The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) (13 page)

T
he wagon edged along a forest
, from which shadows roamed, slinking between fat drops of rain. Beneath a sky the color of burnt steel, silhouettes bounced between the trunks like gnats bobbing from one flame to another.

Cessilo swung the cart away from the trees, giving the encroaching shadows a wide berth. In the distance, oil clung to the air in a thick haze, the burn-off from torches that marked a small village. A dirt path skirted with stone led into the mouth of the village, where various structures extended deep into the wet forest.

Silently, I unsheathed my blade. At least, as silently as one can withdraw the sharp spine of ebon from leather.

Cessilo swung herself around. “Reapers,” she whispered so low I had to watch her mouth and sound out each letter.

“Taking the villagers?” I asked.

She nodded.

Lysa clenched my leg. “We have to help them.”

Cessilo gave a frantic shake of her head.

“But—”

“Lysa,” I said, “she has far more to fear from them than we do.”

In the face of that truth, her idealism faded and her shoulders slumped.

“Stupid Cess,” Cessilo whispered to herself, eyes closed. “Stupid! Thought I cut far enough around. Shouldn’t be here right now.”

“Will they see us?” I asked.

“I’d bet my everything they will.”

“Can you outrun them?”

“Not for long. Horses are tired.”

I considered the dilemma. If they ran us down, I’d have to defend the cart, the horses, Lysa, and Cessilo. If I caught them by surprise, however, then I’d… well, I didn’t exactly have the advantage, but the situation wasn’t quite so dire.

“I’ll head them off,” I told Cessilo. “Take the wagon the opposite direction soon as you see me enter the village.”

“What about me?” Lysa asked. “I’m coming, you know.”

“You’re staying here.”

“No, I’m not.”

I withdrew my second blade and offered the hilt to Lysa. “Yes, you are. I need you here. In case one or two get past me. Don’t let them take her,” I said, gesturing to Cessilo. “Got it?”

Lysa regarded the oily glint of the sword with interest. “Okay.”

In truth, if I couldn’t corral all the reapers, I had little hope Lysa could stave off an attack and prevent her and Cessilo’s death and their subsequent resurrection. Not that I didn’t have faith in her, but cutting down an enemy requires panache. Which is a difficult thing to display when you’ve never swung a sword.

I patted Lysa on the cheek and gave her wink. Then I leaped out of the wagon, landing softly on the balls of my feet.

I crept through wet grass like a hunched panther after its prey, tracking with vigilance and discrimination. Tiptoeing around the litter of pinecones, sidestepping fallen branches. Silence is the greatest ally of an assassin.

But in that damp, cool jungle where torches wavered and oil smoke thickened the sky, silence eloped with comfort.

Something shuddered. Something boomed. Shrill cries erupted from within the village. Shadows sprung like a burning star searing the sky, contours of limbs and heads.

“The forge!” someone hollered. That same voice effused a gurgling shriek.

“Mama,” a boy yelled. “Mama!”

I ran now, desperation shoving me from behind and pulling me ahead. I stopped between two wooden staves upon which fire burbled. Directly ahead, men and women and children scurried amongst an entanglement of buildings and dirt paths.

“Mirla,” a woman said. “Mirla! No! Mirla!”

Chaos spun me around in dizzying fashion. A girl tumbled to the ground over there, and a man was pounced upon over here. One by one, the villagers crumbled under a heap of obscure shapes wielding weapons I couldn’t identify. The downpour of both the night and the rain cast a murkiness over the battlefield. Or what was quickly becoming a killing field.

Indecision seized me. The reapers were numerous, far more than I’d first thought. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty. They were preoccupied with murder — if killing the dead counts as murder — and hoisting the bodies into what appeared to be carts.

I might be an arrogant bastard, but I’m not a stupid one. Attacking a score of reapers, or for that matter a score of anything that wasn’t inept at fighting back, would only get me killed.

The solution was simple, although not pleasant. I’d take cover behind a knotted tree, a great big one whose trunk would conceal me entirely. From there, I’d watch the path out of the village. If a few reapers spotted Cessilo and Lysa and pursued them, I’d surprise the bastards with a gift-wrapped blade and make them shit ebon in the afterlife.

Otherwise, I’d remain hidden. Listening to the despondent villagers beg for mercy.

And that was exactly what they did. They pleaded with their attackers, begged in teary voices. Then they wailed like ghostly aberrations. The children were the worst. Their whimpers. Sobbing. Their confusion as they asked why.
Why, why, why
, they cried, watching their parents and friends stuck with swords and pikes and clubbed over the head with blunt weaponry.

My nails dug themselves into the moist bark as the little ones were then butchered. I pressed my forehead against the timbered rind and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to stop their high-pitched laments from echoing inside my skull.

“Move!” a man barked.

There was a snort, like that of a horse, and a loud crack of a whip. I peered out from behind the tree, shielding my eyes from falling needles and a glut of raindrops pouring from the branches as the wind blew.

A horse-drawn wagon wobbled over the root-choked forest floor, away from the village and, thankfully, in the opposite direction of Cessilo and Lysa.

Desolation captured the village, staked its claim with silence and emptiness. Confident the reapers had departed, I intended to reconvene with Lysa and Cessilo. But something twitched near the foot of a shack. Squinting through the waxy fog of oil, fire and mist, I saw a rough outline of a reaching arm.

Hell
, I thought. Not a whole lot I could do to help the poor guy. Or woman. Or kid. Bringing them along to meet Rav’s brother wasn’t much of an option, and we had limited supplies on board the wagon. And I wasn’t about to use them on some stranger, when Lysa and I might still need them. I’m not that auspicious of a person.

But I could at least put the poor fuck out of his misery, if need be. Er, actually… wouldn’t that technically bring him back? Could people in this realm die? Probably a question for Cessilo.

There was a meek groan as I drew nearer. A shuffle amongst a litter of detritus.

“Where’d they get you?” I asked, crouching before him.

His mouth gaped. His heavy breath sent a dead leaf fluttering across the soil. Another groan, and a rasp. Then he picked his head up.

And I stumbled back, falling onto my butt before scurrying to my feet. “The fuck are you?” I said, aiming the tip of my sword at his worming body. At
its
worming body.

Round pebbles of ebon had replaced his eyes. No whites, no streaking vessels of blood. Only the matte finish of dark, sheenless ore. Even the nearby flames failed to reflect off of them; they seemed to sink into the blackness like it was a whirling void sucking everything in.

Beside his body lay a sword dotted with blood. It all began adding up.

“You’re a reaper, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Please,” he said, raising a hand. “Don’t kill me.”

“Funny. I heard the villagers ask the same of you. Didn’t grant them that wish, though, did you?”

“They’re already dead,” he said. He clawed at the wet mud, pulling himself up to his knees.

I flicked the underside of his blade with mine, throwing it into the air and far away from his reach. “They are dead, so why aren’t you letting them stay that way?”

“I’ll do anything,” he said, showing me his palms, I guess to insinuate he was harmless. But I knew better. “Anything you want. Keep me alive and I’ll—”

“Got it,” I said. “You’ll do anything. Man like you, or whatever the fuck you are, I’d think you’d be at peace with dying. What with coming into this realm, fetching the dead like they’re cows late for an appointment with the butcher. Seems risky for a guy who doesn’t want to die.”

He shied away like a frightful child.

“That’s my long-winded way of asking you what you’re scared of.”

Not a word. Not a peep. Not even a groan.

I pricked his throat with my blade. “You’re not doing a very good job of upholding your promise to do anything.”

“I’ll suffer,” he spat. “For eternity. Forever. For always! If I die now, that’s my fate.”

“Explain.”

He took too long to answer, so I drew a bit of blood to make him hurry up.

“Okay!” he said. “Okay. I’ve… the bad I’ve done outweighs the good.” He paused. “You don’t come here if it works out like that.”

“Where do you go?”

The vein in his throat pulsed madly as a hint of life awakened in his raven-colored eyes. It was the kind of life you see in people whose whole being has been consumed by terror.

“Fine,” I said. “It’s not important. But I’ve got a question that is. Answer it correctly, and I’ll let you live. Do you know of a man with a golden book?”

He stared at me for a while. Then, seemingly without moving his lips, he said, “Yes.”

“Good. Get up.”

He grasped at his ankle. “I twisted it bad. Don’t know if I can—”

I latched my arm around his and yanked him up. He braced himself against my shoulder.

“You’re freeing me?” he asked.

“Not quite. You’re coming with me. I think I could use you.”

To say Lysa and Cessilo expressed surprise when I came back with a reaper in tow would be an understatement. Anger, however? Sure. At least from the cranky old bog hag.

“What’re you doin’ with that thing!” she said, snarling.

“Hand me some rope,” I told Lysa. Then to Cessilo, “Four makes a merry company, yeah?”

“I won’t have that thing on me wagon. No, sir.”

Lysa jumped out of the cart with frayed rope dragging behind her.

“Says he knows Rav’s brother, so he’s coming with us. Here, let me see that.”

“I can tie a knot,” Lysa insisted. The reaper turned his head toward her, his dead eyes catching her unprepared. She twitched in surprise, fumbling the rope.

“Would you keep your eyes closed?” I said, bopping him on the back of his skull. “You’re scaring the shit out of everyone.”

Cessilo continued her protests about allowing the reaper to join us, but in the end, she relented. It was a gamble, truthfully. If I took her at face value — that she was in charge here and this was her cart and her horses and her rules — I could have expected her to snap the reins and ride off into the moonlight, leaving Lysa and me behind. But I suspected Rav had paid her handsomely in whatever currency dead people trade in. Enough that failing to deliver us to our destination would void the terms of the contract. Or, just as likely, she was in debt to the old man.

We traveled slowly into the night, our four-legged chauffeurs dragged down by exhaustion. We’d set up a small camp in the morning, as always, allowing them some much-needed rest. The key to wading through treacherous lands where people want to kill you is not allowing the night to mask their footsteps. You keep on a path, any path, until the sun comes out and chases away the shadows.

I didn’t bother with prodding the reaper until around noon the next day. Tossing back some wild berries I’d found earlier that morning, I kicked the black-eyed enigma into alertness.

“Tired of thinking of you as the reaper,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Rovid.”

Before I could continue with my calculated interrogation, Lysa interrupted me. “Why are your eyes like that?”

The terrain underfoot had turned to a mixture of sand and frail grass. The wheels of the wagon slogged along through the sucking soil, rocking its dear occupants into the side walls. Rovid got the worst of it, his head careening into a wooden panel. That’s what happens when your hands are tied behind your back.

After groaning, he said, “So I can see clearly in the darkness.”

“Like a cat?” Lysa asked.

Rovid smiled. “Like a cat.”

More like a demon, in my opinion. Then again, of the many cats I’d met, the two had often proven to be synonymous with one another.

“How did you do it?” Lysa asked, taking a childlike interest in the reaper. “Your eyes, I mean.”

Rovid’s head fell. “I didn’t. He did.”

“He?”

“The man you’re looking for.”

Huh. You know, I thought, all this time I’d been referring to that aforementioned “he” as Rav’s brother.

“He must have a name,” I said.

“Many.”

“Yeah, me too. Shepherd, assassin, fuckhead. But Astul’s the name I was born with. So what’s the name Mommy and Daddy gave him?”

The sun blossomed from behind the clouds like a blooming daffodil, igniting Rovid’s cheeks in an amber glow. You could see his jaw set, teeth clench.

“Occrum,” he answered. With a confused shake of his head, he looked up. “Who are you? You’re not dead, I know that. You’re alive. But you’re in this realm. And you’re not a reaper.” He pulled back like a man jolted by a terrible realization. “Did he send you? To make sure—”

“You’d think I’d know his name if he sent me,” I said. “No. Trust me, the first time he lays eyes on me will be the last.”

Rovid furrowed his brows, unable to connect the dots.

“I’m going to kill him, you understand?”

He belted out a farcical laugh, the stupid-ass grin on his lips seemingly stuck there forever like a stretched-out belt. Once I informed him he was going to help me, he sobered up.

“You can’t kill him,” he said.

“Why not?” Lysa asked. “He’s only a man.”

“Only a man?” Rovid snapped. “Could only a man do
this
?” He stabbed a pair of fingers into his eyes without flinching. The tips seemed to sink into the blackness, as if it was jelly. “I had real eyes once. Now all I see are grays. I had a future once. Now all I do is return the dead to misfit corpses in a realm they’d long ago left. Turn around, I beg you. Turn around and go back to wherever you came from. Live out your days until the apocalypse comes.”