Blitzed (47 page)

T
rembling
, I knocked on Mistress' bedroom door at precisely eight in the evening as she had commanded me to do. Part of my trembling was caused by pure physical exhaustion, as after my normal morning workout, she’d commanded that instead of coming to see her, I was to be working with Sacha. The burly ex-member of the Russian Army was a bear for work, and had taken me along with two other men out into the forest for what he said was both physical labor and training.

“You three may at some point be tasked with accompanying Mistress Svetlana to cities and other areas off of the property,” he began in his barely understandable Ukrainian. “While she has informed me that all of you have the social grace and skills to be a worthy companion, she can’t evaluate you in the area that I and her uncle Vladimir feel is most important.”

“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.

I dropped my bag and assumed a fighting stance, my body falling into patterns that it had known for far longer than I could recall. The first man who approached me I kicked in the side of the knee, buckling the joint and sending him stumbling, grunting at the injury. I stepped back and stomped on his chest, crushing his ribs and driving the wind out of his lungs. He slumped to the turf, and I quickly looked for the next person to fight.

As I fought, I decided that honorable maneuvers were not to be worried about. Instead, I picked up any dropped weapon I could, used every dirty tactic that I could devise, and offered no quarter. When I saw the other candidate get kicked in the balls before being knocked out by an attacker wearing what looked like lead enhanced gloves, I knew I was making the right choice. At least the chump had taken out four men himself before he went down.

I'd like to say that I was able to fight like a demon, battering all of my opponents into unconsciousness without taking a scratch. However, I staggered around, and I struggled to keep my hands up to defend my bleeding and scratched face. My left leg felt like a frozen block of clay after taking a staff blow to the large muscles of my thigh. I thought I looked more like a victim in a zombie movie than a valiant warrior.

The last opponent reached behind his back and pulled out a short sword and brandished it at me, a cocky grin on his face. For my part, all I had was the shivered end of a staff in my right hand and a leather belt in my left that I had wrapped around my forearm to provide some type of shield.

He charged, a loud screaming warcry ripping from his throat as I stepped back, knowing even as I did that my circling escape attempt had been anticipated and before I could recover my balance, the sword plunged into my ribs, piercing me like a kebab.

In a last ditch attempt at preserving my life, I intentionally let my right knee collapse, sending me tumbling to the frozen tundra of the field and rolling me over my right shoulder. My weapon, now uselessly pinned beneath my body, was released as I rolled, praying that my opponent's footing was as firm and balanced as he had at first appeared.

I came around just inside the arc of his swing, my left arm rising in a terse uppercut that caught him between his legs, lifting him up into the air while I regained my feet. My right arm grabbed him as he doubled over, tucking him into my body and completing the half twist, snapping my enemy over. He crashed head first into the turf, his neck taking our combined weights for an instant before buckling, and his spinal column shattered like dropped crystal. In less than a second, what had been a hard, tense bundle of muscle and bone became a seemingly limp sack of meat, and I climbed to my feet slowly, staring down at him. His eyes widened, and his mouth worked for a second before he spasmed once, then collapsed to the turf, dead.

I heard slow clapping, and I turned to see Sacha, his scowl again slightly lessened, spreading his arms and crashing his palms together over and over. It took me a minute before I realized he was applauding me. “Well done. Few have even survived to this point, let alone been victorious. Why did you kill your last opponent?”

I felt sweat mingling with blood as it dripped down my body from my wound, and wiped at my eyes, clearing the sweat. “His sword would have run me through, he was trying to kill me.”

“Do you regret killing him?”

I nodded, then shook my head. “I do, but if the Mistress had been here and he was threatening her, I would have no regrets.”

Sacha nodded. Going over to one of our dropped packs, he opened it up and reached inside, taking out a small towel. He tossed it toward me, where I caught it in the air. “Wipe your face and clean as best you can. The Mistress will be here in five minutes to see the results of your test.”

Exhaustion dropped away with each wipe of my sweat, dirt and blood onto the towel, which had started a soft tan but ended a filthy, nondescript blackened mess. I tossed it into the pack, looking around for the Mistress.

In seconds, I could see a car approaching, a black Mercedes sports car that I had seen around the grounds of the house before. I could see two people inside, and could barely contain my excitement as the car stopped and she got out of the passenger side, her driver staying inside. She was wearing the outfit that I thought looked sexiest on her, a simple pair of pants and a sweater that hugged each generous curve. I held my position, my hands behind my back and my feet rock steady on the ground.

She saw the results of the testing, clucking sadly over the crumpled body of my last opponent while medics came from the army building to assess the injuries of the others. Some were already sitting up while others were still sleeping their lumps off. “Sacha, you always create such a mess when you insist on these tests,” she said, giving him a raised eyebrow. “And how expensive will this one be?”

“Your uncle won’t find it excessive, Mistress Svetlana,” Sacha said. “Only one death, maybe two if that idiot who broke his leg can’t find his way back to the house.”

“That idiot was a graduate of the University of Leipzig, and a European champion in taekwondo,” she corrected him.

I bristled when Sacha laughed. “Then maybe his teacher should have taught him to look where the fuck he was going. It would be a mercy if I were to go back into the woods and shoot him in the head, so he can’t continue to pollute the gene pool.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes before turning her attention to me. “And my new pet? How did he do?”

“Brave one there,” Sacha said. “He’s not bad.”

She smiled and reached up, touching my face. I shivered, blood rushing down below even from the slight caress. “Considering I've never heard you compliment a test taker at all before, I’m impressed,” she said, before lowering her voice to speak directly to me. “You have pleased me.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. “I’m honored.”

“Then when you return to the compound, you will be rewarded,” she said, patting my face. “Maybe I'll let you do something about that bulge growing in your pants.”

She turned to walk away, my eyes fixed on her beautiful figure when I heard a metallic snicking sound behind me, and the ching of a metal tab popping. The grenade arced from out of the left side of my vision, where it bounced once on the ground before rolling to a stop a mere meter from her. “No!”

Without thinking, I jumped, pushing her out of the way even as my body stretched out, flattening itself to land on top of the grenade. I turned my back to her, hoping that if I kept more of my body between her and the grenade, she would be uninjured. I closed my eyes, waiting for the explosion.

It never came. Instead, the next feeling I had was Mistress touching my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to see her genuinely smiling down at me. “It was a dummy grenade. You have passed the last of Sacha's tests.”

I looked down at the ball in my hands, realizing that it was, in fact, just a snap top dummy grenade instead of the real thing. I looked at Sacha, who still held the pin in his hand, and who was now not scowling, but looking at me with a modicum of respect. He came over and helped me to my feet, brushing off my shoulders as he did. “Good, Spartak. There’s hope for you yet.”

Mistress watched us, then touched my shoulder, gaining my attention. “Come to my room at eight, after the dinner meal,” she said, whispering in my ear. “And make sure you are fully bathed and cleaned up.”