The Time of the Titans

Chapter 14: Captive

I was crouching on my knees, quite uncomfortably, and Ze was standing in guard right next to me. Time passed after Rob had left us, and there was not much but the wind in the long grass, the monotonous rattle of grassbirds and the chirping of crickets.

In the inactive still, all the pain from the beating I had received from Ze's bamboo stick and Rob's whip began to gnaw on me. My uneasy position did not make it easier to bear. I cursed my own weakness and the humiliation of the situation, being a prisoner to two immature kids. I had not even had the chance of taking my knife out. Although, I had to admit, it may have been better so, because I had seen what looked like knives or daggers on Rob's belt. Ze, too, was likely carrying a few concealed weapons, if he was, as Rob had ominously warned, a killer.

The situation was confusing. On one hand, they had beaten me down, they were likely dangerous, and they were better armed than me. Yet on the other hand, they were kids, human kids. I didn't really want to fight them – I wanted to make contact.

"Why do they call you Zero?" I tried, raising my head and looking at his fair but serious face. "Isn't that what Ze is shortened from?" Rob had called him 'my homie Zero'.

He slapped me, just like I had assumed, seized my hair and pushed my head back down.

"Shut up, old man", he said with much contempt. "I know what people like you try to do. You try to be so human, oh so human."

It sounded like he spitted, but at least not on me. "You wanna make me speak, right?" he suggested. He was right, of course, but I wouldn't admit it. "You wanna form a first contact. Then manipulate. Tame us, as they say."

He had seen through my plans, as if he had been trained for situations like this. Yet he was speaking, and that was more important. So I kept quiet.

"We kill your kind", he hissed. He placed his knee on my back and pushed me down, so that my face would almost touch the ground. I heard a very ominous voice, which I recognized – the sound of a sword being pulled out of its scabbard. I gulped, and I saw a smart beetle of some kind, crawling on the ground where I stared at, escaping from the prospect of my head falling down on it.

"You hear me, man?" Ze blustered. "You wanna die?"

I was genuinely afraid that he might actually do it. There was a clearly recognizable element of civilization in these boys. They had been educated. But then again, there was rudeness and vagary in them, too. They were feral boys, educated by other adolescents; for how long, it was hard to say. They had a dangerous combination of unruliness and disciplined determination. Aggressive and arrogant on one hand, yet intelligent and somehow surprisingly mature on the other. Yet I could not be sure whether the maturity was a result of the education they had once received or the lack of it while they survived on the moor on their own.

"No, Ze, I don't want to die", I said, quietly but audibly enough. Mentioning his name and adding a tone of respect were like directly from a textbook of handling hostile situations.

He eased the pressure a bit, but I did not hear him put the sword away.

"Then hear me out", he said. It was all I wanted to do, really, keep him talking. Hear him out. "You're nobody here. You're nothing. I can do anything I want with you. You understand?"

"Yes, I understand", I said.

"Don't even dream I'm not capable", he said and tried to sound menacing, but somehow it was exactly the fact that he needed to explain this that put my heart at a bit more ease. "I'm an assassin and a ninja warrior. I've got much more swag than you'll ever have, you loser."

"I fully believe that", I admitted. "You won the fight and you captured me. But I'm not your enemy."

My compliments had an effect. He took his knee from my back and I could hear him pushing the sword back into the scabbard. But he was not an inch further away from me.