REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

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Shroomer helped Dimia into her covered stagecoach and handed over her old bag and new cat. The Reaper turned to a pair of soldiers who had been charged with protecting the caravan during its journey toward the coast. "If this girl is not delivered to the authorities in Camshire intact and unharmed, I will hold you men responsible."

"She's in good gauntlets, sir," said one whose face had been dented in battle. This fighter had a scurrilous look that Shroomer did not trust. The medic gave a stare that said as much. Shroomer rubbed the heads of Dimia and Scratch and wished them luck. The woebeasts kicked up mud and the wagon jolted into motion and then the girl and animal were on their way to the Nation's great and unknowable capital. Dimia warily eyed her armed escorts as they set out. Imagined their sordid and bloody pasts. She could trust no one. Certainly not warriors who killed for coin or flag. But what of the Reapers, then? Were they not of the same stripe as these soldiers, only perhaps more proficient at their gruesome work? There were at least a couple who visited that church in Marrow who were callous and unkind. Yet she had seen a true and rare goodness in Halo. As Dimia traveled while surrounded by these men of uncertain character, he would serve as her beacon of light.

— • —

Dream subsumed reality. Halo was a haunted man. The Hermit of the Shell continued to chastise him as he trekked deeper into the wastes. But in time the slain recluse's disembodied complaints faded into the background and joined the babble of other souls imprisoned in the glyphed sword. Perhaps the imperial hobgoblin lich Rattanak could navigate the wilderness of dead minds housed by the weapon and pluck from those consciousnesses the fruits of knowledge he sought, but Halo was cursed to only hear constant and chaotic turmoil in the back of his skull. At times he caught the voice of old Narder who'd been cut down by the Justicar's sword in that Marrow church. Halo was surprised to hear the disembodied voice of the bitter elder who still yearned for liquor even in death. This settled the matter of how the hobgoblins knew the Reapers had passed through that doomed town and ultimately tracked them to Fort Nothing. They had indeed followed Team 3 there.

The emperor would not allow Halo to remove the sword from his grip and so the Reaper's exhausted and scarred arm now dragged the weapon in the ground as he walked. Its tip traced a line into the dusty earth behind them. Halo found the sword itself breathtaking in its beauty and evil in its design. He often caught himself watching it gleam in the light borne from fire and moon and star. Its mercurial curves and wicked edges and blood grooves and hypnotic gems. The fine detail of its hilt. Perhaps today the hobgoblins had fallen to building from the bones and leavings of beasts and the silks of insects—but in their glorious past the sandmen had been quite the artisans indeed. The wasters had within them as much ability to design and craft and refine as any human. A shame they no longer embraced that way of life. Or perhaps it was a blessing. Those ancient goblins would have made for mighty adversaries indeed if they still were capable of forging weapons like this.

Halo had long ago run out of water and food. Now he consumed only what he could catch in the wild and felt tainted by it. The Reaper ate and drank of the land, and it of him. He was chapped by the wind, tormented by dust. More fresh runes were carved into his flesh, working up his arm and over his back and chest and neck like sorcerous gangrene. The Reaper knew he should be dead and suspected the only thing that kept him suspended over the void was Rattanak himself, feeding stolen life energies into Halo's own being. He could feel those greedy souls fighting to claim his body for themselves, kept at bay only by the combined will of Emperor and Reaper. If, that was, Halo could still call himself a Reaper. He had deserted his men. And his family. His mind went to them and then immediately it was clouded by his astral jailer.

Halo also caught other voices he dimly recognized in the cacophony, of men from the Reaper training camp who had met their deaths on the road in the hobgoblin ambush and Halo had only known in passing. How strange to listen in on their slain souls now, to hear them chastise themselves with regrets and sorrows. Also counted among the ethereal choir's ghosts were the two river-trappers Team 3 had met along the way to Marrow (and from whom they first heard tell of its horrible pigmen). These people too had seen their untimely demise at the hands of the Justicar and his nefarious blade. There were also ancient voices that spoke in tongues Halo could not comprehend, souls that were perhaps stolen by the August Emperor centuries before Halo had ever entered the world. Most sounded like hobgoblins and others like things unknown. There had to be thousands of dead minds lurking in that boundless space.