Page 4 of Bellamy
***
I woke in a small room much like the one in the attic back home. I was confused at first before remembering the man with white wings. Lazarus. Seeing that the door was cracked open, I left the room. The sunlit corridor made everything so bright. Warm. And it was quiet. After a short walk, I reached another door that led outside.
The sun felt nice as I stepped into the grass and peered up at the sky. An abundance of trees surrounded me, and a stream rushed nearby.
“Galen!” a boy’s voice came from my right. “Give it back. That belongs to me.”
I followed the voices to a grassy field. A boy with bright red hair, like an apple, fought with a much larger boy with dark hair. Two other boys were there too—a tiny one with blond hair, who was asleep near a bed of flowers, and another with black hair, bronze skin, and green eyes. He sat on the edge of the field, away from the others.
The bigger boy—Galen—held something out of the red-haired one’s reach. “What will you give me for it, Castor?”
“How about a bloody nose?”
“You and what muscle?”
I cleared my throat, and all eyes moved to me.
“Who are you?” Galen asked, placing the object—a shiny rock—into the red-haired boy’s hand and stepping in front of him, almost protectively.
“Bellamy.”
“You’re one of us?”
“Would I be here otherwise?”
That remark earned a small smile from the green-eyed one at the edge of the field.
“I’m Galen.” The brawny boy put a hand to his chest before nodding to the boy beside him now admiring the shiny rock. “That’s Castor. The one sleeping is Gradyn. And that’s—”
“Daman.” The green-eyed boy stood from the grass. “I can make my own introductions.”
Galen snarled at him. I got the impression the two didn’t like each other much.
I approached Daman, drawn to him more than the others. His shoulders straightened, and his chin jutted a bit. He obviously didn’t trust people. Well, neither did I.
“How long have you been here?” I asked once in front of him.
“Nearly a fortnight.”
“Where did you live before this?”
His eyes narrowed as he studied me. His suspicious nature was evident. “Dacia.”
“You don’t look like a wolf to me,” I said, recalling the little I’d heard of the Dacian people from men who’d visited the pleasure house. The Dacian soldiers were said to fight like wolves with the strength of a dragon.
Daman smiled. Something told me he didn’t do it a lot. “Well, you haven’t seen me fight.”
That soon changed. All of us were forced to fight. Training began at dawn each day. We ate morning meal afterward and were given time to rest and play before training again in the afternoon. Lazarus never went easy on us. He trained us hard. We learned defensive maneuvers, how to attack, and eventually, how to wield weapons.
Three other boys arrived shortly after me: Raiden, Kallias, and Alastair. Raiden was bulky like Galen, but for being so big, he had a sensitive heart. When we trained, he’d refused to hit us at first. Once Lazarus forced him to fight back, Raiden attacked us with tears in his eyes.
Kallias radiated sadness. Even his voice rang of melancholy. And Alastair thought us to be beneath him. Eight of us in total, brought together because of our fathers.
“Why do you believe we’re training this hard?” I asked Daman one afternoon as we journeyed to the stream to wash after a long day of drills. My muscles were sore, yet my spirit was strong.
“Lazarus is turning us into weapons of war. He cares not for us. He only cares about the power in our blood.”
“You dislike him.”
