Page 16 of Blood Fist

He heard a story once. It was raining, and he had been taking shelter under the broken down back porch of a house. Curled up in the dirt, he heard a man reading a child a story. Or maybe he was telling it frommemory. Brune couldn’t see through the crack in the floorboards. But the story was all about a knight fighting a dragon for a princess.

It ended with a happily ever after, but Brune didn’t think it was all that happy after all. There were so many questions. Why was the dragon guarding the princess? Wouldn’t an evil dragon justeatthe princess? Why spend so much time and effort keeping out other knights? And if the princess was so worthy, why couldn’t she defeat the dragon on her own?

Brune never got an answer to his questions, but he knew one thing for sure—he would rather have someone fight at his side, or no one at all.

The door to the mess hall opened and Brune slung an arm around Niklas’s shoulders. “They are right about one thing. I amalwayswilling to be first in line for food.”

His friend smiled shyly, allowing Brune to drag him to the chow line.

Hunched over his bowl of thin porridge, it took him a moment to notice the change in the air. A tension that wasn’t usually present at breakfast. Niklas was steadfastly staring at his bowl, but everyone else was whispering. Heads popped up, swiveling around before ducking back to continue the train of information.

Brune sat back, looking around until he saw it. The officers. They were acting twitchy, hands resting on their hilts and mouths pressed tight. When they did speak, it was behind a hand to keep it confidential.

“What do you think is going on?” he asked.

“Think I’m eating my breakfast,” Niklas replied lowly, refusing to look up.

“No, I mean with the?—”

“Brune,” his voice was tight. “Nothing good ever happens from sticking your nose in officer business. Just eat.”

Ignoring his friend’s caution, he turned his head to try to catch some of the gossip.

“Ecker said we’re marching out.”

“What the fuck does Ecker know?”

“Nah, c’mon, you know his beta is sleeping with the battalion commander. She told him.”

Brune leaned into their conversation. “Did they say when? Where?”

He was answered with an elbow to the ribs, telling him to back off. He ignored the pain, turning back to Niklas with a broad grin.

Marching out!Finally!Brune had expected little when he joined up, but the idea of getting to leave the city, to finally pass through the massive portcullis and see what was beyond the heavy stone…it was unthinkable. A dream he’d never thought come to reality. The reasons for leaving hardly mattered—he didn’t join up for the cause and he doubted he’d ever really care—but the opportunity to leave, to see a world he couldn’t even imagine That was something he’d fight for.

“Do you think we’ll see the ocean?” he asked Niklas, forgetting his meager breakfast for now. “Or maybe a mountain! They say they’re taller than the walls! Can you imagine that? Something taller than the walls—and not even made by magic!”

Niklas ducked lower. “I think the porridge is especially warm today.”

Brune rolled his eyes at his lack of imagination, dropping his chin to an open palm so he could continue to dream.

But he couldn’t even do that. Brune’s whole life had been dirty cobbled streets in the shadows of walls sohigh he had to crane his neck back to see the top. To think there was a world out there, one so different from the one he knew. It was staggering.

“I wouldn’t get too excited,” Folsom said beside him, scraping his spoon across his bowl. “They’re going to send us to the plains.”

Brune blinked.What’s a plain?He didn’t ask, instead scooting closer. “When?”

“Soon as possible. Battalions three and four are going, too. Seems our good King is finally going to declare open war on those Clansmen bastards.”

His mouth fell open just as Niklas dropped his spoon, eyes wide in shock. Clansmen! They’d heard the stories, of course. Bloodthirsty monsters who consumed the flesh of their dead. Mindless creatures who only thought of violence. Surviving by the mercy of Kaledonea. He knew they’d attacked some Kaledonean patrols recently, but gossip was as unreliable as the water supply in Guttersnipe.

Some of his excitement about adventure waned under the prospect of real fighting. Brune knew that’s what he was being trained to do, obviously, but with fighting came the possibility of losing.

For so many years, he would fall asleep never to be sure he’d wake up. Would hunger steal his life in the night? Would his body rot for days before the cleanup crew came and got him? Sleep always came, and waking would always bring with it a sense of relief and horror. Another day to live through.

Would dying in some plain—whatever that was—miles away be any different? Brune imagined lying on his back, blood seeping from a wound as he watched the clouds roll across a sky unobstructed by the walls. There was no stink of overcrowding, no brazen rats dancing inthe corner of his eye waiting for his final breath to pick him off.

No, there would just be sky.