Yvan Dragomilov - A Death at Daybreak

Even as he readied himself for death---continuing, nonetheless, the struggle to free his arm from whatever entangled it---something within the warrior heart that was Eugene the Sorokin's decided to deal with death instead.

"Desist, bandit!" The Genrichian cried out the words with an earnestness that, had his opponent but known what to listen for, bordered close upon an odd kind of desperation. "Desist and live, I say to you!"

Only the Sorokin's decades of training and inborn indomitable pride kept him from making it. "I beg you!" It had not been, truthfully, so much a shout of offered mercy, although the desire he held dearest was not to add another life to his account, as the direst of warnings. Irresistible forces, deep-grained and dormant within him, were seeking release. Yet the only answer he got was another burst of purge-field energy, thrust in mortal fear and murderous anger at the lawful Oligarch-Hereditary of Genrich.

Even so, it is one thing to give offers and another to make good on them. For all his fears and merciful intentions, the Sorokin was discovering (as before, upon countless occasions) that he could neither resign himself to oblivion, either his own or that of his enemy, nor yet prevent an unlooked-for but inexorable killing. It was, he knew, an ancient conflict within him, deadly in potential to anyone for whom survival hung upon decisive action. Still, the wordless argument was worn smooth as a river stone with the passage of years and the letting of much blood. And experience speaking---as it must---louder than intentions, the conflict could be resolved in one manner only.

Thus, despite any charitable limits he had set for himself---firstly because he had never in his life delivered a mortal blow with a light heart, also because he desired an informative word with this would-be assassin---through no choice of his own, he began to bear harder upon the man, working him faster, watching his vain struggle to regain the initiative, while he, the Sorokin, tried in simple to save the idiot from himself. Still, if need be, it was the other fellow who would die this starry night.

Round they danced through the darkness upon dew-damp grass, in and out of churned soil which came close to being mud. The elder Sorokin, no longer a young man, found himself starting to tire. This did not frighten him as it might many another, but served as a sign, bidding him to realize the moment had arrived, all best wishes to the contrary, to put an end to folly. Nor breath had had he remaining to warn the other guy further, nor time to speak again in offer of charity or quarter. Reflex followed stimulus.

"Premier!" he groaned with disappointment, seeing almost as a detached witness to the exercise of his own deadly skill, the spectacle peculiar to a fight with quickblades between two talented opponents. Adroit with counterthrust and secondary field as both combatants were, no blow could tell between them unless placed as this one had been. It seemed, he thought, as if the other had stumbled, full faced, upon the gruesome stub of an invisible tree branch, or been struck upon the bridge of the nose by a well-placed hammer. Reflex demanded a successful coup be followed with another for effect.

It seemed, he thought, continuing to seek metaphors less horrible than the grim reality before him, as if one of the fragile masks popular on Romanova had been crushed in from the nose by careless packing in a sailing chest. To the Sorokin, his perceptions speeded by adrenaline pumping in his arteries, it seemed he could see his weapon's purge-wavefront sinking deeper until, no longer able to bear the titanic pressures imposed upon it, the bandit's head exploded in a night-blackened fog of blood and pureed brains. He let his arm drop to his side. The fight was over and, with it, his hope of solving the mystery of the ambush upon the lodka which had borne his sons---his sons---(safe, as it had turned out, did they survive this night's mischief) to him. The bandit's truncated body, streaming blood, dead before it had stopped thrusting at him, pitched over with a splash onto the muddy ground.

Heart hammering, lungs heaving, the Sorokin, far gone in pain and conscious at the moment of his years, would have given much to follow its example, to toss himself upon the cool, soggy grass till vision cleared and ears ceased ringing. Yet he could not allow himself the briefest respite. Minutes ago (it seemed like hours to him), he'd been distracted by destructive flares upon the other side of the roadcut, and, he believed, one far below. He must somehow drag himself onward in case young Eugene needed help.

Sweat broke from his hairline, blinding him further, and poured down the back of his neck. Heat radiated from his face as if he had been sunburned. Summoning every particle of energy and moral strength remaining to him, he rose from the half-slump he'd assumed, and took a first step forward.

Gene, you are not getting any younger, I fear, thought one isolated corner of his mind which at all times stayed detached and amused. He took a second step, then a third. Farcing about is for the young men, he lectured himself. If you intend dying in bed, you must abandon this nonsense. You are a responsible married man again, already past the proper age to settle down---a fourth step found his strength beginning to return---and by the Premier's loins, before this evening I had reason to believe I had done!

Now, his blood still singing from exertion, still chiding himself for what he deemed a foolish weakness for adventure, the Sorokin knew only his duty. Growing stronger with each step, he staggered the short distance to the bandit's smoking corpse, knelt with a heartfelt groan which spoke for every muscle in his body, and stripped the quickblade off its already cooling arm. Too dangerous and powerful were those things to be left lying around. Rising with the same eloquent noise, he seized the dripping carcass by the heel-cuff and began dragging it down the slope into the bed of the roadcut where it could be watched over by others. It was, he was grateful to realize, less hard a task than he'd anticipated. He was faster to regain his breath and composure than he had expected. It paid, he thought, to stay in shape.

Finding none to meet him at the bottom, he left the body upon a heap of stones, crossed the cut, and had taken the first leg-straining, reluctant step upward, when he heard a familiar voice below him and to one side.

"Father?"

He stopped. "Adam, is it?"

"Da, Father. No need to climb, unless more bodies you want to collect."

Without thinking, Sorokin tossed the extra quickblade to his son and stepped down to meet him. "I see. How fares your brother?" Ada was quiet a long moment, as though wrestling with conflicting thoughts. "Well?!"

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Flare and noise of canceling blades came to the droilodka across the verts separating it from the roadcut. Those aboard ceased their chatter, glancing with varying apprehension at each other. They stayed seated at the rear---maybe in deference to Zaytseva who could not take himself towards the bow as it was clear his daughter and their two guests wished to do---and peered forward into the glare-illuminated night, straining to make out what was happening with the Sorokins, who had left them behind. Destructive light flared harsh again, this time upon the opposing promontory, followed in a heartbeat by the booming, echo-chased, which was all the muffling dampness of the night allowed passage of.

Left behind with the others, as though he were as useless as they, and no son to his father, Zakh was furious. Even his patience, odd in depth and span for a boy his age, had spent itself. Trusting the preoccupied adults (so-called, he thought with a mental sneer) to continue ignoring him, he arose from the chair he had so long occupied behind the inert steering pedestal, thankful that the droilodka had been powered down. The resulting darkness served his purpose well.

Sidling to the left, out of the others' field of view, staying close beside the starboard wall rather than walking down the middle aisle towards them, he ambled with a painstaking indifference afterward, towards the open hatch-ladder. Against the small chance he should be noticed, he played the part of the bored and restless little boy which, to a degree, he was, the difference being that most bored and restless little boys would have lacked the purpose which the darkness and distraction served.

He reached a point abaft of the cluster of adults and crossed the center where the hatch-ladder yawned, its free end resting a measure and a half below upon the ground. Here, he thought without pausing in his progress, was a case in point and vindication, and why he thought of adults as "so-called." Had he been in charge, with his guests, his father-in-law, his bride aboard to worry over, unarmed and undefended (except, he snorted, by a 12-year-old to whom the task had been delegated as a sop to keep him from underfoot), this access would have been secured before he went a'chasing bandits. Zakh meant no conscious criticism of his father. He suspected such instruction had been issued, only to be neglected by his brothers, their blood up for the hunt.

Now he squatted, as if in a trench, within the well formed by the open ramp, eyes level with the lodka's deck. With a last glance at the passengers, thankful for their preoccupation, and for the virtual invisibility which adult minds could be relied upon to lend a lad of twelve, he crept the rest of the way down the ladder and into the night.

Outside, it was silent. Beneath the smooth-curved wirewoven belly of the craft, the air was damp----his second-best tunic stuck to his skin like a workshirt---wrapped in the stillness anticipatory of dawn. Zakh was not surprised to discover it felt no difference once he had made his shuffling, hunched-over way from under the damaged vehicle and stood up to his modest but more comfortable full height in the greenway.

Yet, as his father was relearning at this moment, anticipation is never quite the same as realization. Insufficient light filtered down from haze-masked stars and moonring to see by, even had he known where he was going and what he intended once he got there. Even this faint aid failed him before long. Not far from the lodka, he caught a toe and stumbled over something in his way. He fell hard, desperate to stifle a cry of surprise and pain. Lying quiet a moment, feeling foolish and ashamed, he struggled to hold back tears, biting his lower lip as he had heard was useful in the effort. This proved not to be the case, but only added to the pain of abraded knees and elbows, although several deep breaths regained for him a measure of composure.

Another moment passed. Zakh picked himself up, invulnerable to injury as boys are wont to be, and upon this account mostly unhurt. He discovered he had his right hand wrapped about a stout stick, half his height in length and almost as big as his wrist, with peeling bark and jagged ends where it'd broken off. It was not from the earlier explosion, for the wood was dry, horn-hard, weather-seasoned to his touch. Maybe, he thought, he had misgauged his luck. Although dried by the elements, the object in his hand had a certain encouraging heft. He swung it a couple of times to get the feel, making it whoosh with menace through the air, and stayed satisfied with his find. What was even better, he thought with boyish viciousness, several projections where smaller branches had been stubbed off gave it teeth of a kind. It was a better weapon than the empty hand's he'd begun with.

This time, he gave the places where he put his feet more than casual consideration and had soon reached the spot where the greenway plunged into the utter blackness of the roadcut, the sides of which swooped towards thin crests where small, fierce battles had just been fought. By this time his eyes had adjusted to all but the darkness of the cut itself. As he heard voices coming to him from a fair distance to one side, he ducked backward into the dew-damp and scratchy but concealing embrace of a nearby bush.

"Bother!" At least Zakh believe that was the word he'd hurt uttered. It seemed a niggardly kind of epithet for a woodsjacking bandit, hissed between clenched teeth and tinged with considerable fear. A pause, and it was answered by a second voice, further away, unrecognizable in the distance, colored with fatigue and caution, instead of fear.

"Trouble, is it?"

"I say bother! No need to climb, unless it's more corpses you wish to collect."

Panic swept through Zakh. He heard the clatter of metal tossed from one of the speakers to the other. Loot, maybe, something which had belonged to his father or one of his brothers? Maybe one of their quickblades?

"I see," the second voice responded in a rumbling whisper Zakh could scarcely make out, although he began to discern shadows in the direction it came from. They were between him and the road, his only avenue back to the droilodka. "How fare the others?"

Silence reigned for a long moment. Zakh didn't wait for a reply which, with proper understanding, might have allayed his apprehension, but crept from the bush toward the right-hand crest. Maybe they would not look for him there if everyone as the first voice had implied, was dead. He had to make sure of that before anything else. But how to get back and warn the droilodka?

Zakh's worry increased with each measure he climbed from the greenway. With every step he imagined greater terrors following upon his heels. Gone from his mind was every thought of caution. By the time he reached the summit, he was running, leaping, by chance or some remnant survival instinct missing every obstacle in his path. A moment arrived when he discovered he had left his windfallen weapon behind in the bush. He sobered, stopped his hysterical, dangerous plunge through the dark, and threw himself upon the ground so as not to present an inviting, silhouetted target.

He gasped in shock: his run had brought him to the brink. One foot hung in space, and he could hear the fall of dislodged gravel. Also, a voice: "Father?" It was his brother, below and to one side where only empty space should be, sounding weak and injured, or maybe just awakening.

"Eugene!" Zakh's voice was a whisper in unconscious imitation of the voices he'd heard below.

"Zakh? Is it you, Zakh? What...."

"Silence!" the younger ordered and in contradiction, "Where are you?"

Eugene took a while replying. "I've fallen over a cliff. Not far, judging by your voice. I've been hanging for the longest time from a tree root. I believe I was unconscious, although how I managed to hang...."

"Silence!" Again the issued order, his older brother's obedience instantaneous and unquestioning. "Someone is behind me," cautioned the youngest of the Sorokin brothers, "at the least, two of them, I do not know how, Eugene, but I shall get you up somehow."

Thinking that a large stick like the one he'd abandoned might be useful in pulling his brother up the face of the roadcut and to safety---he gave no thought as to where he would acquire the strength to use it, although he should have, Eugene outweighing him as he did by 20 weights---Zach rose, cautious as could be, intending to creep into the trees that stood twelve paces away. The boy's knees had not quite straightened when, in a heart-stopping instant, he felt a broad, powerful hand descend upon his shoulder.

"Zakh!" As if by a miracle, the voice was his fathers. "What in the name of the Premier," it demanded, "are you doing up here?"

A Death at Daybreak

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