Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) by Ryan Graudin Read Free Book Online Page B

girl puffed out her own smoke so hard that the little nubby angel hairs by her forehead danced. Lamplight and movement made them twinkle, a bit like a crown of frost. “We should keep riding together, stay the course.”
    Next, not yet, next, not yet.
    He wanted to win. How long had he dreamt of that second Cross? How often had he imagined the look on his father’s face when he glimpsed the sight: iron proof that Luka was far from weak.
    He wanted to keep riding with Adele and, more than that, keep talking beneath starlight and smoke, watching the lamplight toss dramatic shadows across her face. Striking, all striking.
    Why couldn’t he have both?
    There were no cameras, no prying eyes, and so Luka let himself smile. “We ride together.”
    “So.” Adele leaned closer. “Tell me about all these sweethearts you don’t have.…”
    They kept talking—long, too long—into the night.

    Katsuo did not strike the next day. Or the next. Luka stayed the course—through the last of the flatlands, into the mountains that eventually tore themselves off the horizon and swallowed the road. He stayed the course even when the road whittled down to a series of cliffside paths barely wider than his motorcycle. He stayed the course through bare rock valleys and curves that couldn’t make up their
verdammt
mind. More than a few times he lost sight of Katsuo’s fender gleam—and whenever Luka checked his mirror there was a fifty-fifty chance that he wouldn’t see Adele. That’s how twisty the roads were. Too twisty, really, to be stealing rearview glances. The chance of straying off road was far too high.
    But this was part of the reason he
had
to look. The mountain rocks echoed all sorts of noises. Pops, revs, shrieks… loud violent things that made Luka worry Adele had gone accidental lemming on him. (Later, he found out via the Reichssender’s dramatic recap, a racer
had
lost his bike off a cliff. Himura Kenji of Tokyo managed to cling to the ledge as his Zündapp slipped, shattered into a dozen pieces below. Since the supply vans were taking their regular detour around the mountain range, the fourteen-year-old was doomed to wander the race path on foot for a day and a half until officials sent a search party.)
    The mountains began petering off—raggeder to ragged. The road tossed this way and that. Luka’s brakes began to reek of burning rubber from overuse and, though not normally one for prayer, he willed them to last through New Delhi.
    On the fourth morning they reached the Seventieth Meridian. The line itself wasn’t marked, but the space around it was decorated in as much patriotic flair as a wilderness outpost could muster. Standards not yet faded by the south Asian sun fluttered from buildings. Swastikas claimed the first half of the settlement, shifting abruptly into flags with rising suns. Border guards—Reich on one side, Imperial Army on the other—watched the racers cross into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
    The day stretched on with the road, and the land started changing yet again. Colors other than the duochrome blue sky–dirt brown bled into the landscape. Green piled onto green: a tree here, a bush there, palms spiking every which way. Though the racing path had straightened out considerably, Luka’s habit of checking his rearview mirror was unabated. Adele stayed just two meters behind him, hunched against winds created by her own speed. She commanded her stretch of pavement with ease, keeping cataclysmics and hopefuls at bay with quick swerves of her bike.
    One racer in particular kept edging up. He wore a Japanese band around his arm and kept tailing Adele’s tires with tireless persistence. Luka wouldn’t have thought twice about the sight if not for the glint of metal in the racer’s hand: a sharp fang of folded carbon steel that didn’t belong to the bike. Takeo’s Higonokami knife.
    The sight of the blade catching sunlight cut Luka’s breath.
Next, next, already?
But Takeo