For several minutes he scoured the shed for something he could use as reins. After all, the structure appeared to have been a stable or barn a long time ago. With all the rusted farm tools and dry troughs Sam guessed that there would be leather strapping or rope somewhere under all the timber and metal. Not long after lifting what resembled a broken stable door in the corner, Sam struck the jackpot. A wealth of helpful tools and straps were buried underneath, illuminated by the slight beams of the risen moon which fell through the gap in the wall and formed a twisted square on the shed floor.
After luring the horse with a succession of tongue clicks and coaxing, holding some succulent grass in his hand, Sam finally got the animal close enough to give him a stroke on the nose. It turned out to be a rather tame creature, even affectionate, and Sam enjoyed just petting the horse for a while. He had almost forgotten that his life was still in danger while he was in the vicinity. The skin of Sam’s feet burned profusely as he tried to mount the horse with his camera cradled in his long sleeved shirt, which he had made a sling from and used as some sort of makeshift rucksack. He winced and moaned every time he felt the inside of his boots chafe his open flesh, but he had to escape this area, or it would be the last of him.
His dark eyes scouted the road ahead to determine the course best to take.
By now the cold had become cruel on Sam’s bare arms, but his survival was of more importance. Rather get the flu or take his chances with pneumonia than to perish altogether, he reckoned, and spurred the horse onward. He made sure not to drive the horse into a full gallop, because it would sound through the dead cold night, no doubt reverberating against the rising hilltops of the valleys and alerting his pursuers. Gradually they made their way through the night, carefully navigating the trenches and dry riverbeds so that neither of them would sustain any unwelcome injuries in the pitch dark of the strange landscape.
By midnight both Sam and his horse were exhausted. He dismounted just short of the brook they had come to, a few miles before the main road he hoped was on the right track to civilization.
“Oh my god, I think I’m lost,” he finally admitted next to the slurping horse that had its snout immersed in the cascading brook. Its shoulder muscles quivered wildly every now and then as it drank, its ears rotating to the sound of the strange rider’s mouth sounds next to him.
“Do you know where we are?” Sam asked the horse. He found even the animal’s lack of interest soothing, as long as it kept him company. Sam felt utterly lonely, ravenous and cold in the godforsaken patch of German land where he was being hunted like an animal.
Chapter 3 — Skullduggery
Radu stormed out of the tiny alleyway in pursuit of the rat, but he hitched his toes on the protruding cobbles and came slamming down on the stone walkway. All around him passers-by complained about the tumbling boy obstructing their path as they walked along the sidewalk and some of them leered at him with hands raised in a gesture of warning. The ten year old boy scurried out of the way as quickly as he could to avoid a trouncing from one of them. His dark brown eyes appeared enormous in their deep sockets and his head was disproportionately large on his shoulders due to malnutrition. His gaunt appearance likened him to some eerie imp, but his age compelled the citizens of the town to tolerate him.
Since Radu’s mother was killed in an altercation with three drunken attackers three years before he had been eluding social workers’ claws. Even at his age his freedom was more important than a full tummy and a warm bed. He had no idea why he would relinquish the privilege of education and a steady upbringing, but in his little heart he knew he was born to live under the radar of society, a wanderer, like his missing father.
His mother used to hold him at night in their run-down little room, the AM radio waves obscuring the crackling tunes that came and went from what sounded like another galaxy. There she used to tell her son about his father, how he went to work for an affluent family for the harvest season and never returned. Radu remembered looking at the tears in her eyes as she re-told his favorite story of how his parents met while running from the police after a rock concert that got out of hand in Budapest. He remembered how she smiled as she spoke of his father, staring out into space while reminiscing and fondly thinking of her husband.
They had moved to Cluj-Napoca right after their wedding and two months later Radu was born in this very alleyway.
This was why the child remained close to the dirty little space between two mid-town business buildings. He felt close to his mother when he was here. The state took her body and he did not know what became of her remains, because he hid from the authorities, not to be taken in by the system where strangers would pretend to love him for a state subsidy to feed their own desires.
Sometimes his beautiful mother would look at him through her bloodshot eyes after working for eighteen hours at two different residences, and she would shake her head. Smiling at her son, she would say, “You are just like your father, Radu. You are a roamer, a rebel — typical Gypsy.” At the time it was just a word, but he was told by some other hobo’s in the city that the term was either a thing of pride, if you belonged to the culture by blood, while other times being called a Gypsy was an insult and an insinuation of thievery or cheating. Radu chose to be proud of it, because it was the only emotional thread connecting him with his father.
Now he was more alone than ever, with the approach of that dreaded festival that reminded poor people how forgotten they were and nailed the spike of class differences even deeper into the blind eye of morality and compassion — Christmas.
Having abandoned his efforts of catching the rat the young streetwise boy took a walk, wandering up a few blocks north where marveled at the merriment of the patrons under the trees of a local beer garden. Radu wondered what it was like to have. Just to have the means to live. There was a distinct difference between being alive and living, something which he doubted any of them knew. Like he often did lately, Radu frowned with no kind look in his eye. In particular, there was a rowdy bunch of German tourists sitting at one of the bigger tables, looking smug and snobbish to the boy, more so than most.
Immediately he felt a warm wave of willing loathing take him and he started devising a plan to alleviate them of their belongings. Radu watched them keenly. There were two women in their fifties and three men of similar age, apart from one, who was much younger. He reckoned the younger man was the son of one of the couples and the one to watch out for. The younger man was in his late twenties, tall and powerful and very attractive. But he said very little, so the young Romanian vagrant assumed he was too reserved to get violent. After three years on the streets Radu had learned to sum up people’s mannerisms quite easily. He could read people quickly to determine when to make his move and which method to use. Not once did he feel guilty or shamed by his deeds, because he felt like it was owed to him by those who lived in luxury. Giving to people like him, willingly or not, was after all a good gesture, was it not? Radu grinned as he strolled on, hatching his plan.