Reaper

by Janet Edwards

  I considered this. “Point. I’ll ask Hawk to give me a hunting lesson. There’s no reason for either Hawk or the Reaper to refuse to do that. Then I’ll gradually work up to asking him to fight the Kraken.”

  “And what if he does fight the Kraken and loses?” asked Nathan. “Just because the real Hawk managed to kill it once, that doesn’t mean he’ll manage it every time.”

  “The real Hawk would be doing his very best to win,” I said. “Hawk the Unvanquished wouldn’t want me to remember the day I agreed to be in an exclusive relationship with him as the day I watched him defeated by the Kraken.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Hawk and I were wearing matching outfits in silver chain mail that was surprisingly light and supple to wear. We were in one of the hunting zones of Celestius, wading through knee deep grass, with scattered trees around us.

  “You look nervous about this hunting trip,” said Hawk.

  I was far more than just nervous. I was sick with tension. I was afraid I’d flinch away from Hawk and make him suspicious. I was totally terrified of discovering Hawk really was the Reaper. Fortunately, if I appeared nervous, there was a good explanation for it.

  “You’re a legendary warrior. I’ve never been in a genuine fight before. I’m going to make a complete fool of myself.”

  I looked warily round at the trees, wondering what might be hiding under cover. I couldn’t see anything more dangerous than a bush with nasty looking thorns, but we were here so I could fight something. Logically, that meant there was something around to fight.

  Hawk stopped by a large rock, and sat down on it. “Forget whether you’re likely to make a fool of yourself or not, because there’s a far more important question. Are you sure that you want to try hunting? You mustn’t feel under pressure to fight Game monsters because I do it. I like tackling challenges, so I do the warrior thing. Sometimes I get hurt, and that can be very painful. I don’t enjoy pain one bit, but I’ve learned to handle it. Many people can’t.”

  He paused for a moment. “Take Fleur for example. She spent years suffering pain in real life and entered Game to escape it. Her only Game death was when Hercules killed her, and I’ve told you how she reacted to that. She thinks that hunting, deliberately risking being hurt for no real purpose, is silly. She’s right. I’d understand if you decide to go back to your castle right now.”

  I listened to what Hawk was saying, but I knew I couldn’t run away back to my castle. Hunting in general might have no real purpose, but this hunting trip definitely did. It was worth suffering some pain to find out if I was in a relationship with Hawk the Unvanquished or Hawk the Reaper.

  The big danger was that I wouldn’t just get hurt but killed, because that would bring this trip to an abrupt end. The experience of being in Game mirrored real life as exactly as possible. Hawk had repeatedly warned me that a Game death was very painful and the first Game death was especially traumatic.

  If I was killed hunting, I knew the real Hawk would be worried and insist on me taking a long break to recover, while the Reaper would know it was hardest to imitate Hawk when he was fighting and would grab the excuse to abandon the hunt. I’d be left in an agony of suspense, still unsure if this was the real Hawk or if he’d been lost to data oblivion.

  Hawk, or the Reaper, gave me an earnest look. “What I’m trying to say is that my feelings for you don’t depend on whether or not you want to hunt. It might be fun to battle lethal monsters together, but there are plenty of other experiences we could share in Game.”

  He gave a strangely anxious laugh. “But I’m assuming far too much here. I’ve admitted that I love you, but you haven’t given me a hint of how much you care about me.”

  “Don’t be silly. The fact I’ve agreed that we should enter into an exclusive relationship is a very big hint that I have deep feelings for you. Whether I decide I’d like to do more hunting in future or not, going on a hunting trip with you today is important to me. I’ve spent years watching the replays of your famous Game combats. Today is a special day for us, so I want to bring the past and future together by having my first hunting lesson with you, and then ...”

  I broke off and gave him a pleading look. “After I’ve done some hunting myself, can I watch Hawk the Unvanquished fight something?”

  He looked eager rather than reluctant. The ridiculously pleased expression on his face reminded me of the way Michael had looked back in the real world when I told him I’d have been tempted to have a date with him. I’d been grimly resigned until now, braced to find out that Hawk was gone and the Reaper was wearing his image. Weirdly, the fact it was such an awful idea, made me feel it had to be true.

  Now I was far more hopeful. The Reaper had known Hawk for four hundred years, so of course he would be able to imitate him, but that expression belonged to Michael not Hawk. I couldn’t bet the lives of everyone on Celestius on a fleeting facial expression, I needed much better evidence, but still ...

  “You’ll let me show off?” Hawk asked with a grin. “You’ll let Hawk the Unvanquished demonstrate his big weapon for you?”

  I was puzzled by the sound of his voice when he said that. “Am I missing something in what you just said?”

  He laughed. “In my day, that would have been a suggestive remark.”

  I was almost convinced. This was Hawk making the old joke about him being centuries out of date. On the other hand, the Reaper was an original Game designer, so he must be even older than Hawk. He’d know all about the past as well.

  I managed a smile. “I’ll not only let you show off. I insist on it. Promise you’ll give me my own private demonstration of Hawk wielding his mighty weapon.”

  He made a choking noise.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Innuendoes,” he whimpered. “I know you didn’t mean what that implied but ... Be very careful you don’t say anything like that to Hercules, or any of the rest of the family. It’s like the jokes about men wanting big towers on their castles.”

  I blinked. “It means that? But why? A tower sort of makes sense, but a sword doesn’t.”

  “It’s not worth worrying about the psychology behind it,” said Hawk. “You just don’t want to give people the wrong idea.”

  He stood up. “Now, if you get serious about hunting, fighting, or any heavily physical activities in Game, you’ll find there’s a lot of training involved. Today, we’ll just let you try fighting something easy and get a feel of the experience. That avoids you being bored by weeks or months of preparation, just to find you hate the whole thing at the end of it.”

  He smiled at me. “The downside is that you won’t have a clue what you’re doing. You’ll be hopeless, but don’t worry about it. If you find you enjoy the challenge of this, then I’ll help you train, and I promise you’ll end up a good hunter and fighter. You’re intelligent and you think fast, which are the two key things you need. Everything else is achieved by pure hard work.”

  “Do I get a weapon now?” I asked.

  Hawk had Durendal in its sheath on his back, a one-handed broadsword at his left side, a slender rapier at his right side, and dagger sheaths on both forearms. The man was a walking weapon store, while I was totally unarmed. Given my worries about him being the Reaper, this was unnerving, though I knew having a weapon wouldn’t help me if it came to fighting him. I was a total novice, and would stand no chance of winning against an experienced fighter.

  Hawk drew the broadsword and handed it to me.

  “No shield?” I asked.

  “There’s a lot of skill involved in using a shield properly in combat. For your first lesson, it’s best if you concentrate your attention on using your sword.”

  I frowned down at the broadsword. “If I’m not using a shield, wouldn’t I be better off with a two-handed sword like Durendal?”

  “Absolutely not. A two-handed sword is one of the heaviest weapons in Game, the blade is massive, and when you get it moving fast there’s a lot of momentum involved. I don’
t want you cutting your own head off, so you’re starting with a weapon that’s much lighter and easier to control.”

  I looked around at the waving grasses. “What am I supposed to fight?”

  “Over there.” Hawk pointed. “It’s dozing in the shade of that tree.”

  I squinted into the sun, and saw a barely visible, black furry object lying among thick grass. “It’s a bear. No yellow stripes, so it isn’t a bumble bear.”

  Hawk laughed. “I’m not insulting you by sending you up against a bumble bear. They’re so fat they move at a snail’s pace, and they keep falling over their own feet. If you lie down and refuse to defend yourself, a bumble bear might manage to scratch you a little, but it’s really far more dangerous fighting a tree trunk. You’re here to fight a battle bear. Those are plain black, except for the white markings on the ears and chest.”

  “I see.” I stared across at the battle bear. “It seems a shame to wake it up when it’s happily dozing in the sunshine.”

  “The bear isn’t happy,” said Hawk. “It isn’t sad either. It isn’t thinking or feeling anything at all, because its every movement is directly controlled by the Game system. At the beginning of Game, every creature was like that, but once the First Wave settled successfully into Game people worked out that we had immortality here. The whole population of Earth was trying to move in at once, the Game needed more worlds fast, and the Game creatures were given their own artificial intelligence.”

  I listened uneasily as he continued.

  “Using autonomous artificial intelligence meant the Game system no longer had to run each creature’s movements directly. A.A.I. meant we were able to have masses of butterflies and bees, flocks of seagulls, and shoals of fish, each with their own tiny consciousness stream in Game.”

  I didn’t say a word. I was starting to feel sick.

  Hawk laughed. “But then the Game Techs got a few surprises. The wildlife was set up to have natural lives, including eating, breeding, and having a limited lifespan. First came the simple problems, like creatures breeding too fast, so the Game Techs hastily added automatic population limits by making fertility dependent on the number of a particular species that was already around. Then came the real shock of Game creatures starting to evolve. They couldn’t change their appearance but they could change their behaviour.”

  I finally spoke. I knew I’d be safer keeping my mouth shut, but it was my life, and my decision what risks I should take. We were inside a hunting zone. Kwame had a team of Game Techs watching every move we made, and had locked down every normal way out except through Game death and resurrection. If the Reaper killed me, then they would have him trapped, and could deal with him once and for all.

  “I didn’t realize you knew so much technical stuff,” I said. “You’re sounding like Nathan.”

  “I only know these things because I lived through several decades where Celestius suffered from one A.A.I. problem after another. It wasn’t just that the dangerous creatures in the hunting zones developed better attack tactics and became far more lethal. Previously harmless wildlife in ordinary areas of Game started to become a threat too. There were the hummingbirds that evolved to have a taste for blood instead of nectar. There were the bees that started attacking in swarms and stinging people to death. I’m not even going to hint at why we don’t have ravens on Celestius any longer.”

  Hawk gave his one-shouldered shrug. “The Game Techs went back to using direct system control on all the dangerous creatures in hunting zones. Outside the hunting zones, they kept putting extra limitations on the A.A.I. wildlife to stop them evolving, and removed a few species that persistently caused trouble. In the end, they got everything working smoothly. Anyway, my point is that you don’t have to worry about being unkind to the bear because it has no thoughts or feelings.”

  I wasn’t sure what to think. The Reaper would have been one of the Game Techs making those changes to the wildlife. Hawk was only a player, but I could believe that a hunter paid very close attention to changes in the creatures he fought.

  “Go and fight your bear now,” Hawk ordered. “I’ll be right here, watching your back.”

  He sat down on the rock again, and relaxed, seeming amused. I looked at my sword, took a deep breath, and started walking forward.

  “Don’t take your eyes off the bear for a single second,” Hawk warned me. “When it spots you, it’ll charge.”

  I watched the patch of fur in the grass, hardly daring to blink as I took a few more paces forward. The bear seemed to go straight from sleeping to ferocious attack, leaping up and bounding straight at me at startling speed. I gripped my sword tightly, and swung it at the beast, while dodging sideways. I was aiming for the bear’s throat, but it reared upwards at the last second, so I struck its chest instead.

  The bear landed heavily on the ground beside me. It was up again an instant later, advancing on me again, and I could see where my blade had left a red gash across the white-furred chest. I took two rapid steps backwards, and then stabbed with my sword. I missed the neck again, but this time the blade went deeper into the chest, and was yanked out of my hands as the bear recoiled. I grabbed desperately for the sword hilt, trying to retrieve it, but the bear was on me again, its front paws knocking me over backwards.

  I lay helpless on the ground, the bear poised over me, and there was an instant when time seemed to stop. I was aware of a mass of sensations. The tearing pain from claws raking my left shoulder. The rancid stench of the bear’s breath. The sight of the bear’s white tufted ears folding backwards to flatten themselves against the side of its head. The furious, red eyes looking into mine, as it drew back and bared its teeth for the kill.

  I was braced for my first Game death, when there was a flash of steel. The bear went limp and collapsed on top of me.

  “You did well,” said Hawk, strolling over to stand next to me.

  I lay there, half buried under the crushing weight of the dead bear, and totally bewildered. “How did you kill it? You weren’t anywhere near us.”

  “A throwing dagger.” He pointed at the blade buried in the bear’s forehead. “Battle bears have a vulnerable point there. When it reared back, it gave me a beautiful clear shot.”

  Hawk lifted the bear carcass up while I crawled out. I was feeling giddy from shock, and there was a burning pain in my left shoulder, but my arm still seemed to be working. “Thanks.”

  “I promised to watch your back. The bear scratched the left side of your neck a little. Did its claws get through the chain mail as well?”

  “Yes.” I stood up, and loosened the fastenings of my armour to expose my shoulder. Twisting my neck round awkwardly, I could just see where blood oozed from a set of claw marks.

  “Maybe I should wear plate armour another time,” I said.

  “I find you take less damage from each hit with plate armour, but you get hit far more because you’re slower at dodging. You’ll have to make your own decision on what armour to use, but I like chain mail as a compromise between weight and protection. Wearing leather can work well too, but the way Hercules has all the gaps to show off his rippling muscles is ridiculous. It’s no wonder that I can always kill him in a fight.”

  Hawk leaned close to examine my neck and shoulder. “There are two ways to deal with injuries in hunting zones. One way is to teleport back to your home where you’ll get automatic accelerated healing. The other way is to just put a bandage on it and keep hunting.”

  I couldn’t go back to my castle until I knew if this was Hawk or the Reaper. “I’ll try the bandage. I’m here to get the real hunting experience.”

  Hawk went back to the rock that he’d been sitting on, tapped the side of it, and an opening appeared. I gave a startled gasp, and he laughed.

  “The large rocks contain emergency medical supplies. It’s no real advantage in a hunt. It just saves us from having to carry bandage packs.”

  Hawk took out a thin, flat, beige object, and brought it back to me. “You just
choose a bandage the right size and shape, and press it down over the wound like this.”

  I frowned as he applied the bandage. “It looks like an outdated, adhesive bandage.”

  “The Game Techs haven’t bothered changing the appearance of bandages for a century or two.”

  Hawk stepped back, and I studied my shoulder. My wound was still throbbing, but the bandage seemed to be keeping the bleeding under control.

  “If you stayed in the hunting ground for a day or two,” said Hawk, “you’d probably find that wound got infected, but you should be all right for a few hours. Battle bears don’t have poisonous bites or stings. If you get hurt by something that does, you need to head straight home to heal up.”

  I nodded.

  Hawk retrieved my sword, cleaned the blade on the grass, and returned it to the sheath at his side. “So what did you think of hunting?”

  “I’ve never felt so aware of everything that was happening around me,” I said. “It was like all my senses were heightened. I was pretty useless at the fighting though. You literally had to save my neck.”

  “It was your first fight, Jex, and a battle bear is quite a nasty opponent. I wouldn’t have let the fight go on as long as I did without intervening if I hadn’t been impressed by how well you were doing. I hadn’t taken the training you did for the re-enactment fights very seriously, but you’ve obviously learned something from it.”

  Hawk looked up at the sky with a reminiscent smile. “You did far better than I did in my first fight in Game. I was as smug as your friend, Falcon, as I headed into the hunting zone. I was an obsessive gamer, an expert on combat in a dozen of the old style games, and convinced I could handle anything in this one too.”

  He laughed. “In the games I’d played, it was easy for a new player to kill small creatures with a few random waves of a sword, and I expected that approach to work here too. I found a lesser mountain lion, charged, waved my sword, and got a huge shock when the lion didn’t drop dead. Game was designed to mimic reality as closely as possible. In this case, the reality of a person using a sword to fight a dangerous creature. Waving my sword around randomly was useless, and when the lion clawed me it really hurt!”