The Brat's Final Gambit

Bug ran and Card followed. Behind her, she thought she heard Niam’s voice, but the sound of her own panicked breathing muffled out everything except what was around her. Card’s footsteps fell like horse’s hooves as he drew closer, so Bug desperately kicked off her shoes as she ran, hoping to gain any advantage in speed she could find. Someone as heavy as Card shouldn’t be able to keep up with her! As she lengthened her stride to gain speed, she realized that his legs were longer.

“Leave me alone!” Bug screamed. “Go away Card!”

Nearby someone laughed. Anger flared inside of Bug’s heart. Couldn’t people see that she was terrified—running for her life? As she tore down an alley that led into a maze of narrow streets and tightly packed houses, Bug looked around desperately for anything that might help her. Ahead of her, the alley turned sharply, and Bug burst around it like a bat exploding from a smoke-filled tunnel. To her right, the skeletal husk of a wall stood open where the outer portion of a building was being remodeled. Dozens of wooden planks leaning against naked timbers flashed by as she sped past them. She caught a fleeting image of pointed nails sticking out of wooden flesh like iron thorns. She stopped quickly.

As Card bore down on her, she frantically began knocking the planks to the ground, working rapidly to make sure as many of the boards as possible lay with nails pointing up. Card’s footfall grew louder. Without looking back, Bug sprinted out of the alley and into a narrow street. She did not wait to see of her little trick worked. As she knocked over the boards, Card’s footsteps weren’t the only thing Bug heard. Card was breathing much harder than she was. If he stepped on a nail, there was a chance she could outdistance him. All she had to do was stay ahead of him and run longer than he did.

The street widened a little, and another street intersected it. Bug took the one to the right. More streets and alleys crisscrossed this one. Bug jig-sawed her way through a number of corners and turns. If Card wanted to catch her, she was going to make him work for it.

At last, the houses suddenly ended and Bug realized she had reached the edge of Pirim Village, about a half-mile from where Corey and the horse waited. A small bridge crossed over a meager steam, and Bug thought about trying Niam’s trick from several weeks ago, but she remembered how trapped he said he had had been once Salb began pushing the sword blade between the timbers, so she chose to leave the roadside and run along the partially concealed stream bank instead.

Not until she had run half the distance did she stop to look behind her, and she felt alone. So terribly alone. But no one followed. Bug cast her eyes about, expecting Card to burst out of thin air at any moment. Shaking, she wasted no time making her way back to the barn. Ahead, Corey lounged on a stack of crates where he held the horse’s line. Relief wouldn’t come though. Bug wasn’t going to relax until she was at home with the door bolted behind her—if even then. The pain of running made her legs feel wobbly and unsteady as she sprinted into the stable yard. When Corey looked up at her and smiled dumbly.

Bug ignored the expression on his face, and batted away a pang of guilt she felt. “We’ve got to go!” she shouted, and Corey just looked at her. Bug came to a slow stop and waved her hands at him in a shooing gesture. “Come on! Get the horse saddled!” At any moment Card might find them, and the desperation gnawed at her insides.

Wishing she could just slip out of the present moment, a hysterical urge to run for home occurred with such a comforting smoothness that she nearly gave into it and sped away. If she left . . . if she just ran and cut across fields and through the forest, she could be home before Card ever had a chance to corner her. Safety curled up in her room. Her heart ached to hide beneath warm blankets and shut all of this away like a bad dream.

She could do that, she knew. Images of her bed gave way to memories of Corey ramming his head against a wooden post. She wanted to run, to see the winding road leading to her home, and to fly into her father’s arms. These thoughts warred within her, and a stinging shame spread across her face. Fat drops of tears welled at the lower lids of her eyelids and ran in warm, blotchy patterns down her cheeks.

Bug looked at Corey where he stood, seeming to stare dumbly at everything and nothing. Anger flared within her chest. “Stop staring and get the saddle!” she screamed. The urge to run away and leave him burned her. It was his fault she couldn’t run home.

Corey slowly transferred the lead-line to his other arm and slipped the halter off. Bug snatched it from him. “Go get the saddle!” she snapped. “We don’t have the time to waste!” When Bug took the bridle and shoved the bit into the horse’s mouth, Corey looked at his empty hands, as if contemplating its miraculous disappearance.

“Hurry!” Bug shouted desperately, but her cousin did exactly what she was afraid he was going to do: he retreated inward, so much like a turtle that once he went into his own shell it was next to impossible to get him to come out. Bug struggled to fight back her tears because wet eyes were hard to see through, and the first defense against a predator was to see it before it saw you. But her eyes betrayed her, and the tears still ran.

Corey picked up the saddle and held it in the crook of one arm, but his hands shook so hard that he dropped it. Bug let out a squeal of frustration. Cold desperation began to build. She could feel her heart beating against her breastbone as if it wanted to shatter her chest. This was all her fault! She knew better than to upset Corey with her sudden demands, yet that was exactly what she had done as she ran up to the stable!

Bug felt a cold shiver run down her neck as she watched Corey go suddenly still. He looked past her, in wide-eyed terror at something behind her. Bug’s stomach lurched. As she turned, she mentally braced herself for what she was going to see.

Salb stood in the barn’s loft, where he must have been watching as she approached from down the road. He wore a smile promising that only he was going to be happy with what came next. In that instant when their eyes met, Bug intuitively grasped the difference between Card and Salb: Card was like a bodily function that fed off of other people for a moment’s release, the way a giant, carnivorous slug engulfed its prey and left behind spent husks of rats’ skins and bones dissolving the flesh of its victims. The slug only knew hunger. Card knew only desire, but for Salb there was only an ache that no desire could satisfy. People like Salb suffered, and hated the world because it did not.

Bug stood frozen. She did not know what to do. The worst part was the smile that shone from his face. There was no hate in it. Instead, it beamed a chillingly cold light of playful malice.

Bug shook her head, pleading. “Please, no.” Her mouth went dry. The saddle wasn’t even on the horse yet! Salb opened his mouth and sang out in words that cut into her her like a knife. “Card! She’s over here with the feeb!”

“No!” Bug shouted and whipped around. Indeed, Card had wormed his way out of the warren of little houses and was making his way down the road in his search for her. To Bug’s horror, Card stopped, looked up in their direction, and his hungry eyes found hers. “No!” She cried, feeling so very small and defenseless.

Corey began striking his head with the flat of his hand.

“Put the saddle on!” she screamed in futility. She was too short to get it over the hump of the horse’s withers.

Corey looked at her. Beyond the maelstrom of fear and torment in his mind, she saw a little boy who wanted to be safe at home as badly as she did. “I’m sorry,” Bug said desperately. Her chance of getting away evaporated in front of her with each step that brought Card closer. “Please put the saddle on.”

But Bug knew that hunger in the end had won and would have its moment. “Please . . .” she begged. “Please.”

“You made me step on one of those damned nails, but I don’t need to hold that against you. You’re a pretty little thing,” Card said. His voice was soft and warm, his eyes lusty and vacant.

“Get away from me!” Bug yelled.

“I just want to go back there and talk,” Card said, directing his gaze toward the barn. His voice mirrored the distant expression in his eyes, which were focused not on any place in particular, but on what he planned to do with her, instead. “Just to the barn. Just a little talk is all.”

Bug walked to Corey and took the saddle from him. “I’ve got to go home,” she stuttered.

Card knocked the saddle from her hands.

Drawing her arm back, Bug reacted without thinking. She slapped Card so hard her hand flared in exquisite pain. Card merely looked surprised as Bug took a panicked step back. Her eyes darted up, toward the barn loft, where Salb no longer stood.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Card said slowly, grabbing her arm. His fingers were hot and sweaty. Bug flinched at the touch of his flesh against hers. She tried to jerk away, but he snatched her to himself and then began pulling her toward the barn.

Bug screamed and watched helplessly as Corey held his head down and his eyes pinched shut.

“Stop!” Bug pleaded.

Behind her, she became distantly aware of the pell-mell fall of feet approaching. Distantly, she knew it was Salb coming to help finish what Card had started.

Suddenly, she felt herself thrown to the ground, where loose bits of gravel bit into her hands. It’s going to happen here, a distant part of her thought. Everything now felt remote, as if Bug watched outside of herself.

“GET AWAY FROM HER!” she heard Niam roar as he drove his fist into Card’s face, rocking his head to the side with a fierce and savage blow. Card fell to his butt and looked up in dumb confusion at the unexpected turn of events.

“If you touch her, I will kill you, I will do it!” Niam snarled and kicked Card in the chin so hard that his head snapped back and he collapsed, unconscious.

Bug looked up and felt herself mouth Niam’s name. “Salb,” she tried to say—she really did—but as soon as she opened her mouth, helpless sobs began pouring out.

“Are you okay?” Niam barked in panic. “Did he hurt you?” His eyes blazed with a fire she had never seen before.

Bug shook her head. Niam lifted her up and she wrapped her arms around him so tightly her elbows popped. When he let go of her he gave her a probing look-over to make sure she was unharmed and turned to Corey. Before he managed to say anything to calm the boy, Salb emerged from the barn, and his voice dripped with scorn. “Oooh, look—Niam alone with his girlfriend and no one around to help him.”