“No,” said Milos faintly, praying that Fulgur wouldn’t hit him again. The pain was spreading all the way to his stomach in waves of agony.
“Right. I’ll leave you, then. Thanks for this nice little chat.” He turned at the door. “Yup, I really like you, Milos Ferenzy. I just love talking to you.”
Five days after he had arrived, around midday, Milos felt well enough to leave his room, leaning on a pair of crutches. As he went down the corridor, he discovered that the room next to his was fitted out as a rudimentary operating room, with a table covered by a white sheet and globe-shaped medical lamp at the end of an articulated mechanical arm. Jars and bottles stood around in no particular order on dilapidated shelves. This was clearly “Dr.” Fulgur’s domain, the sinister scene of his experiments!
Milos shivered when he thought that he had been lying there, unconscious, at the mercy of a sadist like Fulgur. However, since his leg wasn’t hurting too badly now, he ventured outside. Fulgur had shaved his head the evening before, and the cold air froze his skull and temples.
The camp did indeed stand in a clearing in the forest. You could see the bare branches of tall oaks on the other side of the wire fence. There was a watchtower at the entrance. The man in military uniform guarding it, gun in hand, gave Milos a nod. It was hard to tell whether he meant it as a threat or a welcome. Milos returned it, and laboriously made his way farther on.
After skirting the wooden huts that he thought must contain the dormitories, he came to the canteen hut. An unappetizing smell of cabbage wafted out of it. From here he could see that two more watchtowers guarded the back of the enclosure. Fulgur was right: this was no summer camp.
A square building with no windows occupied the center of the clearing on its own. It was made of tree trunks, like a trapper’s log cabin. Milos had to go all around it to find the way in: a low door, unlocked. He pushed it open with his left crutch, went in, took a few steps along a trodden-earth pathway, and came to a gate made of planks. Beyond it lay the arena, like a circus ring. It measured roughly sixty feet across and was entirely enclosed by a palisade the height of a man.
Four men in canvas pants, their chests and feet bare in spite of the cold, were fighting on the sand. A handful of spectators was watching from the gallery. They glanced at Milos, registered his presence, and then ignored him. The men in the arena were not equally matched. Three of them, armed with swords, were harassing the fourth, whose head was shaved and who was fighting them with his bare hands. The unfortunate man had to keep watch on all sides at once, throw himself on the ground, roll over to avoid blows, get up again, and run. His adversaries pursued him relentlessly, surrounded him again, and threatened him with their swords. He didn’t stand a chance, but he faced them with an expression of fierce defiance as if he could still hope to win.
Even from a distance Milos noticed the blunt features of his young face, his flattened nose and bushy eyebrows, his sturdy limbs. He felt as if he had met the young man before, but where? The fight went on in startling silence. No cries, no calling out, no encouragement. There was nothing to be heard but the crunch of feet on the sand and the gasping breath of the man under attack. He managed to escape his pursuers several more times, losing none of his fury and showing no sign of fear. Then a moment came when he stumbled as he fled and fell to the ground. The next moment, the man closest to him leaped up and struck him on the shoulder. Then he immobilized him, one knee on his chest, the point of his sword to the man’s throat.
“That’ll do,” called a cavernous voice. “Let him go now.”
The fighters obeyed and retreated without a glance for the breathless young man, who was dripping with sweat and swearing under his breath as he held his bloodstained shoulder.
The man who had given the order rose to his feet. He was half a head taller than everyone around him. Thick black stubble covered his angular face.
“See that, all of you?” He was addressing the spectators. “He lost because he fell. If you fall, you’re dead. Never forget that. Ferox, Messor, take him to the infirmary; tell ’em to patch him up. The rest of you go and eat.”
They climbed down a small flight of steps at the side of the arena — it came down to the pathway just behind Milos — and left in silence. The colossus bringing up the rear stopped. His massive size was impressive.
“You the one who strangled Pastor?”
Milos saw in his eyes the same spark of admiration as Fulgur’s had shown a few days earlier.
“Yes,” he said soberly.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Good. My name’s Myricus and I’m your trainer. Welcome to the camp, laddie.”
With these words, he turned his back and walked away. His shoulders only just fit through the door.
Tired after his outing in the morning, Milos dozed through part of the afternoon, but around five o’clock he was woken by the creak of a bedstead being wheeled into the room. The man injured in the arena was lying there, on his back and covered by a sheet that was none too clean. The cut on his shoulder, although not very deep, had been stitched up. Fulgur hadn’t been able to resist his little weakness for playing with needles.
“Doing all right?” asked Milos.
“Yeah, I’m OK,” grunted the injured man.
There was nothing of him to be seen but his pale skull, with the hair roughly shaved. A scar traced a pink comma above his forehead. But when he turned a little to one side to spare his wounded shoulder, his face showed clearly, and Milos looked at him, his jaw dropping.
“Basil!” he cried. “I must be dreaming. It’s you!”
Astonishment and delight choked him. The other young man opened his eyes and broke into happy laughter. “Ferenzy! Ha, ha, ha! I don’t believe it!”
“Basil! I thought you were dead!”
“Dead? Why would I be dead? You’re crazy!”
“But I saw them take you out of the detention cell! And carry you away on a stretcher! Basil, you were covered with blood!”
“You bet! So I fooled you too! Ha, ha, ha! It’s easy to make yourself bleed, you know. Look at this: I got a thumbnail as hard as a bit of old iron. I nicked my scalp with it; blood flowed like someone had bashed my skull in. I wiped it all over me, my face, my neck, everything. Then I bashed my fists on the door, and when they came, I flung myself down and played dead. They thought I’d bashed my head in. Only way of getting out of that rat hole. I was getting bored, see? Only trouble is, instead of chucking me out of the school and sending me to another, same as usual, they locked me up in here. Which is worse.”
“But you haven’t done anything serious,” Milos interrupted. “I thought they only put criminals in this camp.”
“Yeah, but they kind of explained it was . . . Oh, I dunno what now. . . . It was, like, for all I’d done, see?”
“For all you’d done?”
“That’s kind of what they said. Hey, you hit the jackpot first go, right? Did you really kill a dog-handler?”
“So it seems,” Milos admitted.
“Go on, tell me about it. I always like to hear how one of those Phalange guys got done in.”