Reaper's Awakening

by Jacob Peppers

  He frowned, kicking at the dirt, all of the bandits freezing in place as he did. It wasn’t fair. All of his friends were at the village festival and instead of watching the jugglers and musicians he was forced to go out searching for some stupid sheep. It wasn’t as if he’d meant to leave the pen open, but when he’d tried to explain this, his father had only looked at him with that serious, disappointed expression of his. “I know you didn’t mean it, Will, but in this world, a man’s got to fix his own problems, and Maggie’s not going to come back just because it was an accident.”

  He’d wanted to tell his father that he was only eight, that Graham, his best friend, was ten and he didn’t have to do anywhere near as many chores as Will. But, of course, he hadn’t. He’d only nodded, said ‘yes sir,’ and went to look for Maggie. Still, it was unfair. For most of the year, life on a farm was boring and hard work. Midyear was the one day when no one tended their farms, when the traveling actors and musicians passed through their village and performed as they made their way to the capital.

  Besides, no one had ever asked Will if he wanted to be a farmer, had they? When he was grown, he wanted to be a soldier in the king’s army, maybe even one of his own personal guard. But how was he supposed to train at his sword fighting if he spent all of his time chasing sheep?

  He was walking along, brooding on how boring the life of a farmer was—no dragons or princesses here, only grass and dirt and more than enough to go around—when the wind blew in a gust and carried on it a sharp, odd smell. Will had helped his father slaughter some of the cows and more than one of the pigs, so he recognized the smell at once for what it was—the smell of blood. And lots of it if the strength of the smell was any guide.

  Suddenly, Will grew worried. What if Maggie had fallen down a hill somewhere? His father would kill him. Well, maybe not kill him, but Will couldn’t handle another lecture just now, thank you very much. He started in the direction of where he thought the smell was coming from, then paused. What if it wasn’t Maggie? What if there really were bandits? And they’d hurt someone? “Don’t do it, Will,” he muttered to himself, “don’t be a muttonhead.” It was Graham’s word, one that he used when he was teasing him.

  But, of course, he had to look, didn’t he? It could be Maggie. Or wolves, a voice whispered in his head, and he shivered. That was ridiculous. It was daytime, after all. He took a deep breath and, his sword held out in front of him, started through the woods once more, headed in the direction of the smell.

  He followed it into a small clearing and stopped abruptly, his eyes going wide. A figure lay in the clearing and although it was a good distance away yet, he could tell, even from where he stood, that it was a man. Or, at least, it had been. The man’s clothes were torn and cut and what little was left of his shirt was covered in deep crimson stains. That explains the smell, he thought, his hands growing sweaty.

  “Alright, Will,” he whispered, his voice cracking, “You’ve seen him. You’re already a muttonhead for coming this far, but that doesn’t mean you should make it worse. Turn around. Go home. Tell da. He’ll understand why you stopped looking for Maggie.” And his father would understand, he knew. Although he was sometimes harder on Will than Will thought he deserved, his father was not cruel or given to beating him or his mother like some of the other boys’ dads. Besides, it wasn’t like he was a chicken, was it? His dad needed to know, needed to be told. All true things. All smart things. He would just turn around and go back to the village, back to his mom and dad. Instead, he started toward the man.

  The village priest, Balask, said that the gods looked after little children, and, as he drew closer to the still form, Will thought that was just as well. If they didn’t, there probably wouldn’t ever be any big ones.

  The corpse—surely it had to be a corpse—lay on one side, its back to Will. He stopped several feet away, half expecting the man to jump up and charge him, all of it really just a trick, an ambush. It was the type of thing that the bad guys would do in the stories. He was telling himself again that he needed to leave. Whatever this was, it had nothing to do with him, but just then the irrational but irreconcilable feeling overcame him that the man lying in the field wasn’t a stranger at all, but his father.

  Foolish, of course. Something an eight or nine year old might think, but not a boy of ten, nearly grown. Still, the feeling grew stronger even as he stood there until, unable to stand it any longer, he crept around to the see man’s face.

  He sighed with relief as he saw that the man was, indeed, a stranger. He’d no sooner breathed this sigh, though, than something strange started to happen to the grass around the stranger. The thin blades were very green and very tall, nearly coming to Will’s knees but, even as he watched, the grass around the stranger began to bend and fall over, wilting from a vibrant green to a dark, dull black before shriveling and crumbling into dust.

  In a matter of seconds, the man was surrounded in a circle of what had become black ash and, before Will had fully processed this, the circle began to expand, a spreading pool of decay. Poison, Will thought hysterically, that’s all. Someone must have poisoned him and … Sure. But what about the blood? The man had clearly been hurt and badly. Why would somebody poison him just to stab him to death? Besides, although he didn’t know much about poison, he’d never heard of one that could do such a thing.

  Abruptly, Will didn’t care about the festival or bandits or anything else. He just wanted to be at home and in bed, listening to his mother tell him one of her stories—even one of the ones he usually hated, the ones where nothing bad happened and no one fought and the whole thing was about a prince or a princess marrying a commoner. Especially those.

  He turned and hurried away—not running, no, never that. It was a well-known fact that as soon as you began to run something would chase you. Still, there was nothing wrong with walking fast, and he did. He was very nearly to the tree line once more when he heard a rustling behind him. He jerked around, expecting to find some monster hunting him, wanting to glut itself on little boy blood, but there was only the figure and the spreading ash all around him.

  But wait … had the figure’s arm been flung out so far? He didn’t think so but he couldn’t be sure. He’d just convinced himself he was imagining it when the man’s head flopped around, toward him, and his eyes snapped open.

  Will gasped. Green. The man’s eyes shone the most vivid green he’d ever seen, no pupils or whites, only pits of green so vibrant that they made the grass and leaves of the trees seem pale shadows in comparison.

  Then Will was running, and, as he ran, he decided that maybe he didn’t want to be a royal guardsman, after all. Farming wasn’t so bad. Not bad at all, really.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cameron awoke with a gasp. He’d been dreaming, a dream he did not know and, even now, its content was fading, leaving only a few disjointed images. Sweeping fields, the grass green and blowing in a constant wind, a towering forest of oaken sentinels, their branches reaching to the sky. A dream of roots reaching down into the earth, a dream of life and growth and the wild. A green dream.

  He sat up, wincing in expectation of pain but finding none. Looking around, he saw that he was in a small clearing surrounded by towering trees and, for a moment, he felt as if he could hear them, that, if he listened a little harder, he would even understand them. His thoughts felt odd somehow, twisting, far-reaching things, of incalculable patience and endurance of which he was only the smallest part. It was a strange feeling, an uncomfortable one and, as each second passed, that alien presence in his head seemed to grow stronger, threatening to sweep away all that he was, all that made him, him. A crystallized moment of fear in which he stood against that wave of alien consciousness and then outright panic as the wave that was the greatest part of it hit, and he was swept away, carried on its green, murky currents.

  Just as he felt himself being overcome, there was a hand, pulling him up, out of the green tide, and a voice, one that he did not know,
but that he should know. No, Cameron. At first, he wondered from whom the voice came and at whom it spoke, but the hand was holding him, lifting him. You remain, Cameron. Come back. It’s not done. Not yet.

  There was one titanic heave, and he cried out as he was pulled out of those depths, thrust out and into the clearing once more, the sun bright and warm against his skin. He fell to his side, his stomach heaving, his breath coming in ragged, grating gasps. “What in … the Pit?” He croaked.

  He lay for several seconds, struggling to get his breathing under control. Fearing and expecting that alien presence to sweep over him again at any moment. It did not return, but he felt it hiding somewhere in the back of his mind, waiting. Unnerved, he sat up once more, sniffing the air as an odd smell struck him. Looking around him more closely, he was shocked to see that he lay in a large circle of ash, that his clothes and skin were covered in the flaky gray stuff.

  For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was and the panic returned. He jerked to his feet and staggered as revelation struck him with the force of a blow. Marek. He’d been run through. Frantic, he tore open his tunic—it took little effort, what was left of the cloth was little more than torn, bloodstained rags—and stared at the unbroken skin of his stomach in wonder. “Divines,” he breathed, “What’s happening to me?” He tested his shoulder where Brunhilda had stabbed him and found no pain. In fact, he realized that he felt better than he had in days, as if he’d spent the last day or two sleeping instead of being stabbed repeatedly and nearly killed.

  He understood, then, where they’d brought him. Sometimes, men and women whose crimes were considered so great as to make them unworthy of burial were taken into the woods and left to feed the scavengers of the forest. It made sense, then, that they would take a man who’d proved himself a traitor to such a place. What didn’t make sense was that, in every instance, without fail, the man or woman taken was already dead when he or she was left. So, what, then? Had Marek made a mistake?

  He glanced back down at his stomach, half expecting to see a wound appear there as if by magic but none did, the skin as smooth as he’d ever known it. But no … he’d felt the blade go in, remembered the liquid warmth of his lifeblood pouring out of him.

  The rebellion ends tonight. The words seemed to come from right behind him, and a bestial snarl grated from his mouth as he spun, expecting Marek to be standing behind him. But there was nothing, only the clearing and the trees, and the circle of ash, spread out around him. He thought of Memory then, of how right she’d been and of how he’d hated her for it. He thought of the way she’d looked, watching the young girl through the window, the love he’d seen, reflected in her eyes.

  He let out a cry that sounded more like a wolf’s howl than any noise issued from a man’s throat, and then he was running. He never stopped to get his bearings or find his way, for it was as if he’d travelled it many times, as if he knew every bend in the path, every tree or blade of grass, as if they all were arrows, pointing him toward his destination. His muscles, which he would have thought to have been exhausted, seemed primed to a degree he’d never experienced before, his body filled with energy and eagerness, like that of a predator pursuing its prey. And so he ran. Not to save the rebellion, not to save the city, but to save her. Only her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Damnit,” Nicks grunted, rubbing a hand across his sweaty forehead. He glanced at his companion. Blinks stared back at him, an expression of such worry and concern on his thick features that it would have been funny in other circumstances.

  Nicks pinched the bridge of his nose, “Alright, so what do we know? They took him out here along the road, dumped him somewhere in the woods, no doubt. We know they made it this far,” he said, gesturing to the blood stain on the dirt path, “but so’s far as I can tell, once they got here, they proceeded to vanish in thin fucking air.”

  “Right. But where is he, Nicks?”

  “I don’t know, damn you,” Nicks growled, and Blinks winced as if he’d been slapped. “Damnit. I’m sorry, Blinks. I didn’t mean to yell I’m just frustrated, that’s all.” Truth was, he was much more than that. Nicks wasn’t a man who made a habit of thinking overmuch—a man could get himself killed doing that—but he couldn’t help considering the fact that they’d spent the last several hours searching the woods for a man who wouldn’t have been left at all unless he was most assuredly dead. Still, he’d told Memory he would do all he could for the man, and so he would. She deserved that much from him, at least.

  “Pit take it,” he said, “Come on. Let’s try this way.”

  He was just turning to walk into the woods when he heard the faint sound of approaching screams, coming from within the trees. He turned back just in time to catch a young boy that came barreling out of the woods before he ran smack into him. The boy’s eyes were wide and terrified, and a high-pitched keening issued from his throat. He struggled when Nicks caught him, surprisingly strong in his fear. “Relax, boy, you’re okay—” But if the boy heard, he gave no sign, and one of his flailing feet caught Nicks a solid blow in the shin.

  Sharp pain lanced up his leg and Nicks cursed, “Hey, hey, damnit—” The boy was struggling even harder now, his breath coming in quick ragged gasps, and Nicks did the only thing he could think of, reaching out and slapping the boy across the face.

  The youth’s struggles stopped, and a small hand shot up to his face in surprise, “Y-y-you s-slapped me,” he said, accusing.

  Nicks nodded, “Yeah, so I did. Sorry about that. What’s your name, lad?”

  “W-Will,” the kid stammered. Something rustled in the woods in the direction from which the boy had come, and he began to struggle again but Nicks held firm.

  “Easy, lad, easy. Now just hold on a damn minute, alright?”

  “P-please, mister,” the boy said, “you have to let me go. I’ve got to go tell my dad. I have to—”

  “Listen, boy,” Nicks said, keeping his voice calm, reassuring, really not so different than talking to Blinks, as far as it went, “I don’t know what’s got you runnin’ around like a fool, but you’re not goin’ to do you or your pa any good by plowing into a tree and knocking yourself out cold, are ya?”

  The boy’s lower lip trembled, and Nicks thought he was going to burst into tears, but he took a deep, slow breath and nodded. “N-no, sir. “

  “There’s a good lad,” Nicks said, patting the boy on the head, “Now, just what’s got you so worked up anyway?”

  “I saw … something. In the woods.”

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  “It … was … a demon,” the boy said, turning to shoot a nervous glance at the woods behind him.

  “A demon?” Nicks asked, “Well, what do you mean by that, boy? What’d this demon look like?”

  “L-like a man,” the boy stammered, “but not. C-covered in blood, it was and eyes … its eyes were green.”

  “Well, now,” Nicks said, “that’s not so strange, is it, lad? I’ve got a little cousin, she’s got green eyes and so far as I can tell, she ain’t no demon. A holy terror and a brat, sure, but not a demon, and the little boys seem fond enough of her, the poor bastards.”

  “N-not like that,” the kid said, staring at Nicks as if he was a fool, “not normal green. They were all green, like grass or leaves but greener. There weren’t no whites to them at all, mister. Just … just green.”

  Nicks frowned, sparing a glance for Blinks. Not gold eyes but green ones? That didn’t make any sense. He turned back to the boy, “Listen, Will, I’m sure there’s just some misunderstanding, right? Maybe they looked green or … or something else. You just go on home to your pa and be careful, you hear? I don’t know much about demons, myself, but I do know that a careless run through the woods can end up with a twisted ankle at the least.” He let the boy go, “Now just be—” He cut off, sighing, as the boy sprinted into the woods.

  Nicks watched him go, rubbing at his chin. “Blinks.” The big man didn’t answer. �
��Blinks.”

  His companion turned back from where he’d been studying the woods in the direction of the boy’s demon, his eyes too large in his face. And damn if the man didn’t look like he was eager to follow after the boy.

  “There’s not a demon out there,” Nicks said.

  “But how can you know, Nicks?”

  “I know,” Nicks said, forcing himself to be patient, “because there’s no such thing as demons.”

  The big man pondered this for a moment then grinned, “Oh. Right.”

  Nicks considered for a moment, replaying the boy’s words in his mind and found himself with a hope he didn’t have any right entertaining. “Come on, Nicks, let’s go find Cameron.”

  They’d barely taken a step when the woods came alive with the sound of rustling leaves and breaking branches, and Nicks had only just managed to draw his sword, thinking maybe the boy had been right after all, when a figure covered in bloody rags came charging out of the woods with a speed that was unnatural.

  The figure came to an abrupt halt a few feet in front of them, and Nicks yelled in surprise. “Cameron,” he said, “is that you?”

  The figure turned to Nicks, and Nicks found himself taking an involuntary step back. The man’s upper lip was peeled back, revealing his teeth, and he let out a low, guttural snarl reminiscent of some wild animal. It was not these things, however, which had grabbed Nicks’s attention. It was the man’s eyes. Green, all green, just as the boy had said—a blazing green that somehow put Nicks in mind of wild forest glades, the secluded, secret places of the woods where man’s hands had never touched. Still, it was Cameron, green eyes or not. “Hey, we thought you were—” before he could finish, the man was on him, knocking him to the ground with a savage, bestial roar.