Always Walk Forward Read online

  Always Walk Foward

  by Billy Wong

  Always Walk Forward

  Copyright © 2016 Billy Wong

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this compilation are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  If you would like to be notified of my next release, please sign up for my mailing list!

  http://eepurl.com/sno3f

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Credits and author page

  Sample of Iron Bloom

  Chapter 1

  On the rickety stage of the old theatre before an audience of four, a young woman in leather armor topped with rounded pauldrons drove a teenage boy backpedaling from her punches and kicks. "Keep your hands up!" Drea snapped as she peppered the air before him with her fists. "Chin down!" Though she didn't touch him with her strikes, pulling them just before they would have connected, he flinched repeatedly at how close they came. "Move to the side, don't just walk straight back!" She threw a high kick, making him stumble sideways in panic as her shin brushed over the top of his hastily raised hands. "What the hell is wrong with you? That kick was as telegraphed as the dawn and it would have knocked you out easily if I followed through."

  "Gods," the boy said, rubbing his knuckles where her leg had grazed them, "you damn near broke my hand too!" Of the playhouse's younger actors, eighteen year old Vincent looked the part of the hero at a dark and handsome six feet, but didn't sound very heroic right now whining at the equally tall girl with the thick brown mane who had usurped his position. "It's just fake fighting, why do you have to take it so serious?"

  Drea put a hand on her hip. "Well, that fake fighting looking as real as possible has become this theatre's main draw, so you'd better not slack off given you're one of the two people here who look best suited to being my opponent."

  Watching from the front row seats, Sam let out a soft laugh. She enjoyed watching Drea give the men a hard time, but somewhat wished she was more aesthetically suited to tussling with her on stage. Unfortunately, at five foot five she wouldn't make a very convincing main villain opposite the statuesque girl.

  "You look winded," Drea said to Vincent while he panted with hands on his knees, "so why don't you take a break for a bit? Your turn, Cal."

  A tanned man in his late thirties a tad shorter than Vincent but bull-necked and thickset, the director's younger brother Cal was easily the most physically imposing of their little troupe. This made Drea particularly interested in working with him. "We going to work on that spot again?" he asked as he walked in front of her and she took a low stance.

  She grinned. "Of course. Going to work on it until we get it right. Now remember, when I go for a shot, arms around my torso, chest forward and legs back. You want to squash me down under you, not let me drag you down with me on top."

  It took him a few tries to react fast enough to her "shot," as she called her lightning-fast tackle, to keep from being taken down right away. When he started to bear her down with his body weight leaning on her, however, she spun out from beneath him slippery as an eel and clasped her arms about his waist. She lifted him into the air, flipped him over—then gently lowered him to the wooden floor. "I thought you wanted me to stop you," he said, blinking in surprise.

  "No, I wanted you to make a reasonable attempt so you could look like a knowledgeable fighter in character. I still need to win the sequence, and I don't think you're ready for an even more complicated one just yet."

  "She's so athletic," Eli said beside Sam. Seventeen like herself, the thin straw-haired boy was along with Vincent one of the orphans adopted by Director Jon as a child. Sam had come in later. "I wonder what her background is."

  "It certainly isn't acting." Sam, and everyone else, had been wondering too since Drea joined them some months ago. She wasn't like the others, being a few years older than the teens and possessed of a physicality none of them had witnessed in theatre before. Her arrival had revolutionized stage fighting as they knew it, fortuitously for the struggling playhouse as word quickly spread of the unique intensity she brought to her faux battles. Granted, the rest of the actors hadn't been able to nearly keep up and the novelty of her running circles around them might have soon worn thin—which was why Drea now trained them to carry their weight. They had mostly practiced with prop weapons so far, but now she wanted to try some scenes with hand to hand combat.

  Having repeated the tackle counter and counter-to-a-counter sequence with Cal a few times, Drea nodded with satisfaction. "Seems you've got it down pretty well. Good, take a rest. Sam?"

  She stepped onto stage, a wide smile across her face. "You shouldn't be so picky about your villains," she said casually. She noted that no trace of makeup adorned Drea's face. An odd quirk of hers that she usually wore little or none, but sometimes laid it on very thick seemingly at random. "Just because I'm short doesn't mean I can't make a good opponent."

  "You fight better than them, I've admitted that before." Being a city guard's daughter, Sam already had some training under her belt and took the most readily to the new style of their shows. "But I might look like a bully with you for my foil."

  "Maybe someday when I 'm good enough, I could play the heroes and you could be the villains."

  "Perhaps. For now though..." Drea extended a hand and motioned her forward. "Come on!"

  Sam rushed her, throwing fast punches as Drea had said before it was all right. The taller girl dodged them easily just by swaying this way and that, occasionally flinching like one had landed for show. Punching up at her, the height difference was rather noticeable. Drea returned fire with rapid blows of her own, which she somehow always managed to hold back just enough not to knock Sam's head off. Though Sam wasn't quite as good at pretending to get hit yet, the pace of the action helped hide her errors in timing.

  "They're both so good," she heard Eli say. "Sam is really into this."

  "Well, what do you expect?" Vincent replied. "She was planning to become a guard before..."

  Remembering, her eyes misted with tears. Her beloved dad was killed trying to apprehend a criminal the week after her thirteenth birthday. Three years too young to join the guard, she had been faced with the choice of moving away to live with her uncle or finding something to do in the city until she came of age. Director Jon took her in after she chose the latter, and by now she'd stayed a year past the time she had planned to try out for the guard. She still thought she would someday, though she didn't know when she would muster the will to leave the second family she'd found here.

  A fist slammed into her forearm. Though not hitting a vulnerable area, the force was enough that she staggered sideways, tripped over her feet and fell. "Sam!" Drea said. "I thought you were savvy enough that I could throw some less controlled strikes and count on you to react to them. Are you okay?"

  "Yeah. Sorry, I heard something that made me think..."

  "Sorry," Vincent muttered.

  Drea knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. "It's your father, isn't it? Go cry it out, alone if you have to. I understand."

  She shook her head. "I'll be fine here.
Don't want the others to worry, after all."

  As Sam took her seat, Drea called for slim Eli to take his turn. "Do I have to?" he asked. "I don't even like fighting, I'd rather work on improving my emotional range." It had taken some convincing to get the reserved, studious boy to start training with Drea, and he still resisted doing it regularly like the others.

  "Emotional range is certainly important," said Director Jon, the oldest of the crew at a balding forty-three. Average in height and build, he had an unusually small head which made him look larger from afar. His wife Joan didn't act, but made most of their costumes and help set up. "But as we're relying on these action-oriented shows to stay afloat now, you'd best do your part so you have time to continue improving your craft."

  Eli got up on stage, where Drea instructed him to try and punch her. "What? But I don't want to hit anyone."

  "I want you to try to hit me. Watching me with Sam, did it look like I'm easy to nail?"

  "What if you mess up? I don't want to hurt you."

  Drea looked annoyed. "I doubt you can even punch hard enough to do much damage with a lucky shot." She patted her chest. "Hit me here as hard as you can. If I don't react, hopefully you can feel reassured it's unlikely you'll hurt me too bad by accident."

  He raised a balled fist, then hesitated. "Are you sure?"

  "Just get on with it!" Eli struck her between the breasts. She didn't move an inch, but raised an eyebrow. "That wasn't even a real punch. Turn your body into it! On second thought, since I'm not sure you know what I mean by that, maybe you should just step into it." He backed up slightly, then stepped forward with his right foot while punching with the same side fist. His knuckles smacked against Drea's chest with a more audible noise, but she still didn't budge, and immediately after the punch he stumbled to his knees, hugging her legs to keep from falling on his face. She sighed. "Can't even throw a proper punch, can we? It seems that's what we'll have to work on before anything else."

  #

  After having Eli practice different types of punches for about thirty minutes, Drea said he looked better and they would continue tomorrow. However, her terse voice hinted that by "better" she probably didn't quite mean "good." Vincent, Cal, and Director Jon left to do other things, but Sam noticed that Eli remained behind in one of the audience chairs. "What's wrong?" she asked, seeing his downcast look. "You needn't worry about Drea being upset. She gets over minor issues quickly, and it's not as if you'd be in one of the main fighting roles."

  "Even so, it wouldn't sit well with me to be one of the glaring weak points in our act. If people who watched came away talking about how bad that one kid was and I heard about it, I'd feel pretty bad."

  "I'm sure you'll improve your punching form with more practice. Even Drea wasn't born able to do all those moves so smoothly." Sam smiled reassuringly. "If you're really worried about it, how about we practice together by ourselves for a bit? Maybe you'll improve enough to impress Drea next time."

  "Are you sure you want to? That didn't look to be the best session for you either."

  "Thanks for the concern, but I'm fine. This will help take my mind off it, anyway."

  They got back on stage and threw punches at imaginary foes. Sam pictured hers to be foul criminals, robbers, rapists and murderers, but didn't know what Eli's were. Even though he tried to mimic her movements as best he could, the lack of snap on his shots made her think maybe he imagined another actor at the end of them and subconsciously pulled his punches. "I know you don't want to accidentally injure us," she said, "but you can avoid hurting someone with a good sense of range instead of by throwing weakly. Since you're just trying to learn a realistic looking motion for now and using it in a scene will come later, why don't you pretend to be throwing a punch for real? Imagine somebody is trying to kidnap you, and do your best to try and keep them off you."

  She watched him swing his fists with more force now, and approved of his progress. He still didn't look like the best fighter, putting himself off balance rather more often than needed, but then his characters probably wouldn't be either. She heard footsteps from the backstage door and saw Joan, a chubby woman with a soft kind face, with a plate of sweet buns in hand. "You kids want something to eat?"

  "It won't be long before we have to go to sleep." Sam walked over. "But it's really hard to say no to your baking, so we'll have a couple." Taking one for herself and one for Eli, she nodded gratefully at Joan. After she left and they ate the buns, Sam said, "I think Drea will be pleased to see your improvement. Since your punches look passable now and we still have some time left, how about we go a step further? Want some pointers on how to judge safe distance for your punches?"

  Looking encouraged, he eagerly agreed, and they took to the stage once more.

  #

  Shortly before she planned to go to bed, Sam went out on the playhouse balcony to overlook the city of Berilim. It was a plain, weathered wooden ledge, but she liked the view which reminded her of the one from her father's guard tower when he brought her there to visit. Not quite as high, though... just when she'd begun to settle well into the chair, she heard footsteps behind her. "Are you alright?" she heard Drea's voice ask. She looked back to see the older girl step out onto the terrace.

  She couldn't help feeling a melancholy tightness build in her chest, but said, "I'm fine. At least I got to spend thirteen years with my dad. Vincent and Eli had it a lot worse, especially Eli." Vincent had lost his parents to illness as an infant, almost succumbing himself and never getting to know them, but even he had the luxury of not remembering it. Eli occupied the most devastating middle ground between them, his father, mother, and two older sisters burning to death in a terrible fire when he was five. From the nightmares he often had, everyone knew he still recalled their screams.

  "You shouldn't try to quantify your suffering compared to others," Drea said, walking next to her. "You all lost your families, and how it happened isn't a direct measure of how you are or should be affected."

  "I suppose you have a point. Are you an orphan?" she chanced asking. Drea shrugged as expected. She was plenty sociable otherwise, but ever kept an air of mystery about herself. "You want to sit?"

  She leaned forward against the railing. "No, I'm good. Excellent view."

  "Of the slums?" While Sam enjoyed the vantage point from which she could take in row after row of squat, crooked and dirty houses the playhouse faced, most people didn't appreciate it the same way.

  "It's good to have variety. The poor aren't bad people. Most of them are just like the rest of us, and interesting to watch now and then in their daily lives."

  There wasn't much activity in most of the narrow streets they could see now, in any case. Sam chuckled. "You don't need to lecture me about the merits of the poor. We are the poor, pretty much." Except maybe Drea. Rich or poor, native or foreign, an orphan or a runaway princess... Sam didn't have a clue what she was. Director Jon might have a better idea, but if he did, he wasn't telling.

  "You're trying to better yourselves. I like that in people, regardless of their background."

  She wasn't sure how long she would continue attempting to better herself in the same fashion, though. Looking over the city, the allure of following in her father's footsteps tugged at her and warred with her attachment to the theatre. "Social standings aside, my dad used to say the city was like a flock of sheep, in need of shepherds to defend them from the wolves among them." His white dead face with open eyes glassy and blood running from his mouth, seen by Sam when she ran there upon hearing what happened, flashed through her mind. That woman who stabbed him through the chest aiding the drug-addled murderer she bedded hadn't seemed to appreciate said protection. But that didn't stop Sam from wanting to defend those less unsavory than her and her man. "You don't give us a lot of clues, but if I were to guess, didn't you used to be some kind of warrior, Drea? Do you think I should join the guard?"

  "I can't answer that for you. It's something you have to figure out for yourself." Sh
e smiled. "But if you don't care that much for acting, there are worse careers to pursue."

  Sam's gaze drifted up, towards the milky semi-translucent dome of magical force that covered the city. Maintained by scores of mages working in shifts, it served to protect the citizens from becoming collateral damage in the battles between winged Anjeli and fearsome Daimons waged across earth and sky. Sometimes they could see the flashes from incidental impacts against the dome, pretty multicolored flickers that without it might be deadly. The deviants among humanity seemed a mild threat compared to one of those mighty races should they turn their full force against humans, but fortunately they were preoccupied with each other and the Anjeli appeared peaceful by nature when unprovoked.

  "Have you ever seen the naked sky, unobstructed by the barrier?" she asked Drea.

  A long pause. "I have." So she had been outside a city... what a brave person she must be. Most never left the settlement they were born in, and those few who traveled between them did so in large armed groups to give themselves a chance in case they ran into hostile daimons.

  "What does it look like?"

  "It's beautiful, like an upside down ocean in which great islands of fog drift."

  "Ocean?" Sam bit her lip, a touch embarrassed though she knew she shouldn't be. "I don't know what that looks like either."

  Drea scratched her head. "It's hard to explain... anyway, it's getting late. The plays start early tomorrow, don't they? We should probably go to bed, and I'll think of a better way to describe it to you when I can." She strode away, leaving Sam to stare after her in awe of the implications of what she'd said. Meeting somebody who had seen the sky was exciting in itself, but the ocean too? Despite being aware of the perils, she wondered if she could someday have adventures like Drea had.

  #

  The next morning at breakfast, Sam told Vincent and Eli about her talk with Drea. "She's traveled outside the city?" Eli said with big starstruck eyes. "That's amazing! I wonder if she could take us sometime." He frowned and added, "Although, the daimons would be pretty dangerous..."