REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

43

They once fought with their backs to each other in solidarity. Now Rooster and Ogerius had their shoulderblades touched again—but this time only to take their twenty strides apart for the coming duel. The opponents positioned themselves in the streets below the everburning scales that blazed on the arms of the Hall of the Shield's front stairway. The surrounding behemoth buildings and sculptures of black marble watched like amused sentinels or deathworld titans come for sport as crowds of lawmakers and servicemen and vendors gathered to witness the bitter match. Most kept clear for their own safety save a few daredevils and clowns who toed the danger zones. The bailiffs dragged off a solitary soul, wiry and agitated, who had challenged this crude way of settling differences and suggested a debate over steins of ale instead. All these men save that lone dissident—and those who perhaps agreed with the banished speaker but knew better than to add their own voices now—honored the old customs. The Diluvians swore oaths to the early laws. Lived and died by them.

The opponents swung their arms and loosened their old bodies. As challenged, Ogerius had first throw. His steward brought his belt of stones and with the help of his other men held the leather strap aloft for him. Each rock was in its own pouch, arranged from best to last, judged by their weight and accuracy. Two of the stones had killed before. Ogerius always went with them first, for why ever give your opponent the chance to throw more? He reached into the closest pouch and brought forth his first murderous rock. The Ogre gazed down the open path, past the divided throng of onlookers (to include the advocates and judges themselves) and positioned himself and breathed in a lungful of cool air and readied his practiced arm.

— • —

Rooster had a name for each of his ten stones: Ferrth, Edu, Brask, Pittantho, Bad Kisser, Logrus (after his father, rest his soul in the stars above), Kirst, Dumu's Scrotum, Herndop, and Goodnight. He now held Ferrth in his hand. Enjoyed its heft and coolness. He knew Ferrth's spin and range well, had pitched it at the gob-baby doll on the hay bales and fence posts of his family's farm a thousand times and more. It had been named for the uncle who taught him how to throw dice and swing a scythe. He had that one the longest. Knew it like Mercy herself, whose honor he now defended.

Rooster watched his old friend stride forward a number of paces and lob his first stone. Ogerius was surprisingly athletic for his age. The rock catapulted from his hand with polish and rushed toward Rooster in a speeding arc. Before he knew it the thing was there, a rocketing blur. Rooster misjudged its vector and the dense projectile struck him in the shoulder with incredible force. Like a snap from the jaw of a pissed hellshark. The Commander grunted and spun and dropped dear Ferrth. The stone knocked the cobblestones and now Rooster was already down a rock for another rule was that once a stone struck earth it was forfeit. He rubbed the tender joint and cursed Fate and Father. Rooster's throwing arm had already been struck numb on the opening shot and he'd lost his best stone. A hell of a start and now it was his turn to throw. He cursed the Trickster's Coin and straightened himself, determined not to broadcast the extent of his injury to his foe as he drew forth his second stone. This was Edu, a bit of ore that had been cut from the glumrock mined under the site of Fort Nothing, a souvenir to remember the dismantled garrison by. Dismantled, just as Ogerius now wished to do with the Reaper program as a whole. General Grattus, who now watched from the sidelines, gave Rooster a subtle and reassuring nod. Surely the General and his comrades would not mind seeing the original architect of this campaign against the illegalities of the secretive force die in this match. It would save them the trouble of someday handling the cauldron-stirrer themselves.

Rooster took aim and threw and his arm raged with fire. The rock went embarrassingly wayward and off into the crowd. Struck a bystander in the back as he recoiled and then it ricocheted into the chin of another. A few bystanders went to their aid but most only laughed. They laughed and Rooster swore. It had been a long time since he had thrown. To the pits with that now-repurposed desk and its endless layering of writs and maps and missives that kept him on his rump so long in his later years. He was not the man he once was.