CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  -Turning the Fort’s Teeth on Themselves

  That night, the barracks was a low murmur of whispers. I lay on my pallet and stared at the door. The ache in my ribs throbbed in time with the distant clink of chains.

  “Hey, Seventeen,” someone hissed nearby.

  Forty-eight. Small voice. Too clear for this place.

  I rolled my head just enough to see him. The boy was smaller than most, all elbows and sharp angles under a blanket that hung too loose on his shoulders. Right now his eyes were wide, catching the thin strip of torchlight that leaked in around the door.

  “Why did you do that?” Forty-eight whispered. “Today. With the bucket.”

  On my other side, the crooked-nose boy snorted softly.

  “He tried to help the dogs,” he muttered. “You saw. They went mad for the meat. He looked right at them.”

  Forty-eight turned his head.

  “Does it hurt a lot?” he asked.

  I let the question hang between us. My ribs pulsed. My back felt like someone had scrubbed it with coarse salt. A month ago, a kick like the one that folded me today would’ve left me choking on my own cries. Now it just sat there, a steady, sour ache. Back then I counted that as proof I was getting tougher instead of asking what it meant that I needed to.

  “Not as much as before,” I said finally.

  Forty-eight frowned.

  “Your mouth,” he said. “You were bleeding when they brought you in.”

  “It’ll stop,” I said. “Sleep.”

  He hesitated before tugging his thin blanket higher. Outside, the dogs shifted restlessly. One barked, twice, then quieted. The barracks door seemed to grow heavier in my eyes. Two problems, I thought. The bar and the dogs.

  I slept. The bell rang.

  The day began again.

  When Rauk shoved a bucket into my hands and jerked his chin toward the ditch, I went again. By now I knew how to make sure the job landed on me: stay close, stay useful, stay just empty enough that Rauk’s eyes would catch on me first. My body fell into the same work as always while my mind picked apart the moment of failure. It hadn’t been just the weight of the bucket. Not just the frozen ruts.

  I could remember the exact sound my bare feet had made when they hit the ground. A flat slap, then a scrape as I pushed off. My shoulders had been tense, hunched. My breath had come too fast. I’d leaned toward the bucket to guard it, making the handle knock against my leg. I sounded wrong before I was even close.

  The next time I steered my path toward the dogs, I slowed my steps to a crawl. I put my toes down first, then my heels, thinking that would help. I tried to keep my shoulders loose, my grip light, my breathing even.

  It didn’t. They still heard me. Heads came up together and went off like a thrown spark in dry grass. The wardens blew up and I went down hard under boots and fists. I slept that night on my side because my back complained when I tried to lie flat.

  The day began again.

  I tried walking on my heels. That only made more noise. I tried keeping all my weight on one foot while I slid the other forward, then swapping. I nearly fell twice. Once, a warden caught me before I hit the ground and shook me like a rag for wasting time.

  The day began again.

  Once, I thought I had it. I crept across a patch of bare earth near the sheds, ribs tight, jaw clenched, eyes on Flea. The dog didn’t move. A stone rolled under my sole. The faint clink of it made Flea’s ear twitch. One bark later, I was on my knees again with someone shouting that if I wanted to crawl so badly, they should just cut my legs off and see how far I got.

  I lost track of how many beating-days there were. After a while the pain all ran together. Faces of wardens came and went. The only things I kept were the moments right before the dogs woke. The feel of the ground under my feet. The angle of my knees. Where my weight sat. It wasn’t enough to just put my feet somewhere else.

  The ground didn’t care how I stepped. It was the dogs I woke. They heard it when my whole body was already tense and noisy about me coming. I thought of nothing else as I worked, as I ate, as I lay half awake in the barracks and listened to the others breathe.

  On one of those half-sleeps, when my body was limp and my mind still gnawed at the problem, a different image slipped in. Wind. Wide sky. The yellow-brown of steppe grass rolling away under the sun. I saw a fox again. Not the one from old stories, the trickster spirit that slipped between yurts and stole eggs. A real one, distant on a slope, nose to the ground.

  I remembered standing beside my uncle, boots too big, hands tucked into my sleeves to keep them warm. My uncle had pointed with his chin.

  “Watch,” he’d said. “Not its feet. Its shoulders.”

  The fox had moved downwind, body long and low. Its head didn’t bob with each step. Its shoulders flowed. The paws touched the earth, rolled, lifted. No jolt through the spine. No sharp shifts. It moved like it owned the ground, not the other way around.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Wolves are the same, my uncle had said. The good hunters, anyway. They don’t stomp. They slide.

  That memory felt cleaner than anything the fort had given me, like something smuggled in from a better world. I woke with my jaw clenched and my hands fisted in the thin blanket. Not just feet, I thought. Back. Hips. Breath.

  The bell rang.

  This time, when I stepped out into the cold, I rolled my shoulders once and let them settle low. I kept my knees loose. I tried to feel my weight sit somewhere between my belly and my spine instead of hanging down in my legs. The yard felt different under me.

  I did my work. I didn’t rush. I let my breath stay shallow and even. When Rauk jerked his chin, I took the offal bucket without flinching.

  “You. Rat. Take this to the ditch. Drop it and come back. Try not to fall in with it.”

  The words came in the same order as before, same as every time. The bucket was heavy, but my hands knew the grip now. I started toward the back of the dog yard. I didn’t look at the dogs at first. I watched the ground. I let each step roll from the front of my foot back, then off again. I didn’t slam my weight down; I laid it. My shoulders stayed level. My hips stayed quiet. Closer.

  Flea was already watching Rauk’s hands. At the first whiff of the new stink his nose twitched, a string of saliva slipping from his jaws to darken the dirt. His eyes stayed fixed on the knife and the slabs of meat, but his whole body tightened a fraction, as if some part of him knew there was more food just out of sight.

  My heart climbed into my throat and sat there. I swallowed it down and kept moving. The chain gave a faint clink as Flea shifted in place, claws scraping once at the ground without stepping closer. Not yet. Not yet. Just smell it. Look at him, not at me.

  The bucket brushed my knee once. I adjusted my grip to stop it from knocking again. My breath came in slow, thin pulls through my nose. I pictured my spine as a straight, heavy line and my body hanging from it like a frame, not bouncing around it. I took one more step, then another, counting each one in my head. Flea’s ears pricked. The dog’s nostrils flared wider. He lifted his head and sniffed. He didn’t bark.

  I stopped for the barest fraction of a moment, angled the bucket out, and tipped its contents in a quick, thick slide. Offal hit the dirt with a wet slap halfway between the chains and the ditch. Close enough that the stink shot up sharp, far enough that no jaw could reach it without dragging the peg near to breaking.

  I didn’t wait to admire my aim. I lifted the now-empty bucket and kept walking toward the ditch, pace steady, shoulders even. Behind me, I heard the first growl. I didn’t look back until I’d dumped the thin smear of remaining grease into the water and turned.

  Flea had already lunged forward, claws scraping for purchase. The chain strained. The peg creaked. The other dogs had picked up the scent now. Their eyes were wild, teeth flashing white. They threw themselves toward the pile of meat and gristle, each jerk of their bodies driving the pegs deeper before loosening them as the frozen earth cracked and shifted.

  “Hey!” one of the wardens yelled. “Down! Back!”

  They didn’t listen. Flea’s peg tore free first with a dry, tearing noise. He stumbled, then surged. The chain snapped across the dirt like a flung whip. He hit the offal in a slide, jaws working. Another dog slammed into him a heartbeat later, teeth going for the same mess. They tangled in a blur of fur and noise. A third dog broke free. Chains clattered. Pegs toppled. The yard flooded with snarling bodies.

  Wardens swore and scrambled. One grabbed for a chain and got his hand clipped between teeth for the trouble. Another waded in with a club, swinging, trying to break the fight apart.

  “Get them off each other! Get them tied!”

  The overseer’s voice cracked across the yard like a whip. Men shouted back. Clubs rose and fell. The air filled with the high, pained yelps of dogs and the ugly thud of wood on flesh.

  I stood near the ditch and watched. It was a mess. Ugly and necessary. I’m sorry, I thought, and the feeling sat heavy in my chest. I’m going to need you tired.

  Something shifted at the edge of my vision, as if the air itself had drawn a slow breath.

  [Skill acquired: Novice Dead Step.]

  [Death walks without warning.]

  A prickle ran up my spine. My body felt the same and not the same. The way my feet met the ground felt different now, steadier, more precise. That was the first time any kind of reason started to take shape. The skills that had flashed past me before, the ones I couldn’t touch, stopped feeling like stray accidents and more like pieces that were meant to fit here instead. Maybe this First Passage was supposed to end with that first death and simply never did. Maybe that’s why it’s running so long now: the missing day I skipped, dragging itself out so I can catch up to the things I somehow grabbed on the Second Passage. I still don’t know if that guess is right, but it fits better than anything else I have.

  Dogs and men churned the offal into the dirt until it was nothing but a dark stain. When the frenzy finally broke, the wardens dragged the animals back to their pegs, cursing, bleeding, shaking. Flea’s side was striped with fresh welts. One of his ears bled. His tongue lolled as he panted, chest heaving. He sank to his belly as soon as they tied him down again.

  The overseer stalked over, boots squelching in the mess.

  “What in all hells was that?” he snapped.

  Rauk wiped his knife on his apron and jerked his chin toward the dogs.

  “They went mad over something,” he said. “Maybe saw a rat, maybe caught a scent. Whatever it was, they tore it up and each other with it. There’s nothing left but blood.”

  The overseer spat into the mud.

  “Get them away,” he said. “Lock them in the pens until we can reset the pegs. No scraps tonight. If they want to bite something, let them bite their own tongues.”

  The wardens grumbled but did as they were told, unhooking chains from the loosened pegs and dragging the dogs toward the rough plank pens by the far wall. Each animal got at least one last kick for good measure. By the time it was done, the animals weren’t watching anything. Heads on paws. Eyes half-lidded. Every breath looked like it hurt.

  I slipped back into the edge of Rauk’s shadow as the overseer turned away.

  “Bucket,” Rauk grunted without really looking at me.

  I crossed the churned patch at my usual nothing-to-see-here pace. Flea was already being dragged toward the rough plank pens with the others, stumbling on unsteady legs, head hanging low. I kept my eyes on the ground and the bucket in my hand.

  When the overseer finally turned away, I walked back to Rauk’s spot by the cookhouse wall and set the empty bucket down where he liked it. I got no more than a snort for my trouble. No one spared me a second look. There was too much noise and blood on the ground for that.

  My ribs were whole. My back was clean. My legs were steady. Two problems, I thought, as I glanced once more at the barracks door and the bar that would rest across it tonight.

  I’d thought about the roof. The ceiling above my pallet was nothing but cracked boards and old nails; in places I could almost see the night thinning between them. But anything big enough to crawl through would mean prying boards loose, dropping splinters and dust onto thirty sleeping boys and making enough noise to wake half the fort. The walls weren’t any kinder: thick planks sunk deep into posts, gaps packed with old straw and dirt. Digging at them with bare hands would only leave blood on the wood and give the overseer another reason to beat me.

  The dogs were done. Now I had to learn how to lift a bar from the wrong side of the door. Watching that me on the First Passage, I can’t help being a little impressed by his stubborn creativity. I don’t know what he’s going to try next, but I want to see it.