REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

2

STAVE 8

Team 9 had once been the First and Only—given the number nine to confuse, to trick the enemy into believing the threat posed by the deadly Reapers was in fact ninefold—but when the Nation's conflicts escalated and spread, the spit-brass expanded the force and made their enemies' fears real. Thus the other eight companies were born. But 'Nine was always another thing, its reputation beyond. Those who achieved its ranks prided themselves on their unrivaled discipline and honor and craft of war and fearlessness. Their bond ran deeper than any inherited link, was forged in a medium stronger than mere death—and to them went the missions most deadly. Nine's work sent them to regions never meant for man. Only explorers and the mad dared venture beyond the odd horizons they now prowled, toward the heart of the ancient hobgoblin empire. These were mercurial reaches, with winds so strong and fickle they could shift the paths of rivers overnight. Even the stars were jumbled in those precipitous frontiers.

Perhaps the Reapers of Nine had become drugged on that which they picked and ate from the tainted earth. Existence was harder purchased in the vast, harsh wastes in which they now operated. Effectively this was the truer world, their leader Castle had come to understand. And preach. The verdant lands of the Nation were a rare oasis, an anomaly, when set against the greater wildernesses beyond. Resources were scarce in these outlands and the species hosted by the dying wilds had to fight and scrape more earnestly to have their place. Hardened shells and serrated pincers and piercing horns and deadly venoms—the overwhelming reality, the truer norm, was this grinding hell. Eat or be eaten. Fuck or be fucked. Life defined itself by death and rebirth and little else in that odious country. Castle respected these primal creatures found in the outer wilds. Their animal minds were not clouded like those of men. Unbothered by guilt or remorse or honor. The natural world acted on raw impulse, a thing mankind had gotten away from.

Castle spoke to his men often and from the pit of him. He let aloud all his untold fears and regrets and sorrows. Many were they. And awful. But most of his psychic wranglings were those same concerns that beset all thinkers, common to all mortal souls but rarely aired. His followers found themselves at odds with their own instincts to keep such things stifled within. Soon they all opened their hearts, one by one. The warbrothers of Team 9 communed through the night together, said mantras together, swore oaths of ironclad brotherhood. They practiced rituals of bonding they had mimicked from those they killed. Rakshasa and ylf and even sandman, for each kind had its own ways of tapping within. The confessions gushed like mortal wounds. First Nine's members lost themselves to the wild and then to one another. Out in these voidlands they molted their old skins and bared their baser souls. Dined on the botflies plucked from their comrades' backs. Ate the casualties of battle, friend and foe. Made gods of themselves. Castle, Freek, Demon, Jackal, Darling—a pantheon of assassin lords lost to the outer madness.

Castle learned more lessons in the crucible of Reaper action than in an entire career of common soldiering. Knew what truly drove the souls and desires of people when the stakes were pitched. Once a man murdered he was a murderer. Make him kill for you and he is yours. Some soldiers sought meaning in the bloodshed. A compass, a cause to justify it all. Easily given by any voice claimant of truth or power. Castle promised both. Formed his own laws, concluded his own axioms. Made acolytes of his men and worshippers of the locals. He was a deity to them, a paragon of thought and body, the Lord of Nine. Still, Castle was troubled. The Reaper did not know whether he'd lost his mind Out There or found it.

— • —

"Why do gobs stink?" Thirteen flashed wolfish teeth as he went on filing the edge of his black knife for the coming bloodletting. He waited for a reply from his comrades. The members of Team 3 were gathered round a campfire after a day of grueling travel across the lower wastes. They kept those whom they would soon slay on the far cut of the horizon, lest they chance notice of their presence. The Reapers traded hushed words as they dried their socks and cleaned their gear and massaged their sore bodies, knowing soon they must fall silent and set themselves aside for the grim work to be done.