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

by JC Andrijeski

  He is still thinking about this when she returns.

  She is fully dressed this time, wearing a work dress and a thick cloak, and carrying a satchel over her back. He sees a second bag coupled with the first, and realizes she’s packed food as well, and water. He watches her in a kind of disbelief, barely able to think straight when he realizes she is really going to do this thing, and without asking him why.

  When she reaches him, he doesn’t think.

  He kisses her, pulling her to him.

  She doesn’t fight him, but kisses him back, sliding her arms around his waist as he pulls her between his. He kisses her for a long moment, holding her tightly against him. By the time he draws back, she is breathless, her cheeks flushed.

  “What was that for?” she asks, smiling at him.

  “For trusting me,” he says.

  He doesn’t smile as he says it. Then he is handing her the money and the book, telling her there is a wagon waiting for her, pointing directions as he looks up the road. He doesn’t kiss her again before she leaves, but squeezes her hand a last time, looking at her face with a love he doesn’t know how to feel, that he doesn’t know what to do with.

  “Goodbye, Ewald,” she says, smiling at him.

  “Goodbye,” he says, feeling the word catch in his throat. “Be safe, my friend.” Once she is out of earshot, he says, quieter, in prayer.

  “I’lenntare c’gaos untlelleres ungual ilarte. Y’lethe u agnate sol..”

  The Gods love and keep you my most beloved sister. It is for you that I am here...

  He doesn’t cry until she is gone.

  He is sure he’ll never see her again.

  29

  DEAR FRIEND OF MINE

  “ALLIE!” THE VOICE was frantic, yelling. “Allie! Wake up! Come on!”

  I fought to open my eyes, but it felt like weights were on them, like I was being pulled from deep inside a well of ice-cold water.

  “No…” I managed, pushing at his chest. “No… leave us alone…”

  “Allie!” The voice, the light behind it, flooded me with his with relief. “Thank God. We couldn’t wake you. We couldn’t wake either one of you. It’s been three days… Revik’s a mess, Allie. He’s dying. We have to get him help…”

  But I was beating against him, hitting my fists against his chest.

  I couldn’t stop the sob that built in my throat, tearing out of me, like an animal trapped inside my chest. I fought to get free of him, struggling against his hands, but I was still back there, still lost in that other place, where I saw her face…

  ROUGH HANDS HOLD him, gripping his collar and his hair, holding his bound wrists behind his back. They’ve seen his face, and he’s with others, so he can’t do anything.

  He can’t fight them… not even with his sight.

  They do not know for certain the French soldiers don’t have their own seers.

  He looks at the dirty faces across from him as they are all pushed and pulled across a hillock-covered field. He recognizes others from his unit. He sees three he knows right off, and a half-dozen who are wearing his uniform. More than twice their number push and pull them along, including the French soldier holding him by the artillery belt he knows they will strip from him as soon as they are someplace where they won’t have to carry it.

  Likely after they’ve put bullets in each of their brains.

  His body is hard from months in the field.

  He is hungry, almost starving, but barely feels it as they march him hard across the grass. He sees a house up ahead, a normal farmhouse, like he would see back home, and there are lights on upstairs. Whoever they are, they are awake, but likely getting ready for bed, as they have vacated the main living space on the lower floors.

  It must be their field they are crossing, their animals they walked among earlier, trying to find cover. There is something strangely familiar in this scene.

  He could die here. It would be like coming home.

  The man behind him grunts as one of the others in his unit stumbles.

  He turns and stares at the dirty face, seeing near-black eyes in Chinese-looking features, tattoos on the hands which are visible beyond his uniform sleeves. He looks at this other one, a brother of his, and he thinks to himself that his face is too unusual here.

  If they have even one seer among them, they will know what he is. They will know him, and all of them will be caught.

  He will look for an opening.

  If he has to kill all of these French fucks, so be it.

  He is not supposed to expose himself, though.

  Exposure to the French would not matter––they would not live to tell anyone what they saw. If he exposes himself to his own people, however, that is a larger problem. His uncle would expect him to kill them, too, and that he will not do. He cannot kill his own brothers and sisters, not without good reason.

  He will wait.

  They push him and the others through the door of the house and yell at the occupants in French. He cannot understand French, but he reads the bulk of the meaning off their minds as they yell, waiting expectantly for an answer.

  They want these people to keep them here, bound and guarded.

  He relaxes a little, exhaling under his breath. He will not need to kill anyone important. As soon as these soldiers are gone, he and Wreg can push their captors. They will be free within the hour.

  Of course, getting free hadn’t really been the issue. He would have gotten free, regardless––he has no choice but to get free, given who he is.

  There is an answering call from upstairs.

  Seconds later, a man comes down, disheveled, with brown hair and a large nose. The man, presumably the owner of the house, is thin but wiry, tall with eyes that are large in his face and carry a surprisingly gentle light. Despite the lack of meat on his frame, his shoulders are broad, and he has a worker’s hands.

  After the soldiers explain to the farmer what they want––what they demand, really––the farmer motions them back out the front door, past the windows along the side of the house, towards a green-painted cellar door, whose frame stands in solid earth.

  Nenzi follows along with Wreg and the others, stumbling first among the group down the wooden stairs, with the French bastard’s fist still in his back. He lets himself be shoved into a corner of a cellar filled with wooden shelves holding jams and jellies, butter and cheese.

  Staring around at all of it, he feels his stomach cramp. He wonders how much they can carry with them as they leave.

  Then a light follows the farmer down the wooden steps, and a woman is with him.

  He stares at her, stares at her face.

  For a moment, he is transported somewhere else.

  Thoughts of how he will get away, how much food he can steal and how many he will have to kill, leave his mind…

  He stares at her, and he cannot stop staring.

  But he forgets another of their classmates is among them.

  “Kuchta,” Stami breathes, from two bodies left of his. He stares at her, too, then his eyes find Nenzi’s, holding a condensed hate. “You little fucking bastard.”

  A French gun hits him in the head, silencing him before he can speak any further.

  Nenzi is relieved when he sees Stami hit, but his eyes cannot help but return to the woman’s face. This time, he finds her staring at him, too. Eyes wide in her face, she looks him over, taking in the size of him before returning her gaze to his face, and finally his eyes.

  She looks at the French soldiers then, biting her lip.

  They are staring at her, their eyes openly wary.

  He is in their minds before the thought is fully formed. Within seconds, their expressions grow slightly blank, right before they look away, focusing back on the farmer.

  “You will watch them,” their leader tells him. “Keep them here.”

  “Oui,” the man replies, looking at the prisoners with a pained expression. He says in French, “We will lock them up in here. Bolt the
doors on top, and use a chain.”

  The head of the French unit, the pigs who have taken them, nods, giving a last hard stare over the group of them. He does not pause on Nenzi’s face.

  “Give us any trouble, and we’ll shoot you all dead,” he says, in broken German. “We will line you up and shoot you… we’ll say you fought back.”

  “Or say nothing at all,” another adds darkly, his voice deeper than that of the first.

  Nenzi doesn’t look up at their threats, afraid he won’t be able to keep his eyes off the woman. He holds Stami’s mind now, too, and forces him to forget what he’s seen, hoping it will work until the woman leaves the cellar and returns to the upstairs rooms.

  After what feels like a long time, they all do leave. The cellar goes dark, and he is in there, with the others, breathing hard the smell of mold and butter.

  “Who is she?” asks Wreg.

  Keeping his mind blank, Nenzi turns on him.

  “Why did you not take them?” he hisses, his voice openly angry as he speaks in Prexci. “They had no seers! What chickenshit game are you playing at, Commandante?”

  Wreg blinks at him in the dim light, his eyes shifting from curiosity to irritation. It is dark in the cellar, too dark for the humans, but not so for the seers’ more sensitive eyes.

  “Orders, runt,” he says. “Pretend you remember what that means. Then pretend you remember you’re still under my command… and that I can have you beaten until you piss blood if you do not do as I say.”

  “But to what purpose is this? We could be out there, now. Going after them!”

  “Your uncle did not want to risk our being seen by any of our brothers or sisters working for the French. We were asked to scope out the area––”

  “From a fucking cellar? Was that the request?”

  “Watch your tongue, you little prick, or you might get it cut off while we’re down here.” The older seer’s voice hardens, even as those black eyes meet his. “You wouldn’t dare speak to me that way, if your uncle was someone other than who he is. Maybe you should think about what kind of man that makes you, runt.”

  “I’m not such a runt now,” he retorts back. “I’d caution you to remember that, too.”

  The other laughs, looking him up and down. “You want to duel with me, little Nenz? I would gladly take that challenge. Maybe then we’ll see if a good long trip to the hospital helps you grow up a little. Or at the very least gives me a few weeks’ peace.”

  “You’re on, you arrogant cocksucker. Just give me the time and place––”

  Sound, then light, pulls his eyes upwards, towards the trap door as it opens over them. A sinking feeling forms in his gut, even before he sees her face glowing behind the lamplight.

  “Ewald?” she whispers. She peers down through the hole in the ground, scanning faces to find his. “Ewald, is that really you down there?”

  “No,” he says, glaring at Wreg when the other pings him insistently with his light. “Go away, woman. Go back to your farmer.”

  “He is out with the soldiers now. They asked for him to come and help them with some of his equipment. To move things. Bring them supplies––”

  “You should not be telling us this,” he says angrily. “We are enemy soldiers, remember?”

  She laughs, and the familiarity of it closes his throat.

  “You are hardly in a position to do my husband harm,” she says.

  “Go back to sleep, Frau,” he growls at her. He does not realize he is speaking German until then, or that she has been using the same.

  Who is she? Wreg asks him in his head. How do you know her, runt?

  He ignores the other seer, his attention focused on the woman in front of him. She looks so much the same it catches his breath, makes it hard for him to think clearly, much less pretend he does not know her. Her face is slightly thinner, her cheekbones more prominent, but otherwise, it is the same face, and the same honey-colored eyes staring down at him, holding a kind of wonder as she looks at him, too.

  He is still watching her warily when she pulls out a long kitchen knife.

  “No! Kuchta…” he whispers fiercely as she approaches him. “Don’t! We can get away. It is all right––”

  “So you do know me?” she smiles.

  “Kuchta! This is serious! Leave me here… I don’t need your help…”

  She gives him a puzzled smile, then bends down over and behind him, sliding the knife between his wrists and sawing at the heavy rope.

  “Who says I am doing it for you?” she retorts, in the voice he remembers so well. “Do you think I will miss my one and only opportunity to question the man who sent me away all those years ago? The boy who once said he was my friend?”

  He glares up at her, gritting his teeth. “What will you tell your husband?”

  “Absolutely nothing. There will be one less prisoner when they return. By then, they will likely be so drunk they will not notice.” At his raised eyebrow, she smiles, cutting through the last of the rope around his wrists. “Their very first request was wine, Herr Gottschalk. And we are blessed with an abundance. I imagine my husband will be gone quite some time. He knows how to handle these swine. They pillage our stores regularly these days.”

  When his hands come free, he rises to his feet, catching hold of her arms.

  “Kuchta! Go back upstairs.”

  “Only if you will come with me.”

  He stares at her, half out of his head with relief that she is alive, joy to see her, and fury at her for being so completely unreasonable.

  “No. I won’t,” he says.

  She folds her arms, looking up at him without changing expression. Despite her surprise in seeing him before, she seems undaunted by the differences in their sizes now.

  “Then we will have to talk down here. Shall I start asking you questions now?”

  “Kuchta…”

  “You are a soldier now, Ewald? Why? What is this stupidity to you?” She unfolds one arm, pointing at where Stami lies on the ground, his head bleeding. “What are you doing with that sack of shit, like he is your brother now?”

  “It is complicated, Kuchta.”

  “Complicated? That you pal around with your tormenters now? Explain to me just how complicated that is, Ewald.”

  He looks at her, then at Stami’s face, and cannot help a curl in his lip.

  “He won’t live out the war,” is all he says.

  Stami starts to speak, but Wreg elbows him, hard, to keep him silent. He is staring between Nenzi and the woman, his black eyes wary. Nenzi takes this in, then turns back to the woman, feeling his jaw harden again.

  “You have to go, Kuchta,” he says.

  But she acts as if he hasn’t spoken.

  “Shall I ask you the other question now?” she says pointedly. “The one about why you sent me away all those years ago? What the real reason was?”

  He looks at Stami again, sees the death threat in the other’s eyes, and the way he stares at Kuchta in her dress. He won’t remember this, though. He won’t remember any of it. Nenzi will make sure of that, no matter what he has to tell Wreg to convince him to go along.

  “Ewald?” she says. “Are you coming? Or not?”

  Seeing the stubborn look on her face, he thinks about pushing her. Then, on impulse, he doesn’t, grabbing her arm instead as he steers her towards the stairs.

  “One hour,” he tells her. “We will talk. Then you will bring me back down here, and tie me up. Or leave… and let us go.”

  Brother, what are you doing? Wreg asks him in his mind.

  Piss off, he retorts. Getting laid… what the fuck do you think I’m doing? I’m sure you don’t mind, given that you’re sitting on the ground in your own shit, just like you wanted.

  He closes off his mind before the other can answer, following her up the wooden stairs without looking back. But he feels a ripple of the other’s anger even through his shields. He continues to feel him seething down in that dirt-floored room, even
after Kuchta shuts the double doors to the cellar and locks them with a thick chain.

  “Why are you doing this, Kuchta?” he asks her, once they are inside the house.

  They are upstairs and she is sitting on the bed, looking up at him with a half-smile on her face. He glares at her when the expression doesn’t change, looking around the small room in spite of himself, taking in the wood floors, the curtains on the windows.

  “You are doing well for yourself,” he grunts finally. “Is he a good man, your husband?”

  He turns to look at her, and she laughs, right before she gets to her feet. She envelops him in a hug before he understands what she intends, and he can only stand there, holding her back. After a moment, she separates herself from him, wiping her eyes. He sees her fingers holding tears and is frozen for a moment, unable to make himself speak.

  He is still standing there, when she slaps him hard on the shoulder, just like she used to.

  “You are enormous!” she laughs. “What the hell have you been eating?”

  He smiles. He can’t help it. “Baby goats,” he says.

  “Well stop it, you’re like a mountain.”

  “I’m not so large.”

  “You are! You are…” She holds her hand up, until it reaches the top of his head. “You are so tall, Ewald. How did you get so tall?”

  “Nenzi,” he says, without thought. “My name is Nenzi now.”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  He hesitates, then shrugs, looking her directly in the eye.

  “You know what kind,” he says.

  She frowns at him a little, but it is a frown that is almost a smile. He realizes she is pleased with his words, if only because he told her the truth. He feels an odd rush of pride on her as she sits back on the bed, patting the mattress next to her with one hand.

  “Sit! Talk to me! Tell me all about how you became this scary soldier.”

  “No, Kuchta.” He shakes his head, feeling his frustration rise. “Put me back with the others. I did not send you here to get you shot by the fucking French.”