REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

3

Onward the boneframed wagons rolled, ever deeper into the creeping wastes. Time lost its meaning to Tusk but for the rhythmic complaints from the procession's loping wheels and the occasional steady report of a flagellant's cane. The cruel sandmen threw rocks and cacti and rotted things into the caged vessel that held the animalist and his comrade Risper. The wasters afforded their captives no blankets through the long frigid nights. The men were exposed naked to the sky when the sun reached its scorching zenith so that they could cook and bask in the glory of the zealots' cyclopean and radioactive god Xul.

Rare sparkling oases, green and inviting, sometimes punctuated the journey. The hobgoblins only regarded such places as evil islands of temptation tainted with the twin wrongs of comfort and abundance and thus gave them no pause or regard. From his cage Tusk masked the dismay he felt as he watched those emerald clutches fade into the shrouds of dust that smeared the retreating horizon. He tried to shut out the thoughts of how the water that fed those lush mineral springs would taste on his tongue and feel as it splashed into his parched mouth and blossomed in his droughty breast. Struggle as he might, Tusk failed to banish away the intruding visions of swimming in a lake clear as crystal and listening to fronds flapping in the warm winds like the sails of ships as he sucked manna under the palms.

Instead of such choice fare, the captive Reapers had been fed stuff gathered and scraped from the desert floor by their sunsick keepers. Tusk had no guess as to the origins of many of the things he took into his gut on that baleful journey and much of it did not stay in his belly for long. The men were given just enough water to cling onto wretched life. They suffered frequent blackouts from the sun's dehydrating barrage. What little piss trickled from Tusk's pecker was the color of purest yellow gold and then soon came flecks of red.

Bereft of locomotion by his captors, Risper was of abysmal spirits. This formerly virile man, once a storied swordsman and dancer and lover—now this. He had made it as far as solving his own cage's lock with a bonepick lifted from the hair of one of his tormentors before being caught and dealt with in severe fashion, every ligament and tendon in his body surgically severed by the monsters. His wounds were then crudely sutured and dressed and he was thrown into this crippled wagon. Tusk learned that he'd avoided the same fate himself only because he had not also attempted escape from his foul coop. Risper began the subsequent journey in quiet melancholy with his tongue claimed by yet another kind of paralysis, that of despair—but as time rode on the prostrated man grew irritable and bitter and, to Tusk's chagrin, far more verbose. Only after untold hours of moaning and cursing did Risper's voice finally grow dry and weak. Tusk knew peace again, if but for a while.

After some days of it Risper asked Tusk to kill him. Of course the animalist refused and instead plucked and swatted pests from his fellow Reaper's body to help alleviate his suffering. The poor man was covered in bites. Tusk knew formulas of beast sweats and musks that could ward off the nuisances but he had no access to such remedies from this cage and in these strange environs where the life was so alien and sparse. He did his best to preserve the dressings on his comrade's wounds but feared infections would soon take root.

"Don't bother," Risper said. "Let the pests at me. I am numb to them. Or do the right thing and just kill me as I asked." On this last word his throat again seized and he retched and coughed violently.

"And how would I?" Tusk picked up one of the many rocks that had been cast at him by the sandmen. "With this?" He tossed the stone from the cage.

"Put your hand over my mouth," Risper said hoarsely, speaking to Tusk as he would a child. "And pinch my nose, and I'll be ferried to the stars before you know it. Worry not, your scales will not tip. It would be an act of mercy."

"I need you to stay alive," replied Tusk. "If not for you, for me."

"I'm touched that you find me such pleasant company," said Risper as he hacked dry phlegm. "But this is my choice to make, brother."