STAVE 8

Team 9 had once been the First and Only—given the number nine to confuse, to trick the enemy into believing the threat posed by the deadly Reapers was in fact ninefold—but when the Nation's conflicts escalated and spread, the spit-brass expanded the force and made their enemies' fears real. Thus the other eight companies were born. But 'Nine was always another thing, its reputation beyond. Those who achieved its ranks prided themselves on their unrivaled discipline and honor and craft of war and fearlessness. Their bond ran deeper than any inherited link, was forged in a medium stronger than mere death—and to them went the missions most deadly. Nine's work sent them to regions never meant for man. Only explorers and the mad dared venture beyond the odd horizons they now prowled, toward the heart of the ancient hobgoblin empire. These were mercurial reaches, with winds so strong and fickle they could shift the paths of rivers overnight. Even the stars were jumbled in those precipitous frontiers.

Perhaps the Reapers of Nine had become drugged on that which they picked and ate from the tainted earth. Existence was harder purchased in the vast, harsh wastes in which they now operated. Effectively this was the truer world, their leader Castle had come to understand. And preach. The verdant lands of the Nation were a rare oasis, an anomaly, when set against the greater wildernesses beyond. Resources were scarce in these outlands and the species hosted by the dying wilds had to fight and scrape more earnestly to have their place. Hardened shells and serrated pincers and piercing horns and deadly venoms—the overwhelming reality, the truer norm, was this grinding hell. Eat or be eaten. Fuck or be fucked. Life defined itself by death and rebirth and little else in that odious country. Castle respected these primal creatures found in the outer wilds. Their animal minds were not clouded like those of men. Unbothered by guilt or remorse or honor. The natural world acted on raw impulse, a thing mankind had gotten away from.

Castle spoke to his men often and from the pit of him. He let aloud all his untold fears and regrets and sorrows. Many were they. And awful. But most of his psychic wranglings were those same concerns that beset all thinkers, common to all mortal souls but rarely aired. His followers found themselves at odds with their own instincts to keep such things stifled within. Soon they all opened their hearts, one by one. The warbrothers of Team 9 communed through the night together, said mantras together, swore oaths of ironclad brotherhood. They practiced rituals of bonding they had mimicked from those they killed. Rakshasa and ylf and even sandman, for each kind had its own ways of tapping within. The confessions gushed like mortal wounds. First Nine's members lost themselves to the wild and then to one another. Out in these voidlands they molted their old skins and bared their baser souls. Dined on the botflies plucked from their comrades' backs. Ate the casualties of battle, friend and foe. Made gods of themselves. Castle, Freek, Demon, Jackal, Darling—a pantheon of assassin lords lost to the outer madness.

Castle learned more lessons in the crucible of Reaper action than in an entire career of common soldiering. Knew what truly drove the souls and desires of people when the stakes were pitched. Once a man murdered he was a murderer. Make him kill for you and he is yours. Some soldiers sought meaning in the bloodshed. A compass, a cause to justify it all. Easily given by any voice claimant of truth or power. Castle promised both. Formed his own laws, concluded his own axioms. Made acolytes of his men and worshippers of the locals. He was a deity to them, a paragon of thought and body, the Lord of Nine. Still, Castle was troubled. The Reaper did not know whether he'd lost his mind Out There or found it.

— • —

"Why do gobs stink?" Thirteen flashed wolfish teeth as he went on filing the edge of his black knife for the coming bloodletting. He waited for a reply from his comrades. The members of Team 3 were gathered round a campfire after a day of grueling travel across the lower wastes. They kept those whom they would soon slay on the far cut of the horizon, lest they chance notice of their presence. The Reapers traded hushed words as they dried their socks and cleaned their gear and massaged their sore bodies, knowing soon they must fall silent and set themselves aside for the grim work to be done.

Jasha bit. "Don't know, brother." The healed-over burn scars on the sniper's face had the look of an aged map in the firelight. A mock topography of these very deathlands they traversed. "How 'bout you tell us... why do the sandfreaks reek so bad?"

Thirteen licked his lips. "So the blind can hate 'em, too!"

The men laughed, though not all with sincerity. The reforged party of Reapers had gone into the near wastes saddled with multiple objectives. They were to learn what they could about the mysterious roads being constructed by the hobgoblins in those vast stretches and to gather intelligence on the fates of their missing men. The Reaper force had been shattered in recent times. Many lost and dead, a familiar burden in their perilous trade. Foremost in the Third Company's thoughts were Halo, their former leader, and Tusk, the ranger who was perhaps the team's true heart for many years. This was the twilight of their force, they felt it on the winds. Other Reapers had gone missing, too. Instructor Risper, who had trained Blacwin. Adamore, who'd nursed him back to life. All sworn brothers-in-arms. Bonded by ink and blood. Beloved by their teammates and students and their families back home. Those men had all vanished in the chaotic events surrounding the Battle of Fort Nothing. Tusk and Risper were assumed to have been captured by the sandmen while on patrol. They could be anywhere in these wastes now, alive or dead. Three's stronghearted leader Halo had deserted his infirmary bed with that cursed hobgoblin sword, swallowed by the night. That was not him. Halo's teammates suspected the dark magics locked within that unholy artifact had compelled the decorated officer to abandon his brothers. Dark times... which these men often diffused with dark humor.

"What do you call a hobgoblin cleric?" Jasha posed.

"Holy shit," the others answered in unison. A few chuckles ensued.

"Old one, old timer," Blacwin said. The freshly coronated Reaper was well aware of the irony in his words. The ylfblood in Blacwin's veins greatly expanded his lifespan and so he was truly the eldest in the entire party by many years. Longer in the tooth than Jasha and even seasoned Nail. But that was a secret known only to Blacwin and no other. He'd grown much closer to these men in the course of this tour, his first as a True Reaper—but the half-ylf knew he would never dare share the truth of his heritage with them no matter how strong their bond. Ylfs were viewed with sheer antipathy by humankind and that was to include many of his new brothers he camped with this night. Such hatreds often ran deep and impenetrable. This Blacwin knew firsthand. He remembered well the public lynchings of woodspawn his old master had forced him to witness as they drifted from town to town decades ago. Man was no friend of ylf, Grendyll had warned. Blacwin's own eyes and ears confirmed this invidious truth.

As if to confirm this reality Thirteen unsheathed a new knee-slapper on the company: "What do you call a dozen dead ylfs in the back of a wagon?" The Reaper touched his thumb to the freshly honed edge of his blade. "A good day's hunting!"

"Or a good start," said Riddle, the rune man from Toloy who had replaced Jinx for this operation. "That's how I always heard it."

Blacwin forced a smile but winced within. Now it was the ylfish race that would again become the butt of his teammates' ridicule. A familiar and frustrating routine. They were out here fighting sandmen, not sylvans. But humans had a particularly hostile and enduring view of ylfkind due to the decades of cycling conflict in the northern frontiers and their ever-clashing cultures and beliefs. Thirteen in particular displayed a fierce animosity for the woodfolk. He'd spent his youth in a town that had frequently suffered costly raids from the so-called ferals. Claimed his Reaper name was inspired by the killing of his first ylf at the formative age of so many years. Humans, who themselves were of infinite hues and variations from the darkest black to the palest white, a continuum that was cherished for its diversity and ignored in any other way, had long ago abandoned such petty differences when set against those even more different and alien. Most humans were united against those legion forces hostile to their kind. It was easy to look past such a small thing as the color of a fellow's skin when set against Others with tusks and the eyes of cats and webbed feet and, most importantly, malicious purpose in their logics. The Nation's society did not divide itself by color (but did not spare any other means of partitioning itself among religions and social strata). The Diluvian creed set all of humanity as pure. And all else as not. The Reapers themselves were such a cross-section. Nail, Thirteen, Jasha, Riddle, Vulture... they were of all shades, and saw no differences based on such. If only such harmony could be struck with all those who walked the world, thought Blacwin. All genders, all morphologies, all walks. With a throaty rasp to his side, such fancies were promptly dashed to the rocks.

"How d'ya keep ylfs out of the backyard?" said their newest man Vulture. "Crucify one out front!" This commando was mad as a wild goost and meaner than a snakefight. Sinewy, head shaved clean. Sometimes spoke to himself. Or someone else unseen. With Tusk captured by the hobgoblins and Shroomer remaining behind to deal with the deluge of wounded at Fort Stowerling, this new member rounded out the team's roster. Vulture was capable in many roles to include animalist and medic and assassin and joker. Thus they tolerated his other traits. Vulture's former Reaper teammates had all perished in these very wastes at the hands of the Blind Prophet's holy fighters—or so he claimed, with none to challenge it. Vulture had been Company Two's lone survivor, forced to independently contend with the sandmen and the damnable weather and the threat of hungry teeth for weeks on his own wit and grit. None (except perhaps Jackal of Nine, whatever had become of that accomplished and adventured lunar) had the store of knowledge possessed by this oddster about the manner of life that reckoned this voidscape habitable. The ranger had already saved Reaper lives many times in his brief presence.

"How d'ya stop a taint from drownin'?" This one came from Nail and by 'taint' he meant Blacwin's kind—half man and half ylf. With Halo missing and Nail's own eyes failing, the ex-sniper had been appointed Three's new leader. Halo had been known to often speak with his troops to try and keep their scales balanced and their souls strong. Nail was the other kind of man. He rarely uttered a word at camp except for the purposes of their mission. He led in silence. Preferred his team be a quiet machine. And so it came as a surprise to the others when Nail chimed in now with his own black riddle. Some in the company knew the joke's answer, but also knew better than shade their leader's sun. Nail put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes and gave dramatic pause before delivering the finish as if it were plain and obvious: "Take your boot off the back of his head."

Chuckles all around. More of rote than mirth. Nail's eye shot open and landed on Blacwin. The half-ylf's heart sunk yet further. Did the old hawk suspect something? The stern deadeye rarely spoke without purpose. Like his 'coffin nails,' Nail's every word was squarely aimed. And when he pulled the trigger it was to kill. Perhaps his jokes too had reptilian agendas.

And to further blacken Blacwin's heart, Nail had even now changed the subject from ylf to taint in disarming specificity. Blacwin's mind raced to think of a new joke to better fit in. None came. He tried to remember those his bunkmate Forthrup had said about ylfs. The words escaped him. Only the feeling of animosity returned. Nail's eyes were back on the fire now. The moment had passed. The leader had already spoken. A fitting end to the banter. Better not to drag it on. Blacwin's fingers went back to restitching a failing hem on his uniform and his mind returned to Nail's suspicions. The grizzled leader had made sly comments in the past about Blacwin's extraordinary senses and lightness of sleep. What was it Nail had called Blacwin when he'd last spotted something in a darkness no man's eyes should have been capable of plying? Ah yes, now he remembered... the word Nail had used to describe him was 'inhuman.'

— • —

A pair of travelers stopped at a brook to let their horses take water and took the opportunity to quell their own road-shaken bones as well. The junk-peddlers lounged on the grassy banks and puffed their pipes and chatted about bad happenings. They had fled the escalating tensions in the region with all they had left to them on their backs and saddles, the remainders of their possessions sold off at great deficit before their hasty departure. The war was spilling onto their doorstep and if they did not escape then they might never do so. The partners reckoned they would be safer behind Camshire's high walls and if that city was already too crowded with refugees, as they had recently heard, they would venture north instead. "Better ylfs than gobs," said one as he picked up his lute and began to strum.

The horses grew restless. Neighed and backed away from the treeline. A cacophony of beastly calls issued from the dim recesses of the woods. A low and restless racket of chirps and moans and cackles and growls. As the foreboding babel drew closer to the forest's edge the paled men caught glimpses of animal forms between the shaking leaves. Bristling hides and festering fangs and wicked talons and predatory eyes, a host of feral horrors. A mutilated human hand appeared along with the mangy paw of a furred beast and together they parted the branches.

"Unholy stars," said the musician in a shocked whisper at the apparition that emerged from the thickets. There stood a sight that their eyes took in but their brains refused to accept. It was a hulking agglomeration of bird and beast and reptile and man, a product of imagination gone helter-skelter. Beyond the horrid aspects of the thing that were clearly stolen from the corpses of men, the merchants saw all manner of fauna from the wilderness in the golem's composition. The companions froze at the sight of the monster. They made no move to draw the weapons at their hips or stop their horses from fleeing down the road and away from this unnatural scene. The men simply stood in the hoofdust and marveled at the grisly construct before them, the impossible arrangement of dead things given unlife from tattooed mad runery.

"Yourth muse toy," the creature said. "Give to usth." It held out that human hand, gray with death but preserved and lacquered.

The troubadour silently complied and set the stringed instrument down on the grass. The men backed away. They had of course heard tales of necromancy and the terrors it could birth. Had seen accused practitioners burn. They knew of rotters and runes. They understood it best to not fight, to let the monstrosity have the thing. Perhaps if they cooperated the abomination would allow them to keep their most precious possessions—their very lives. The golem picked up the lute and retreated into the thick brush. The travelers waited some time to be sure it was gone, uncertain if the faint cackles and shrieks they still heard under the windrustled leaves were issued by the lingering visitor or the wildlife returning to voice now that the unholy presence had finally withdrawn. The tradesmen set out to find the horses, thankful to still have their skins... and, further, an unbelievable tale for the taverns—even if it all had come at the cost of one fine lute.

— • —