The Way of Death

by James Von Ohlen

  “And who will we be joining for dinner tonight?”

  The farmer looked at Gavin for a few seconds before answering, perhaps seeing something there that he didn’t like. “Just me and my boys.”

  Gavin nodded, accepting the answer as he began opening the gate.

  “That would be a delight.”

  BLOOD spread from where the farmer lay. His hands were bound behind his back as well as his feet tied together. A precaution that seemed totally unnecessary to Reiji. What chance had the old man had against a dozen or so younger, armed, men out for his blood?

  The inside of the farm house had been nice enough. Far more comfortable than anything Reiji had ever called home. Then again, he’d been far more Spartan for most of his life. A mat to sleep on, a place to take a shit when nature called, a working shower, and a space in which to train. His needs were simple enough.

  But the farmhouse, that had been something else. Leathers and tech as far as the eye could see and air conditioning working at such high efficiency that it felt like stepping into a meat locker. Reiji could have sworn that he saw his breath frost in the air when he entered.

  Something that resembled polished marble wove its way through the leather furnishings above a polished hardwood floor. Not easy things to find out here in the middle of nowhere. Either this man had more than a few credits to his name, or more likely, someone in his family a few generations back had had enough to put this place together.

  The farmer nervously showed Gavin’s crew to a large, open room at the rear of the farmhouse. What might have been a barn at one point in time. Within, there was more than enough space for each man to spread out and sleep in comfort or simply laze about until it was time to eat. The expectation of which was something that Gavin made clear to his unwilling host. There would be food or there would be a problem.

  The farmer disappeared to go about the business of putting together a meal large enough to feed this many men at once. It was not something that Reiji envied. Perhaps there was some fancy tech in the man’s kitchens that would make short work of a such a task, but it was unlikely. It was going to be sweaty, dirty work to prepare for that many.

  And not a single man in Gavin’s crew lifted a finger to help. The others seemed content to lay in the air conditioning and drink cold, clear water. Reiji was as well for some short time.

  Rising and excusing himself, he set out to find the promised showers. They were in a room branching off of the former barn, and when he turned them on Reiji was glad to feel warm water emerging from the showerheads.

  He stripped down and placed his gear where he would be able to see it. Gavin had made clear that any man caught stealing from another man in his crew would lose a hand. How he managed to enforce such an edict, Reiji wasn’t quite sure. No doubt the twins figured heavily in that proposition. Threat of dismemberment aside, Reiji still didn’t trust the others to not rifle through his things at the first chance.

  Reiji stepped into the warm water and let it wash over him. It had been far too long in his mind since he’d bathed. Such a simple thing now seemed a luxury beyond compare. In his mind at that moment, he might as well have been the richest man on Lexington.

  He turned the water up and rubbed the soap on his body into a thick lather, relaxing and enjoying the sensation of the bubbles moving over his skin. He rinsed himself clean and then turned the temperature control on the shower as low as it would go.

  Near freezing water washed over him, shocking the breath from his lungs. Now that is something he would never get used to, Reiji thought as he expanded his chest and forced a breath. It always felt terrible when he did it. At least for a few seconds until he got used to it. But the benefits of the contrast shower far outweighed any temporary discomfort.

  He shut the showers off and stepped out, looking at his filthy clothing as he did so. No need to put such dirty things on right away if they’re not needed, he thought. Reiji scanned the room and found a stack of robes, grabbing one and securing it tightly about his waist, but leaving his upper body bare.

  Kneeling to check his pack, Reiji was satisfied that it hadn’t been tampered with. He slung Kai and Little Brother over his shoulders and carried his pack in his hands. Somewhere within reach there must be a relatively quiet place.

  Reiji found what he sought after opening a few doors and passing through them until he found himself in what appeared to be an old storage room. He placed his pack back on the ground, hanging his dirty clothes up to air out, and sat on the floor, crossing the matched blades over his thighs.

  Finding the right position, he produced the data plug that would link him to his ancestors and snapped it into place behind his right ear. The room around him faded away and he found himself upon the tatami of the training hall once more. Grandfathers glared at him angrily and with disapproval etched upon their features. Just like always, he laughed to himself.

  After being struck down for the twentieth time, Reiji rose again to face his attackers, determined as always to learn from his mistakes so that he might never repeat them. Kai closed on the hulking armored form of a grandfather from one side, striking towards the neck as Little Brother mirrored the attack from the other side.

  “Hey mister, whatcha’ doin?” A voice Reiji didn’t recognize spoke in his ear, causing him to stop the assault and spin to face a new attacker upon the tatami. There was none.

  Then someone was grabbing his shoulder and rocking him. He spun to shake them away just in time to be struck down once more by grandfather. Reiji raised his hand to remove the data plug from behind his ear and found himself sitting in the storage room.

  A boy, somewhere in his late teens stared at him while shaking his shoulder.

  “You okay, mister?” The boy asked, smiling ear to ear with what could only be described as an idiot’s grin. Something about the boy struck Reiji as…wrong. It took him a few seconds to realize that the boy was retarded. Such a person being born on Lexington had been a very rare thing before the world had been left behind. There had been tests and procedures aplenty to ensure against it. In the rare cases that a child with some type of defect made it to term without the problem being corrected, there had been gene therapies available that would correct the problem over the course of several years.

  But those things had grown scarce in recent years. Reiji looked at the boy with something between pity and contempt. The anger he felt at being interrupted while training with the ancestors subsided some, but only a little. He felt an urge to slap the boy, extra hard across the mouth.

  Reiji looked closer, noting that the boy didn’t seem to suffer from any physical abnormality save for the exception of a large surgical scar on one side of his head, almost, but not quite, hidden by his hair. The edges of it were irregular, telling him that it was perhaps the result of some trauma other than surgery. The boy reached forward again to grab Reiji’s shoulder and shake him.

  Reiji grabbed the boy’s hand and in a single fluid motion and twisted his arm, pinning the boy to the ground next to him. “Do you always interrupt men who are at important business?”

  “No no no no no!” The boy spoke in a high pitched whine of words that merged together into one. Reiji realized he was hurting the boy, but didn’t really care. On some level though, he realized that injuring someone who might well be a family member or servant of his host was significantly less than the correct etiquette. He had been left in peace to train for some hours, and he would not repay that with unnecessary violence.

  And judging by the look of slobbering confusion on the boy’s face, he had no idea what was happening and had genuinely been concerned for Reiji’s safety.

  “Now, you can stay there like that, with your arm twisted in pain,” Reiji began, adding a slight pressure to the hold that made the boy squirm and grunt in discomfort. “Or you can twist your arm in the other direction, like so, and escape.” He moved his free arm, showing the motion to the boy.

  The simpleton repeated the motion with his own
arm, breaking Reiji’s grasp and pulling away from him with another odd smile.

  “Hey, that was neat. Show me again!” The boy screamed with his enthusiasm, his voice filling the storage room.

  “Maybe later, boy. Is there a reason why you’re here?” Reiji looked upon the boy and couldn’t help but feel some of his infectious enthusiasm.

  “Um…” the boy began to speak and then paused as if trying to remember something important that he had forgotten. After a few seconds it was as if Reiji could see the gears spinning in the boy’s head and his eyes shone as he remembered. A triumphant gleam that spoke of just having conquered the world with only his two bare hands.

  “I was uh-sposed to come find you,” the boy began, pronouncing ‘supposed’ in a strangely twisted way. “Hey are those real?” His words flowed out again in a jumbled stream as he reached for Little Brother.

  Reiji caught the boy’s hand and, this time, gently pushed it away from Little Brother’s handle. “Careful boy, you could hurt yourself.”

  “Uh…thanks mister. I don’t want to hurt myself. But they look so cool!” The boy laughed as he finished the statement and a great strand of drool fell from his lips, hanging there until he reached up with a sleeve and wiped it away. As the sleeve peeled back from his wrist with the motion, it revealed a crisscrossing network of scars there. About the right shape and size to have been caused by manacles, Reiji noted. Someone had kept the boy as a prisoner in the past.

  “Oh yeah I was uh-sposed to come find you and tell you that supper is ready!” The boy yelled in triumph, hurting Reiji’s ears with the volume of it.

  He looked past the boy and saw that his pack had been opened. Its contents had been spread around on the floor, but nothing seemed to be missing. An MRE had been opened and emptied out on the floor. The contents lay untouched with the exception of the desert. A small chocolate bar had been opened and a single bite taken.

  How long has this little retard been here? Reiji wondered as he looked at the mess. And how did he get so close to me without my noticing until he touched me? There were some definite drawbacks to training with the ancestors, and he decided that he would need to find some way to work around them. Motion sensors or proximity detectors perhaps.

  “Did you do that?” Reiji asked with a hint of anger in his voice as his gaze lingered on the remains of his careful assembly of his pack.

  The boy shied away from him as if expecting to be struck and looked down. “Yeah,” he responded. “But I was just looking. Honest I didn’t take anything.” His words slurred as though it was difficult for him to form them. Like his tongue was too big for his mouth and too slow for his thoughts. He turned around quickly, moving on his hands and knees over to the pack and began reloading the contents.

  Reiji began to stop him, but then thought better of it.

  “You might as well finish the chocolate bar,” Reiji began. “There’s no fucking way I’m going to eat it after it’s been in your mouth.”

  The boy looked at him quizzically for a moment and then snatched the remains of the chocolate from the ground and shoved it in his mouth before moving back to reloading Reiji’s pack. Loud smacking noises filled the room as the boy devoured the candy.

  “What’s this one?” The boy said as he held up a small blue package with a white cross emblazoned on it. Reiji found it curious that even the retard didn’t recognize it right away. Every man familiar with violence, medicine, or even trash entertainment like movies and television would no doubt recognize it right away.

  “Medicine,” Reiji replied. It was the first aid kit he almost always carried. On a few occasions it had even saved his life. Several pre-loaded syringes filled with various types of medical nanobots. Some would quickly heal even a serious wound, knitting flesh back together with seeming supernatural speed and acting as substitute blood. Other pre-loaded syringes would combat the effects of poisons or infections, neutralizing toxins and destroying non-native viruses and bacteria. Useful things, all around, Reiji thought. Especially in his line of work.

  The boy managed to put everything back into the pack and in the correct place with a speed and efficiency that surprised Reiji. He considered giving the boy a beating to teach him a lesson, but once again thought better of assaulting someone under the watch of his host.

  “Well then,” Reiji said as he rose to his feet. “No sense in starving any longer than necessary.” The boy looked at him expectantly. “Let’s go eat,” Reiji said impatiently in response, motioning to the door as he did so.

  The boy rose to his feet, and Reiji realized his height. The boy’s face said he was somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen, but his height said that he was a full grown man and then some.

  “Hey mister, you ever go hunting?” He asked as he walked through the open door. Reiji saw himself chasing Meyer through the trash choked slum before he killed him. Cutting off the man’s head in a filthy public restroom, and then drowning Zirsens in the stinking filth.

  “Of a sort. Do you?”

  “Yeah, my dad takes me. I shoot the rams with my bow. They taste good.” The boy mimicked drawing a bow and firing, sticking his tongue out with concentration as he did so. He released the imaginary arrow and then made a whooshing noise to mimic the projectile in flight. His hands immediately fell to his belly and he began rubbing it, making noises of approval that suggested he had watched a great deal of children’s entertainment.

  Desert rams. Reiji was of the opinion that such meat was fit only for warding off starvation. Even then, he’d be reluctant to each such garbage. Death might be a better alternative. But if the boy thought it tasted good, then all the more decent food for Reiji.

  The boy led Reiji through a series of doors and hallways, seemingly too far and too many to be contained within the same farmhouse he had spied on early. The boy seemed to know exactly where he was going, or at least pretended to. Reiji assumed the boy led him towards the large tables set up in the dining room he had seen when he first entered the farmhouse. They turned towards a door that he recognized, almost there, when Reiji realized that he was still wearing the robe taken from the showers and nothing else save for sandals and his swords.

  Fuck it, he thought. It’s not like there was decent company to impress.

  “And where, exactly, is this woman? Or is it women? More than one?” Gavin’s voice carried through the open door and around the corner accompanied by the sound of blades being drawn. Bad news for someone. And that someone likely wasn’t Gavin or anyone in his crew. That left very few options for who it might be.

  Reiji paused, pushing the boy back, causing him to stop before leaning against the wall and straining to listen. There was something mumbled that he couldn’t clearly make out, but it sounded like the farmer. The same fucker who’d called him a half-breed. If violence was to be done upon him, Reiji wouldn’t complain.

  “I graciously accept your hospitality, and bless your hovel with my presence and the protection of my brothers in arms,” Gavin paused and voices that Reiji recognized as belonging to the other men in the crew offered words of agreement and encouragement.

  “And you refuse us the comfort of your women?” Gavin sounded angry as he spoke.

  “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you!” A man’s voice shouted, but not one that Reiji recognized.

  “Shut it, boy. You’re not helping,” the farmer responded.

  Things had definitely taken a turn for the worse for this farmer. Given what Reiji knew about the group of men with Gavin, the farmer was likely about to experience a great deal of pain and would be lucky to survive. Reiji didn’t give a shit about him. If he got himself cut down, it was his own damn fault. But the boy, Reiji thought, this fucking retard, had done nothing that deserved more than a few hard slaps. Leading him to his death seemed somehow…wrong.

  Reiji paused at that thought. How long had it been since something he had been involved with struck him as immoral? Years, perhaps. More likely decades. He looked back at the boy who
opened his mouth to speak as he did so.

  Reiji grabbed the boy by the collar of his shirt and pulled him back down the hall a way, clamping a hand down hard over his mouth to keep him silent. The boy instantly began laughing and licking the palm of Reiji’s hand, eliciting a grimace of disgust from the hunter. He kept his hand in place long enough to muffle the laugher and pulled the boy close to him.

  “Bad things are about to happen.” Reiji whispered directly into his ear and the boy stopped moving. His eyes went wide, but he kept licking Reiji’s hand. “Go and hide. Now.” He pushed the boy away, back down the hall. The boy stood there for a moment, seemingly unsure and then turned and ran down the hallway. There was no doubt that the men in the dining room would have heard his footsteps.

  No point in bringing the retard into this, Reiji thought as he entered the room. They would think it had been him approaching. Nervous eyes rose to meet him and the men of Gavin’s crew turned from him and back to their entertainment.

  The farmer was lifted by rough hands from the ground where he lay bound and bleeding. Knives worked at his bindings, but in no friendly manner. He was lifted and then held face down on the table by two men, his head twisted to the side and locked in place by a third so that he faced Gavin. The leader of the expedition remained seated, flanked by Varg and Virgil. Still stone-faced and impassive. Fists clenched within heavy black gloves and hanging low at their sides. The same as every time Reiji had seen them.

  Men stood scattered about the large room, as if they had bounced off of each other as they rose from the table in their haste. Most held weapons at the ready, though Reiji couldn’t tell who they were supposed to be facing. The only men in the room who weren’t with them were the farmer and a boy, apparently one of his sons.

  Gavin looked to Reiji as he entered the room, eyeing him up and down and raising one eyebrow. “Reiji,” he began. “I’m glad you could join us. And in your Sunday best as well.” A few laughs rose from the men scattered about the room, but they seemed forced. Fake.