Always Walk Forward

by Billy Wong

  "Oh look, the princess is awake," Drea said, walking beside them. "You fainted."

  "I fainted? Don't you mean you did?"

  Drea gazed skyward. "No, you."

  "How does that happen?"

  She poked Sam's shoulder, making her realize it hurt. "You got pierced by multiple daimon claws, but didn't say anything probably since you failed to notice in the excitement. You've been out for days, and almost died! You stopped breathing and I had to breathe life back into you—and because of the condition I'm in, I was half dead by the time I finished. Fairly tough of you to survive even with help, though. Vincent insisted on going on. He's a fit enough lad, and decent sized—but he's been carrying you for four whole days. So now, he's half dead too."

  "We'll never catch up to Eli," Vincent said.

  "Sorry... You can put me down now. Hopefully I can walk."

  After Vincent set her down, Drea looked sadly at him. "I don't know about never, but at this point, I'd say we're definitely not catching up before they reach the city."

  His shoulders slumped. "Why does our luck have to be so crap? Why can't the Paladins get attacked repeatedly and delayed by daimons?"

  "There's some luck involved. But also, their being a larger group that sticks together would discourage some daimons."

  They traveled for two more full days. It seemed like they had walked for so long... Sam hurt all over, her shoulder most of all, and even more than half a week of sleep didn't help much. She wondered how Director Jon and his folks were doing, if they worried a lot about her and Vincent back home or might have given up on them. Topping one final rise late the third morning, they finally came into view of the city of Patuta, looking very much like their own from outside with its magical dome. "Don't worry," Sam said to Vincent, "we'll get Eli back in there."

  "You mean," Drea corrected, "you'll get him back."

  Sam couldn't quite grasp what she meant. "What?"

  "This is as far as I can go with you. It's already been what, about two weeks, and I don't know how long the playhouse can last without me or any of us. So I should go back, put on some shows with limited fighting"—she patted her injured abdomen—"working on my acting skills with Jon and Cal, and maybe Joan or some temporary hires can fill other needed roles."

  She couldn't believe it. So this, more than the possibility of her dying, had been what she'd been trying to prepare them for... "You want to go back?! I hate to sound callous, but Director Jon and the others won't die if you aren't there. At worse they'll have to borrow, and live meagerly; maybe lose the theatre if we're gone long enough. But if you abandon us to face the Paladins alone, we probably won't make it..."

  Drea put hands on her hips. "Relax, do you really think I would leave you to die? You're my friends. I have a plan." She pointed towards the city. "In there is an old man who hates the Paladins. That man also happens to be a high ranking military officer—Commandant Talben, leader of the city defense force. You tell him your brother was taken by them, into his city no less, and I'm almost certain he'll help you. Don't mention me, though. He has a bit of a grievance with me, so it's best to leave me out of your story."

  "So you're giving us into the care," Vincent said slowly, "of some man who you sort of know, but isn't even your friend?"

  "He's a good man. I trust him to do right by you."

  Sam felt like fainting again. "What the hell? Going back all of a sudden right now... you really are-"

  "Fine just the way I am, remember?" Drea finished with a wink.

  "That was before we knew you would... you would..."

  She handed back the bag of nuts, which she must've held onto while Sam was unconscious. "By the way, you keep these. Don't use them unless you're seriously hurt though, not just for any old pain."

  "But don't you need them?" Vincent asked. "You're seriously hurt."

  "I can do without. I just wanted them for a really bad moment. Remember, don't use them unless you have to! Anyway, take care of yourselves. I hope to see you alive again." She turned and strode away, not looking back. Just the sight of her tall shape, the contours of her sleek back, her thick hair and overstated pauldrons as they receded into the distance... was infuriating at the moment.

  After a long shared silence, Vincent said, "No need to panic yet. She's probably just messing with us in her 'mysterious mentor figure' way, and will show up again to help us in a few hours or days—don't you think?"

  It seemed a distinct possibility, now that Sam thought of it, but not one she would put all her hopes in. "I hope you're right. In any case, let's go meet this Commandant Talben."

  Chapter 5

  They approached the gate of Patuta behind the milky dome. The guards facing out whose duty it was to receive visitors didn't seem to be paying attention, so Sam tried knocking. She was slightly surprised to find the barrier didn't feel hard to the touch, but instead met her knuckles with some give like a great block of lard. Her knock produced a low thrumming sound which alerted the guards to their presence, and one stocky soldier shouted in a muffled voice through the dome, "State your business!"

  "We, uh, we're travelers coming from Berilim!"

  "On what business?"

  "Say we're visiting friends," Vincent whispered.

  "Visiting friends!"

  "Name of friends?" There was no way the guards remembered the names of every person in the city for this to be a legitimate question, but Sam supposed maybe it served to give another chance for them to notice suspicious behavior.

  "Commandant Talben!" Vincent said without thinking.

  He regarded them doubtfully. "Friends of Commandant Talben? You?"

  "We're um, family friends," Sam replied with an awkward smile as she tried to salvage the situation.

  The stocky soldier's older partner said, "They're just kids. Seems unlikely they're here to cause any real trouble." Sam supposed that depended on how "real" rescuing Eli from the Paladins was.

  Finally the first guard relented with a nod, and the second opened a hole in the barrier with their Keystone. He studied the duo as they passed inside. "You sure look beat up. Just the two of you, or were there more and they died?"

  It might have been a close call, but, "No, nobody died."

  The first guard chuckled while they raised the gate. "Just the two of you then? Talk about in over your heads."

  "Well, we made it through, didn't we?" she shot back.

  They put the gate behind them. The interior of the city quite reminded Sam of their own. It sat on a hill, sloping up towards the center, and grew increasingly crowded with newer multi-story buildings as outward expansion would be impractical. This trend of upward development was prevalent back home even in the slums where there were limited resources to build, as bunk beds became ever more popular, and she figured the same to likely be true here.

  "Place looks boring," Vincent said, "same old drab apartments stacked onto each other. I'd kind of hoped a different city would be more exotic."

  "We aren't exactly that far from home, and designs are limited by humanity's circumstances. Besides, we're here to get Eli, not as tourists." A word used mainly in jest, as they hardly existed in life.

  "That's true. But I want to go to a tavern first."

  She stared at him. "What?"

  He exhaled. "I know what you're going to say. It's a waste of time, that'll delay us from saving Eli, and Director Jon says we shouldn't. But I have pain all over my body, and my heart's worn out from all the struggle and scares. I just need a drink to take my mind away from it for a bit, we can always make up any time lost by sleeping less."

  "You haven't even had alcohol before, how do you know it's what you need?"

  "I have, actually. Cal slipped me some whiskey before. It definitely takes you away from the stress and pain."

  Sam couldn't resist a smile. "If that's the case, I could probably use some too. Why not, it can't hurt that much."

  They asked passerbys for directions to the poor quarter, the only section
of town where they dared chance spending given their limited funds. Finding a suitably downtrodden-looking place called The Loom, possibly started by a former tailor or in one's former shop, they headed inside. Sam welcomed the dizzying smoke that filled the air into her nostrils this time, as it calmed her nerves. The dining area was more spacious than she'd thought from without, the hat store that shared the building's first floor probably taking up a small section of it. An obese behemoth leaned against the counter talking to a skimpily clad wild-haired woman. Walking by them, Vincent ordered from the barkeeper, a well groomed man in his late thirties with friendly eyes and deep smile lines.

  "Two... whiskeys," he said, pausing between the words.

  Sam asked, "Shouldn't you have asked me what I wanted before ordering for the both of us?"

  "Do you know what kind of alcohol you like?"

  "Fair point."

  The barkeep looked them over humorously. "You two look like you've been through hell and back."

  Sam nodded. "Yeah. Hell is outside."

  "Oh, is that the case? You must be courageous souls to brave the daimons. But, I hope you don't mind me being frank, you smell quite bad. Would you be interested in renting a room so you could clean up?"

  "No room," Vincent said. "Drinks alone might use up too much of our money."

  "Fair play."

  As he turned to pour their whiskey, Vincent's lips parted in surprise. Sam looked as he did to see a titanic hand enveloping his shoulder. "You cut in line," the fat giant said, his features seeming tiny squished together in the middle of his cookpot-like head.

  "You were talking." Vincent sounded scared, as Sam would if those sausage fingers squeezed her shoulder.

  "I was still in line. You skipped me."

  "All right, you can go ahead."

  The barkeep returned with the drinks, placed them on the counter with a wary look. "It's too late," the giant rumbled with a sneer. Sam grew angered. What a bully, looking to start trouble with a boy half his age and size.

  "What do you want?" Vincent asked. "You want the drinks?"

  The man shoved him, knocking him to the floor. "I want you to take off your trousers and do a little dance." Behind him, the wild-haired woman laughed.

  Sam had had enough. Without waiting to see how Vincent would respond, she stepped in front of him and summoned her best impression of Drea's confidence. "I don't know what your problem is, but you saw us walk by and didn't bother to speak up until it was too late. You're clearly just looking to pick a fight."

  He guffawed. "A fight, with that whelp? I'd have to slap myself awake if he had the spine to raise a hand to me. Now, quit sticking your nose into man's business before I put you in your place."

  "Let's just get out of here, Sam," Vincent said.

  Though she kind of wished she could teach the bully a lesson, that did seem the most responsible and pragmatic course of action. They started towards the exit. As they tried to walk away, the giant grabbed Vincent's pants from behind and yanked them down. "Hahahaha!" Half the patrons laughed with him. "How does his pickle look? Tiny is it, I bet?"

  Vincent spun and punched him in the face. Uh oh, Sam thought. The bully frowned for an instant, then took on a big grin. "So you do have some fire!" He hit back, sent Vincent flying onto a table which fell over as people scrambled out of the way. As Vincent came jerkily to his knees with blood running from his nose, Sam could see his eyes were already half rolled up. He tried to stand, but couldn't find his balance and grabbed at the fallen table to keep from collapsing completely.

  Sam ran between him and the giant again. "I'll be your opponent," she said, raising her fists.

  His grin widened. "You'll? Get out of the way before I step on you, pipsqueak."

  Not wanting to draw a weapon and risk killing somebody, Sam tried to remember how Drea had handled Tonius the Tremor and model a strategy after that. She soon realized the major flaws in her plan. Drea was only a few inches shorter than Tonius and had incredible speed, power, durability, and skill, while this bully towered a foot over Sam and she didn't trust in any of her attributes compared to his. With no better ideas, she threw a punch up at his head.

  The upward trajectory robbed her blow of much of what power it had, so that his grin didn't even waver when her knuckles brushed his jaw. She winced, the sorry excuse for a punch having probably hurt her shoulder more. "What was that? I thought you'd at least be a hair better than him with that bravado." His fist plowed into her face. She felt her inner cheek tear open against loosened teeth, filling her mouth with the tang of blood. Her spine and the back of her skull thudded onto rigid wood, making pain shoot through them. She raised her head groggily. Where was she? The room seemed a dark blur, and noisy, and people were yelling excitedly—the bar! She was in the-

  A huge boot slammed into her mouth, laying her out flat again. She moaned in anguish, her face a mass of pain, sticky, sickening wetness on both her cheeks and chin. Now she knew part of how Drea had felt... Her opponent loomed over her, and she saw an opening. She kicked up between his thighs, felt her shin go home solidly in his crotch. He doubled over, then fell to one knee, and she thought she had a chance. She raised her legs to choke him with them as she had seen Drea demonstrate before.

  His hamlike fist crashed into her cheek, crushing her skull against the floor. Her hands, reaching up to help secure the hold, dropped to her sides as all strength left them. The hammers of meat and bone came down again and again. She heard a crack as something in her face broke. She rallied enough to lift her arms in an attempt to defend, but the impacts shook her brain through them and with each one she felt less.

  Hopeless, she rolled to her side covering her head.

  #

  Vincent watched in horror as Sam curled up into a fetal ball under the barrage from the monstrous man. Her arms formed a sort of guard for her head, but obviously didn't do much good as her skull nonetheless bounced around like a ball from the punches. She slapped the floor in a gesture of conceding defeat like Tonius had, whether consciously or out of instinct Vincent didn't know, but her foe didn't seem to see or recognize it and continued to pound away.

  "Stop it!" Vincent shouted, finally getting to his feet to run towards them. "You're killing her!"

  The bully backhanded him, swatting him away like a fly. But he stopped striking Sam. "I don't want to kill her," he said after taking a moment to catch his breath. He had beaten her so savagely, he winded himself. "If she dies that easily, she's not even worthy of killing." He pulled her up by the hair, revealing the bloody ruin of her face. "Mind a warning for next time, girl? Know your limits." Considering her eyes were closed and her features didn't so much as twitch, Vincent doubted she heard him. The man let her fall back down and walked away.

  Vincent crawled to her side and turned her over. "Sam! Sam, are you okay?"

  She spat out two teeth in a shower of blood, and her eyelids drifted lazily open. The sight of her filled him with pity. Both eyes were black, one swollen shut, both sides of her face ballooning up grossly though the left side worse, cuts all over, lips shredded and mouth full of blood. She looked up despondently at him. "The first fight I get into without Drea, and I lose."

  "That's all right, it's not a big deal. I lost too."

  "You think that makes it better? It's worse if anything that both of us lost. The second we don't have Drea with us, we can't... do shit." Her body convulsed in his arms with sobs.

  "That isn't true. You fought that flying daimon by yourself and won." While his words had a factual basis, they didn't appear to have any effect on her. He understood her feeling, given Drea had still been part of their "company" then. What'd happened just after she left them highlighted their dependence on her as much as anything could. He stroked Sam's blood-matted hair, feeling helpless to comfort her just as he had been to save her in the fight. "You hear what he said before he left?" he asked, not having anything better to say.

  "The last part of it." Her voice took on a sour tone. "
Know your limits."

  "Drea said something similar to me too while you were getting the nuts—well actually I said it in summary, but she implied as much."

  "I don't want to know my limits," Sam protested, "I want to exceed them! How are we ever supposed to rescue Eli from the Paladins, if we can't even beat some bully in a tavern?"

  "Maybe that fat man was like the male equivalent of Drea or thereabouts."

  "He didn't show any special skills. He was just way too big and strong for us. It isn't fair..."

  Vincent held her close. "This isn't the end of the world. Even if we aren't strong, we can still save Eli... with help, just as Drea directed us to."

  Unexpectedly, that got a laugh out of her. "Director Drea? Now that would be something."

  He was glad to see her a bit calmer. "She already directs her own fight scenes, pretty much."

  "That's true." She blinked and reached up towards his face with a frown. "He broke your handsome nose..."

  "Hopefully they'll say it gives me character."

  "We should go see Commandant Talben now, and not waste any more time we could use to help Eli..." With a nod, he tried to help her up, but she squawked and said, "My shoulder! Other arm, other arm!"

  Some clumsy shuffling later, they finally got their feet under them, Sam's head dangling as he supported her. "Still want those drinks?" the barkeep asked. Somewhat surprisingly, the whiskey still rested untouched on the counter.

  Sam looked up. "Better pour us each a couple more."

  #

  Three hours later they stepped into view of the burnished gates before the white manor, the largest in the aristocratic quarter and the city as a whole. They'd gotten quite lost on the way, owing to drunkenness and punch-drunkenness, but finally made it. "Sure we should go in looking like this?" Vincent asked.

  They had cleaned up as best they could, but Sam especially still looked quite the mess. Because she feared her pain might overwhelm her, she had transferred half of the nuts from Drea into a belt pouch. "Waiting for it to heal would take far more time than we can afford. Just let them assume this happened to us out there."