The Almost King

by Lucy Saxon

  ‘It’ll be your turn next, son,’ his mother told Aleks with a smile, patting his arm. Aleks looked horrified and immediately opened his mouth to splutter a protest.

  His father laughed. ‘He’d have to leave his own thoughts for more than ten minutes and actually talk to a woman first! Don’t worry, Aliya, he’ll find a girl yet. He’d better do, anyway – you’re not exactly getting any younger,’ he added to his son, who grimaced. Both Max and Torell had been engaged by the time they were Aleks’s age; as far as the family were concerned, Aleks was falling behind. As per usual. That lucky idiot Grigori had taken the Faith and was spared these awkward questions.

  ‘I’m not in any rush, Father,’ Aleks insisted, earning a roll of his father’s eyes.

  ‘That’s what they all say. Leave it any longer and all the good ones will be gone.’

  Aleks sighed, shaking his head, too weary of the argument to even bother making his point. ‘I’ll need to start looking for work before I look for a bride, at any rate. We finished in the tunnels today,’ he explained.

  ‘Already? You boys work fast!’ Nadeah exclaimed.

  ‘You can go back to the shop job,’ his father informed him, as if he was an idiot for considering anything else.

  Aleks stifled a wince; he’d had a job logging inventory and doing odd jobs for his father in their shop since the age of twelve, and the family business was exactly what he’d hoped to escape by taking the job in the tunnels. He didn’t want to be his father’s errand boy for the rest of his life!

  ‘Well, I, uh . . . I was hoping for more,’ he explained hesitantly, noticing the dark look that crossed his father’s face.

  ‘More? What more is there, boy? A steady job, a roof over your head, food in your belly, and the chance to find a nice girl to take you off our hands!’

  Aleks sighed, tugging at his messy black fringe. He was seriously due a haircut.

  ‘Never mind, Father. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.’ His father had never had the wanderlust he seemed to have developed. He’d always been happy exactly where he was, doing the same job, keeping his quiet life in their minuscule village. He’d never wondered what the cliffs in the East looked like, or whether the palaces were really as breathtaking as they were in the newscasts, or how it would feel to fly through a storm. Not like Aleks had.

  Now: Rensav

  Pushing away wistful thoughts of the family he’d left behind, Aleks shuffled to the end of his bed to reach into his trunk, sifting through his saddlebag for his notebook and pen. He should probably write to his parents and let them know he was alive. Settling back with the notebook balanced on his knees, he bit his lip and began to write.

  Dear Everyone,

  I’m safe, don’t worry. I made it South in good time and without any problems; the workmen in the tunnels were very welcoming, and let me stay overnight and share their meals.

  I’m in Rensav, and you’ll never believe this: I joined the army. Yes, Max, I’m completely serious. It turns out enlisting is really the only decent work in Rensav, and I thought it sounded like a good idea; I’ll learn a few new skills, and hopefully even get to travel if I make a good rank. Quicksilver is still with me, as I joined the Mounted Infantry. My first day of full training is tomorrow.

  I hope things are well back home. Little Daniil is probably keeping you all busy, if he’s anything like his father. Please don’t worry about me; everything is fine, and I’m doing what I want to be doing. I look forward to hearing from all of you, but I’ll be busy for a while so there’s no need to rush your reply. Give my regards to everyone at home, and I’ll write again soon.

  All my love,

  Aleks

  Signing off with a messy flourish, Aleks looked up. ‘Is there a post office around here?’ he asked Jarek, who gave him a sideways glance.

  ‘Writing home, are we?’ Aleks nodded. ‘Post office is next to the enlistment building. Big sign on the front, you can’t miss it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Carefully ripping the page out of his notebook and tucking the letter into his coat pocket, he locked his notebook and pen back in his trunk. Glancing over at the clock on the wall, he saw it was still over an hour until lights out. Aleks curled up tight under his blanket, willing sleep to come and praying to all three gods that tomorrow would be better. He reminded himself he was doing the right thing, that he was helping his family by being here and finally fulfilling his dream of travelling.

  Before: The Decision

  Exchanging his slippers for mud-crusted boots at the front door, Aleks shrugged on his thick fur-lined coat and headed for the stables. No doubt in all the chaos of the baby’s birth, the horses had yet to be tended to. Tiny flakes of snow drifted lazily to the ground and Aleks ducked his head to keep the cold off his face. Rounding the corner to their small stable yard, he paused at the sound of voices.

  ‘We can’t keep on like this, love, and we both know it. We can’t afford to.’ It was his father, his voice quieter than it usually was, his tone softened in a way it only ever did when he spoke to his wife.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Aliya replied, sounding distressed. ‘But it’s not permanent. We can afford to feed them all a few months more, at least.’

  ‘Can we?’ Olik asked plainly. Aleks shuffled closer, wincing as his boots crunched in the snow on the pathway. ‘The shop isn’t doing as well as it used to, we both know that. We could manage before the girls were about, but having both of them around – as much as I love them dearly – has overstretched us. The price to pay for four sons, I suppose.’ It was custom when a woman got pregnant for her to move in with her husband’s family for the duration of the pregnancy. Only when the baby was born were the couple expected to live on their own.

  ‘If we cut some corners, we can manage it. Though I’ll admit, Aleks finishing in the tunnels could have been better timed. We needed his income more than I care to say.’ Aleks’s stomach lurched, though he knew it was hardly his fault.

  ‘I’ll take him back at the shop, of course I will, but there won’t be much money in it for him.’ The man sighed, and Aleks imagined him running a hand over his thick grey beard, as he often did when in thought. ‘Boy needs a real job sooner or later. But we’ll figure something out.’ There was the rustling of fabric, like the pair were embracing, and Olik’s voice was so soft when he spoke next that Aleks almost missed it. ‘None of them have noticed in all this chaos, and we must keep it that way. When the other sprog’s born and they’ve all moved out, it’ll just be us and Aleks. We’ll manage fine, the three of us, eventually.’

  Aleks bit his lip, creeping back towards the house, the horses still untended. If he’d ever hoped for a sign from the gods that he should leave his tiny little village like he’d always wanted, he wouldn’t get a much clearer one than that.

  Now: Rensav

  Despite his prayers, Aleks’s first official day of training was ten times worse than induction. For breakfast, he was given the tiniest, coldest bowl of porridge after spending almost an hour in the queue. With barely five minutes to eat, he was already lagging behind by the time he made it to his first mounted combat training session. His instructor was a tall, wiry man who looked very similar to the horse he rode. Jarek was right; Aleks wasn’t allowed to ride Quicksilver, but was instead given an old nag he was quite sure was half lame already. He’d spent more of the session worrying about whether his steed would collapse underneath him than he did about listening to instructions. That had only resulted in him being told to get off his horse and run the drills on his own two feet for the remainder of the session.

  Reluctantly emerging from the stables for his second training session of the day, Aleks found himself in a group of cadets who were all twice his size and at least five years older than him. They were clearly more interested in attempting to shoot each other than aiming for the targets, and one had even decided to prove he could swallow an entire clip of bullets in one go. He was sent straight to the medical centre, a smug look on his fa
ce as he crowed about having dodged another two weeks’ training.

  The obstacle course was just as brutal as before, if not more so because this time he had the added competition of several other cadets, and the last one to finish had to run the whole thing again. He was knocked over several times by cadets far bigger than he was, and one man had seemingly tried to drown him in the mud pool they had to wade through. It was only through luck that Aleks was able to reach out and grasp the man firmly around the ankle, tugging hard and sending him flying. He kept an eye on the cadet for the rest of the course, but thankfully lost him somewhere on his second lap. Either way, he was the last one to finish, and while everyone else went to shower and head to dinner, Aleks was covered in mud and restarting the course for the third time.

  Shivering, chalk-white and covered in bruises, he lined up for his dinner, amazed when he finally got there to see a decent-sized portion still left. The gods were obviously taking pity on him. He sat in what he was beginning to see as ‘his’ corner, wolfing down the food as fast as he dared and then heading straight for the barracks after a quick detour to drop his letter off at the post office.

  Ignoring Jarek’s attempts to talk to him, Aleks tried to get an early night, praying for warmth and wondering how much longer he could cope before something in him crumbled.

  4

  Four days. Four days was how long Aleks managed to tough it out, each day progressively worse than the previous one. As much as he hated proving everyone in his barracks right, he was sure of one thing and one thing only: the decision to join the military was, hands down, the worst decision he had ever made in his life. But he’d made his choice now and he was determined to stick with it. The hazing would have to end eventually, surely?

  A groan escaped his lips as he collapsed on to his bed. Jarek let out a low whistle. ‘Gods. First hand-to-hand combat session?’ Aleks let out another groan in confirmation. Everyone in his group was twice his size; he’d barely lasted a minute with each of them, and all the instructor did was laugh. ‘The bruises will fade in time, don’t worry. Just be glad you didn’t lose any teeth.’

  ‘I can’t be certain of that, I haven’t checked yet,’ Aleks muttered, rolling gingerly on to his back.

  ‘Who runs your session?’

  ‘Lieutenant Dohma.’

  Jarek winced, shaking his head. ‘Storms, man. First Antova does your intake, Shulga’s your CO, then you end up with Dohma – what did you do to get on the gods’ bad side?’

  Aleks huffed bitterly. He’d asked himself the same question a fair few times in the past four days. ‘Don’t think it would’ve mattered who did my intake,’ he said instead. ‘Still would’ve ended up here.’

  ‘Anyone but Antova would’ve offered you the fee,’ Jarek replied, shaking his head once more.

  Aleks’s brow furrowed. ‘Could you please explain what you mean by that?’

  ‘All right, but you won’t be happy about it.’ He sighed, shifting a little to face Aleks. ‘Whenever a new cadet signs up of their own free will, the commander doing their intake is supposed to offer them the chance to pay the enlistment fee. Those who can pay end up in Pervaya, over in the Southeast. That’s where the proper army types go, the ones who actually want a career in the military. The respectable ones. Anyone who doesn’t have the money to pay ends up here. I think you can agree we’d all jump at the chance to pay the fee, if we had the money. The Pervaya base is the one you see in all the newscasts, the one that’s supposed to teach you new skills and give you a better standard of living. Most folks don’t even know there are two bases. All they do here is wait for us to kill each other or drop dead of exhaustion.’

  Aleks felt sick to his stomach; he could have avoided all this? ‘How – how much is the fee?’ he asked.

  ‘When I came in it was five golds. Can’t see it having changed much.’

  The news was a slap in the face. Aleks had had that money in his saddlebag when he’d arrived. He didn’t any more, but at the time of enlisting he could have paid the fee. Storms, they had taken the money from him, anyway. Why hadn’t they seen he could afford it and let him go to Pervaya?

  ‘I’m guessing by the look on your face that five golds wasn’t a problem for you,’ Jarek said, sounding envious.

  ‘How can they get away with this, right under the king’s nose?’ Aleks asked angrily, sitting up despite the protest from his muscles. ‘How many others have ended up here when they could have paid?’

  ‘A fair few – usually idiot country boys like you who don’t know any better.’ That was a bit rich, coming from an Eastern country boy. ‘No one cares. Few people outside Rensav know that the two military bases are any different in their methods. Depending on who you ask, even the king doesn’t know the difference.’

  Rage swelled in Aleks’s chest, and before he could stop himself he was shoving his feet into his boots.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To talk to Commander Antova.’

  Jarek’s eyes widened. ‘Are you mad? You can’t just march into the commander’s office! You’ll be on midnight drills for weeks!’

  Aleks ignored him, shrugging his coat on and storming from the barracks, unable to think rationally due to the red-hot anger pounding through his veins. How dare Antova trick unsuspecting young men into signing their lives away and then steal their money for no good reason!

  He didn’t knock at the enlistment building. Shoving the guard aside and slamming the door open, he strode straight across to Commander Antova’s office. The door was shut, but that didn’t slow him; he wrenched it open, drawing the attention of several other men in the building. Antova was sitting behind a large mahogany desk, and he looked up with a dark gaze at the intrusion. ‘What in the name of the gods do you think you’re doing, boy?’ he spat. ‘I am your superior officer! How dare you walk in uninvited and unannounced.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Aleks retorted. ‘How dare you not tell me about the enlistment fee! I could have paid it! I had the money, as you well knew when you had your men steal from my bag on my arrival. What gives you the right to consign me to this life when I could have afforded better?’

  Antova seemed unimpressed by his rant, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over his chest. ‘You think I care, boy? Here or Pervaya, it makes no difference to me where you are. If anything, it’s for your own good – those sissies up in Pervaya would only coddle you, make you soft. No one wants a soft soldier!’

  ‘No one wants a dead soldier either, but that’s all that’ll happen to half the men in this bloody place!’ Aleks snapped. ‘And who gave you the right to make that decision for me, for anyone?’

  Antova stood, pointing at the stripes on his shoulder. ‘The king did, brat. You want to take it up with him?’

  ‘I want to be transferred to Pervaya,’ Aleks said sharply. ‘You already took more than the fee from me when I arrived.’

  ‘You can want all you like, boy, it’s not going to happen. You’re stuck here and the sooner you accept that the better. Shulga has your enlistment forms, so as far as the law’s concerned you’re our property.’

  ‘I could go to the authorities,’ Aleks threatened. ‘The rest of the world doesn’t know how it is down here, but I could tell them. Put you on the newscast as the man who treats even the legitimate recruits as criminals.’

  Antova laughed, his moustache twitching. ‘You daft, boy? I am the authorities! And you can bet your right arse cheek you won’t find a newscast screen around here. Storms, those Anglyans have got a lot to answer for; that brat of a queen and her ilk have given everyone and their bloody mother ideas of rebellion.’ He shook his head, giving Aleks a stony glare. ‘You’re not going anywhere, boy, and you’re certainly not going to tell anyone how it is here. Accept your lot or do us a favour and go and throw yourself off a cliff somewhere.’

  Aleks made to take a step towards the man, but before he could move he was grabbed tightly by the shoulder.

  ‘Shulga,’
Antova said with a nod, addressing the man holding Aleks. ‘Take this cadet to the time-out room and remind him of his place.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Shulga replied promptly, dragging Aleks from the room. As the door shut behind them, Aleks glimpsed Antova’s self-satisfied face, and his stomach churned. What was the time-out room?

  Shulga marched him around the corner to a small, square concrete building, just before the rows of barracks. Aleks had never seen anyone come or go from this place; it looked like he was about to find out why. Shulga took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, then shoved Aleks inside. There was a single lamp hanging from the centre of the otherwise empty room, and the smell of soured blood made him gag.

  ‘Maybe this will teach you to have a little respect for your betters, boy,’ Shulga sneered, kicking Aleks firmly in the back with a steel-toed foot, sending him sprawling to the concrete floor. Aleks’s eyes widened, pulse racing as he realised what was about to happen. Then all he could feel was pain.

  Before: The Family

  ‘Shouldn’t you be out working?’ Maxim asked, eyes flicking to Aleks. Three of the four Vasin brothers were in the kitchen, enjoying a rare moment of peace while Daniil slept; Grigori was busy praying. Their mother was cooking breakfast, humming quietly to herself, lost in her own thoughts.

  ‘No, we’re finished in the tunnels. I’m unemployed for now,’ Aleks explained, sipping his tea.

  Maxim frowned, scratching at his stubbled cheek. ‘You’d better get about fixing that, then, before Father drafts you again.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Aleks agreed ruefully. ‘Where do I start, though? There’s hardly anywhere around here that’s got a position open, especially for me.’ As he spoke, Olik wandered into the kitchen, dressed and ready for a day of work. He passed by his wife, stealing a still-warm pastry as he kissed her on the cheek. ‘I . . . I think I’m going to look a little further afield, now the tunnels are dug.’