Her Reaper's Arms, Charlotte Boyett-Compo [world best books to read .TXT] 📗

less were left from

among the Four Nations. Some of their customs had been abandoned, forgotten,

morphed from one belief into a new one that better served its worshippers. He knew

that had happened for many of the natives of Terra.

“You look very sad, danitaga,” Chief Amaketai said as he came to stand beside the

Reaper. “You should rejoice for Onisca. He will soon be with Those Who Have Gone

Before.”

“Although I am saddened by your son’s passing, that is not what haunts me this

day, oginalii,” Bevyn replied. “It is the sight of the pyre that disturbs me.”

“Ah,” Amaketai said. The old man had sat many hours with the Reaper before the

campfire, hearing tales of lands far beyond the green hills of Armistenky. He knew how

8

Her Reaper’s Arms

the young man had met his end in that alien world so unlike his own. “It is the burning

you dislike.”

“Only because it brings back memories,” Bevyn admitted.

“I understand,” Amaketai said. He gave the man beside him—the man his people

called danitaga, blood brother—a gentle look. “Life has not been kind to you, has it, my

son?”

“Life has kicked my ass, old friend,” Bevyn said with a faint smile. “Many times

over.”

Onisca’s widow was given the honor of lighting his funeral pyre and she placed the

burning sweet grass sheaf to the bundles intertwined with the oak branches. A loud,

trilling ululation rose up from the throats of the mourners as the fire took hold and the

flames rose. The bitterly sweet odor of burning flesh rose in the air.

Bevyn turned away, unable to watch the body catch fire. The stench was more than

he could bear as well and his hands were trembling, his shoulders hunched as though

he expected the fire to reach out to ensnare him. Bidding a hasty farewell to Amaketai,

he strode purposefully to his horse, grateful the chief did not try to stop him. Grabbing

a handful of Préachán’s thick mane, he swung up into the saddle and dug his heels into

the horse’s black flanks. He needed to put distance between him and the burning man

who had been like a brother to him.

He needed a drink, he thought as he raced his mount across the plains. He needed

something strong, something that would numb the memories, something to erase the

feeling of impending doom that had reached out to entrap him. Sometimes the only

way he could make it through a week of loneliness, the isolation of his job, was to

drown himself in whiskey and attempt to sleep it off.

The trouble with his kind was they had trouble sleeping. Even with a full bottle of

rotgut sloshing in their bellies, the nightmares always hovered close by to claim them

and to torment their rest, to drag them hissing from the land of Nod. Past deeds rose up

to jeer at them and the cries of the dead they had dispatched haunted their restless

slumber.

It was a hell of a way to live.

As Préachán—his big black stallion—raced over the ground, Bevyn thought of the

balgair, the rogue, he had executed for murdering Onisca. He had hunted the bastard

down, driven him to ground and had used his laser whip to slice off pieces of the

rogue’s body a little at a time until there was nothing left but mush on the blood-soaked

ground. He had reveled in the man’s screams, had inhaled his fear and agony as though

they were perfume. He had taken out his wrath in painful increments that had lasted

for hours until his whip arm grew numb and heavy and his energy flagged. Still he had

slashed at the body—long after he had sliced the head from the corpse with an expert

flick of his wrist—until the killing rage had finally passed, and he had been stunned to

see what he had wrought.

9

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“I have avenged you, diganeli,” he had offered up to Onisca’s ghost, calling him his

blood friend.

But it had been more than vengeance he had meted out upon the rogue. It had been

frustration and disappointment and an attempt to alleviate the bitter loneliness that was

slowly driving him insane. The devastation he had perpetrated against the balgair had

been excessive and he knew it but it had felt good—at least at the time—to vent.

For the last five years he had carried out the assignments the High Council had

handed to him, never once questioning what was expected of him, never balking at the

deeds done that were necessary to do what was required. He had killed in the name of

justice without a shred of conscience staying his lethal hands. His anger over his own

death was still a raw wound in his mind and a dark blot on his soul and nothing

seemed to be able to calm the fury riding him with bloodied spurs.

The sun was low on the horizon and spearing into his eyes. Ahead of him was the

town of Orson and a saloon where there was a bottle with his name on it. He licked his

lips at the thought of the liquor burning its way down his throat, the promise of

oblivion, the siren call to forgetfulness. The town wasn’t much, the people dispensable

in the grand scheme of things. He hadn’t been there in quite a while, and the last time

he’d passed through, he had spent two days in a drunken stupor he wished to

experience again. Perhaps while he slept, a balgair would sneak in and take his head and

the pain would finally stop.

Riding into the rundown town with its beaten-down citizens, Bevyn smiled grimly

as those civilians scattered, rushing to hide behind locked doors and pulling draperies

rather than garner the notice of a Reaper. Dismounting in front of the saloon, he glanced

around, not surprised to find himself alone on the dirt street, to hear the eerie silence as

breaths were held and lips mumbled in silent prayer that he would not stay long in

their town.

Hitching up his gun belt, adjusting the dragon claw handle of his laser whip in its

thin leather sheath, he tied Préachán to the hitching post and stepped up on the

boardwalk, his spurs jangling against the weathered gray boards. Putting his hands on

the batwing doors