“Subi dura a rudibus,” said Srenners.
“The Legionnaires speak Latin,” said Nash. “Not Hoplites.”
Srenners smiled and winked at him. It was useless to ask what it meant. If he could explain what it meant by using another palindrome he already would have said it.
The Hoplite with the scanner moved from one member of the party to another, nodding and lowering the scanner after each one. When he raised the scanner to Livi’s face, Black Kettle said, “Anyone who hasn’t seen the scan of a gate crasher, take a look.” Every Hoplite came forward and took a turn looking at the screen on the back of the scanner.
“Like a figging animal in a zoo,” complained Livi as they rotated through.
“Better than skewered like a pig on a spit,” commented Nash.
When the Hoplites were satisfied with their search of the packs, they backed away and Black Kettle motioned Nash away from the rest of the group. Livi would be able to hear what they said, which was fine by Nash. The purpose of her enhanced senses was to make her a more proficient huntress, but she never seemed opposed to using them for mundane activities such as eavesdropping.
“You’re walking into a hornet’s nest, Ranger.”
Nash just nodded his head.
“She’s still your problem. Any crime she commits will be on your head. Not Adam’s. Yours.”
Nash thought for a moment then said at a normal volume, “We have to stop the Reaper. Someone has to do it and she’s the only one with enough balls to join me.”
He saw a small smirk cross Livi’s face, but the Hoplites just turner more sour.
Black Kettle didn’t bite. “There’s no talking you out of it, then?”
Nash shook his head.
“Take my advice and keep the barrel of your gun against her temple until she’s back on her side of the island.” Nash still didn’t reply. “Begone, I wash my hands of you. When she betrays you, and you face the hangman’s noose, may you die like a man.” Black Kettle waved an arm and his men parted to allow the group to pass.
Srenners surprised the group when he muttered, “Egad! No bondage.”
“Don’t speak too soon, Srenners,” said Livi. The five of them gathered their packs, and with Livi in the center of the group, walked toward the Cold side gate. There was no moat or drawbridge on the Cold side, just a large iron portcullis that was currently open. Nash eyed the pointy tips as he passed under, still suspicious. They didn’t move.
“Congratulations, my lady,” said Adam, once they made it through. “You’re a rare exception to the ‘No Escalation’ law.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
“How did you do it?” asked Nash. “What was on that card?”
“It’s not important,” said Adam. “It’s just a matter of making our struggles worthwhile.”
“No,” said Livi. “Now it’s just a matter of seeing how much trouble I can cause for our little Ranger.”
Nash clenched his jaw and led them into the night. The road was all theirs. With the Grim Reaper’s reputation spreading, most people had become unwilling to travel at night, and the fireflies were done dancing. The drums were still present, and grew louder as they walked toward Ponce, masking the chirruping coquís.
Apprehension weighed on Nash. He’d agreed to take her life in his hands once they got here. He and Livi were more powerful than anything here—the Reaper excluded, and possibly some Rangers—but more danger waited ahead than it ever had back on the Hot side.
He was glad to have her as a partner. Just a few hours ago he wondered if she would abandon them when the Marauders attacked. Now they felt more like a team than ever. It would be hard to split after they finished with the Reaper business. At least he didn’t feel compelled to arrest her when the time came to part ways.
“How you feeling?” asked Nash.
“I’ll admit,” she said, “I feel a little electric thrill, but it’s not like I’m as comfortable as a brier rabbit over here.”
“Brier Rabbit?” He laughed and slapped his leg. “Brer Rabbit, you mean.”
“Shut up. I don’t care about your stupid rabbit. And respect your elders, boy. Tell him, Adam. I know there’s something about that in the Bible.”
Adam changed the subject. “Anyone up for the Game?” It was a rhyming, riddling game, popular on Hollow Island.
“I hate the Game.” The tone of her voice made it clear how exhausted she was.
“You know Adam made it up, right?” asked Nash.
“I didn’t know that,” said Livi. “But I can like pigs without liking bacon.”
“You do like bacon,” said Nash.
“Point for you,” she said. “It’s an analogy.”
“It’s also offensive to Rangers,” said Nash. “The whole police force, pig reference.”
“I’ll apologize later for what I said when I was so tired I wanted to curl up and die.”
Smiling, Adam began to sing in a high pitched, longing tone.
La tierra de Borinquen,
Donde he nacido, yo.
Es un jardin florido,
De mágico primor.
Nash didn’t understand any of the words, but the tune had the feel of a song from way before, and knowing the history of Adam’s ill-fated island, it felt more like a dirge for the dead.
With the Cold side of the island spread out before them, and the Reaper still on the loose, Nash wondered if people would be singing dirges for his little group soon. If that was the case, so be it. But Nash was not going down without raising some hell first.
Epilogue
A Harvest
<< Rewriting DNA is as easy as fixing faulty computer code.
– Quote from Hasan Kushnir’s speech as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Medicine, the first Nobel Prize awarded to a corporation. >>
Like an omnipotent king considering his vermin subjects, the Grim Reaper peered through his cowl over the new city of Ponce. Atop the domed church in the center of the city, he watched the large plaza for signs of life. Nothing moved.
One night on the Cold side and the city already cowered before him.
After a month of terrorizing the Hot side of the island, he’d been given permission to cross to the Cold side and given a restriction of one kill per night. “Permission,” he scoffed. As if they could stop him from doing whatever he wanted.
No one could stand against him. Not in Ponce, not on all of Hollow Island.
Even the most powerful Jennies on the Hot side of the island were worms under his feet; he’d proven it two weeks before in front of King Homer’s castle. The slaughter of the Legionnaires, an entire squadron of them, had been so sweet. The fulfillment of a desire to test himself. The death of so many king’s elite soldiers wasn’t his idea to begin with, but had come through the messenger who always parlayed information from his makers.
Someone thought they had created a monster, but they were wrong. They had created a god.
The slaughter had been satisfying, but he wouldn’t repeat such a massacre. Spree killers and mass murderers were hacks that flared and were gone in a single incident, soon forgotten. Anyone could plan a single incident and notch a couple dozen kills. But true masters persisted for months, years. And no one in history could compare with the terror he’d incited on Hollow Island. After failing for thirty years in his quest for glory, he would settle for fame.
A short woman with dark hair walked out of a building across the street, checking both directions. She reminded him of the Filipino woman in Melbourne he tried to kidnap with the bop n’ drop in the grocery store parking lot six years before. His broom handle had proved too flimsy, and with a grocery bag of canned goods she’d chased him away. His first failed attempt at abduction. No one would ever know about that.
He let the woman in the street go on her way. Because I killed a woman last night.
Variety was key in his mission of terror.
The death of the wench he dragged into the street the previous night, the
first on the Cold side, had stirred up an anthill before the sun even came up. A grating snicker escaped his lips when he thought about the man attempting to stop him. A flea trying to stop a dog from scratching. For hours after that, people lit torches, woke their neighbors, and generally ran around like a bunch of impotent, headless chickens for hours.
Drum beats rolled over the city, taunting him, making him wish his hearing had been taken away entirely instead of just diminished. The Reaper glanced into the sky at the object of the Druids’ worship, and forced down the memories of his past life on the Island. He had no name but Reaper. No friends, and no family. As the mightiest Jennie ever created, the entire human race was below him, only worthy to worship him.
And worship him they would. The drums that now paid tribute to a lifeless rock would someday venerate the true and only god on Hollow Island. He would allow his creators to believe they could control him, so as long as it didn’t interfere with his own purposes. As long as he could inflict pain and terror, increase his terrible reputation, and gain some revenge in the process, he’d go along with their wishes.
In truth he had as little knowledge of which Corporation big wig directed him as he did of his own weakness, beyond the diminished senses which didn’t compare with the extraordinary endowments. He’d figure out both eventually. All Jennies had vulnerabilities built in; it made for a much more exciting world. More than anything, the Corporation needed a captivating world or viewers would stop tuning in.
Sliding his scythe into the strap, he flurried his cloak and glided noiselessly into the air. To the earthbound vermin he would appear no more than a lurid bit of night sailing through the darkness. In a street beneath him, a child stole from the shadow of one building to the adjacent, trailing a staggering man toward the outer city.
The Reaper settled onto the flat roof of a corner building that afforded him a view of the scene below. A woman just outside of her own home the first night on the Cold side, then a child the second night. Ponce would be in utter chaos within hours. Unfortunately the urchin would probably be mourned by no one, but the violent death of any child should be enough to disconcert an entire city.
Within a block, the child approached the drunk man. From where the Reaper perched on the building’s corner, the boy seemed stealthy. But even in the torchlight, he couldn’t be sure due to the distance.
In exchange for his powers, the Reaper’s senses were severely limited. Everything except his night vision, which had been augmented. They’d taken away most of his ability to see colors as if his eyes were shrouded with a grey lens.
With a swipe of a small dagger, the boy slit the bottom of the sot’s coinpurse and coins clinked to the ground. The man cursed and tried to kick the boy, but the kid grabbed two handfuls of coin-infused gravel, and ran the direction he’d come from.
Gliding again, the Reaper gave pursuit from above, catching up to and passing the urchin before he’d run two blocks. At an intersection lit by two torches, he swooped to the street in the path of the fleeing boy and slowly brandished his scythe. The terror reflected on the boy’s face was darkly satisfying, and the coins falling to the patchy asphalt sounded like applause. The Reaper didn’t speak, but his gravelly laugh sent the boy darting down a side alley.
With scythe still in hand, he gripped his cloak and launched back to the rooftop. Keeping out of sight, the Reaper waited until the boy entered another street then descended near another torch, again blocking his path.
At the moment the Reaper entered the street, the urchin was looking over his shoulder into the night, and brought his head around just in time to stop before barreling into the Reaper. With a squeal high enough to make the Reaper wonder if it was a boy or girl, he turned and ran again. At a pace barely above a lope, the Reaper caught up to the boy and pulled him to a stop with fingers more bone than anything else.
Purposefully cutting off the boy’s wind, the Reaper lifted him into the air by his throat. Even though it signified pain, screaming was often an artificial payoff. Visual evidence of fear and pain was so much more personal and satisfying. And the pleasure of fear was the Reaper’s only satisfaction, all other enjoyments robbed from him along with his sense.
“What’s your name, boy?” he grated. Without allowing him air to breathe, he displayed his scythe.
The kid wanted to answer, and continued to try to force air through a blocked windpipe. A faint scent of urine penetrated the cowl, and the Reaper tossed the kid against a wall. Not too forcefully, though. If the euphoria of reaping lives was the only thing he could feel, he’d savor it.
Colorless, the boy cringed in terror. “L..L..Liam,” he finally croaked.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever killed a Liam.” The Reaper’s sepulchral voice scoured the dim streets as he moved closer to the urchin and he dragged one bony finger along the brick wall, feeling nothing. The kid stared at the finger and cringed even further from the noise.
The Reaper raised the scythe into the air. “Your time is up. Liam.”
Half an hour later as he slithered across the rooftops, this time on his way out of the city, the Reaper wiped his scythe clean on a black rag. He considered the Dark Ages death symbol, a scythe sweeping thousands of lives away through pestilence, war, and famine.
Eight hundred years later, again in a medieval setting, Death once again harvested the souls of men.
Also by Daniel Coleman
HOLLOW ISLAND SERIES
A Route of Wares
A Mutiny of Marauders
A Grove of Druids - Dec 26
A Party of Rangers - Jan 21, 2020
A Clash of Deathkillers - Feb 11, 2020
For FANTASY readers:
Knights of Wonderland Series:
Jabberwocky
How can one young man succeed where an army has failed?
Hatter
Witness the tangled ascent into madness of literatures most loved lunatic
Red Knight
Wonderland is at peace, but not for long. Just when Chism and his men need them most, their dreams and aspirations are stolen.
ALTERNATE FANTASY
Falyn Sweeney Saga
A girl traveling, carrying secrets of generations. A man steering who has other ideas for the traveler. An entity recording everything, even thoughts…
The Passage of Falyn Sweeney
The Name of Falyn Sweeney
The Calamity of Falyn Sweeney
The Keening of Falyn Sweeney
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Gifts and Consequences
How far would you go for what you want most?
www.dcolemanbooks.com
About the Author
Daniel Coleman is a firefighter/paramedic, student of creativity, advocate for kindness, collector of PEZ dispensers, proponent of bow ties, believer in magic, and proud husband of one and father of three. For Daniel, writing fiction is an escape from the traumatic days of firefighting and a celebration of the triumphant days.
Daniel lived in Puerto Rico for a couple years in his early 20’s.
www.dcolemanbooks.com
You can find him on these sites. He is most active on Facebook and BookBub.
A Mutiny of Marauders Page 15
