Chapter 25
Ending Lives
“Some are tough, some are not,” said the man’s voice, hoarse with age and in a strange, guttural accent with rolling r’s. “A consequence of the misappropriated experiments that created those monsters. Sad, I always thought so.”
Saan finally stopped watching the fasshim “monster” twitch and die from the final blows that were the arrows in its side, and turned her head and body far enough to her right to see the stranger, who stood near the curving tree line several meters away. He was older, as his voice hinted, a gray-haired man, his mane smooth, clean, and long, with a matching thick gray beard that fell from his chin a few centimeters. The lines on his face were dignified, with a few thin, old, smoothed-out scars showing through a moderate, healthy tan. His clothes were simple, meant for travel and work outdoors, with patterned and layered leather that would make it a sort of semi-armor. He wore thick spectacles, his eyes slightly bigger than they should be through the lenses. His height, broad shoulders, and steely, muscled arms made him an intimidating presence despite a consistently jovial quality to his voice.
From his size and obviously built-up strength, it was no wonder the compound bow he carried was strong enough to embed arrows halfway into the fasshim. That bow was, in and of itself, an attention getter. The cams and several other parts were made of a blood-red mineral that Saan could guess was corundum, which was common but ignored by the system and sold to tribes, with raw gems sometimes used as black market currency. That mineral blinked and twinkled where it was used, lending this old man’s weapon an appearance that was at the same time joyous and deadly. It matched its wielder perfectly. His appearance and that weapon, both of which her own people speak of as if they were transcendent legends, made him instantly recognizable.
“Gastineo...” Saan whispered. Saying the name out loud was strange, as he was mostly derisively called “the hermit” by her clansmen.
“Yes,” the old man said excitedly, a big smile curling his lips, hunting bow low since the fasshim was dead. “Gastineo Deadletter at your service, dear.” He took a very slight bow at the waist. “And you are Saan-Hu de Kensing. Finally! A formal meeting with the young, proud, prodigy recruit.”
Last names. He used last names, and not just his own, “Deadletter,” which sounded fabricated, but hers, a secret she revealed to no one besides Nes. How did he know exactly who she was?
Before she could think further on it, a warbled chirping sounded off in Saan’s ears, higher in tone at the end; a question. Another set of chirps, again a question. A couple of seconds passed, then a third set of chirps, slightly deeper, not a question. It was Evara and Goner, talking into the mics, the sounds ruined by what would likely be a scrambler carried by Hays – even hypnotized, the captain would come prepared to end lives with his typical proficiency. She grunted at herself in disapproval – the arrival of this old man distracted her from the fact that two privates under her command were in combat less than a hundred meters away, and against a highly regarded ranked DSF agent of all things. But this suspicious old man was armed, skilled, and in front of her. She could not turn away from him to help or the Stroffs might find her with an arrow in the back, if they survived at all.
“What are you doing here?” Saan asked, louder now, confused by the appearance of the famed hermit, wanting answers and wanting them quickly. “This is not Ko Monasi land. You always...”
“Always what?” he interrupted cheerily. “Stayed near your clan’s lands? No, no, no, dear child, no, no, no. I am free like the birds, and go where I please. Free, yes.” He shifted his eyes, looked into the trees ahead past an area of low grass, shifted his body, nocked an arrow, drew it back smoothly, the corundum cams clicking three times as he pulled the string back. He held the fletching up close to his eyes, aimed the deadly projectile. “Unlike these poor folk, free.”
He loosed the arrow, the speed making it a nearly invisible projectile. A man cried out in surprise, and Saan instinctively tightened her grip on the short, curved sword that was her only weapon at the moment. She hadn’t looked away from Gastineo since she saw him. Having only ever heard rumors about him, she couldn’t trust him worth anything, but whoever he just shot at might also be a threat. Gastineo reached back into his quiver, loaded his bow, aimed and loosed again. A man with a difference voice yelped this time.
She allowed herself to believe for now that the bearded old man was on her side since he killed the fasshim for her, and swiveled her gaze to where the new arrows had been aimed. She saw them: two men, dressed in ill-fitting, mismatched, patched-up clothes, and barely beyond the tree line, right where the fasshim rushed out at her. One of them was easily recognized as Milser, the young man who took over Trenna’s homeless camp in order to help Vaiss, and who took the bag with the strange translucent objects in the monastery.
The issue wasn’t who was there, it was how she didn’t see or hear them coming. On further examination, Gastineo had only shot their guns, not them, explaining the surprise in their eyes and their focus on the rifles lying on the ground. The hermit’s aim was perfect, ruining the assault rifles by slamming arrows through the barrels, but the wooden projectiles also ripped through a slip of paper that was taped clumsily to each gun. Her heart sped up when she saw symbols on the ruined paper, symbols she couldn’t read as the ones taught to her – a foreign version of what she knew.
“You are correct in your assumption,” Gastineo said while lowering his bow as the enemies hastily bent to pick up assault rifles that were struck out of their hands. “Those are Stitch, provided by a certain Citizen, as he calls himself. Powerful enough to work on members of entourages like yourself. Those men would have come after you quietly, killed you loudly.”
That was why she had not paid attention to these men, only to the fasshim, though the men would have been getting closer and closer to her the whole time. She had been affected by “ignore”-type Stitch during training a few times, and those men would have been nothing but shimmers in her vision, her brain tricked into selective blindness. As close as they were, they could have fired with their guns and killed Saan unceremoniously if Gastineo had not saved her for the second time.
“Well, Saan-Hu de Kensing?” Gastineo said. “Get to it.” He smiled again, but this time it was full of mischief. He was not going to help her any further despite a clearly visible leather quiver full of arrows with white fletching.
The scene was bizarre, and Saan took it in while here pulse raged, making her think her whole body was vibrating. She was at the oh-six-hundred position on a clock, and this is how the circle of death went: Nes was to her left and a couple meters forward, on his back and unconscious after having drained himself to get to a better position while she fought the animal; then came Milser and someone else behind some trees, their guns broken at their feet and their shapes dappled in bright light and middling shadow; the dead fasshim was directly in front of her, but not on the clock’s edges as it were; and finally, there was Gastineo, on her right at about oh-two-hundred. However, after that quick scanning of the area, Saan’s attention went back to Nes, because nothing else was as important.
Gastineo clicked his tongue in disappointment. “You know you are not to worry for him. Not your job. You are to attack, subdue, and seek the injured after. I will take it upon myself to assist Corporal Nesembraci Jaydef. You, dear child, take care of them. If you are corrupted by Vaiss, they will be the greater fighters, and I will leave you to die. If not... well, you may still die if I am not fast enough to save you yet once more. Best of luck.” He said the last while pointing at the two men.
Saan waited. While Gastineo jogged behind her, taking the long way around to reach Nes – and not coincidentally avoiding the space where Saan would have to fight – she watched the strange men as they brought out big, identical serrated-tip combat knives that had been slid into their belts. Once the hermit was on the white pebbled shore, he continued to Nes, running behind Saan. The hermit reached the corporal, got down on o
ne knee to examine him, and Saan stole a glance in that direction to see her friend. Gastineo quickly helped Nes up to a sitting position and she saw that he was still conscious, if glassy-eyed. The hermit began a visual examination of him, whispering something.
Milser and the man with him had been standing where they were, their guns damaged beyond repair, waiting to see if they were evenly matched in numbers or not. The young man with the scar across his nose, whom Dastou first took note of at the bombing incident that started this whole mess, looked back and forth between Saan and Gastineo, wondering whether to go after him, more heavily armed and apparently an expert marksman, or her, with only a short sword in hand. Gastineo solved that problem for them by taking a small piece of paper from a pocket and putting it on his shoulder, using the quiver’s strap to hold it in place. It was a Stitch, oddly written with extra flair to the symbols, but the general shape of the marks was a clear message: “ignore me.” He was taking himself out of the fight completely, and making sure no one else around him had the same benefit. Saan looked at her enemies, whose faces twitched momentarily, registering the hypnotic effect of the Stitch, and then Milser stared at her with hard, bloodthirsty eyes. The other one seemed in half a trance.
“I wish for once,” Milser said, a combination of anger and disappointment in his voice, “things went the easy way and we killed you without a problem.”
“Why are you here at all?” Saan asked, using the time to read body language and see exactly how much of a trance the other man was in. “You and that leader of yours stole our Caravan. You could be far away from here, free.”
“No, I couldn’t. Whatever Vaiss did to us made us faster, stronger. But I wish it made us smarter, smart enough to know that it was a trick.”
There was a very bizzare combination of determination and duress in his voice that almost triggered a sympathetic reaction in Saan. He sounded very much backed into a corner.
“Our minds are,” he continued, “breaking down. I’m lucky. Vaiss let me stay more or less normal so I could lead my people. The rest... they’re going to die or become murderous savages and kill each other. Their minds are poisoned and rotting, and mine is coming along, just slower. We’re the last left alive of our people, the rest of the bodies have been dumped in those tunnels your Caravan uses.”
“If Vaiss did this to you,” Saan said, “if he really did trick you, then my question remains relevant: why are you here?” she repeated, saying the last few words slowly as if each was its own sentence. “If you’re dying because of him, there is no point in doing what he wants.”
Milser laughed. “What he wants? I’m not doing what he wants.” His voice had grown louder, more forceful. “Vaiss told me to kill to you to make up for my failures in killing the Saint. Except that he expected me to fail. I’m not doing this for that fucker. He’ll find a way to get what he wants no matter what. I’m doing a favor for the world. You people all need to die, I knew that before like I know it now.”
“What about getting help?” Saan asked, desperate to avoid a fight. “If Vaiss’ hypnotism causes such issues, we may be able to do something for you.”
“No,” Milser said sternly. “I’m not letting you disgusting things into my head, even if it’ll save me. It’s your kind’s fault I was taken away from my family, my friends, my girlfriend, you people that control everything that makes the world whole.”
Saan wanted to correct him, to explain that Saints controlling the system was an old rumor and nothing more, but he wasn’t going to believe her and she knew it. What Vaiss had promised Milser was a lie, and whatever he was asked to do for that promise was a different kind of deception. The young man was resigned to this fight and was never going to see a way out of it.
“I’ve already gone too far,” Milser finished. “Now I can at least die knowing I took you with me. I’m gonna happily bleed you dry.”
Saan glanced one more time toward Gastineo and Nes, but neither was looking in their direction, and the former wasn’t going to do anything anyway. She focused on the men she was about to fight, and watched them begin to stalk toward her.
She moved to her right, to the grass, closer to where Gastineo had come, leaving the fasshim corpse to not be a distraction or a factor. As the men continued walking toward Saan, they came at a staggered distance, which was smart. The pair also showed far too much skill in the way they held their knives, the way they spread apart as they got closer to create blind spots, the way one was always creeping in faster when she took a good look at the other. These were not quite the same happy-trigger-fingered ragged folk Dastou and Nes handled days before. She squeezed the sword handle in her right hand as she moved and got to a good section of the curving treeline. Behind, in front, and to her right were trees, and to the left was the shore. She thought of martial demonstrations she held at the academy, on spaces made up of different materials to show how you have to change tactics based on sand, grass, solid or loose stone. Instead of students all around, it was just trees and low, unkempt grass, and this affair was no demonstration where the worst that ever happened was a broken bone or a bad cut. Milser and his entranced ally, wore a faded red jacket with some dirt stains and branch scratches on it, were only three arm-lengths away now and weren’t looking to impress for a good grade.
Gastineo called out, yelled really, from next to Nes with his only piece of advice. “Treat them as trained DSF agents, or you will die here and Cosamian Dastou’s debt will not reach him in time!”
Before she registered how much of a coincidence it was that Gastineo’s warning about fighting these men like agents was similar to her memory of the martial training, she asked herself: how did he know about Dastou’s debt?
She could not come up with anything remotely intelligible in the split second before the man in a faded red jacket lunged at her, knife forward, while Milser stayed back for now. She used her sword to block, making contact with the knife and swiping it and the attacking arm away in a clean, circular motion, though the man kept a hold of the weapon. She had to turn half around to parry Red Jacket’s strike and change his momentum, which gave Milser an open chance to strike at her back with his own knife. Saan knew that was coming, encouraged it with the big motion to block the first strike, and got low, very low, almost touching a knee to the ground. She twisted while still in a portion of the movement she used to parry Red Jacket to make Milser miss, his arm slipping harmlessly by her belly as she continued with one final motion.
Milser’s arm was now behind Saan as Red Jacket was getting his knife back in an attack position. Saan pushed herself backward into Milser, hitting the extended arm with her own back. Rather than keep her thrust going to push him and create distance, she slowed, got her feet flat and reached back with her free arm to lock Milser’s elbow with her own, making his weapon useless. Saan immediately tried to pull forward to break the man’s elbow, or at least damage it. She couldn’t get the angle right, and trying to force the joint to break almost caused her to lose her balance when Milser abused her shift in movement to try and trip her, a leg sticking out in front of her own and almost getting it done.
Red Jacket came in for another attack, and Saan parried smoothly despite having one arm busy locking down the other enemy. Milser awkwardly reached over Saan’s shoulder to hold her still with his unlocked arm, his free hand able to grab hold of Saan’s jacket and almost her breast as he did so, a miniscule offense compared to trying to kill her. Red Jacket tried to stab her in the gut and Saan pushed to one side, making him miss. Red Jacket was relentless and came at her again, her parry awkward as she held.
Milser almost fell over from this last sudden movement and Red Jacket tried again, this time going high and swiping horizontally for her neck. Saan snapped her head backwards, which simultaneously avoided the swipe and struck Milser in the mouth hard, loosening the man’s grip on her as he squawked.
“Argh!” Milser screamed. “You fucking bitch!”
Saan pulled her sword arm’s elb
ow back fast, thudding it into Milsers gut. He spat blood from the attack, hitting Red Jacket in the face as the latter was about to come at, staggering him. Saan unlocked herself from Milser’s elbow finally, moved forward half a step, and launched a vicious low kick into the side of Red Jacket’s shin. He toppled, cried out, but kept enough balance to only go down onto one knee. When Saan raised her sword, Red Jacket whipped left and right with his knife in a blind defense, blood spat from Milser in his eyes, forcing the staff sergeant to hop backwards and to the side to avoid it. That hop put her closer to Milser again, and he took his own downward swing just within Saan’s periphery. She twisted at the hip to face him and lowered herself on bending knees while lifting her arm, blocking the downward strike. Still holding the knife above her with her own blade, she grunted as she swung a brutal upward punch with her unarmed fist, slamming Milser’s side just below his ribs. When she made contact, her entire weakened left arm stung, and she yelped with pain at the same time Milser did.
The tension against her sword from Milser’s knife loosened when Saan punched the man, and she used the chance to change position. As she moved up to a half-crouch, she swept the enemy’s knife hand to the side. She had enough power in her legs to better her position, but instead she kicked herself upward, jumping straight into the air, and cracked her knee into Milser’s already bloody jaw. She saw his eyes glazing over before her feet hit the ground again.
She came down awkwardly after breaking Milser’s jaw, and the man grabbed her left arm as he fell backwards. Her bad landing and his momentum pulled them both in the same direction. Milser fell, landed on his side, and she tumbled on top, but quickly rolled to one side, making sure not to cut herself with the sword she still held tight. She was on her back and could see straight ahead, could see Red Jacket coming, and despite that one’s hobbled knee he was close enough to not have to move too far to reach her. Red Jacket tried to kick her knee the same way she did to his, but she moved both her legs, making him miss easily. Saan repositioned herself flat on her back and went into a backwards roll that ended in a half-crouch facing Red Jacket.
Red Jacket’s ill-advised, angry kick forced him to take a second to recover thanks to already being injured. Saan just watched, waited; Milser was down, and may get back up, but not immediately. Red Jacket was balanced again in a moment, and stared down at a dead still Saan two steps away. She very slowly, stood up, changing her grip on the sword so it was upside down, the pommel at her thumb and cross-guard near her little finger. Red Jacket grunted and came at her with a pronounced limp, swinging wildly, sloppily with his knife, a dangerously amateurish thing to do. Was he losing some of his hypnotism-induced skill?
Saan moved carefully backwards, staying out of reach and letting the ragged man swing away a few times. When he went too wide to one side, she stepped in smoothly, swung her pearlescent blade upward, intending to cut him at the wrist vertically with a fast swing. Rather than a deadly cut that would sever veins and tendons, the sword cut the enemy’s hand completely off just behind the wrist. Saan felt a fraction of the pressure against her palm that she should have when the weapon sliced in, the stolen sword cutting through the ulna and radius bones of the lower arm and the interspersed human meat like it was soft bread.
Gastineo guffawed in the background at the severing of the limb. Blood sprayed like a fountain from Red Jacket’s wrist, and thankfully Saan was already moving to the side in combination with her upward swing or it would have gushed all over her. Instead it hit the grassy ground ahead of the maimed man, plopping repulsively. Red Jacket screamed, kept moving forward due to his momentum, and slipped on his own blood, his feet completely taken out from under him. He landed hard on his back and his breath hammered out of him audibly.
Saan could not let him stay as he was, or he’d go at her again, adrenaline fueling him. After he was down, his breathe wheezy and panicked, she rushed to close the single stride of distance between them, got down on one knee, raised the curved sword, and stabbed downward. She aimed for his heart and hit the target, the blade going all the way into Red Jacket with sickening efficiency down to the hilt, a small fraction of it escaping out of his back to stick into the grass below him. What in the void was this iridescent sword made out of? She kept her grip on the weapon, pulled it out. The slimy, slushing sound of the sword sliding out of a man’s fresh corpse was going to brand itself into her mind for the remainder of her life.
Saan stood up and turned to check on Milser. He took two terrible, damaging blows to the mouth and chin and still found the strength to roll forward begin to push himself up, trying to keep fighting. Saan walked to him and gave him a merciless kick to the ribs. He spit blood, coughed, gagged, dropped face-first, but moved to try and get up again. By the void she was ready to end this. Saan walked very close to Milser, lifted the sword, steadied her hold with her left hand, and took a few short breaths.
Each breath she took was mixed in with a bloody gurgle from Milser lying on the ground in front of her. Could she actually do this again, though it was necessary? The level of hypnotic influence these two men suffered under was a dangerous taboo, Citizen Vaiss having used entrancement to transfer unearned skills. It ruined a person’s brain, and after mere weeks made them a husk. These men were better off dead than soon to be violent, brain-damaged slaves like Milser said. That’s what she told herself, but her hands kept shaking, making the sword pick up and twist it into different colors as she stood there justifying her mercilessness. When she tried to look away from the man in the dirt that she knew she had to kill, she made the mistake of looking toward his legs. A tattoo was revealed at his ankle, his pants having been pulled up a little sometime after he was on the ground.
She saw the whole of the body art except for some curling edges, and her vision went white, her mind seeing things that weren’t there. Saan was being taken, she knew it, and still could do nothing other than stare at the overwhelming Stitch.
At seeing the tattoo, images started to flash in her mind, and it was exactly as Dastou said it would happen: sudden and unstoppable. The only images she understood were ones that featured Citizen Vaiss, whom she’d only seen once at that point, in the monastery, when he came to take his fasshim and leave her, Nes, and Trenna behind. Salt-and-pepper hair, nice, clean clothes, handsome, dark-brown eyes with yellow striation.
She saw him as a leader, a great man. He was as powerful as a Saint, but without the support of something like that so-called and soon-damned Davranis Security Forces. Vaiss could use small teams, guerillas he named them, to fight against Cosamian Dastou, a power-hungry gray-eyed mastermind, all while building his own army to battle the DSF. If some innocents sadly died in this struggle, so be it, as long as in the end the last Saint was killed, his influence removed from the world, the people released from the Social Cypher they so despise. That was a worthy cause, of course, though surely more complicated than that.
There’s a chance, a real chance, that the Saints corrupted the Social Cypher from its original version. It was now the year 439 PN, Posta Notis, and just maybe, at the beginning of tracking time in that structure, the Social Cypher was simply a tool of ease, to help the masses deal with less in their daily lives. It would mean no time spent planning towns or cities, no need to figure out what to do for a living, how to feed your family, what to do in an emergency such as fire, flood, or injury. Now that Saan thought about it, the tattoo on Red Jacket’s ankle somehow leading her along this path of untainted understanding, it made more sense than anything she had ever known, or would ever learn.
The Saints, in their arrogance, changed the Social Cypher! It is supposed to be a simple, accepted way for society to work, without thinking about how it works, which is something no one needs to know. Everything could be solved, if only the last Saint, Cosamian Dastou, was finally dead. The last of the corruptors, the atypical ones, the anomalies, the errors, the pretend gods that so love their worship. The last of Bin-Haak’s legacy, whatever that meant.
&n
bsp; Citizen Vaiss could do this, and Saan-Hu could help him. Could she really, though? Was she so important and useful as that? Unquestionably, she was! She shouldn’t underestimate herself, but if it would help, Vaiss could teach her things. How to fight properly, how to fire and maintain a weapon, the role of command structures, how to use specific tools, how to build wonderful, useful machines. She could be so valuable by Vaiss’ side, doing such good works, and helping fix the Social Cypher, keeping it going. But... how did it work? That’s alright, no one needs to know that.
Saan hadn’t been paying attention to the sweat all over her body. She was a soldier, who had been through strenuous training, who ran mile after mile to stay in shape, she was used to sweat. She felt the slickness of her skin too strongly now, as if her sensitivity was increased a hundred fold, and the sweat made her body icy. She shivered almost violently, every pain on her frame piercing her all the way through, out, and back in, all at the thought of how the Social Cypher worked, at her internal rebellion that she didn’t need to know. The entire point of the Academy was to find out, every second of study she put herself through was for that purpose. Her life was voluntarily a cog in a machine whose sole task was to discover how it worked, to break it.
No one needs to know that! No one needs to know that! No one needs to know that!
Saan doesn’t need to know that.
Fwip!
An arrow struck Milser’s ankle through the tattoo, then another went through his temple almost immediately, ending the man’s existence and Saan’s trance nearly at the same time.
~~~~
Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Page 37
