Her Reaper's Arms

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Sitting on a spread quilt beside her man, Lea slathered mustard on still another two

  slices of bread as her Reaper lounged beside her on his side, one leg crooked at the

  knee, his bare foot planted on the quilt. His head was braced on one fist as he happily

  devoured the sixth sandwich she’d made him while impatiently awaiting the seventh.

  “You realize this is the entire loaf of bread I brought, don’t you?” she asked him as

  she slapped a big wedge of ham and another of sharp cheese between the bread slices.

  “I’m a growing boy,” he muttered, popping the last of his sandwich into his mouth

  and holding out his hand for the next one.

  “You’re going to be an obese man if you keep eating like this,” she warned as he

  took a massive bite out of the fresh sandwich, licking away a dollop of mustard that

  oozed to the side of his mouth.

  “Reaper metabolisms are different,” he said around the glob of food in his mouth.

  “We require a lot of energy to maintain.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lea agreed. She cut a small piece of chocolate cake for him, careful of

  how much sugar she was going to allow him.

  He picked up his fork and shoveled several loads of potato salad into his mouth,

  gobbling the food as though he were a starved man and someone would snatch away

  his nourishment before he could eat it.

  “It’s a wonder you don’t get indigestion,” Lea told him.

  “Won’t happen,” he said, munching away. He eyed the cake. “Is that all I get?”

  “I see celery and carrot sticks, radishes, tomatoes and green onions still on your

  plate,” she said. “If you eat all that…”

  “Rabbit food,” he called it, “and aye, I will eat it.”

  “Then you can have the cake,” she said.

  “But that’s such a small piece,” he complained. “There’s not that much sugar…”

  She just arched a brow at him.

  “Oh all right,” he mumbled, knowing where her mind had gone.

  Sheriff Gilchrist came walking over to inform their Reaper that word had come

  from Clewiston that the train would be leaving in three days for the Citadel.

  “I booked you and Lea passage as you asked, milord,” Buford told him.

  “My thanks,” Bevyn said. “You eaten?”

  “Had a bite or two,” Buford said, “although I could go for some of that cake.”

  Bevyn frowned. He wanted the cake entirely to himself but Lea was already cutting

  a piece—and a gods-be-damned big piece at that!—for the sheriff.

  “Much obliged, Lea,” the sheriff said, taking a seat on their quilt.

  Bevyn glared at the older man as Buford inhaled the creamy chocolate confection

  and held his plate out for more at Lea’s offering.

  “I don’t mind if I do,” Buford said. “That’s right good cake.”

  90

  Her Reaper’s Arms

  Crunching a stalk of celery, Bevyn deliberately tore his stare from that second

  helping of cake and caught a glimmer of movement in the stable loft. Though he stared

  long and hard at the opening door, nothing else stirred.

  “What do you see, milord?” Buford asked, glancing that way.

  “The door’s open on the loft,” Bevyn said. “Must have been the wind swinging it.”

  “Want me to go check?”

  “Nah,” Bevyn said. “It’s all right.”

  Now and again for the rest of the day, he would turn his gaze to the loft, but

  nothing else moved up there.

  Penthe had scooted back when the Reaper’s gaze shifted to the loft. She knew she’d

  been lax in giving herself away and was careful now to keep well out of sight.

  Lying down, she decided to take a nap. Heat was shifting through the stable and

  wafting up from the hay in the stable below and she was sweating profusely. She’d

  consumed all her water and was thirsty for more but didn’t want to risk being seen or

  heard climbing back down the ladder since the stableman and his helper had been in

  and out several times already.

  Instead she thought of her trip on the Ostria, the Long Range Cruiser that had

  brought Asteria and her to Terra.

  She missed her lover terribly but their relationship had just about run its course.

  Asteria had been flirting outrageously with one of the yeomen on the LRC so it was but

  a matter of time before she and Penthe had parted company.

  Sighing deeply, Penthe’s thoughts went to Captain Antimache and Lieutenant

  Myrine who had joined her in searching for Asteria’s attacker. When they had come

  across the three rogues who were also hunting Roy English, there had been one helluva

  fight—one in which neither the three balgairs nor the three Amazeen had come out the

  victors. It had taken them all several days to recuperate from the vicious brawl.

  “Join up with us and we’ll help you find the Reaper,” Eton Reece, the leader of the

  rogues, had suggested. “Six to one is good odds. He won’t get away.”

  At the time, Antimache had thought it a good notion and though she did not

  outrank Penthe, she was in charge of the expedition. Her fellow Amazeens were

  angered at the gruesome death dealt to Artesia, and seeing the Reaper pay for a rogue’s

  brutality seemed like a fair exchange.

  It hadn’t been clear why Reece, Bartlett and Dempsey had been looking for English,

  but the three rogues definitely had murder in their minds when they found him.

  Perhaps it was because English had come down with rabies and was a danger to

  everyone and everything around him, or it might have had something to do with the

  carnage the balgair had left behind in his rundown shack.

  “By the gods!” Reece had exclaimed as he took in the slaughtered nuns dangling

  from the walls. “This is bad. This is really bad!”

  91

  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  But it had been the Reaper who had destroyed the evidence of English’s perfidy

  and for that Penthe bore him a begrudging amount of respect. Had she not been

  engaged in the third day of mourning for Asteria, she would have come out from the

  place she’d been hiding to attack the Reaper, but the dictates of her religion had

  prohibited her the use of her weapons during the Pentheo, the triad of mourning days.

  Antimache and Myrine had gone on with the three balgairs to Lawler while Penthe

  had stayed behind to bury her dead and say the prayers for Artesia’s soul. Her only

  regret was that in her grief at losing her lover, she had failed to bury Artesia’s Dóigra

  with her in the grave.

  She hadn’t been there when the balgairs had bought it at Coure’s hands, or when

  Antimache and Myrine had taken the captured breeding stock up into the Ostria. If she

  had, she would be flying free among the shades as were the captain and lieutenant—or

  roasting alongside them in the Abyss.

  She supposed she had Coure to thank for not having met her fate in the barn.

  A deep frown shifted over Penthe’s face. She tested what she was feeling at that

  moment as one would a decayed tooth—pushing at it, probing the sensation—and

  realized she no longer bore any ill will toward the Reaper for the destruction of the

  ship. He had not caused it. The Triune Goddess had and why?

  “Because they tried to snatch Her precious Reaper,” Penthe reasoned.

  Okay, she thought as she mulled that one over. She didn’t fault t
he Reaper for the

  destruction of the ship so she couldn’t blame him for the possibility of remaining on this

  stupid world. Neither was his fault. But there was still the matter of avenging her

  ancestor’s vendetta against Coure. But then, she realized, there was a problem with that

  as well.

  “The man was a priest,” Artesia had commented. “He had taken a vow your greatgreat-grandmere bid him break. Was there honor in that?”

  Her lover’s question had precipitated a violent argument that had lasted for days

  with Artesia reminding her that Coure had not been a male captured during a skirmish

  or even during a raid. He had been assigned as a priest to Rathlin and had not even

  been on Amazeen soil when Kennocha Tramont had him imprisoned for denying her.

  “Think on what you have agreed to do, Penthesilea,” Artesia had declared. “You

  are taking up a vengeance no other warrioress has agreed to in all the years since your

  great-great-grandmere declared the Edikeõ, the Vengeance, because they knew there

  was no honor in it. Why would you? And why now?”

  Penthe had her reasons and it was not so much that she had wanted to perform the

  Antapodidõmi, the Pay Back, by taking on the mantle of a Blackwind but that she wanted

  to leave Amazeen, to soar past the anomaly of the Carbondale Gate—that section they

  called The Sinisters—and journey into the vast unknown of the megaverse in search

  of…

  92

  Her Reaper’s Arms

  “Adventure,” Penthe whispered, disgusted with herself. She sat up and ran a

  distracted hand through her thick brown hair. “Adventure and glory at bringing home

  a Reaper.”

  But would her sisters be happy that she had taken on something none of them had

  been willing to do? Or that she had brought home to them a Reaper who—by rights—

  had done them no harm whatsoever? It was not as though he were their enemy, had

  caused them the first trickle of trouble. He had not. As far as the elders knew, the only

  bad thing Bevyn Coure had ever done was steal an apple from one of his instructors

  because the boy had not eaten in seven days.

  Penthe turned her head and looked at the apple cores she had casually tossed into

  the corner of the loft. Had she not stolen to fill her belly? Was that not her only crime so

  far on this gods’ forsaken, backward world? She had not gathered up the breeding stock

  nor locked the women in the church nor the older men and young boys in the jail. That

  had been carried out by Antimache and her lieutenant and the balgairs.

  While all that was going on, she’d been lying in wait for the Reaper, ready to stun

  him with the Dóigra and carry him aboard the Ostria. She’d taken no part in the deaths

  of the Terran men.

  Turning over, she crawled on her belly and carefully lifted her head to look out the

  loft. The sun was lower in the heavens but it was broiling hot outside. She saw the men

  toiling with the building, hammers busily rising and falling, saws rasping back and

  forth, tin panels being carried up to the rafters where the Reaper sat straddling a

  support, a clutch of nails between his lips.

  By the gods, the man was prime as he sat there, his bare chest gleaming with sweat.

  He’d discarded his hat for a bandana that covered his thick dark hair and was tied at

  the nape of his neck. His muscles flexed and pulled as he hammered the tin into place.

  Though his fingers were sheathed in thick black gloves so he could handle those hot

  panels, Penthe could almost feel the strength in his hands, could see it bunching in his

  shoulders as his hammer rose and fell.

  And then he was looking straight at her, their eyes locked.

  “Oh shit,” Penthe said, going completely still.

  He had felt her presence and now he knew where she was. She stared at him unable

  to move as he poised there with his hammer at his shoulder, looking her way.

  Peripherally she saw other heads turn to see what had grabbed his attention and one

  man pointed to the loft.

  Eyes were shielded as they turned her way. Everyone there was aware of her now.

  Though she could dematerialize into vapor as all Blackwinds could, where would she

  go?

  Then Coure did something completely unexpected. He turned his eyes from her

  and drove the hammer hard against the nail.

  “Come down, milady,” the Reaper called out to her, “and join us.”

  93

  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  For a long while Penthe lay there with her hands clutched into the hay, looking out

  the loft window, watching the townsfolk looking up at her, no one speaking, no one

  stirring save the Reaper who had moved to another section of the tin panel and was

  busily hammering away as though he had all the time in the world. His woman had

  stood up and was staring at Penthe with concern.

  Her brows drawn together, the Blackwind considered dematerializing but her belly

  was rumbling and her thirst was such that her mouth was as dry as the dust flitting

  down from the stable’s rafters. She licked her dry lips then sighed.

  “Come down,” she heard him whisper into her mind . “I mean you no harm.”

  “What if I mean you harm, Reaper?” she sent back to him, and was stunned when he

  laughed.

  “I think I can handle you, wench,” he chuckled.

  Penthe smiled even though she sent him a mental snort. Getting up, dusting the hay

  shards from her jumpsuit, she slid down the loft’s ladder—boots to either side of the

  ladder’s uprights—not caring if she made any noise now. She strutted out of the stable,

  ignoring the stunned looks of the men and the uneasy looks of the women.

  Lea was staring at the tall—she had to be at least seven feet—female with broad

  shoulders and short brown hair who came striding purposefully from the stable. The

  woman’s long legs and wide upper body were encased in a type of one-piece garment

  that fit her like a glove. When she cast an insulting look over Lea before heading

  straight for Bevyn, that look made the hair stir on Lea’s arms for the woman had a tribal

  tattoo that covered the whole of her right cheek.

  Bevyn stopped hammering and sat there on the rafter with his wrist resting on his

  knee, his leg drawn up to ease the ache in his ass caused by the hard lumber upon

  which he’d been perched for over an hour. He stared down at the woman who came to

  stand directly beneath him with her hands on her hips. The dark green eyes looking

  back at him were filled with a vibrant emotion he could not ignore.

  “I am Commander Penthesilea Aracnea,” the woman stated. “I am the descendant

  of…”

  “Kennocha Tramont,” the Reaper interrupted.

  “I came to take you back to Críonna,” Penthe told him.

  “You’ll play hell doing it,” Lea snapped.

  Penthe flicked an amused look over the Terran woman and then returned her

  attention to the Reaper.

  “I know little of Blackwinds,” Bevyn said. “What is it they call what you have

  sworn to do?”

  “Antapodidõmi,” Penthe replied.

  “Which means?” he probed.

  “Pay Back.”

  “Pay Back for what?” Lea demanded.

  94

  Her Reaper’s Arms

  “Her ancestor believes I wrong
ed her,” Bevyn said. He stood and walked the rafter

  like an acrobat, easily and without a moment’s wobble. He climbed down the ladder

  and turned to the other workers. “That’s it for today, men. I’m tuckered out.”

  “Wronged her how, milord?” Lea asked.

  Everyone else was standing about as though they had been turned into statues. It

  was so quiet the proverbial pin could have been heard dropping.

  “She wanted me and I refused her,” he answered.

  “I imagine many women wanted you,” the Blackwind said softly.

  “What is Kennocha to you?” he asked Penthe.

  “She was my great-great-grandmere,” Penthe replied.

  “Ah, so the beastess is no more,” Bevyn said, folding his arms over his chest. He

  was less than three feet away from the Amazeen Blackwind, his gaze steady on hers.

  “She was laid to rest thirty years ago,” Penthe declared. “It has taken me this long

  to find you.”

  Bevyn tilted his head to one side. “You can not be much older than that, wench.

  What are you? Thirty-four? Thirty-five?”

  Penthe raised her chin. “Forty-four, but I thank you for the compliment, Reaper,”

  she said with pride.

  “You wear your years well, milady,” he said. “So at the tender age of fourteen you

  declared yourself my enemy and began to seek me out.”

  “I would not say I declared you an enemy, Reaper, as it were. I simply wanted the

  pleasure of catching you and bringing you back. You must admit you would be quite

  the trophy.” Observing his raised eyebrow, she shrugged. “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in

  seeking you out, milord,” she replied, the closest she would ever come in her lifetime to

  asking anyone’s apology.

  They stared at one another for a long, long time without either blinking then the

  Reaper slowly smiled.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, unfolding his arms and walking past her, turning his

  back to her, though the men tensed and the women gasped, for the strange woman was

  holding a lethal-looking weapon in her hand as though it were a lance.

  “I am starved, warrior,” Penthe admitted.

  “Then you’ll be glad to know my lady is an excellent cook,” Bevyn said.

  Lea’s eyes were narrowed as the tall woman fell into step beside the Reaper.

  “I could eat a horse,” Penthe noted, “although yours I would gladly fight you to

  possess.”