CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  -Where the Wolf Stays

  We broke from the cover of the granary and crossed the open strip toward the base of the wall. To anyone watching from the card game, we would’ve been just three shadows sliding along the edge of the dark. Dead Step took the edges off my movement, turning steps that should’ve rasped, chains that should’ve clinked, into something the night could swallow. I could feel the skill working in me, a soft adjustment in my muscles, a borrowed grace from all the times I’d tried to sneak and failed. I kept the others tight to my pace and their feet wide, each chain kept just tight enough that anyone watching would only see three shadows moving as one.

  Death walks without warning. My ears stayed open. The wall patrol walked. The dogs snored. The card game murmured and laughed and slapped wood. The wind slid along the top of the wall with a low sigh, pushing cold down into the yard. The wind shifted. Something in the sound of it was wrong.

  It wasn’t louder. It didn’t whistle. It made a different kind of line in my head, a short, mean streak instead of a wide, soft sheet. It cut across the patterns I’d been listening to all night.

  I saw the arrow only when it was already in Forty-eight’s chest. The boy made a small, surprised sound, more breath than voice, the corner of his blanket still clenched between his teeth. His feet tangled. He sat down hard in the frost, staring at the feathered shaft between his ribs, waiting for someone to admit it was a rude trick.

  For a heartbeat, no one moved. Blood began to spread around the arrowhead, dark even in the thin light.

  “Forty-eight,” I said.

  The name came out useless.

  Laughter rolled on from the card game by the inner gate, too far and too loud to notice one boy sitting down in the frost.

  I didn’t look at them. I looked at the wall. There, at the base where the light didn’t reach, a darker shape leaned against the palisade, one shoulder braced to the posts. His belt cord sagged loose, trousers bunched low on his hips, the bow hanging slack in one hand. For a moment he looked like a man who had just pissed in the shadows. The string still quivered as he straightened, casual as anything, and reached back over his shoulder for another arrow.

  Eleven moved first. He bolted.

  “Run,” he breathed, the word catching in his throat. “Run, run, run.”

  The word ended in a wet grunt. The second arrow hit him high in the back and came out near his heart. The force spun him. He hit the ground on his side, eyes wide, mouth working without a sound.

  I didn’t run. I could. The fort’s map was in my head now. I could see the line from here to the shadow of the wagon shed, the angle along the wall, the blind spots in the patrols. If I turned and sprinted, if I let Dead Step carry me just a little farther, I might make the dark before the next arrow flew.

  I looked at Forty-eight. The boy’s hands fluttered weakly at the shaft in his chest, too shocked even to try to pull it out. Blood painted his fingers. His wheeze was gone. Each breath now was a small, desperate sip.

  I looked at Eleven. The other boy’s mouth was moving, but no sound came. His hand reached toward me, stopped halfway, and fell.

  They don’t remember, I thought. Tomorrow they’ll be asleep on their pallets again, coughing and muttering and glaring. If I leave them now, they still die. If I stay… If I stayed, I’d die with them. Death didn’t care which choice I made. The knot would only feel the tug, not the name of the hand doing the pulling.

  Once, before the fort, I’d watched a wolf get its leg caught in a trap. The others circled it, whining, pacing, hackles high. They stayed until it stopped moving, bringing scraps of meat, driving off crows and foxes whenever they crept too close. The trap never cared. Metal closed and stayed closed.

  Back on the steppe, before the first snow, we always counted what we could carry. Horses. Goats. People. There was never room for everything. Old ewes and lambs that never put on weight stayed behind when we rode out. My father called it mercy, said it was better than letting the winter choose for us. It never felt like mercy when they turned small behind us and the wind swallowed their voices.

  The yard felt like that now. The walls were the snow. Forty-eight, Eleven, me. Three bodies. Not enough room in the morning for all of us. I’d thought I understood that choice out on the steppe. I was wrong. I wasn’t going to be my father. If someone had to be trapped, I’d rather be the wolf.

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  Beyond them, in the shadow of the wall, the archer saw that I wasn’t running. The man smiled. He nocked the third arrow slowly, moving with the lazy confidence of someone who believed he had all the time in the world.

  “What now, rat?” he called softly across the yard. “Going to beg?”

  I stood up. My feet felt strangely light on the frost. The yard seemed to narrow until there was nothing in it but my own breath, the two bodies at my feet, and the man with the bow. I didn’t look away from the archer. The knife was in my hand without me remembering drawing it. I walked.

  The archer watched me come, amusement turning his mouth.

  “You know what happens to runaways,” he said. “We hang them up where the others can see. Makes them think twice about testing the chains. Maybe I’ll put you right in front of your little friends.”

  I didn’t answer. I walked until I could see the stubble on the man’s chin, the frayed edge of the bowstring, the slight puff of breath in the cold between words.

  Up close, he smelled of stale piss and cheap liquor.

  “Last chance,” the warden said.

  I didn’t stop. The man’s hand twitched, starting to bring the bow up. He never got it level. I stepped in, faster than anything I’d ever done with my body before the loops, faster even than the night I’d run for the gate with dogs at my back. Dead Step pulled me forward, putting my feet in the place between one heartbeat and the next.

  I went under the bow and into his space, shoulder slamming into his chest. His breath woofed out. His fingers loosened on the shaft.

  The knife went in low. I felt the give of flesh, the hard scrape of cartilage, the sudden warmth on my knuckles. I angled the blade up and in, the way I’d have pushed a stick through a rotten knot in a fence.

  The archer’s smile folded. His mouth opened on a wet gasp.

  “What—”

  I wrenched the knife free. The warden staggered back, clutching at his belly. Dark seeped through his fingers.

  By the inner gate, dice rattled and cards slapped wood. The wardens there laughed over some small joke that had nothing to do with the bodies in the frost.

  “You hear it?” one said. “They told the north garrison to start marching south. Samrajya border. Word is this year’s ‘little skirmish’ wants more bodies.”

  A second snorted.

  “Scared they’ll send you?” he said. “You’d trip on your own spear before you saw a Samraj dog.”

  A third voice joined in.

  “They won’t waste him there,” he said. “They need someone here who pisses himself when the wind changes.”

  Laughter rolled across the yard. I turned toward the sound. Dead Step gathered in my legs, a careful hush along muscles that wanted to tremble. I left the archer sinking against the palisade and moved, keeping low, crossing the strip of open ground between the wall and the crate where they played.

  The lamp on their box threw a crooked pool of light. Beyond it, the yard was shadow and frost. I slid into that edge, close enough now to hear the wet slap of cards, the clack of dice in a cup.

  “Border or no border,” the first warden grumbled, “they don’t pay us enough to bleed for nobles.”

  “You don’t bleed for anyone,” the second said. “You fall over and let your fear leak out instead.”

  They laughed again.

  I came up behind the nearest one. He sat on the crate corner, back loose, shoulders easy, head tipped toward the game. His neck was a pale strip above his collar. I set my hand on his hair and drew his head back.

  The knife crossed his throat in one hard pull. Bone checked the blade for a heartbeat. I dragged on it until something tore. Heat burst over my fist and wrist. His shout turned into a choking gargle and broke off. The cup of dice went over. Wood skidded. Cards scattered.

  “Hey!”

  “Jor?”

  Behind him, the card game finally broke. The man on my left lurched up, hand going for the cudgel at his belt. I shoved the dying warden into his chest. They tangled for an instant in a knot of limbs and spilling blood.

  Huh. Two wardens down in one night. Any wolf back home would’ve called that a good day. I’d trained more. That boy had bled more. Watching him now, I could feel the gap.

  I stepped through them toward the next. This one was quicker. He saw the knife coming and caught my wrist mid-swing, fingers clamping down hard enough to grind bone.

  “Got you,” he snarled.

  The third warden was already hauling his sword free. I tried to rip loose. The man holding me yanked me in close instead, using his grip on my knife hand to drag me off balance. Pain shot up my arm. My fingers spasmed. The knife slipped.

  “There is no running,” he spat in my face. “Not for you. Not for any of you.”

  I stamped at his knee, kicked at his shin, twisted. He rode it out. The sword slid in from the side. Cold punched through my ribs so fast I almost didn’t feel it as pain. My breath went out in one rush. My legs went slack. He let go. I slid down the front of his tunic, leaving a red smear.

  I hit the frost on my knees and stayed there, swaying. I could see Forty-eight lying on his back, eyes fixed on a sky he couldn’t name. The arrow still stood from his chest like an accusation. Eleven lay curled around his own shaft, one hand pressed to his side, trying to keep something important from leaking out.

  They’ll be back on their pallets, I thought. Tomorrow. Breathing. Complaining. Glowering. They won’t remember this. I would.

  The world narrowed. Voices grew distant. The cold deepened before it vanished, leaving only a curious lightness. The yard, the fort, the men, the blood, all shrank.

  I felt the moment when the knot tightened. Then the world snapped. I lay on my thin pallet, staring up at the same cracked plank in the ceiling.

  Forty-eight wheezed softly three beds over. Eleven muttered about someone’s elbow in his ribs and kicked the straw. The bar on the door thudded into place with its familiar uneven drag.

  My chest didn’t hurt. My hands were empty. My heart pounded like I’d run from one end of the steppe to the other. I breathed once. Twice. Then I smiled in the dark.

  “The bar moves,” I whispered to myself. “The archer pisses under the wall. The card players sit by the inner gate.”

  I closed my eyes and saw the yard again, this time with four red marks on it. One by the shadow of the wall. Three by the crate near the gate.

  New knots. I’d untie them. Step by step. Death after death. Until the night I walked out and didn’t snap back at all.

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  They’ve been drinking my future like it’s corp-subsidized coffee. I’m about to make them choke on it.

  I’m Dash. My great-grandfather was one of the Fifteen who saved humanity during the System Apocalypse, founding the corps that rule the solar system. That legacy should’ve been mine. Until my father was disinherited and died, leaving us with nothing but a single building on Earth 2.0.

  My compatibility tested at 17%. Failure. While classmates advanced to System Academy, I got mining school, fighting bugs for drops. But the 17% compatibility score was a lie. A rival corp has been draining my power.

  When a broken System finally manifests, it grants me Hoqalo, a trait to forge gear better than anything factory-made. Now, armed with my tools and my corporate grandmother’s dangerous resources, I’m done fighting for scraps.

  They stole my future. I'm stealing it back with interest.

  | LitRPG | Cyberpunk | Magitech | Underdog | Book 1 Written |