The weight of the axe
Chapter 1: The Weight of the Axe
POV: PASHA
*Fifteen years earlier*
***
The wind didn’t carry the smell of rain; it carried the scent of iron and well-fed horses.
I froze, my fingers tightening around the worn handle of my pitchfork. It was the end of autumn. The wheat was in the barns, the grass was drying for winter, and by all rights, the world should have been peaceful. But the hairs on my neck were standing up, screaming a warning I’d heard in my nightmares for years.
Then I saw her. Two skinny legs and bony knees poking out from behind the hayrick.
I heard the familiar, suppressed giggle. On any other day, I would have played along. I would have chased her until she shrieked with laughter. But not today.
“Vida? Get out here. Now.”
She snorted. A tiny, wet sound she’d made since she was eight, a sound that meant I was being ‘bossy.’ It was the sound of my life, the sound of a future I could feel being torn away with every hoofbeat.
“Vida, I’m not joking.”
“You’re always joking, Pasha,” she whispered, peeking out. Then she saw my face. Her smile died.
In the distance, a pale cloud of dust rose. Beneath it was the heavy, rhythmic thud of hooves, the ugly, synchronized beat of the King’s Riders.
They came every Friday like clockwork, harvesting healthy boys the way we harvested wheat. They took them to be soldiers, to forget their blood, and eventually, to turn their swords against the very villages that raised them.
“Go,” I hissed, stepping toward her. I grabbed her shoulders, my calloused thumbs brushing her cheeks. “Run home. Lock the door. If Vasil makes a sound, cover his mouth. Do you hear me?”
“But Pasha,”
“Go!”
She bolted. I didn’t watch her. I couldn’t afford to. I turned and ran toward the small, derelict hut at the edge of the yard. Months ago, I had dug a shallow grave beneath the floorboards, not for a body, but for a life. I’d hidden there every Friday since spring, listening to the village doors’ hinges scream as my friends were dragged away.
I slammed into the hut, the wood groaning. I dropped to my knees, clawing at the dirt and straw, searching for the notches in the boards.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The hooves were in the yard. The vibration traveled through the earth and into my marrow. My fingers slipped. I couldn’t lift the board. Panic, cold and oily, flooded my chest.
Too late.
The horses stopped. The silence that followed was worse than the noise.
I looked up. A freshly sharpened axe hung on the wall, the blade catching a stray beam of light. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. If they found me whole, I was a soldier. And if I was gone, Mum and Vasil would starve. My brother had the strength of a giant but the mind of a toddler. He was born that way, to stay a child forever and give pure love, but without me, they both wouldn’t know how to survive.
“Pasha?”
It was a ghost of a sound. Vida was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide, dark pools of terror. She hadn’t run.
“I told you to leave!” I rasped.
“They’re outside,” she whispered.
I looked at my hand, my strong, right hand. Then I looked at the axe.
“Vida,” I said, my voice dropping to a graveyard whisper. “Pick it up.”
“What?”
“Pick up the axe. Now!”
She moved like a sleepwalker. Her thin, wiry arms trembled as she lifted the heavy tool.
“I can’t hide anymore,” I said, laying my hand flat on the chopping block we used for kindling. I tucked my fingers in, leaving only my thumb exposed. “If they take me, we all die. If I’m a cripple, they don’t want me.”
“Pasha, no...”
“Raise it,″ I ordered
″Raise it and let it fall!”
The door creaked open behind her. A shadow blocked the light.
“I can’t,” she sobbed.
“Do it!”
She screamed, a raw, jagged sound, and swung with every ounce of her desperate heart.
The metal bit through flesh and bone.
White-hot agony turned the world blindingly bright, but I felt only a terrifying, hollow cold. Through that searing light, the door kicked open, a dark silhouette against the glare.
“What do we have here?”
A soldier in a fine blue-and-red coat stepped in, squinting against the dimness. He ripped down the black cloth I’d hung over the window. Sunlight flooded the room, illuminating the spray of red across the straw and Vida’s ghost-white face.
The axe lay between us, slick and red.
“Damn,” the soldier laughed, a cruel, dry sound. “Look at this little devil. He thinks he’s smarter than the King.”
Vida made a small, broken noise. She was staring at the floor.
The soldier walked over, his heavy boots crunching on the wood. He grabbed my hair, forcing my head back.
“He crippled himself,” the soldier called out to his comrade. “Took off half the thumb.”
Another soldier leaned in and squeezed my jaw. “Check the rest of him.” He reached down, checking my frame, my legs, and finally, my crotch. He grinned, baring yellow teeth. “He’s got balls. Big ones. The quiet ones just die. This one has fire. If he survives the infection, we’ll forge that spite into something useful. We’ll teach him to use a sword with his left hand, and he’ll kill for us just to prove he can.”
“No!” Vida shrieked, lunging forward.
The soldier backhanded her, sending her sprawling into the corner.
“Tie him up,” the officer ordered. “Put him in the cage.”
They dragged me out. My feet scraped the earth I had spent my life taming. I saw the wagon, a rolling prison filled with boys from the neighboring village, their faces pressed against the bars like cattle.
As they threw me inside, the world tilted. The pain finally arrived, a thundering roar in my blood.
“Keep them safe, Vida!” I screamed, my voice cracking as the wagon started rolling. I grabbed the bars with my good hand and shook them. “Promise me!”
Vida scrambled out of the hut, chasing the wagon as it started moving. She stumbled and fell, her knees painting the road red, but pushed herself up, still trying to keep pace as the distance between us grew.
“I promise!” Her voice reached me, thin but unbreakable. “I promise, Pasha!”
A soldier inside the wagon hissed, “Shut up, boy,” and brought the hit on the back of my head.
The light went out as my body fell to the wagon floor.
***
Author notes:
Dear friends, I am posting seven chapters of a new story. I wanted to wait on this one because I never write more than one story at a time, but I couldn't. The characters' situation and everything just pulled me in. You know how we say that all stories are like our children and we love them the same. It is not true; some we like better. And this story is one of those :) Please let me know your thoughts or leave a heart if you like it. Starting Monday, September 21, the story will be updated three times a week: Monday, Tuesday, and Friday :)
