Free Escape by Varian Krylov Page A

on, so there was plenty to drink, and Kosos kept sharing his food. He also kept looking at Luka with a pale echo of the revulsion he'd seen in the soldier's dark gaze the night before as Luka had thrashed and begged. Down in the shadowy abyss Luka never let himself really look into was a vague awareness of what that look meant. What the soldier supposed Luka was imagining as he'd pleaded and pathetically tried to writhe free of grasping hands and binding rope. Even keeping himself far back from the edge of that chasm, his blood rushed hot up his throat and face. His jaw went tight in a spasm of anger. He wasn't the one dragging someone across the country against his will. He was the captive. The one who'd been threatened with a knife and pinned down and tied up. Why the hell was he the one feeling ashamed?
    When they made camp just before dark, Kosos got out a bar of soap and a razor. “You've never shaved a day in your life, have you kid?”
    Luka's face went hot.
    “I guess you don't know how to use this, eh?” Kosos held up the straight razor.
    “Why? Don't you?”
    Luka regretted being smart, but Kosos just grinned. “No mirror.”
    “I'm probably better with that thing than you are.”
    The soldier's grin widened and he raked his fingers through his dark beard. “Let's find out.”
    Was this guy really going to hand him a razor and let him put the blade to his face? To his throat? “You think I'm a coward?”
    Kosos laughed. “No. I don't think you're a coward. But I don't think you want to hurt me.”
    Why was Luka's face burning again? Why be ashamed of not wanting to slice through that soldier's jugular and watch him bleed to death?
    “Come on. Before it's too dark.” Kosos handed him the razor, got the soap wet, and lathered up his face and neck.
    Maybe he was a coward. Luka stared at that throbbing vein in the soldier's neck, vulnerable, extended, offered up with inexplicable trust, and all he could think about was handling the razor carefully so he wouldn't cut him accidentally. It was a chore, sheering away that beard, but he got it done, and without a single nick. Without the beard, Kosos didn't look like a serial killer anymore.
    Kosos ran his hand over his face. “Damn. Good job, kid.”
    “How old do you think I am?”
    “I don't know. Sixteen?”
    Fuck. Well, that's what he got for asking.
    “Well? Am I close?”
    “Nineteen.”
    “My apologies, Sir. I had no idea I was addressing someone of your venerable age.” Without the beard, Kosos looked ten years younger. Not that much older than Luka, actually. Maybe twenty-three. Twenty-five, tops.
    “My name's Luka. Not kid.”
    “Great. My name's Tarik. Not asshole, or whatever you've been calling me in your head.” Tarik washed the remnants of soap from his face, then started preparing their meal. “So, were you tempted?”
    “To do what?”
    “Cut my throat while you had my razor in your hand.”
    Luka dodged his gaze. Hunched away, he waited for his face to stop burning. What was so embarrassing about not wanting to kill? There was no reason to feel ashamed. But he did.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR: The Irremediable
     
    APRIL—The front of the Bokana/Ersba regional conflict, Xukrasna
     
     
     
    The supreme art of war is to
    subdue the enemy without fighting.
    Sun Tzu
     
     
     
    Thirteen nights in the cave, where there were no days. Tarik had crawled into that dark, wet womb, helpless and needy, nourished for thirteen twenty-four-hour-long nights on the safe silence and the umbilical sustenance of fresh water. In his fetal memory, there'd lingered a murky understanding of why he was there, rather than hunkered in some soft wound cut into the earth with the other men stuffed into the same Eršban uniform sticking to his sweaty skin.
    After the birth, everything was bright, the sun dusting the leaves and trunks with a gleaming silver that from certain angles almost glinted, almost blinded. Had two weeks in the dark of that cave made his