Sword Sisters

by Tara Cardinal

“You can’t go alone,” Sixle said. There were murmurs of agreement around him. What wonderful, fragile, foolish creatures.

  “It’s got nothing to do with your courage,” I said. “It’s about training. And skill. This is what I was born to do. It’s second nature as I’m afraid you witnessed earlier today. I’m very sorry I hurt your son.” I lowered my head, but not my eyes.

  “He has needed an experience like that for some time. It was…harsher than I might’ve wished, but nonetheless, he invited it by his conduct. He will be fine and hopefully a better man someday.”

  I was speechless for a moment. In none of my experiences with humans had I witnessed anything like this. My ribs felt tighter than usual. That fluttering must be fear. But of what?

  Then, a little girl came forward, bearing a sword longer than she was tall. She handed it to me with reverence. “My daddy said grandpa once killed a bear with this,” she said seriously. “It’s very strong.” She brushed her long hair out of her eyes and curtseyed. No one had ever curtseyed for me before.

  I took it from her and marveled at the weight of it. How had this little girl carried this sword by herself? I was in awe of her. It was strong, all right. It was a Reaper sword, tarnished with age but still as solid as the day it was forged. No doubt grandpa had scavenged it from a battlefield. And who knows? He might also have used it to kill a bear because it would definitely have done the job.

  I looked down into her adoring face. What did she see when she looked at me? It was certainly different from what Adonis, Eldrid, and all the other Reapers saw. I wished I could see through her eyes just for a moment.

  “What is your name, young squire?”

  She blushed. “Felicia.”

  “This,” I said with a smile, “is the best sword I’ve ever held. Thank you, Felicia.”

  She smiled, revealing two missing teeth, then scampered off.

  A young boy, one of those who’d watched the fight with Gaither, awkwardly carried a shield. He knelt and offered it to me, the way I might approach Adonis in a public ceremony. I took it and said, “Thank you.” It was a standard human infantry shield, solid and graceless, but certainly capable of blocking clawing hands and spider fangs, which was all I needed it to do.

  “I’ll find Amelia if at all possible,” I said, trying not to imagine her bones among the others on the cavern floor. “And this time, I will kill Lurida Lumo or lose my own life trying.”

  “Reapers can’t die, can they?” a boy asked.

  “We can,” I said with a smile, “but it’s a lot harder than you’d imagine.”

  Then I turned and marched off into the night toward the cave of Lurida Lumo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I took the pilgrim trail because I saw no reason to waste energy cutting through the forest again. As I passed each of the pillars, I tapped it with my sword. It was a combination of a gesture for good luck, and to announce to Lurida Lumo’s fellow gods that retribution was coming. Sure, retribution was a petite, red-haired girl with borrowed weapons, but they underestimated it at their own peril.

  As I neared the cave, the blue glow again greeted me. I approached cautiously and wondered if the giant spiders emerged after dark to hunt. If they did, I didn’t see them or sense them.

  What I did see, though, were unmistakable footprints in the dust just outside the entrance. They were small, feminine feet in slippers, and they headed into the cave. So Amelia had come here and had gone into the cave. And if that spider had still lurked in the overhead passage, then my rescue mission may have already failed before it got properly started. I really did make a terrible Red Reaper.

  I saw other prints, larger and from boots. A man, probably Damato, had gone into the cave as well. Whoever it was, his scent was obscured by the wind.

  Well, there was nothing to gain by waiting. I tucked the shield against my chest, kept the sword ahead of me, and descended into the passage.

  The big spider was gone from its earlier perch, but fresh webbing covered the walls and floor as if it and its brethren had recently crawled past. Had they joined in to wrap Amelia and Damato then dragged their immobilized forms into the cavern where their venom could make them easier to digest? I saw no evidence of the kind of fight I was sure Damato would make. I almost smiled when I thought of Damato in action. I’ll bet he moves like a cat. I also saw no sign of the sword I’d lost here earlier. I hoped Damato had picked it up.

  Should I call out for them? If they had escaped the spiders and were hiding, it might give them away. Or it might draw the spiders to me although I couldn’t believe they hadn’t already sensed me. No, there was nothing to do but keep plugging forward. Patience was not a natural Reaper virtue but one we train in heavily.

  I reached the end of the tunnel, where it opened into the cavern. Immediately, I saw that Lurida Lumo was not on his throne and didn’t seem to be anywhere around. Where was he? Did he have a bathroom nearby, where he sat and read some scroll? Or a nice little chamber with soft cushions and tea? Or worse, was there a Mrs. Lurida Lumo somewhere, and the two of them…oh, yuck. I couldn’t imagine his weird, slimy form doing anything, really. It seemed like it would take all his concentration to keep from oozing to the floor.

  It was impossible to walk without crunching on bones. I glanced down and spotted the impossibly small skull of what must have once been a little girl. I gritted my teeth against the associations that jumped to mind. I saw her with Felicia’s face, playing in the village, picking flowers, spinning proudly in the beautiful new dress she’d probably worn just to come here and be spider food. How could any parents do that? And of course, that led me back to thoughts of my mother, which just made me angrier. This had to be stopped.

  “Damato?” I said. It wasn’t a yell, but it was no whisper either. “Amelia?”

  Something moved above me.

  A human-sized cocoon hung from the center of the ceiling. It writhed as whatever was inside tried to emerge. I gasped. I’d assumed the giant spiders were their final form, but what if they weren’t? What if they turned into something even worse, maybe something with wings?

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered to myself and backed away. I wasn’t going to run, but I didn’t want to be directly beneath whatever came out either.

  Then I caught faint, muffled cries of feminine outrage. It wasn’t a cocoon, it was the spider’s latest meal, wrapped up and put aside for later just as I should’ve realized. As if to confirm that, three of the huge spiders moved slowly across the ceiling toward it.

  Then I recognized the voice. It was Amelia. I couldn’t help but smile. Anyone else, probably including me, would be screaming their heads off. But Amelia was trying to escape, not wasting energy on panic. The spiders hung back, apparently waiting for their dinner to calm the hell down.

  I saw no way to get her free. I certainly couldn’t climb up there, and I had no projectile weapons. “Amelia!” I called. “It’s Aella!”

  “Get me the hell down from here!” she yelled, her voice distant behind the wrappings that, thankfully, didn’t seem to be airtight.

  “Working on it,” I said, and looked around. Bones, loose rock, and dissipated webbing were all that was at hand. None of them seemed like they’d help. “Where’s Damato?”

  “Damato? I haven’t seen him. This web stuff really smells bad, Aella. I’d really like to get out of here!”

  “Me, too,” I said and tried to think of something, anything, that might let me reach her.

  Then I had more immediate problems. One by one, the three spiders dropped from the ceiling and landed before me. I backed up to the wall so they couldn’t surround me and prayed to the goddess Mantisia that there were no more of them hidden anywhere. They crouched there, immobile, eyes staring. Their palpable threat caused predictable responses in me.

  As my Reaper blood rose, I grew increasingly calm. “Fellas,” I said with my battle smile, “let’s be clear on our roles in this little performance. You’re the bugs. And me? I’m the flyswatter.
”

  I put one boot against the rock wall and used it to launch myself at them.

  I didn’t go into full Reaper mode this time. I didn’t need to. I knew they were killable, and I understood how to approach them. There were two crucial tactics: avoid the fangs, and dodge the webbing.

  I drove one back with the shield as it jumped at me and severed the head and front two legs of the next as it tried the same. The third scuttled low, so I put one foot on his head and drove the sword deep into its abdomen. It scurried back, casting plumes of webbing randomly into the air as it fell onto its back in its death throes.

  That left one. “Just you and me now, Legs.”

  And then two more joined him from the shadows.

  “Really?” I said to the universe at large. “You really felt this was necessary?” As always, I got no reply.

  Two of them jumped at once, and I ducked beneath the shield. They collided above me. One knocked the other aside and landed on top of me. The fangs clanged against the metal as they tried to penetrate it. I stood, using my leverage to toss it aside, and hacked two legs off the other one. The one I tossed scrambled back to its feet, but before it could move, I stabbed it with a thrust right between the fangs. That proved an error because its spasm of agony yanked the sword from my hand.

  The remaining one had stayed back while the other two attacked and saw its chance. It was also the biggest, and I admit, I got a serious shiver as it scuttled toward me, raising its first pair of legs to tower over me.

  But I met the charge head-on with the shield, pushing its fanged face back with all my considerable strength. I grabbed the nearest bone of any size, some unfortunate girl’s femur, and drove it under the edge of the shield, up into the spider’s dripping mouth. It recoiled, and I ran to wrench my sword from the twitching form of my prior opponent. A shower of venom squirted straight up, barely missing Amelia, and came straight back down onto the still-writhing spider. It screamed as its own venom burned through its eyes.

  I barely had time to turn before the big spider was on me again. It was high on its legs, its abdomen curled to spew a vast net of webbing my way. I jumped through it before it could solidify enough to snag me. I landed painfully on my back in a pile of rib bones, and the spider loomed over me then, preparing to drive its whole upper body down on me.

  Idiot. There was a reason bugs hadn’t conquered the world. Its entire cephalothorax was exposed, including the narrow waist between it and the abdomen. I severed it with one clean swipe then scrambled away before the front half, with all the legs and fangs still attached, could grab me in its death throes.

  I wiped the webbing from my face and looked around for more spiders. There were none, or at least none brave or hungry enough to face me.

  “Aella!” Amelia yelled from inside the cocoon. “Aella!”

  “I’m here,” I said breathlessly. “Killed a bunch of spiders.”

  “Good! Stupid bugs. Can you get me down?”

  “Still working on it.” Then I noticed that her cocoon was attached by one relatively thin strand to a lone stalactite. “Okay, give me a minute.”

  Reapers, as is probably obvious by now, are physically much stronger than humans. We also work hard to develop our hand-eye coordination. I picked up a rock from the cave floor, hefted it experimentally, then threw it as hard as I could at the stalactite’s base.

  It shattered, and the fragments rained down on the cocoon. “Ow!” Amelia cried. “What was that?”

  “Practice shot,” I said. I found some more rocks and began throwing them as rapidly as I could. Each one shattered but also took out chunks of the stalactite. I hoped the cocoon was as thick and protective as it appeared.

  After six rocks, the stalactite cracked, and the cocoon fell to the cave floor. The sudden drop made Amelia scream. I rushed to her and used the sword to cut the webbing over her face.

  “What the hell?” she said, outraged. “You could’ve warned me!”

  “Didn’t have time,” I lied. “Are you okay?”

  “They didn’t bite me if that’s what you mean. They just wanted me for later, I guess. But get me out of here. I’m baking alive!”

  “Hold still,” I said. No human could have pulled the strands apart, and it was difficult even for me, but eventually, I helped her emerge like a sweaty, angry butterfly. She still clutched her family sword.

  She kicked the cocoon and said, “That was disgusting!”

  I sat back against a protruding rock, breathless. “You’re welcome.”

  She looked around at the dead spiders, some of which still spasmed in their death throes. “Did you do all that by yourself? I wish I’d seen it.”

  I grinned and gasped, “Hardly broke a sweat.”

  She laughed. So did I. We dissolved into giggles, like girls sharing secrets when no one was looking.

  Finally she offered me a hand, and I got to my feet. I asked, “Did you see anyone else here? Blue guy, sticky looking?”

  “No, I barely got past the entrance before they grabbed me. Where were you?”

  “Our paths got crossed. I’m sorry. And you didn’t see Damato?”

  “No. Was he supposed to be here?”

  I didn’t know. I just assumed he was here because it’s what I would’ve done. He might just be off visiting some other woman; hell, maybe he had a secret family in another village. Or liked to get drunk by himself in the woods. I really knew nothing about him, except that at some level, he made me feel differently than any other man, human or Reaper. And I still wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. “I just thought he might be. Either way, we need to get you out of here before—”

  Two new figures appeared from the back of the cave. They were white-faced and moved stiffly. The unkillable Demons.

  “—they show up,” she finished for me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “They’re bad news, I take it,” Amelia said.

  “They’re Demons,” I whispered.

  This made Amelia jump, and her voice shook. “Demons?”

  I knew what she was thinking. What Demons did to human girls was well known; it was where Reapers came from, after all. I said, “You should run, Amelia. Seriously.”

  “But—”

  “Run!” I screamed because the Demons suddenly charged toward us, grasping hands extended, shrieking.

  The female Demon ran for me, the male for Amelia. I had no choice but to deal with the one in my face first, which I did by the expedient tactic of kicking her in the crotch. Demons had the same basic anatomy as humans, and this had the same effect. It wouldn’t stop her for long, but hopefully, I didn’t need long.

  The other Demon had Amelia by one wrist and a handful of her hair. She screamed in terror for the first time since I’d known her, and in this situation, that was a perfectly valid response. I swung my sword blindly, not even pausing to think. The stroke severed both the Demon’s arms at the elbows. Amelia fell back, the fingers of one Demon hand still tangled in her hair.

  The Demon screamed, a shrill, high-pitched sound that echoed throughout the cavern. He turned to me, but no blood came from his stumps. It took me a long moment to grasp why. HE was already dead.

  I kicked him in the chest and knocked him onto a pile of bones, where he thrashed like one of the big spiders.

  And that gave me an idea.

  I couldn’t kill him in the normal way. The slug controlling him kept me from slicing off his head. But I could certainly neutralize him as a threat.

  He got back to his feet, not slowed by his missing arms.

  I grinned. Payback.

  I swung not at his head but at his legs. The sword sliced easily through the nearest limb and partly through the other. Either way, the Demon went down, still screeching, his remaining leg bucking at the air.

  I turned to face the female. She stayed out of sword range, hissing, the thing on her neck pulsing bright blue beneath her hair. I had to assume she, too, was a corpse given life by Lurida Lumo. It would�
�ve been so satisfying to wade in and send that head from her shoulders, but I knew I couldn’t, so I bided my time. We circled each other slowly and watchfully.

  “What are you waiting for?” Amelia said behind me. She kept her sword leveled at the still-moving but mostly-limbless Demon who’d attacked her.

  “The right moment,” I said.

  Then the she-Demon smiled and hissed out, “I know you, Aella.”

  I went cold inside, but my sword didn’t waver.

  “Ganesh’s little pet Reaper,” she continued, still smiling. “Daddy’s little girl. Do you remember playing pincushion?”

  Of course I remembered. The Demons would tie me down and stick their daggers in me, laughing, seeing how many they could squeeze onto my wriggling, screaming little body. That day, I learned both how quickly Reapers healed, and to hate Demons with all my heart. I never knew intelligent beings could take amusement from another’s pain until then although that lesson would be the main thing the Demons taught me.

  “It was my idea,” she said. “I saw those plump little cheeks and just imagined them full of pins and needles.”

  Then the smile faded, replaced with a look of anguish like I’d never seen on a Demon’s face wrenched across it. “Help me, Aella. Kill me. It’s got its fingers in my brain…”

  I knew I couldn’t kill her with the parasite on her, but I desperately wanted to and not out of pity. I swung hard and severed both legs her above the knee. I stepped on her chest and, with two quick strokes, hacked off her arms.

  Then I turned her over, face down on the stone floor, put my sword tip against the throbbing parasite, and poked. Its skin gave but didn’t puncture.

  I pushed harder.

  It spread out like a stain and flowed off the Demon’s neck, pulling long tentacles from within her head. She screamed, long and wavering, as they withdrew. Then, like a mobile terrestrial jellyfish, it crawled slowly across the rocks. The Demon lay limp, finally dead.

  “My gods,” Amelia whispered.

  “Stand back,” I told her. Then I lopped off the Demon’s head just to make sure.