Reaper's Awakening

by Jacob Peppers

  She glanced down at herself and realized she had nothing to give him. She rarely wore jewelry, and she never wore it for her visits to the chapel. “I’d be happy to, but there’s nothing—”

  “What about that?” He asked.

  Leandria followed his pointing finger to the stone hanging from her neck. She’d grown so used to wearing the necklace—she never took it off, not even when she slept or bathed—that she’d forgotten she had it on. “This?” She asked, cradling the necklace in her hands, shocked at how the thought of losing it made her heart race, “It … it was my mothers.”

  “Oh,” he said, holding up his hands and backing away, “I understand, and it was wrong of me to ask. Forgive me, princess. A man of low birth like myself is not worthy of such a token.” His face twisted in grief then he turned and started for the door.

  He was reaching for the handle when words burst out of Leandria’s mouth, “Quintin, wait.”

  He turned, his expression hurt, vulnerable. She took a deep breath and slowly undid the clasp of the necklace, suddenly feeling naked and very alone as she offered it to him. “Please, take it. I want you to have it to … remember me.”

  She’d no sooner held it up than his hand shot out, snatching it away. A look of covetous joy twisted his normally handsome features into something ugly and cruel but, in another moment, it was gone. “Thank you, princess. I will … cherish this.” Quintin flashed a smile then turned and disappeared through the chapel door.

  Leandria stared after him, shocked by how abruptly he’d left. She was still staring after him when a bout of weakness came on her from nowhere, and she swayed uncertainly on her feet before half-sitting, half-falling into the pew. Abruptly, she felt nauseated, and her skin was uncomfortably warm. Is this what it is to be lovesick? If so, the poets were liars. She didn’t feel a sweet ache or an intense yearning and passion. She just felt ill. It was as if all the worry and stress of the last couple of days had begun to tell on her physically and for a time she only sat and breathed, and waited for it to pass.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  He was there again, his mother’s arms tight around him, a toy ball, dropped when his mother grabbed him, rolling across the floor. He’d had the dream a thousand times, more, yet he found that he was there in a way that he’d never been before. The tiled floor was cold beneath him, his mother’s breath hot on the back of his neck. He could even hear the shouts from outside the door—not quite able to make out the words—but the anger, sure, that was there and all too clear. This isn’t right. The thought from the small bit of him that was a man still, and not a boy in his mother’s arms, scared and made more scared by her fear. Before, the dream had always felt like a painting, a frozen instant in time. Never before had it felt so … real.

  But this time was different. His father held the door, his side pressed against it, his considerable muscles straining, his normally kind features—for they were normally kind, the kid in the dream new this, loved his father well—were set in a grimace of determination. A blow came against the door and the wood bulged with a sound so loud that his mother cried out. His father pressed harder against the door, shouting something, and although Cameron couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the anger and desperation that they carried well enough.

  Time was not frozen, as it always was in the dream, but it was slowed, and Cameron had time enough to notice that the wood had splintered from the impact and several pieces of it had struck his father. Blood ran in small rivulets down his face, dripped from his hand where he held the door handle, but he only grit his teeth and set his feet once more. Another crack, even louder this time, and an axe blade cut through the wood of the door, missing his father’s face by inches.

  His father held the door for another moment then abruptly let go and turned to look at Cameron, an expression of calm on his forgotten, familiar face. In that moment, everything seemed to fade except for him and his father. He could no longer hear the shouts of the men outside, could no longer hear his mother’s screams or feel her arms around him.

  In a moment, the door would come down, and men with swords would come into the house. He knew well enough what happened from there, had heard the tale many times. But for now, for this moment, it was only him and his father. He found that there were a thousand things he wanted to say, needed to say and ask, yet the child he was felt only fear, and the words would not come. His father’s expression turned worried, and he shook his head, “You have to wake up, Cameron.”

  Cameron felt some force pulling at him, trying to take him away, but he fought against it, wanting, needing to ask his father for the truth. “Cameron,” his father said again, his voice louder, so loud that it seemed to echo in Cameron’s skull. “Wake up. Now.” The force came again, louder this time, and even as it did, a crack, the loudest yet, echoed in the small room, a crack loud enough to turn dreams into nightmares, a crack loud enough to tear the world.

  Wake up now. He wanted to stay anyway despite knowing what was coming through the door, knowing what it would mean. He needed to ask his father about what had happened, to know the truth, but he felt himself thrown as if a great power pushed against him and, in the next moment, he jerked awake, his eyes snapping open.

  At first there was only the darkness of his room, the familiar made strange by the shadows that hung like tapestries all around him. He lay there, staring into that darkness, his cheeks wet with tears. Then, from the shadows, a whisper, “Wait.” Cameron’s breath caught in his throat. Imagined, surely. The rustle of the sheets beneath him, but had he moved? He hadn’t thought so but what was the other explanation? That somehow people had--

  “What is it?”

  “I thought … I thought he moved.”

  “Just shut your fool mouth and get it done.”

  Cameron strained his eyes and finally vague shapes began to emerge in the darkness. Three? Four? It was impossible to tell with any certainty. Just who were these me and how had they got into his house? The door was always well-locked. More importantly, why were they here? But no, he knew that, at least. There was only one reason to break into a Harvester’s house. They’d come to kill him. The why was irrelevant as was the how. The only thing that mattered was that these men had broken into his house while he was sleeping. Had broken in and went into his room, meaning to kill him as he slept. And Brunhilda … the thought of his Housekeeper, almost assuredly now dead, sent a wave of dread washing through him.

  Sudden rage bucked and thrashed in him, a living thing fighting to be let free, and it was all he could do to stay still and watch with heavily-slitted eyes as one piece of the darkness separated itself from the rest and glided to the side of his bed.

  The shadowed form suddenly leapt forward and, moving more by instinct than sight, Cameron twisted his head to the side. A line of heat and pain traced its way down the side of his neck, deeper than he would have wanted, but not deep enough to kill, at least he hoped. He grabbed his attacker’s blade hand with his own and the man, not expecting his helpless prey to put up any resistance, had no time to react before Cameron drove the blade up and into the outline of his chin.

  The knife sunk in to the hilt and hot blood showered over Cameron’s face and hands as the man choked and gurgled and, finally, went still, Cameron holding him off with his other hand.

  “Well?” One of the shadows asked, unaware of his companion’s misfortune, “is it done?”

  Cameron hesitated, unsure of what to do, then he thought of one of the rare visits Marek had made to the young Harvesters in training, and the words his lesson had instilled in them. Don’t hesitate. Some men may be faster or smarter or stronger, but when two men pit themselves against one another, it is almost always the man who did not hesitate that gets to keep breathing.

  With that in mind, Cameron spun on the bed, trusting the shadows to hide most of his movements, then he drove both of his feet into the corpse’s midsection sending it hurling across the room and into one of the shadows.
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br />   There was a cry of surprise, and the man and the corpse hit the ground in a tangled jumble.

  “What the fu—” Another of the men started, but Cameron had already pounced from the bed and rushed forward, slamming the blade into the man’s stomach and cutting off his words. The man’s air left him in a wheezing sigh, and he doubled over, nearly tearing the knife from Cameron’s fist. He held on grimly, stumbling backward and, at the same time, driving the blade in a second and a third time, wincing at the feel of the hot blood coating his arm.

  He pushed the dying man off of the blade and let him hit the floor, turning in time to see the glint of metal flashing out at him from the darkness. He jumped back quickly enough to avoid seeing what his guts looked like but not so quickly as to avoid a fresh line of agony that cut its way across his chest. He roared in pain. Don’t hesitate. Instead of backing up or circling in an effort to put distance between the man’s sword and his own meager blade, Cameron did what the man would least expect. He charged forward, using his pain and his anger as fuel to energize his already tiring body.

  The man’s shadowy form paused, uncertain, and Cameron bared his teeth in the darkness as he shouldered into him with all the strength he could muster. The assassin grunted, crashing into the wall and knocking over the room’s single night stand in the process. The man stumbled, falling, and Cameron followed him down, slashing wildly with his blade and cutting deep into the man’s flesh over and over again. In moments, the man’s struggles slowed then ceased altogether.

  Cameron rose drunkenly to his feet, his body feeling light and numb from blood loss or battle lust he didn’t know. He staggered over to the last of the would-be assassins and saw that the unfortunate man had somehow become entangled in the corpse and was even now trying to fight his way free. Cameron put one hand against his neck, and it came away slick and greasy with blood. He wavered, fighting against the urge to faint, then reached down and picked up the room’s only lantern, the glass cracked by the feel, and withdrew his flint from the toppled nightstand.

  He lit the lantern and grunted as the bright light stung eyes used to darkness. He looked at the remaining assassin and saw that he was still hopelessly entangled by the corpse’s dead weight then limped over and took the sword out of the other dead man’s hands. The tip of the blade glistened in the flickering orange light, red with blood. His blood.

  He shuffled back to the man who froze as the tip of the blade, already wetted, pressed against his throat. “Who sent you?” Cameron rasped, each word an agony, and he cupped his free hand to his neck in an effort to stop the flow of blood.

  “Go to the Pit,” the stranger said, trying for courage, but Cameron could see the fear in his eyes.

  He lashed out and down with the sword. Whatever else might be said of the blade’s previous owner, the man had worked at keeping the steel sharp, and it sliced through the helpless man’s wrist with little resistance, his hand falling away lifeless to the floor. The assassin screamed, a high-pitched, and he writhed on the floor, blood spurting from the place where his hand had once been.

  “Let’s try this again,” Cameron said, knowing that he was running out of time—the wounds on his neck and chest needed to be seen to and soon, or it wouldn’t matter who had sent the man. Had it been Memory, perhaps? Her group may not have been the only resistance in the city, but it was certainly the biggest. Besides, he’d as much as told her he would put an end to her rebellion, that he would tell the Church where her and her followers were. What easier way to deal with the problem he posed, the secret he knew, than to send assassins in the night? After all, few things silenced better than a blade. He wouldn’t have thought it of her but, then, it wasn’t as if he knew the woman. He squeezed his hand tighter against the bloody cut in his neck and prodded the moaning assassin. “Why are you here?”

  The man hacked and spat out a glob of blood, “You cut off my hand.” The man said in disbelief, staring at the bloody stump.

  Cameron brought the sword down again on the man’s foot, just visible sticking out from beneath the corpse. He used both hands, and although the blade didn’t cut through it as cleanly as it had the man’s wrist, the foot flopped at an impossible angle, held on by little more than tendons. The man let loose another ear-shattering scream, finally subsiding to breathless gasps and hisses of pain.

  “I won’t ask again.”

  “I-if you kill me….” The man sputtered, bloody spittle gathering around his mouth, “You’ll … never know.”

  Cameron stared at him for a second then nodded. “I can live with that. Unfortunately for you, you can’t.” With that, he drove the blade down into the man’s heart and watched the light fade from his eyes.

  Cameron pulled the blade out and stumbled, his head feeling light. He shuffled to the bed and used the knife he’d dropped to cut a strip of cloth from his sheet. Then he wrapped it tightly around his throat, so that he almost felt as if he was choking. The white cloth began to turn crimson almost instantly, but he applied pressure to the wound and fought to control his breathing. As he did, he examined the faces of the dead men but didn’t recognize any of them. No great surprise, that. It was a big city and there were plenty of men who’d kill for the right amount of coin. Still … these had seemed better trained than some thugs hired on Cheapside.

  Once the ebb of blood from his ravaged neck had begun to ease, he looked at his chest and saw that the wound he’d taken there, although painful, was not life threatening. Still, he took a moment to tear another strip of cloth free and wrap it around his chest.

  As he worked, he considered who might have sent the assassins. Memory, perhaps? As he’d first thought? She did not seem like the type, but he had given her an ultimatum, had told her he was coming back for them, a fool thing to do, but he’d been angry, hadn’t he? Angered by her words, lies, of course, but sounding too much like the truth for his liking. And if it hadn’t been her, the man, Harmen, perhaps? He doubted it. He’d struck Cameron as the type of man that would want to be present to witness the product of his labor. But if not them … then who? The truth was, there were entirely too many people that would be happy to see any Harvester or—in many cases—him personally, dead. He was still trying to think his way through it when a thought struck him, and his skin grew cold.

  Brunhilda. While he sat, worried about who’d sent the murderers, his Caretaker, who’d been like a mother to him could even now be bleeding out the last of her life in her room or in the entryway. Fool, he thought, jerking to his feet and nearly falling in the process. He reached out, steadying himself on the wall, and picked up the battered blade once more before starting out of his room, his senses alive for any sight or sound of other intruders lying in wait.

  “Brunhilda!” He shouted, knowing he should be quiet in case there were others in the house but his fear for her getting the better of him. Still, the sound came out as little more than a hiss, and he grunted at the fresh wave of pain in his throat.

  Sweat streaming down his back, fresh blood staining the makeshift bandage on his chest as he moved, he staggered into the hall. He took his first step through the doorway and came to an abrupt stop, shocked.

  The old Caretaker stood a short distance down the hall, her eyes wide, her hands buried in the waist apron she always seemed to wear. “M-master?” She asked, surprise and confusion coloring her tone.

  “I’m okay, Brunhilda,” he said, letting out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, “You haven’t been harmed?”

  “No, my lord,” she said, “But … what’s happened?”

  Cameron stumbled forward and wrapped his arms around the small, older woman, “Thank the Divines you’re okay,” he said, “but we have to get out of here. There might be more of them.”

  “Them, my lord?”

  Cameron gestured weakly to the doorway behind him, wincing at the pull the gesture gave on his wound, “Assassins. Four of them. Come on.” He started past, waiting until he was sure she was following before
moving down the hallway toward the stairs. He kept one hand on the rail for support as he made his laborious way down, the bloody sword still gripped tightly in the other.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he was surprised to find that the door was open. He examined the latch and saw no visible damage. “That’s strange,” he mused, then started forward to check with his hands to see if, perhaps, some small mechanism had been broken in the lock.

  He was bending over to look when something drove deep and hot into his shoulder. He shouted in shock and pain and stumbled forward into the door. He spun and saw Brunhilda bearing down on him, a bloody knife in her hands. The old woman’s familiar face was twisted with incoherent rage and fury, made ugly and strange by it, and the hand holding the knife lashed at him again and again, scoring him on his arms as he held them up in defense.

  “Traitor,” she hissed, “you’ll die for your sins.”

  Cameron, weak with blood loss, dodged the darting knife desperately, but wasn’t fast enough to avoid another shallow cut across his side and forearm. “Brunhilda, wait—” but the old woman rushed at him as if possessed, screaming.

  His instincts took over and Cameron’s arm lunged forward of its own accord, the blade sliding smoothly through the old woman’s chest. She screamed again, in pain this time, but hesitated only for a moment before pushing herself further onto the blade in an effort to close the distance, her knife slicing the air only inches from his face.

  A shiver of fear rippled through Cameron at the unbridled hatred in the woman’s eyes, and he kicked out one foot, nearly falling as he did. The Caretaker came free of his blade with a sick, squelching sound and blood sprayed as she spun and tumbled to the ground, finally coming to a rest on her back.

  Panting, struggling to stay upright, Cameron leaned his side against the wall, fighting back the darkness that threatened to overwhelm him. He started toward the woman, leaving a trail of blood along the wall with each painstaking, laborious step. “Brunhilda,” he managed, his breath coming in gasps, “I … don’t understand. Why would you do this?”