Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  The scream turned into a sob as I saw him fighting the other seers.

  Terian dragged me forward despite my struggles. In a matter of minutes I couldn’t see Revik anymore, though I could still hear him. I willed my light, every part of myself in his direction. Half dragged and half shoved through the thigh-high grass, I eventually opened my eyes on what looked like a Jeep parked on one side of the field, a few dozen yards away.

  Something in me broke.

  I lunged against Terian’s hands, leaping off my feet to throw him off balance.

  He caught me around the waist, dragging me forcibly through the grass. I lunged again at each step, fighting harder the further we went, trying to get free––until he gave up and simply picked me up. Slinging me over his shoulder, he held my waist with one arm, clamping my legs with the other. When he motioned to one of the guards, I felt metal on my ankles as he chained those together, too.

  The boy followed, but that time, he didn’t protest.

  I glanced down and found him staring at me, his eyes still holding that faint glow. The look in them remained hard from his conversation with Revik.

  I begged him to let me go.

  When that didn’t work, I begged Terian.

  The latter forced me into the back of the Jeep. One of his men cuffed me to the door with a third set of handcuffs.

  The boy sat next to me, his hand on my leg. I stared at his small fingers, then back at the cabin, screaming when Terian started up the Jeep’s engine, throwing myself against the metal cuffs. He put the the vehicle in gear and hit the gas, bumping and driving across the field without so much as glancing back at me.

  I watched the cabin grow smaller in the distance.

  Terian ground gears as we bounced over holes and hillocks, accelerating until he pulled up alongside the helicopter parked in a flat area by the river.

  Seeing where we were, I burst into another sob, fighting until my wrists bled. The boy tried to stop me, but I elbowed him off me angrily.

  It was the same place Revik and I picnicked the first day we’d taken out the horses.

  By the time Terian unlocked me from the Jeep, picking me up and carrying me across the grass and through the helicopter door, the drug was finally taking its toll. I managed to keep my eyes open while he locked me to the bench in the back of the military helicopter. In the front seat, I saw a woman with black hair and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.

  She smiled at me, but those eyes remained cold as ice.

  “Everything go okay?” she asked Terian.

  “Well as could be expected,” he grunted.

  She looked me up and down, still smiling faintly. “She’s a little underfed. Pretty, though. I suppose that’s why you forgot her clothes?”

  Terian smiled. “The boy didn’t seem to mind.”

  The woman chuckled, exhaling smoke. “No, he doesn’t seem to.” Glancing back at the boy sitting next to me, she motioned towards me with the hand holding the hiri. “And Dehgoies?”

  “He’s alive.” Terian shrugged. “Not much I could do. They’d been fucking for at least a week.” He put on headphones, raising his voice above the cycling blades. “I left Tor and David to patch him up. I’ll call when we get a little farther.”

  She nodded, but a hardness touched her mouth.

  I watched, numb, as the boy slid closer, leaning against my side.

  A few seconds later, the rotary blades got louder as the helicopter began to lift off the ground.

  I managed to stay awake for a few seconds more as we rose over the fields. I stared down until the river looked like a winding snake through the plexiglass window near the metal bar where I’d been cuffed. I could no longer see the house.

  I was crying, but I held on to what I’d heard Terian say.

  Those seers were patching him up. Terian would call, and someone would find Revik before he bled to death or died of exposure under those stairs.

  Feeling eyes on me again, I turned.

  I found the blue-eyed woman staring at me. Her eyes examined my body in detail, lingering on different parts of my skin. Barely glancing at the bruises she was focused on, I leaned back on the cushion. More tears ran down my face, making it hard to breathe.

  Not long after that, I must have passed out.

  30

  WVERCIANS

  REVIK WOKE UP in the dirt, unable to breathe.

  His arms felt wrenched out of their sockets. His throat hurt. His head felt like it was being crushed in an iron vise, his pulse throbbing against the skin of his temples from whatever drug they’d given him.

  He looked up to where the cuffs he wore locked to a chain that wound around the bottom supports to the wooden stairs. Looking around where he lay, he tried to scan in reflex. The organic collar shot pain up through his skull, temporarily blinding him. It was nothing like the pain he’d endured in that glass and tile dungeon in the Carpathians… but with how he felt, it briefly knocked him out.

  The second time, he was more cautious.

  Extending his light, he tried to find the boundaries of where the restraint kicked in, trying to get a sense of what type of collar it was, where the limits had been set. The second jolt was less severe. It broke him out in a sweat, temporarily blinding him, but didn’t knock him out.

  Even so, it was effective. He couldn’t get past it.

  He tried anyway, testing it again, using a number of different kinds of scans. He fought for any glimpses through, any means of sending out a flare to someone who might be looking for him. He couldn’t tell if any of it worked, but he doubted it.

  All he knew for sure was she was gone.

  He wasn’t ready to feel that yet.

  He tried to move, to sit up, and liquid fire shot down his spine, hurting him enough to make him sick, nearly blacking him out again. He threw up, vomiting bile on the dirt from his empty stomach, just before he crumpled back to his side.

  He’d forgotten about the leg.

  He needed water.

  After that, food.

  He was too weak to do much of anything for long, if he didn’t deal with those two things. Staring up at the lightening sky, he fought not to feel, ignoring the smell of his own vomit. No matter how many times it tried to rise, he forced the image of Allie, collared, naked and covered in bruises, out of his mind.

  Minutes passed with him lying in the dirt, fighting to control his mind, before he realized that the seers had bandaged his leg before they left. So they’d only meant to hobble him after all… not kill him. He supposed he had Terian to thank for that.

  He wondered if Terry actually called the Adhipan, like he said he would.

  He also wondered why Terian hadn’t sent someone back to collect him yet. The boy must have him on a short leash. He’d obviously been displeased with the kid’s decision to leave him behind.

  He tried to think through scenarios, if only to occupy his mind.

  Terian might take her to a cave, like he had with him and Jon and Cass, but Revik doubted it. He would feel safer in the United States. Most of the Rooks in Europe and Asia would be off the grid still; some would still resent him for his coup of Galaith, if not blame him outright for the demise of the Pyramid.

  Galaith, whatever his faults, always had the gift of engendering loyalty.

  Terian did not.

  The sun rose over the valley. Revik watched every incremental movement of its path up and off the horizon, feeling his breath come short.

  The star was most of the way in the sky when he found himself choking again, fighting to breathe. His skin hurt, every part of him. He forced her out of his mind, her face out from behind his eyes. He fought out every stray thought about where she was, what might be happening to her.

  He spent the next few hours trying to get out of the cuffs.

  He considered biting his wrist, trying to squeeze out of them that way.

  The same thought seemed to have occurred to Terian’s guards, though. They’d cinched the organic metal cuffs all
the way down, until they bruised the bone. He couldn’t risk bleeding out in the dirt if it didn’t work.

  He used the chain to saw at the wood instead, working in hard bursts until his arms were so exhausted he had to rest.

  The sun was higher in the sky by then.

  He was thirsty, hungry, and the sun was starting to feel hot. He felt sick from pain, and increasingly, from the wound in his leg. He wondered if they’d bothered to dig the metal out before they bandaged him up. He decided they must have, or he’d feel even worse.

  He went back to sawing at the wood, until again, after five or six more bursts of muscle and intent, he was forced to stop.

  It seemed like time went on like that forever.

  Lying in the dirt, half-dead with pain, fighting emotions that tried to rise… then forcing himself to move, sawing at the wood until his muscles could no longer stand the strain… then back to lying in the dirt, trying not to feel.

  The sound crept up on him.

  He’d taken another break from fighting the wooden support. He guessed he’d made it about a fifth of the way into the segment of wood he would need to shave off before he could crack the base of the step with his arms and foot. He almost didn’t notice the sound at first.

  Then, he wondered if he was dreaming, remembering.

  The sound got louder.

  Horses.

  He opened his eyes. Turning his head, he squinted through the glare, and saw three horses enter the gate at a canter. They seemed to come up on him fast, given how gradually the sound rose in his awareness.

  The first one pulled up near the steps and Revik found himself looking up at a broad, wind-burned face. He didn’t know it specifically. He didn’t know the others, either, despite their similarity to one another.

  Anyway, he would have expected a helicopter from Balidor––not these three giant brutes on shaggy, long-maned horses.

  Looking from one face to the other, he tensed more and more. He recognized the broad, Asian-like features, the deep black eyes. Apart from the color of their irises, each of them had identical, almost-albino coloring, with white hair matted and greased to a darker yellow in thick braids down their backs.

  Wvercians.

  Revik hadn’t seen any like them since he was young, maybe an adolescent.

  He watched them take turns looking at him from their horses.

  Hand gestures passed between what appeared to be their leader and the other two riding with him. Then the youngest-looking of the three jumped off his horse with a graceful slip of his leg, and ran up the stairs.

  Revik felt the seer’s feet shudder the wood he was chained to, just before the door to the house slammed. He looked back at the others.

  “Help me,” he said in Prexci. His voice came out hoarse, a thick whisper. He spoke to the leader, seeing the dark eyes focused emotionlessly on him. “Please. They took my wife. Please. Help me.”

  The leader swung off his saddle, leaping down as lightly as the first man, despite his considerable girth. As he stood over Revik, it occurred to the latter that the man could probably kill him with one sharp kick to the throat.

  Wvercians were generally nomads, and warlike. Smugglers. Opportunists. For the most part, they didn’t follow Code. When they did, it was a different version from the one Revik had been raised in. They’d been known to smuggle children, and women. They tended to form their own tribes, ignoring the clan laws of the other seers as they competed amongst themselves. They’d aligned with humans as often as their brother-seers over the past one hundred or so years.

  From the well-bred horses he could see under the shaggy manes, and the organic rifles he saw slung in their saddles, these three must be doing well for themselves.

  “The house is mine,” he said in Prexci. “I give it to you. Everything in it. It will be legal.” He pointed towards the river. “Horses down there. Those are mine, too. Full-sized. One draft. At least one thoroughbred. Ten in total.”

  The leader smiled. He looked up at the other man, who leaned over the pommel of an oversized Tibetan-style saddle, peering at Revik’s face. He pointed at the organic bandage, saying something Revik didn’t catch. The leader smiled, saying something back in a language Revik recognized as a bastardized form of Prexci mixed with Mandarin. Their accents were so thick he only picked out words, a few phrases.

  The one who remained on his horse spoke the most.

  (some kind of insult) “…here to rob him.” (the man laughed, and said something else Revik didn’t catch) “…knows about the…?” (something else) “…Bridge? Same person as…” (something else he didn’t catch).

  Revik stiffened at the mention of Allie.

  The leader didn’t seem to notice. He grunted, motioning in affirmation.

  The one on the horse spoke again.

  “…leave alone if the…” (something else that sounded insulting) “…orders?” (something else) “…dead? She couldn’t have…” (something else he missed) “…few thousand in his own…” (Revik was pretty sure the word was “army”).

  He looked between them. He’d started grinding at the wood of the steps again with the chains, almost unconsciously.

  If they knew who Allie was, they might not be here to help him.

  Where the fuck was Balidor?

  The third Wvercian exited the house, half-running down the steps. At the leader’s level look, he gestured negative. The leader grunted, then looked down at Revik, his black eyes devoid of feeling.

  “You are Dehgoies Revik?” he said in heavily accented Prexci.

  Revik hesitated. He looked between the three of them, then decided he didn’t have the luxury to be coy.

  “Yes,” he said, gesturing affirmative.

  The leader looked him over, then motioned towards the youngest of the three Wvercians. Revik stiffened, trying to push his body backwards when the smallest giant pulled his heavily modified organic rifle off his saddle. It had organics in the stock, too, which likely meant some kind of high-caliber ammunition. Revik stared at it, watching as the man clicked off the safety and raised it to his shoulder.

  “Wait!” he yelled, holding up a hand. “Wait! The Bridge!”

  The man with the rifle lowered it slowly, his eyes puzzled.

  Revik spoke faster, louder. “You’re looking for her… right? If you kill me, you kill her! She’s my mate! I swear to the gods she is! Take off the collar, and you’ll see. Check the telltale. She and I are one…”

  The man with the rifle looked at the leader, his eyes bewildered.

  The other two laughed. The one on the saddle motioned at the one with the rifle. A thick scar ran across his forehead and down beside one eye.

  (a string of run-together words) “…thinks you’re going to kill him!”

  The leader motioned for the young one to proceed, then turned to Revik.

  “Hold still,” he said, pronouncing the words deliberately.

  Revik did. He watched the youngest of the three seers aim at the chain around the base of the stairs. Realizing what was happening, he closed his eyes, turning his face away from the chains.

  There was a metallic clang, and hot metal burned his arm.

  He winced, but when he moved, the chain came free. His wrists were still cuffed, but no longer to one another… or, more importantly, to the stairs.

  He sat up with an effort, gasping a little when he jarred the shot leg.

  “Thank you,” he said, gesturing respectfully. “Thank you.”

  “Can you walk?” the leader said.

  Revik winced, trying to pull himself closer to the stairs.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  They looked at one another. “Can you ride?” the leader said.

  Revik nodded, looking between them. “Yeah.”

  He started to pull himself up the first stair towards the house. He heard them talking amongst themselves. Then the one with the gun got in his way, motioning him off with his hands, his gestures adamant.

  “
No,” he said in Prexci. “Stay!”

  Revik pointed towards the house. “I need clothes.” He looked at the leader. At the blank look on the giant seer, he gestured in sign language. Clothes. There are some inside. I need my gun.

  The one on the horse laughed, saying something in a joking tone.

  But the smallest one vaulted up the stairs again, past Revik and into the house, once more letting the door slam behind him. Revik lay there on the wood, happy to be out of the sun. He was still slumped with his back against the steps, when the leader pulled a canteen off his horse. Walking over, he offered it to him.

  Revik nodded in thanks, and drank for a full minute.

  He was still drinking when the youngest Wvercian clomped back down the stairs, holding out clothes. Revik saw he’d gone into the refrigerator too. He handed containers to the man on the horse, then walked back to Revik, handing him a shirt and a pair of loose, cotton pants, both Chinese in style. Revik struggled into them while the three Wvercians talked amongst themselves in low voices.

  The younger one handed him a container of food when Revik tried to get up.

  Revik waved it off, but the young seer thrust it forward again.

  “Eat,” the leader said. “We will go soon.” He used his hands to indicate a person falling off a horse. “Ouch,” he said, smiling.

  “Yeah,” Revik said. “Ouch.”

  Reluctantly, he took the container off the young seer, fighting impatience as he dug his fingers into the thick pile of greens and pasta in the wooden box. He was still putting fingers-full of the casserole in his mouth, swallowing without a lot of chewing, when the leader approached him with what looked like a pair of bolt cutters, only made of some kind of organic.

  “Hold still,” he told Revik again.

  Revik froze as the giant fitted the cutting tool under the collar he wore. He felt the round loop of the collar drop into the notch inside the shears. Then the massive seer squeezed the handles together, his trunk-like arms flexing. Revik flinched as the cutters grazed his skin, nicking the side of his throat. He gasped a little as he felt the organic in the collar die, just before it broke apart on his neck.