REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

22

After miles upon miles of trekking deeper into the Hinterlands Team 3 rose a hill that finally put Catatonia in their sights. The Reapers approached the town as they would any place of unknown character—with planning and caution. They had been traveling parallel to the main road between Vacancy and Catatonia and now went further from it and came at the town from its side. Nail sent Blacwin ahead to appraise the scene solo for he was the quietest and, like Scratch, worked best alone. Had another man been with Blacwin in Vacancy, the scouts might have been spotted by the invading wasters. Instead Blacwin had managed to slip away and warn the approaching team. Nail had also seen Blacwin's intervention between Vulture and Thirteen in their game of mock execution and recognized a sense of fairness in him that was rare in this damnable world. There was a shade of men like Halo and Tusk in Blacwin. Those with hearts. As Nail watched the scout disappear over the next hill he reflected on the dawning prospect that there was credence to the theory that persistently intruded on his mind regarding the fledgling Reaper. He had witnessed signs he couldn't ignore. The extraordinary senses, the lightness of sleep and step, the low heart rate, the slowness of healing. All signs that Blacwin had the blood of an ylf. Did the scout even know this about himself? He must. And if Nail's suspicions were true... what then? Ylfs were banned from serving in the Nation forces. Considered enemies by most, to include Nail himself—though he of course recognized that Blacwin could be an exception. If the soldier was indeed a 'taint' and were to be exposed, the Nation likely would not trust him to live. Reapers knew too much.

— • —

The scythes and sickles and sawblades claimed to have been wielded by the First Reapers in their frontier war against the ylfs were now displayed on the walls of an enormous wing of the Triad, a vast triangular complex that stood somber and proud in the heart of Camshire's ruling district. Each of the building's three arms was dedicated to a different aspect of Diluvian rule over the city and its Nation—the Shield, the State, and the Coin. At its center where those wings joined was a vast three-sided chamber. There the high triumvirate of Ministers regularly convened and discussed and voted on the country's greatest matters. As with most Diluvian structures the Triad was plain and solid in its build, unlike the Julian palace and the ornate spires and temples and other such examples of exquisite craftsmanship that riddled the surrounding wards. The fascists' newly erected buildings were feverishly constructed seemingly overnight after the party's seizure of power, on top of entire impoverished neighborhoods that had themselves been deadened like those northern wildlands to make way for the new. The Diluvian architecture was formidable. Sober gray walls of flat stone and squared windows and undecorated metal doors. Function trumped form. The only ornaments to be seen on the Triad's exterior were the icons over the entrance to each wing bearing a symbol that matched its domain. A coin. A star. A shield. And the stark black and white flags that perfectly distilled the Diluvian view of the world. Law and chaos. Good and evil. Patriot and traitor. Us and them. Nothing between.

Jinx quietly worked in a blast-proof chamber deep below the Hall of the Shield with two other rune-ciphers named Vail and Nikolai. The walls of this subterranean and windowless room were carpeted with the skins of dead raptors that had been splayed wide, their wings outstretched, in order to display the hobgoblin runes on their backs. The thaumaturgists used strange geometric tools to measure the fine sorcerous calligraphy of the enemy and transcribed their decoded messages onto scrolls spread out on great flat tables. Jinx and his coworkers employed arcane compasses for the drawing of vectors and amplituhedrons and elaborate bronze sextants designed to navigate projected geometries that occupied thought alone and not true space. This was dangerous work, considering what had happened to Rancent at Fort Nothing and other rune men who had been too careless in their trade. One slip and the wrong ward could be triggered, sending all three men in this subterranean vault and their clandestine work to oblivion. But the runists had grown more careful and methodical in their treatment of such things. They now better knew the hobgoblins' arcane tricks. Jinx had even concocted a countermeasure that would involve rewiring the runes on the birds to have them detonate when they returned to their sorcerous masters but the Reaper could not bring this plan to his superiors for they were all forbidden to create new runework under the rules of the Covenant. It was dangerous to even mention such ideas to the wrong individual. The Nation runists were only permitted to destroy and deactivate the glyphs their enemies used. Their foes, however, cared nothing for treaties and covenants and fully embraced the dark powers made available to them by the arcane laws of nature or their gods. Jinx believed the Nation armies needed to carefully defy that treaty themselves if they were to have a chance at succeeding against their sorcerous enemies but he had to be careful about raising such possibilities. Not only did the Covenant forbid such talk, the Diluvians and the masses were fiercely unforgiving when it came to the use of those outlawed arts.