kid to the next, waiting to see who’d make the first move. I slowly slid my right leg back and shifted my weight to stabilize my stance.
I was about to lift my blade when something washed over me. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was as though something inside of me had died. I panicked when I realized what it was.
My magic was gone.
“Who do we have here?” someone called out from behind the blockade of kids surrounding me.
They parted far enough for me to see the girl standing behind them. She had black hair like mine and a red vest.
Up until this point, I had assumed Toothless was their leader, but even he retreated far enough for the girl to see me. She didn’t seem to want to get any closer.
“New arrival,” Toothless said. “Seems to think that bag belongs to him.”
“Does he?”
Things were getting worse by the minute. Taking on five or six kids was one thing, but those numbers had tripled and I couldn’t reach my magic. I was going to have to do this the hard way.
You don’t realize how much you depend on something until it’s gone. My abilities were a part of me. I’d only ever had to fight without them once before, and that was a personal choice, unlike now. One of my gifts was pre-sight. It was the ability to see things before they happened. I wasn’t a seer or anything. I couldn’t prophesy future events. It just gave me a few seconds of warning when something was going to affect me in a physical way.
With this many kids, I could have really used that additional help.
“Stand back,” Toothless said, drawing his shortsword and waving for the others to give him some room. “He’s mine.”
Most of the belongings in my sack were clothes, so I held it out as a padded shield against strikes while gripping my dagger with the other hand. The sack wouldn’t do much good against a sword, but it might stand up against the clubs if it came down to it.
I raised my blade.
Toothless roared and charged. He swung directly for the top of my head. Even without magic, I could see it coming. He clearly had little experience using the weapon. I didn’t even bother trying to block. I sidestepped and rammed the butt of my dagger straight into his mouth. There was a loud cry of pain followed by blood. Lots of blood.
Toothless dropped his sword and covered his face with both hands, trying to hold in what was left of his front teeth. He stumbled backwards, tears coursing down his cheeks. “Kill him!”
The others came at me at once.
I didn’t have time to worry about my bag. I dropped it and grabbed the discarded sword. I’d barely turned around when the first wave hit. They were about as skillful with their weapons as Toothless was, but with their numbers, proficiency didn’t really matter. All it would take was one lucky strike.
I blocked with the sword and cut with my dagger. Kids began dropping all around me. I took a hit to my right arm and nearly dropped the knife. I hadn’t seen it coming. I was off-balance without my magic.
I pushed through the thinnest point in the lines to keep from having to fight everyone at once. I managed to keep two or three of the kids between me and the rest as I fought my way closer to one of the buildings. I needed to keep my attackers from flanking me.
Toothless was still screaming at them to kill me. Even their leader shouted her disappointment. “What’s wrong with you? He’s just one boy, you pack of pathetic weaklings! Are you going to let him embarrass Wildfire like that?”
Their leader’s shouts seemed to spur the kids into an even greater frenzy. I dodged left, twisted and spun right, fighting to stay clear of their clubs. Going for the legs worked best. Once a kid was down, they were less likely to get back up.
My movements felt sluggish, forced. I had to devote most of my energy to compelling my limbs to respond, something I’d never had to do before. For the first time, I felt what it was like to be normal.
My second gift allowed my body to remember coordinated movements and replicate them. While others had to spend hours training every day in order to master a particular skill, I only had to do it once. My mother said I was a repeater, a very useful tool when you found yourself being robbed by a herd of bloodthirsty thugs.
I kicked a boy to my right in the knee. He screamed and went down. I parried a club strike with the shortsword, giving me time to stab a lanky kid in the thigh with my dagger. I twisted to block an attempt at my head.
I couldn’t keep this up. There were just too many of them.
One of the girls got too close and I head-butted her in the face. She squealed and swung wide, clubbing the kid beside her, who took two more down with him. A wild swing with a knobby table leg struck me in the thigh. The muscle cramped. I was barely able to put weight on it.
I blocked two more swings trying to keep from being completely overwhelmed. I kicked off the stone wall behind me and shoved my way into the middle of the pack. It was a lot harder for them to swing their clubs in close. They were just as likely to hit each other as me. I stabbed three legs. Three cries followed. Three more kids went down.
I pushed toward the open road, but something heavy struck me from behind and I tumbled to the ground.
I tried to get up, but whatever it was, it was still on top of me. I was pinned. I tried wiggling free, but the remaining kids grabbed my arms and legs and held me down.
I twisted my head around just enough to see Toothless sprawled on top of me. The blood from his mouth dripped down the side of my face.
“I’m going to kill you . . . slowly.”
It was over. All my dreams of making a name for myself in Aramoor, of winning back my spot in the clans, were gone. I was never going to see my family again. They would never know what happened to their son. Considering the circumstances, that was probably a good thing.
Toothless rolled off me. They pried the weapons from my hands and pulled me to my knees.
“Move aside!” The girl in the red vest pushed her way through the kids, nearly tripping over the injured still sprawled on the cobbles. Her face was as red as her vest.
“Hold him still. It’s my turn.”
There’s nothing quite so humiliating in life as being beaten in front of a pretty girl, unless the one doing the beating happens to be that very girl.
She swung her fist. I hadn’t had a chance to recover from the last one. I was on my knees, held in place by two thugs that looked like they’d rather eat me than fight me. Her fist connected with the side of my face, whipping my head to the right. Something popped. My jaw throbbed, but I held my tongue and hid the pain. I was Upakan after all. We didn’t break.
At least I hoped I wouldn’t.
I was seeing double. The two older boys released my arms and I collapsed. Blood seeped from the corners of my mouth, pooling in the gaps of the worn cobbles beneath me. I rolled over to my back. The buildings on either side of the n
arrow street towered overhead like the audience from an ancient colosseum—bearing witness to my shame.
The pain was excruciating, nearly as bad as the time I’d fallen from Pike’s Bluff during one of my first solo climbs. That experience, however painful, wasn’t nearly as traumatic as getting pummeled by this girl and her band of psychotic misfits. There were dozens of them now, all standing around cheering her on as she bravely beat an unarmed, defenseless stranger.
She appeared quite fond of applying her fists to my face. The small part of me still clinging to consciousness wondered if it had something to do with the thrashing I’d given her fighters before they overpowered me. It had to be humiliating, a dozen of her best taken down by one boy. I tried to smile but the muscles in my face refused to cooperate.
I stared up at her through blurry eyes. She couldn’t have been much older than me, fifteen or sixteen at most. Her hair fell halfway over her face, only partially hiding the satisfied smirk.
I didn’t lose. I didn’t know how to lose. I hadn’t been beaten this badly since . . . Well, I’d never been beaten this badly. Why these lunatics were so intent on pummeling me into a sack of mush was beyond me. I should have followed my instincts and never gotten involved.
“What’s your name?” the girl with the red vest asked. Her voice was deep. Deeper than mine.
My head felt fuzzy, and I was having a difficult time focusing on her words. Her face was little more than a blur now that both my eyes were swelling shut. “Ayr . . . Ayrion.”
“Where are you from, Ayr . . . Ayrion? I’ve never seen anyone with eyes like that. You sick or something?”
My head was spinning. “I, uh . . .”
“Well, no matter.” I could hear the smile in her voice. She lifted my bag and waved it in front of me. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, Ayr . . . Ayrion.” She turned and started down the street. “Oh, by the way, welcome to Aramoor.”
I could hear the faint sound of laughter as everything spun out of control and faded into darkness.
A splash of something wet hit my face and tore me away from the peace of my unconsciousness. It must be raining. At least, I hoped it was rain. The thought of a stray dog marking its territory on my head was enough for me to wrench open one of the swollen masses that were my eyes.
No sign of a dingy cur, urinating or otherwise. I exhaled a raspy sigh of relief. At least I had one thing going for me. That was until the drops decided to turn into larger ones. A crack of lightning was the only warning I had before the sky opened and released its flood on top of me. I shook my head. Maybe the rain would wash off some of the humiliation.
The sun had set, leaving the lonely street covered in darkness. The soft glow from the lamp on the corner was hardly enough to cut through the shadows. I wondered how long I’d been out and why nobody had bothered to help. Had no one seen me lying there? What sort of a place let a wounded kid bleed in the streets?
I tried lifting my head.
Bad idea. My body felt like it had been trampled over by a herd of zyntar intent on pounding me with each of their six enormous hooves before passing. The searing pain whispered in my ear to just lie there and let the inevitable happen, but, in the end, I managed to push myself into a sitting position. It was then that I realized that not only was my travel sack with all my worldly possessions gone, but I had been stripped down and left with nothing more than a thin pair of under-trousers. Of course, it wasn’t one of my nicer pairs, but an older one my mother had mended on more than one occasion.
I looked around for any sign of my things, already knowing I wouldn’t find them. From what I could tell I was no longer on the street where the fight had taken place. The buildings were too close. They must have stashed me in an alley somewhere.
My father always said if you’re going to do something, then do it right. Apparently, the girl with the red vest lived by the same motto.
Nauseated, I hacked up a thick wad of blood. I watched as it mingled with the pools of water around my legs. The dizziness had lessened, but my eyes were swollen enough to leave me nearly blind.
I slowly took stock of the damage. It didn’t take a physicker to know some of my ribs had been cracked, if not broken. Every breath felt like a knife sliding further into my chest.
I was rolling my neck when I realized the chain holding my father’s ring was missing.
“No!” I spun around. Pain shot through my chest. I scoured the surrounding area.
No ring.
“Where is it?” I forced myself to stand and wobbled across the worn stone. Desperation took over and I fell to my hands and knees, crawling from one side of the dirty street to the other. I examined every crack, crevice, and puddle, but there was no sign of it. I stumbled into one of the larger holes and lay there, too weak to move.
My world shattered. What started out as a soft whimper quickly turned into a full-on wail. I had only cried this hard one other time: the day I found out I was to be banished from the Lost City, the day I had been forced to leave my home and family behind.
Never had I felt so alone.
“If you’re looking to go swimming,” a voice said behind me, “I’d suggest the potholes over in Cheapside. They tend to be a bit deeper than these.”
I wiped my tears and turned around. There was a short figure standing near the mouth of the alley. His voice sounded young, but with the lamp to his back, all I could see was his silhouette.
I must have looked insane—sprawled out in the middle of the walkway with bare chest and feet, my hair matted to the front of my face—but I was too exhausted and in too much pain to care.
“If you’ve come looking for an easy mark, you’re too late.” I tried to get to my feet, but collapsed back into the pool of water. “I don’t have anything left but my underpants, and if you want those, you’ll have to kill me first.” I managed to stand, trying to appear capable of defending myself, but my traitorous legs quivered like a drunken sot with a full bladder.
The boy moved closer. He was shorter than me and walked with a noticeable limp. What I thought had been some form of mutation was actually a large satchel he was toting over his right shoulder. I hoped, for one desperate moment, it might be mine, but it wasn’t.
I lifted my fists just in case.
“Easy,” the boy said. “Your wet skivvies are the last thing I want.”
The boy turned enough for the street lamp to show his face and I lowered my guard. He was younger than I was. His light brown hair was short, parted to one side–or at least it had been before the downpour. He seemed well kempt compared to the last group of kids I’d met. His face appeared to have been washed within the last week.
“What do you want?”
“Clearly, I want your sodden undergarments.” The boy stood there with a smug look on his face. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny or if he was serious. Even though he looked younger than me, the way he spoke sounded like someone much older.
“Actually, I want to help.”
“Why?”
“Why? Someone offers to help, and the first thing you ask is why? Not very trusting, are you?”
“Today’s my first day in Aramoor,” I said, pointing down at my lack of clothing. “Do I look like I need to be trusting?”
“Good point. You look like you received a royal welcome from one of the tribes and lived to tell about it.”
“Is that who attacked me?” I tried to sound calm but my desperation took over. “Where do I find them?” I stumbled forward, but the boy caught me before I fell. My burst of strength faded. I needed to know who that girl was and where she had taken my father’s ring.
“If you have to ask, then I’d say your best bet is to come with me.” He worked his shoulder up under my arm. “I doubt you’d last the night without my help. With your luck, you’d probably run across the one ruffian out there who’d want your soiled skivvies.” He chuckled to himself.
“I need to get my stuff back. I had a ring–”
“You don’t understand. She took my ring. I have to get it back.”
“She?” The boy stopped. “She who?”
“The girl who took it.” I huffed, wondering if the boy was a gimp in the head as well.
“What did she look like?”
“She was about this tall.” I motioned with my hand to show that she was a little taller than myself. “She had black hair down to here.” I pointed to the middle of my back. “Wore a red vest.” Describing her wasn’t difficult. Her image was seared into my memory.
The boy released a heavy sigh and shook his head. “Yeah. That would be Red.” He studied my swollen face. “What did you do to get on her bad side?”
“Do? I didn’t do anything!” I tried to steady myself, but my legs were still shaking. Another outburst like that and I was going to send us both down to kiss the cobble. “Two larger boys grabbed some kid and ran off with him. He was screaming for help.”
The boy shook his head. “You fell for the ol’ kidnap routine.” He chuckled. “That hardly ever works. Most people are too scared to help.” He gave me a curious look. “Where did you say you were from again?”
“I didn’t.”
“So what happened next?”
I took a deep breath and coughed. “When I caught up with them, I realized it was a trap. That’s when they demanded my stuff. When I refused . . .”
“You’re lucky she left you alive. Red doesn’t like to lose, and if you ever embarrass her . . .” The boy tisked. “Let’s just say it’s not a wise thing to do.”
“Where can I find her . . . this Red?”
“You don’t. She finds you.”
We stopped at the corner. The main street was quiet. Most of the windows were dark, shutters drawn and occupants asleep. The boy turned us right and we started walking again.
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