Blitzed(148)
“Which is?” one of the other men, Yvgeiny, asked.
“Vladimir Ilyushin is a man whose business puts him in contact with dangerous individuals,” Sacha replied patiently, like a teacher trying to reach a rather dull pupil. “She’s the closest thing he has to a daughter, and sometimes seen as a target of opportunity by Vladimir's rivals. It will be your job, as her companion and escort, to serve and protect her.”
I nodded, eager to prove my worth. Just the thought of not only being near the Mistress but to stop those that wished to hurt her left my pulse rushing. Sacha, despite his trollish exterior, was intelligent and saw my expression for what it was. “Slow down, pet,” he jeered, refusing to use my name. “Just because you may have the opportunity to be her arm candy doesn’t make you worthy.”
“I understand,” I said in my best attempts at speaking Russian. My accent was horrible, and I was sure my pronunciation was garbled, but he got my meaning. “What do we do?”
“First, let's see how well you can keep up,” he said, pointing. He turned and started running through the woods, away from the river and toward the far off mountains, misty and unfocused in the far distance. The three of us candidates were all wearing fifteen-kilogram backpacks, while Sacha was wearing just the hiking boots and Russian Army fatigue pants that we also wore. Still, he set a hellacious pace, bounding over rocks and fallen trees in the old forest.
It was truly old. Privately owned, the last time someone had cut any significant number of trees here was perhaps when the Soviet Army and the Nazis were fighting in the bitter winter cold, and maybe even not then. Trees fell over when the winter ice and snow bade them to fall, and not before. The foliage was dark, deep, and it was easy to not see where you were going. Ruts in the forest floor weren't visible until it was too late, and in less than a mile, Yvgeiny fell, tumbling to the dirt and screaming. I heard the dry cracking sound that I assumed was his ankle, or perhaps a dry pine branch that he'd stepped on, but I didn’t give him even a backward glance, my eyes fixed on the form of Sacha ten meters ahead of me. Getting lost in this forest was almost a certain death sentence, especially hungry, tired, and with night temperatures dropping well below freezing.
For some reason, a reason that tickled the back of my mind where my old life lay, I knew that the reason I was able to move so well in the darkness was because I had done blackout training of some type before. I didn't quite remember where, but the scent of wood and dirt was familiar to me as I ran, hopping a branch that was mostly covered in pine needles and then vaulting a fallen log. Sacha spared us a glance back and poured on the speed, extending his gap to fifteen meters before I had a chance to adjust my pace. He was trying to exhaust us, and doing a good job of it.
My legs were already tired from my morning exercise session, which had thankfully been inside using squats and the kettlebells, but the run was turning the tiredness into white hot agony that coursed through my muscles with every step. Still, I dared not slacken my pace, or else Sacha would disappear into the forest, and if I got back to the house I doubted I would be greeted well if I got back at all. Regardless, I'd have lost my chance to be closer to my Mistress, and that I would never allow.
Time lost all meaning as we pounded our way through, the sort of place that inspired the old tales of werewolves and vampires. Those too tickled at the back of my mind but were less important than the Russian in front of me.
Suddenly, we broke out of the woods, into a large open field that looked like it had once been some sort of airport or something. Sacha went on another fifty meters, then stopped. The other remaining recruit and I came to a halt, the breath searing our lungs with every inhalation and exhalation. I wanted to drop face first to the ground, to vomit what I had left of my second meal onto the dirt between my feet. Instead, I put my hands on my hips and forced my shoulders back, both to show strength and to let my lungs gulp more of the precious air.
Sacha looked, if not impressed, at least less disgusted by us than he had when we took off on the run. “You maggots can at least keep up,” he said. “But can you fight?”
He turned his back, sweeping his arm to indicate the space behind us. “This area, it used to be a Soviet army base,” he said, indicating the older buildings that were about a hundred meters distant. “Three generations of Red Army soldiers trained and lived here, ready to defend Mother Russia in case NATO or someone equally stupid decided to try what Napoleon and Hitler couldn't. Here, boys became men, and men became supermen. The process was simple, not complex, in the way that the Russians have done for millennia. You learn by doing, and let Darwin's laws weed out the weak. That Englishman may have put the rules to paper first, but Mother Russia knew them before paper was even invented.”
“What do you ask of us?” I asked, happy to be able to form words again. I knew that his speech was mostly for our benefit, to give us a chance to recover some, but there was a meaning in it, words to it that I wanted to get to the heart of.
“It is simple,” he said, reaching into the right front pocket of his trousers and pulling out a silver plated whistle. “Drop your bags, you won’t need them. Then, the only rule is to survive.”
Sacha put the whistle in his mouth and blew it three times, the sharp tone piercing the frigid air and carrying for a long distance. The door to one of the abandoned buildings opened and nearly two dozen men poured out, some of them armed, some of them not. Sacha looked at us with an evil smirk on his thick lips and pointed to them with his open hand, as if inviting us to a feast.