“He’s got beautiful eyes,” she muttered low enough for only me to hear.
I starred at the picture feeling that same old curiosity that had landed me in trouble a few years back when I’d wanted to explore the rituals of the Mayan Indians, specifically the part about human sacrifice. It wasn’t that I was a disturbed person, fascinated with violence, but more that I wanted to be like my heroes from the past and go on adventures to discover hidden secrets. I had seen old documentaries about archeologists uncovering Viking graves and hidden burial sites of the ancient Egyptians and Mayan Indians. My two favorite heroes were the archeologists from the last millennium whom I had studied and even written my dissertation about. With the content on the old Internet partly lost and partly falsified from cyber-attacks during the war, it was hard to get a clear picture of their lives, but movies had been made to honor their work and I had found video clips that testified to their bravery and adventures. I wanted to be the kind of archeologist that lived in the old days. I wanted to be like my idols Indiana Jones and Lara Croft.
CHAPTER4
The Northlands
Alexander Boulder
I was circling Khan, my body alert and ready to defend myself against his attack, which would come any second now. Drops of sweat were dripping from his forehead and his right eye was already beginning to swell from the right hook I got in a minute ago.
A displeased grunt escaped Khan as he made a mock attack with his right fist that made me sway back and raise my arms defensively.
“You really thought you could take me in a fight?” He smirked and moved with me as I kept circling him.
“All day, every day,” I said fearlessly.
“Tsk.” He smacked his tongue and narrowed his eyes, and that was his mistake. I knew his attack was coming because he was as easy to read as he had been when we were teenagers. Back then too he would narrow his eyes just before he came at me full force.
With a swift movement, I turned my body enough to avoid his frontal attack and quickly grabbed his arm to twist it back. Wincing in pain, he didn’t stand a chance when I kicked his feet underneath him, forcing him to his knees.
“Do you surrender?” I hissed in his ear and squeezed my arm around his neck.
Unable to breathe, he shot me a murderous look of fury. Khan was a proud man but smart enough to know he had lost this round.
Closing his eyes, he signaled surrender and I immediately let go of my ruler.
We were both panting from the fight and Khan stayed on the ground while I bent forward resting my hands on my knees and taking deep breaths to steady my racing heart.
“Good fight!” I rasped.
“Fuck you,” he bit back and slowly got up. “I went easy on you.”
“Did you now? Maybe you shouldn’t have.”
Offended, he snorted and went for his glass of beer on the table. “Don’t fucking strangle me again or I’ll have you castrated.”
I laughed and picked up my own glass, leaning my head back and downing the content. “You’re a sore loser, my friend.”
Khan emptied his own glass and smacked it down on the table. “Maybe, but so are you.”
“Always was and always will be.” I picked up a chess piece that had flown through the air when I pushed the game off the table only minutes before. “As I said, you might be able to beat me in chess, but never in a physical challenge. I hate losing.”
“Not as much as you’re going to hate that you won.” Khan had that look on his face that always made me nervous.
“What are you talking about?” I asked and pushed my long hair back.
His tongue ran over his upper front teeth and his hand carefully touched his swollen eye. Khan was a vain man and took pride in his good looks. No wonder he was pissed about his black eye.
“Hey, when you fight you get hurt,” I said and shrugged.
He rolled his eyes. “Spare me your wisdom.”
I laughed. “You can’t be the best at everything. Haven’t you learned that by now?”
Brushing invisible dust of his shoulders, he ignored me. We both knew that Khan was too competitive to accept being second at anything. He was born to be a winner. Son of a ruler who had mercilessly installed a winner mentality in him, still there were a few things he couldn’t change no matter how badly he wanted.
We hardly spoke about it but he absolutely hated that both his younger brother, Magni, and I were taller than him. At six-eight, I was two inches taller than Khan, and his brother Magni had outgrown him at the age of sixteen and become a large man, close to seven feet. Being six-feet-six himself Khan was in no measure a small man, but being the smallest of the three of us bothered him.
