Time lost all meaning as we pounded our way through, the sort of place that inspired the old tales of werewolves and vampires. Those too tickled at the back of my mind but were less important than the Russian in front of me.
Suddenly, we broke out of the woods, into a large open field that looked like it had once been some sort of airport or something. Sacha went on another fifty meters, then stopped. The other remaining recruit and I came to a halt, the breath searing our lungs with every inhalation and exhalation. I wanted to drop face first to the ground, to vomit what I had left of my second meal onto the dirt between my feet. Instead, I put my hands on my hips and forced my shoulders back, both to show strength and to let my lungs gulp more of the precious air.
Sacha looked, if not impressed, at least less disgusted by us than he had when we took off on the run. “You maggots can at least keep up,” he said. “But can you fight?”
He turned his back, sweeping his arm to indicate the space behind us. “This area, it used to be a Soviet army base,” he said, indicating the older buildings that were about a hundred meters distant. “Three generations of Red Army soldiers trained and lived here, ready to defend Mother Russia in case NATO or someone equally stupid decided to try what Napoleon and Hitler couldn't. Here, boys became men, and men became supermen. The process was simple, not complex, in the way that the Russians have done for millennia. You learn by doing, and let Darwin's laws weed out the weak. That Englishman may have put the rules to paper first, but Mother Russia knew them before paper was even invented.”
“What do you ask of us?” I asked, happy to be able to form words again. I knew that his speech was mostly for our benefit, to give us a chance to recover some, but there was a meaning in it, words to it that I wanted to get to the heart of.
“It is simple,” he said, reaching into the right front pocket of his trousers and pulling out a silver plated whistle. “Drop your bags, you won’t need them. Then, the only rule is to survive.”
Sacha put the whistle in his mouth and blew it three times, the sharp tone piercing the frigid air and carrying for a long distance. The door to one of the abandoned buildings opened and nearly two dozen men poured out, some of them armed, some of them not. Sacha looked at us with an evil smirk on his thick lips and pointed to them with his open hand, as if inviting us to a feast.
I dropped my bag and assumed a fighting stance, my body falling into patterns that it had known for far longer than I could recall. The first man who approached me I kicked in the side of the knee, buckling the joint and sending him stumbling, grunting at the injury. I stepped back and stomped on his chest, crushing his ribs and driving the wind out of his lungs. He slumped to the turf, and I quickly looked for the next person to fight.
As I fought, I decided that honorable maneuvers were not to be worried about. Instead, I picked up any dropped weapon I could, used every dirty tactic that I could devise, and offered no quarter. When I saw the other candidate get kicked in the balls before being knocked out by an attacker wearing what looked like lead enhanced gloves, I knew I was making the right choice. At least the chump had taken out four men himself before he went down.
I'd like to say that I was able to fight like a demon, battering all of my opponents into unconsciousness without taking a scratch. However, I staggered around, and I struggled to keep my hands up to defend my bleeding and scratched face. My left leg felt like a frozen block of clay after taking a staff blow to the large muscles of my thigh. I thought I looked more like a victim in a zombie movie than a valiant warrior.
The last opponent reached behind his back and pulled out a short sword and brandished it at me, a cocky grin on his face. For my part, all I had was the shivered end of a staff in my right hand and a leather belt in my left that I had wrapped around my forearm to provide some type of shield.
He charged, a loud screaming warcry ripping from his throat as I stepped back, knowing even as I did that my circling escape attempt had been anticipated and before I could recover my balance, the sword plunged into my ribs, piercing me like a kebab.