CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  -Two Problems: Crossbar and Dogs

  Porridge, then the line, then cold air on my face as we shuffled out into the yard. Frost bit into the cracked skin of my bare feet. Breath steamed in pale puffs in front of the boys’ faces. Someone coughed. Someone else cursed under his breath when a chain tugged at his ankle. I let myself be carried along with the others, shoulders hunched, head down. My tongue still tasted faintly of iron, a leftover memory of blood from a night that had already been erased.

  Gate. Ditch. Wall. Dogs. River. Roof. I’d died on all of them. I saw them in order as the line moved. The gate with its heavy crossbeam and narrow killing lane. The ditch, dark beyond the yard, jagged ice along its edge. The palisade with the thin walk where wardens paced. The circle of chained dogs. The slow black water of the river. The granary roof, high and waiting to break a neck.

  I’d tried running in full daylight, with everyone watching. I’d tried in the gray smear between bell and dusk. I’d tried when my chest burned with nothing but anger and the need to move. Every time, the fort had reached out and closed its hand around me. Watching it now, it’s almost impressive how patient the place was. It never hurried. It just kept catching.

  They watched the gates. They watched the ditch. They watched the wall. They watched the river path. I lifted my eyes just enough to see where the wardens stood. Two by the gate, spears planted, eyes on the road. One on the wall walk, bow unstrung but close to hand. Another by the ditch, pretending to piss while he scanned the line. Others scattered, boots white with frost where they stamped for warmth.

  None of them looked back at the barracks now that it was empty. No one spared the closed door a glance. Their attention clung to the places where slaves turned into problems: gaps, edges, ways out. They don’t watch us when they think we’re put away.

  My gaze slid back to the door we’d just come through. In my mind I saw the bar that sat across it on the inside of the yard. A single length of old, thick wood resting in iron brackets. I’d watched it drop into place every night from the yard. I’d felt it thud through the frame from inside when the overseer sealed us in.

  If I want to go, I have to go then. When they shove us in and drop the bar. When they think the day is done. When the others sleep. When the wardens are at their laziest. When the fort’s eyes slide past the slave barracks and never look in.

  Two problems sat in my head like stones. The bar on the door. The dogs outside it.

  I’d heard them every night. Chains clinking. Low growls. The sharp bark that made half the room flinch in their sleep. Flea and the others lay almost directly across from the barracks entrance, chained to pegs in the packed earth. If I lifted the bar and stepped outside in the dark, I’d walk straight into their teeth. Even if I get the bar up, the first step outside will wake them. They bark, the bastards shout, the overseer comes. Back to the knot. I breathed out slowly. Cold air scraped my throat. So. Two problems. The bar and the dogs. For now, only one of them was standing in front of me.

  Porridge slopped into wooden bowls ahead. The line crawled forward, boys taking their rations and peeling off toward the eating corner. I took my bowl when it came, swallowed without tasting, and slid back into the flow of bodies heading out into the yard.

  Rule one: never be the first or the last in the line. I found my usual place in the middle. Not the quickest. Not the slowest. Nothing to make me stand out if I could help it. My eyes did their work while my hands did the overseer’s.

  [Error: Deviation exceeds recorded parameters.]

  [Note: Observer bias detected.]

  [Calculating rollback...]

  [Rollback failed.]

  [Observer anchor: locked.]

  [Continuing desynchronized branch.]

  For a breath the sound cut out. No chains, no dogs, no boys. When it came rushing back, I knew there was something wrong. The day went on anyway, without a pause, and all I could do was move with it.

  Across the yard, Flea raised his head as the line passed. Scarred muzzle. Nicked ear. Chain running from his collar to a peg half-buried in frozen dirt. The other dogs lay in a rough arc, all of them facing the slave barracks, all of them with the door in sight. They’re not there to guard the granary. They’re there to keep us from spilling out.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rauk sat on his stool by the cookhouse wall, knife already busy. Steam curled from the pot beside him. I watched the man work whenever I could. Rauk never rushed. He cut meat from bone in long, easy strokes. Good pieces went into one tub. The rest he scraped into a separate bucket with the back of the blade. Guts, fat, stringy bits, gristle.

  Offal. On one of the days that kept restarting, I’d seen only the frozen smear of guts where someone had spilled a bucket in the yard, well away from the dogs. I’d kept that detail. Even rotting scraps like that might be enough to drag hungry animals out of position if I could find a way to put them closer.

  I watched Rauk flick another mess of tendon and fat into the bucket. It landed with a wet sound. You keep what you want. You throw the rest away. Something mean woke up behind my ribs. If I bring the thrown-away part closer to them, they’ll pull harder. They’ll break their chains or choke on them. The wardens will beat them, drag them, wear them out. Maybe both.

  I couldn’t move the pegs. I couldn’t risk throwing meat so far that it bounced back within easy reach. But if I could get that bucket near enough to smell and just out of reach of their jaws, the dogs would do the rest. First, I need the offal. Then I need to get it there without sounding like a herd of oxen.

  The overseer barked orders and the morning broke apart into tasks. Carry this. Stack that. Drag sacks. Sweep. The usual.

  I kept my pace steady. Not fast, not slow. Eyes counting as always. Distance from Rauk’s stool to the dog yard. Distance from the dog yard to the barracks door. How many steps I could take before a warden’s eye might snag on me if I drifted too far from where I was supposed to be.

  Whenever the work shifted, I let myself edge a little closer to Rauk’s corner. Never so close it looked like I was hovering. Just close enough that when the bastard snapped for help, I could be one of the bodies in reach.

  By the time the offal bucket was half full, most boys nearby were already bent under sacks or hauling crates toward the granary. Rauk spat, lifted his head, and looked for whoever was left. His gaze caught on me, a few strides away with empty hands and chain slack.

  Rauk wiped his wrist across his nose and jerked his chin.

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

  The bucket handle bit into my fingers. The stink rolled up into my face, thick, heavy. The ditch ran behind the dogs and out past the far side of the yard. I’d taken waste there before, spilling it over the edge and watching it slide toward the river.

  Today, I shifted my grip so the bucket hung low and close to my leg. The line of dogs drew a different path in my head. If I walked the first stretch as usual, then drifted out while Rauk’s back was turned, I could come up along the far side of their circle. Close enough to let the stink fall almost behind them. Not too close, or it’d look wrong. Close enough that they smelled it. Close enough that they forgot everything else.

  I waited until Rauk bent over his work again and the overseer’s attention slid toward the gate. Then I breathed out and started walking. The first few steps I took straight toward the ditch, the same way I’d done it a dozen times before. My chain kissed my ankle once. I let it. The sound vanished into the scrape of feet and muttered curses all over the yard.

  Three, four strides past Rauk, I began to drift toward the dogs, angling my path so it looked like I was only stepping around a patch of bad ground. A shallow angle at first, just enough to look like I avoided a rut. Each step I tried to put my foot down softer. Less heel, more front of the foot. Keep the links from ringing. Keep the bucket from knocking.

  A lifetime of walking the usual way fought me. The yard dirt was frozen and uneven. My bare feet slipped, skidded, caught. The chain between shackle and belt whispered, then gave a louder clink when I misjudged a step.

  Flea’s head snapped up. The dog’s nostrils flared. For a heartbeat he stared past Rauk and the meat block, eyes fixed on the sway of the bucket and the thin trail of stink behind it. Not yet. Not yet. I’m not close enough.

  I took another careful step, trying to roll my weight the way I remembered a fox moving on a slope years ago. The bucket shifted anyway. The rim clipped my knee with a dull tap. The mess inside sloshed. A thicker wave of smell broke free. All at once, every head along the chain-circle swung toward me.

  Shit. The first bark came from a brown bitch near the end. High, sharp, afraid and hungry at once. Flea let out a deep, raw sound that cut across the yard. Chains rattled as all of them threw themselves forward, bodies hitting the ends hard enough to spray dirt.

  “Hey!” A warden near the granary turned. “What are you doing there?”

  Too late.

  “Back in line, shit-rat!” another shouted. Boots scraped.

  I froze, bucket heavy in my hands. The stink, the cold, the burn in my arms, the dogs’ noise, boots coming up behind me, all of it crashed together. What was I supposed to say? That I’d taken a wrong step? That I felt like feeding the dogs? There was nowhere to go that wouldn’t make it worse. For a heartbeat, my mind gave me nothing.

  The first blow landed across my shoulders. Fire ran down my spine. The bucket flew from my hands. Meat and scraps splattered across the dirt. A second strike glanced off my jaw, snapping my head sideways and filling my mouth with blood. A third drove a knee into my gut. The world narrowed to that point of pain.

  I didn’t die. Not this time. They didn’t bother. They beat me until the dogs settled. Until my legs shook and my breath came in ragged gasps. Until the overseer snapped that it was enough and told them to get me moving or leave me where I lay.

  I spent the rest of the day tasting blood at the back of my throat. Each breath scraped like sand. Every stretch of my shoulders burned where the blows had landed. It wasn’t a graceful failure. But it was the first time the fort had hit me for trying and hadn’t killed me for it.

  Watching it now, I can see the shape of it. Not a wasted attempt. A test. A bad first draft of something that might work later, if that me on the First Passage ever learns how to turn this place’s habits against itself. That me didn’t know any of that. All he knew was that when the shouting and the blows finally stopped, he could still stand, and that meant he had one more chance to learn.