Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  He knew his uncle paid them.

  He wonders why he didn’t admit it to Kuchta.

  He hears pieces of the blond-haired giant’s dialogue, even follows some of its tangents, but mostly he uses his light to feel for any change in the other’s mental currents, any movement outside his usual ebb and flow. He lets his light touch theirs from the Barrier, a scarce touch, in case other eyes are watching––eyes that might block him from knowing whether another test is coming––but he feels no differences in his light.

  Not until she walks by him.

  She smiles at him, a bare look, but he cannot help but give a small smile back.

  Her honey-colored eyes close in a quick blink, an acknowledgment of him, but she doesn’t break stride, or change expression. She has agreed, long before this, to follow his rules.

  Still, she passes too close, and the blond boy is watching her, too.

  “Hey, Kuchta!” he calls out, stopping midstream in one of his soliloquies. “Kuchta! What are you doing out here? Not inside, like a little book worm as usual?”

  The smile in her eyes evaporates.

  Frowning, she rolls her eyes at him, continues to walk.

  The giant doesn’t give up. “Will you come to see me race, Kuchta? I am riding my new horse in the township race this weekend. I am sure to win, with the nags they show!”

  The boy feels a curl of her disdain, a disgust she does not hide in her voice.

  “I’d sooner clean the school outhouse with my mouth,” she tells him. “As spend a second with you without a gun to my head.”

  “That could be arranged,” Stami yells, while the blond giant is still digesting what she’s said. The others sitting around the table laugh.

  The silence of the blond-haired one makes the boy nervous, though.

  He doesn’t want to look at first, but when the silence deepens, he turns his head.

  It is a mistake.

  The dark eyes fix on him. They grow hard as coal as they meet his.

  “You can’t make the races, Kutcha?” he says then, loudly enough that most in the yard turn to look at him. “I suppose you are busy, eh? Too busy rutting with runt boy over there?”

  He lets the silence grow louder, as other conversations in the yard die.

  Then he speaks up again.

  “If you’re to be had by that little cock, maybe I’ll take some for myself one of these evenings, Kuchta.”

  “You might lose something if you try,” she retorts, but this time, her face is bright red. “And it might be too small for you to notice, but it’ll burn if you pee!”

  The others at the table burst into a laugh.

  Even Stami lets out a low snort, covering it over with his hand when the giant swivels his head to glare at him. Gerwix's eyes are back on the girl though, quickly enough that the boy feels his body stiffen from the other table.

  The giant's pale skin is flushed, blotchy with anger when he focuses on her.

  “You little whore…” he growls.

  He leaps over the table and reaches her in two strides.

  …but the boy finds himself on his feet in the same breath of time, until he stands between them. Gerwix towers over him, his eyes as emotionless as a doll’s.

  “Out of my way, runt.”

  “Leave her alone.”

  “I’m only going to ask you once…”

  “The teachers will be out here in a minute,” the boy says. “If they see you picking on a girl, they’ll suspend you. You won’t graduate.”

  Gerwix laughs, his eyes incredulous. “Listen to him! The little kiss-ass doesn’t want me to miss out on my schooling…”

  The boy starts to speak again, but she touches his shoulder.

  He jumps, but doesn’t turn his head, or take his eyes off the giant in front of him.

  “Ewald, don’t,” she whispers near his ear. “He won’t hurt me. Don’t do this.”

  The giant’s laugh grows harsh. “Yes, she likes you, runt. She likes you a lot.”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” Kuchta says.

  “You know where he learned to give head so well, little girl?” Stepping closer, Gerwix lowers his voice, so it’s softer than a whisper. His eyes never leave the boy’s face. “Have you told her, runt?” he says, smiling. “Have you told her how much you liked practicing, before you finally tried it on a girl…?”

  The boy feels her react behind him, before his mind has wrapped around what the giant said. She squeezes his shoulder in her hand, tight enough to hurt. He feels her panic, a pulse of horror and revulsion off her light as she hears Gerwix’s words.

  Kuchta is no fool. She has not missed the crack, or its meaning.

  Nausea rises in his gut, a hatred that makes it hard to see clearly.

  “Did you tell her, runt?” Gerwix says, his voice still soft. A kind of contentment rises in his eyes as he sees the boy’s face at his words. “Or should I? Should I tell her just how many cocks you had in your mouth before you tasted your first pussy?”

  Before he can find his voice, the fury on her expands outwards, bewildering his own.

  “You bastard!” she spits. “You goat-fucking son of a bitch!”

  The boy jumps a little, shocked in spite of himself.

  Gerwix only laughs. “Goats were a step up for us after that, my lovely.”

  “You aren’t fit to touch his boots! You complete and utter bastard. I hope you die choking on your own vomit, being pissed on by that damned horse!”

  Gerwix laughs again, looking to his friends. The others watching from the table laugh, too; Stami’s voice is louder than any of them. But most of them hadn’t heard Gerwix’s words before hers. Stami walks up behind Gerwix, clapping him on the back.

  “She’s got a mouth on her,” the taller, thinner boy remarks, nudging Gerwix’s shoulder with his. “Maybe we should all give her a run. Teach her some manners.”

  “In your dreams,” she retorts. “You’re as worthless as he is, Stami Gunter. You’re nothing but a thieving drunk, whose father only has land because he stole it.”

  Stami’s eyes glitter at her, just before they find Gerwix’s.

  The white-haired boy shrugs, smiling.

  “Can’t really argue with that,” Gerwix says.

  “She’s a little trash talker, that one,” Stami says. “We really do need to find something to stuff in that mouth. Something bigger than runt-boy’s cock.”

  The boy glances back at her briefly, willing her to be silent. Despite how quickly he looks at her light-brown eyes, it is still too long. Before he turns back to look at the giant, the knuckles of his massive fist are already most of the way to his jaw.

  The blow knocks him sideways and off his feet.

  Half-stunned, he stumbles, catches himself with his hands before he goes all the way down… and pivots his body without thought.

  He sweeps the giant’s legs with one of his own, throwing his weight forward to compensate for the other’s, which is easily three times his own.

  He’s been training. For years now, he’s been learning to fight.

  He learns by fighting humans.

  Then he learns by fighting other seers. His uncle throws him into the ring with three against him, then four, then five. He learns to fight long before he is allowed to use it, long before he is allowed to tell anyone what he can do.

  It is why the boys don’t bother him anymore. His uncle tells him that he has no need of such tests anymore. His uncle tells him he could hurt the other boys now, that for him to use his skills could call too much attention to him, that it might make people ask the wrong questions.

  How much of this Gerwix knows, the boy doesn’t know.

  But Gerwix isn’t expecting a fight.

  He was relaxed, standing with his feet too close together, his balance off slightly to one side. He is caught totally unawares, and so he goes down hard, hitting his head in the packed dirt. The boy turns his head in time to see him struggling to get up, a fury in his eyes that is almo
st inhuman, clouded in a daze of having hit his head.

  “Run!” he yells to Kuchta, pushing at her behind him. “Get the teacher!”

  Stami lets out a scream, catching hold of his hair.

  Before the boy can turn, the other sticks him in the side with the hand-blade he keeps shoved into a band around his wrist, under his sleeve. The boy knows about the knife, of course. It’s been used on him before, more than once, but he barely is able to move back enough to keep the blow from seriously hurting him.

  Crying out, he feels it slide between his ribs before he wrenches his weight backwards, straight away from the blade, kicking out and down with all of his weight, aiming his boot for the side of the other’s knee. He feels his heel connect, feels the joint give, moving hard in the wrong direction. Before he can know if it will drop him, he leaps to the side, avoiding the right cross of another of Gerwix’s followers, a heavyset boy named Troy.

  Jerking the knife out of his own side, he lets out a gasp.

  Staring at the bloody blade, rage settles over his light.

  He steps back from all of them, moving fast now, light on his feet as he keeps his hands and the knife clutched in front of him. He buys himself seconds as they stare at the stained blade. He finds himself focusing on Gerwix in that pause, who is still only halfway up, still holding his head where it cracked against the ground from the sweep.

  “I’ll kill you,” the giant bellows. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands!”

  Without thought, the boy leaps at him.

  His feet land on his chest before the brute is fully sitting up. His fist comes down hard on the other’s face, hitting him where his eyes are still half-focused. Using his weight to slam Gerwix's head against the ground, he worsens the wound on the back of his head. Feeling the giant’s light shift into a deeper confusion from the blow, he hits him again, harder than before.

  And now, out of nowhere, feeling flows through his arms––a rush of adrenaline that brings all of his strength forward in a hard pulse.

  He is bigger now, still more than a head shorter than the giant, but his muscles are hard and his shoulders broad from the nonstop work he does at his uncle’s command.

  Feeling a rush of that power, he hits him again and again, half out of his mind with fury as he continues hitting him even after his hand feels broken, his knuckles swollen where they are covered with blood, only some of it his.

  Thoughts don’t reach him, but images do.

  He remembers knives they used on him, along with switches, sticks, pieces of metal. He remembers pain as they took turns on him, forcing him to beg, forcing him to do whatever they asked. He remembers what Gerwix told to Kuchta, too. He remembers being forced to do that to them when he was done, Stami holding a knife to him, threatening to cut his throat if he didn’t, or break his teeth in his mouth.

  He remembers doing it in front of all of them, on his knees, like an animal.

  The fury turns to a black hatred, a wanting to kill that takes over his mind, that leaves nothing but silence, a throbbing, single-minded need.

  He hears screams behind him, shouts to stop, but he discovers the knife is still in his hand, the same hand he’s been using to punch the giant in the face, and the realization twists the rage in his light into something colder, more sure.

  Without leaving that no-thought space, he shifts the angle of his hand…

  …and slices the throat of the white-haired boy all the way through the artery.

  He watches blood pump through the hole, a warm liquid flow, and a kind of peace falls over his mind, a silence that fills him with relieved quiet.

  He is still sitting on Gerwix's chest, holding the bloody knife in his hand, when someone hits him from behind in the head.

  They hit him with a rock, hard…

  …and everything disappears.

  …I AM NOT outside of this, not even for a second.

  It is dark, and the wind is blowing.

  It is night, and I can feel that weeks have passed. Late summer has shifted into a new season, or the cusp of one. The ground feels colder, and he is huddled in the dark, his back to the outside of a barn, his fingers close to numb.

  Still, he waits.

  He has been there for hours, waiting, but he does not move, or make a sound.

  As I watch with him, a light trails out from the back side of the house, and he studies it, squinting against the wind. He thinks at first it is one of the others, a brother or sister, or her mother perhaps. He walks closer as she disappears into the outhouse, but remains in the shadows, in case someone might see him from another window.

  He is still unsure if it is her when she opens the door and exits the small wooden shack, but then she raises the light and he sees her face.

  “Kuchta!”

  He calls to her in a whisper, rising to his full height on stiff legs. He pulls the coat tighter around his body, walking fast, low to the ground, watching her face. He sees her eyes go wide, sees the terror in that look, and holds out a hand, a peace gesture.

  “Kuchta! Do not be afraid… it is me!”

  She blinks, staring at him in bewilderment. “Ewald?”

  “Yes. It is me.”

  “Ewald.” She stares at him like he is a ghost. “What are you doing here? I have not seen you since––”

  “Since I left school, I know.”

  She stares at him, bewildered, and seemingly without words, or maybe with too many of them.

  While she looks at him, he does the same, realizing he’s missed her in the past few months. He sees that she is wearing only a robe and a long nightgown of heavy cotton under what looks like a long work coat. Letting his eyes drop all the way to her feet, he sees her bare legs disappear inside the frayed tops of leather boots that are likely not hers. They look like her brother’s, or perhaps her father’s.

  She grabs the sleeve of his coat while he is looking at her, and drags him back towards the barn, out of sight of the windows of the house. He watches her face as she pulls him deeper into the darkened doorway. He sees the determination in her eyes, the lack of fear.

  “What is it, Ewald?” she says, once they are out of sight. She touches his hand and flinches, staring up at his face. “You are freezing! How long have you been out here?”

  He shakes his head. “It does not matter.”

  “It does,” she says. “What is wrong? Why are you here?”

  He looks at her, helplessly, as she stands before him in her family’s clothes.

  Guilt seizes him, an awareness of the total unfairness of what he’s come to ask her to do. But the words come out of him anyway, all in a rush as he remembers his uncle’s face, the look in his eyes when they last spoke.

  “Kuchta,” he tells her quietly. “Remember what I asked you? In the hay loft that day?”

  She frowns. It puts that pit between her eyebrows he knows. He is about to remind her of what he means when she speaks, her voice suddenly serious, and all-business.

  “Of course I remember,” she says. “You never wanted me to talk about them, those other people. You asked me not to speak of it––”

  “Not that.” He catches hold of her hands, flinching a little at how warm hers are, next to his. “I asked you, remember? I asked would you ever leave here, at once, if I told you it was life and death. You said you would, Kuchta. You said you would do it even without knowing why.”

  Her eyes widen slowly as she stares up at him.

  “What has happened?” She touches his face. “What has happened, Ewald?”

  He shakes his head, clicking at her without realizing he is doing it.

  “I cannot tell you.” Seeing the look on her face, he squeezes her fingers tighter. “I cannot, Kuchta. I’m sorry… please. You have to trust me on this. Please.”

  She stares up at him, her eyes flickering between his.

  “Please,” he says again. Fumbling in his pocket, he pulls out the other things he has brought for her. “I’ve written out what to do,” he
says, knowing how it sounds, forcing himself to continue speaking anyway, to get it out. “If you follow this, they will leave you alone. You have to follow this exactly, Kuchta. Do not deviate from it at all. I will cover for you here. I will give them reasons not to go after you.”

  She stares at the bound pad of paper he gives her, filled with careful neat print in German.

  “Please, Kuchta,” he begs her. “Please… I’ve got money. A lot of money.”

  He hands her everything he has, everything he has made from the fighting he’s been doing over the past year, and even from before that, when he got money from his uncle and hoarded it.

  She stares at the pile he hands her, her eyes showing disbelief.

  “It is enough for Paris,” he says. “Maybe not dresses… or champagne. But you could get work there. You could go to school. You wanted to be an artist, yes?”

  He waits for her, watching her face.

  He waits for her to catch up, to hear what he is saying to her.

  He waits, holding his breath, hoping he won’t have to coerce her, that he won’t have to push her into doing this thing. He stands there in the cold, holding her hand with one of his, clutching the coat over his chest, realizing suddenly that he is taller than her now, by almost two inches.

  He grips her hand tighter as he waits for her to look at the money, as she takes the notebook from his other hand.

  When she looks up, her eyes study his once more.

  There is fear in hers, but he sees something else there, too, something that causes his breath to expand in his chest.

  “When?” she says, when she finally speaks. “Tonight?”

  He nods, restraining himself from kissing her in his relief.

  “Yes, tonight.”

  “All right. Will you wait for me?”

  “Yes.” He smiles, nodding as he holds the jacket tighter. “I will wait.”

  He releases her arm, watching her as she walks back up to the house.

  He doesn’t have long to wait.

  Even so, by the time she returns he is beside himself with worry, nearly sick with it. His mind churns through scenarios as it occurs to him that she could be telling her parents, that she could have decided he was dangerous, or that he’d lost his mind. She might have told him yes just to get away from him, to fool him into letting her back in the house.