Fear The Reaper Read online

  ‘Will you heal him then?’ she asked, trying not to lose her temper.

  ‘Is he worthy of the God’s grace?’

  ‘What? How should I know?’

  ‘Then why does he deserve to be healed? There are many such as he in the world. Those that become diaspores are lost, their humanity lost, but what singles out this infected as more deserving?’

  ‘How can you think like that? What sort of . . .’ she trailed off. The angel’s blank expression told her there was no point – it was not a being capable of being persuaded, of seeing a mortal’s point of view. ‘Maybe you can’t heal them all, but when you come across one, how could you just walk on by? What sort of holiness is that?’

  ‘The joy of the God’s creation in all its forms,’ the angel said baldly. As it spoke, it spread its wings with a sweep of feathers that caused her mule to shy back. ‘But as you request it, I shall do so.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  Ice didn’t reply, merely leaped up into the air to catch the breeze. Wings outstretched, the angel wheeled above their heads then beat at the air, once, twice, to drive up higher and head towards the man in the road ahead.

  ‘See, my love,’ Moss said, nudging her arm with his callused, grubby hand. ‘Even the angel’s not resistant to your charms.’

  ‘Don’t be simple,’ she muttered, and started off down the slope. Cicadas called from the fields around them.

  ‘This world’s simple, mistress of my heart!’ he called after her. ‘You command, we can only obey. A goddess you’ll one day be, benevolent and merciful to all!’

  She ignored him, knowing that to argue would only make it worse. Instead, she watched the angel surge through the warm air towards the infected man. Despite everything, she found her breath catch at the sight of it in flight – effortless and beautiful in its movements. The stroke of its wings was both lazy and powerful, a reminder that Ice was no mortal animal of the world, like her or even the mule.

  She had seen it eat and drink, but a token amount only. Whatever terrible strength was in the angel’s bones and driving those muscles, it was not solely meat and bread that drove it. The spark of the divine was inside it; bourn of that nameless God that had a dozen worshipping cults, but didn’t deign to nominate a true faith. Some claimed the God had created the world, others that it had reclaimed it from the cold horrors beyond this mortal realm. She knew the angels were its soldiers, however, and had seen with her own fearful eyes what Ice had named the Voiceless. It was hard to imagine this world anything more than a temporary conquest of mortal warmth, forever assailed by the cold stars from which it had been taken. The angels were soldiers, carving out territory in a war of more than ideals – a war of existence itself.

  ‘Come on, fool,’ Shell called to Moss.

  She clicked her tongue and tugged the mule forward, slowly making up the ground to the infected man as Ice landed in front of him. The shambling figure was obscured by the angel’s outstretched wings as it landed, but then they furled and Shell saw the infected had fallen to its knees. Man or woman she couldn’t in fact tell, despite the angel saying it was a man, and she doubted Moss could either. Whichever it was, they were apparently not so far gone in their disease as to not recognise an angel of the God in all its terrible glory.

  ‘Can angels get infected?’ Moss asked in a sullen voice behind her, following but clearly unhappy. ‘They’re flesh and blood still, ain’t they?’

  ‘You heard Ice – it’s lived a thousand years. Must know by now what it can and can’t do.’

  She upped her pace a shade, feeling mean-spirited towards the reluctant soldier. As she did, she saw the angel reach out a hand to the cowering infected and place it on their head like offering benediction.

  ‘Guess we’ll find out now,’ Moss said. ‘Reckon it’s heresy if you put down a sick angel?’

  Shell didn’t respond and he kept quiet as they made up the ground. The angel maintained its pose as they walked, but from fifty yards off Shell noticed something was happening. The air was in flux above the angel, a swirl of dust rising like a funnel that owed nothing to the gentle breeze. Closer still, she saw the air tinted green by the tiny spores that had exuded from the infected’s flesh – all spinning around in the air and being drawn down to the angel below.

  She handed the reins to her mule to Moss and gestured for him to stop on the road. The soldier made no objection and watched her skirt wide around the angel, razor grass whispering threats against her calves as she walked out on the savannah. From the other side, she saw the stained air was being drawn into the angel’s mouth and nose. Ice was drinking in the man’s infection – and it was a man, she could see now, kneeling glassy-eyed before the motionless angel.

  Ice didn’t breathe the swirling cloud of spores, but in they went all the same as though driven by a will of their own. The man was older than Shell, gaunt and greying with patches of green and yellow stains on his skin. It looked as though lichen had colonised his body, bizarre but not terrible until one looked closer and saw the feather fronds draped down one ear, running from his scalp to his shoulder in a cruel imitation of hair. Between his fingers the matting was obvious too, thread-like webbing connecting each digit and hanging free from his elbow.

  His clothes were similarly infected; sickly and discoloured and strangely humped on his thin frame where the fronds had clumped underneath. She knew from what she’d heard of diaspores that his body would be slowly failing, skin stretching tight over his bones before it split and revealed more slender greenish tendrils. Shell crept closer and the man’s eyes turned her way, revealing stains even there.

  As she watched, the fronds hanging from his arm began to wither and dry, turning desiccated brown before her eyes. On his fingers, the same began to happen, then everywhere on his body. Keeping one hand on the man’s head, the angel reached down with its left and yanked at the man’s half-rotted shirt. The material ripped easily and at last the man moved his arms, feebly tugging at the remaining scraps of cloth on his body. The angel bent lower and tore away part of the man’s trousers, the rest of the job slowly done by the man himself. As his gaunt body was revealed, Shell gasped at the state of his skin, great whorls of pale green spreading out from his armpits, almost meeting on his chest as one side covered his heart.

  The stains varied in colour but they all trailed long feathery fronds, some thick enough to appear a pelt on the hairless man’s skin. As the last of his clothes disintegrated she saw he had only an uneven clump of fronds where his pubic hair should have been, nothing on his legs or chest and only the shadow of whatever had once been on his scalp.

  The infection began to slough away as he bowed to the angel, naked and painfully thin to behold. His ribs and hips jutted out from the wrinkled, stained skin that had not fully returned to a normal colour, only faded somewhat. He began to shiver with the effort and Ice too seemed drained. The angel sagged and dropped unexpectedly to one knee, hand still pressed against the man’s head. As the last stain in the air was drawn inside it, Ice shuddered as though struck and its arm went limp. The pair stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, then each collapsed backwards and was still.

  Shell turned and ran towards Moss. He gave her a questioning look but she didn’t bother to explain, only rummaged in her pack for spare clothes and her gloves.

  ‘We’re making camp,’ she instructed him as she headed back toward the fallen pair. ‘Find us something to eat.’

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ he called, sounding dismayed as she approached the man and angel.

  ‘What I can. They deserve that much.’

  ‘What about the infection?’

  She shook her head. ‘It must be gone; Ice has taken it all inside. And if it hasn’t,’ she added with a shrug that was more nonchalant than she felt, ‘given where the angel wants me to go, a slow death’s the least of my worries.’

  With that, Shell slipped on her gloves and began to drag Ice away from the dry scattering of dust t
hat surrounded him. The angel felt strangely light, despite the fact she had seen it fly. Still it was an effort, its wings and sword dragging on the ground as she hauled it into the shade of a nearby umbrella-like tree. Behind her Moss cursed loud and long, but his voice soon began to recede as he started off across the savannah in search of food.

  She didn’t turn to look, instead returning to the naked man to look down at his unconscious body and wonder exactly what her moment of compassion had resulted in. The last of the dust fell from his body as the breeze washed briefly over them. Holding her breath until the dust was carried away, Shell grabbed his forearms and began to haul.

  AS DUSK’S FLOCK swept across the evening sky, Shell sat beside the fire she’d lit and watched the carcass of a bird cooking on a spit. She was flanked by the supine figures of the angel and the once-diseased man – both as still as death. Clouds of tiny wyverns swept through the sunset-tinged sky – thousands upon thousands in great evolving spirals far above their heads.

  Moss stood with his back to her, watching the display. Behind the dark shifting mass of feasting reptiles, pale lights streaked through the striated clouds to glow briefly before fading.

  ‘What are those?’ he called over his shoulder to Shell.

  She looked up and shrugged. ‘Angels dancing, so I was always told.’

  ‘Angels do not dance,’ said Ice abruptly from Shell’s left, causing her to jump.

  ‘Hells!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘I have been here all this time,’ the angel said, rising and looking at her with unblinking eyes. ‘I needed to rest. The infection’s grip was considerable.’

  ‘And he’s clean now?’ Shell gave the other man a dubious look. His skin was marked powdery green and yellow, almost the streaks and hue of some fantastical painted beast if not for the horror of his infection. ‘I mean, he’s clean of the spores?’

  ‘It is gone from his body,’ Ice confirmed. ‘What will you do with him now?’

  ‘Me? What do you mean?’

  ‘He was saved at your command – his soul is bound to you now.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  The angel regarded her and then went to stand over the stained man. ‘It is the way of things – the responsibility of creation and salvation.’

  Shell frowned, but didn’t pursue it. The angel was nothing if not certainty – already she’d learned there was no sense in arguing with it. Ice simply did not understand how there could be an argument.

  ‘Will he wake up soon?’

  Ice bent down and touched two fingers to the man’s forehead. In response the man gave a gasp, arching his back as he drew in as much air as possible. It ended in a wail, the true horror of being until he opened his eyes and saw the angel looking down at him.

  ‘Am I dead?’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘No.’

  ‘This isn’t the heaven-clouds?’

  ‘Does it look like a fucking cloud?’ Moss called. The big soldier stamped over with a grumpy expression and stood at Shell’s side as though guarding her life against this intruder.

  The man struggled up to a seating position and looked around, blinking in wonder at the world he found himself in. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘On the road to the Yellow City, more or less,’ Shell said more gently, pushing Moss away. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Name?’ The man looked confused for a long while. ‘I . . . I don’t remember. It’s been . . . so long. Too long I think. What year’s this? I remember I was ill, my family cast me out.’

  He looked down at his bare chest, ribs obvious under the stretched skin stained by his infection. ‘I walked away, kept walking. Did I stop? I don’t remember it, perhaps I just kept walking. The sickness passed, or maybe I just forgot about it. My skin didn’t look like this once.’

  ‘It’s the third year of the Vaulted Heavens,’ Moss supplied, planting his feet just out of Shell’s reach and close enough to get between them if he needed to.

  ‘Three years? More?’ the man whispered in horror. ‘My children will be almost grown by now.’

  ‘Never know your luck,’ Moss growled, ‘they could be dead also.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Shell snapped, throwing a smoking stick from the fire at Moss. The soldier swatted it away. ‘Do you remember them?’

  The man winced at the effort of thinking. ‘Only like shadows on the wall,’ he said eventually, hands trembling.

  ‘Maybe it’ll come back in time. There’s no rush.’ Shell glanced back at Moss who stared at her sullenly. ‘For the time being, you need a name. I’m Shell, he’s Moss. I’m calling the angel Ice, but it’s not clear if they really have names.’

  ‘What about me?’

  She pointed at his green-stained skin. ‘How does Lichen sound? The angel says you’re bound to me and Moss won’t bloody leave me alone, so that makes you a pair of sorts.’

  Lichen looked blank at the suggestion, but raised no objections, so she twitched the roasting bird to attract his attention to it. ‘You must be hungry. Come have your first meal as a new man.’

  ‘New?’ Moss echoed. ‘Risen from the dead more like.’

  ‘No, I do not have that power,’ Ice said. ‘Only the God gives life. The spore infection had not killed him.’

  ‘Figure o’ speech.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  The question seemed to stump Moss and he went to fetch a skin of wine from his pack while Shell pulled a leg off their supper and passed it to Lichen. The soldier offered his wineskin to Shell and nodded towards Lichen.

  ‘He drinks from a cup.’

  The sky darkened and the flutter of wyverns overhead became a whisper. As night completed its reign, lantern flies began to drift up from the undergrowth around them. Shell turned when she heard the buzz of wings behind her and watched with fascination as a long, slender insect made its laborious way up a broken stalk, hesitantly testing its wings as it went. Some kin of the firefly, its entire abdomen glowed with pale greenish light.

  At last it took flight and rose up in the air while a gossamer skirt of fronds spread out from its body to catch the night’s breeze. The fronds caught the light of its body and amplified it so as it rose toward the first stars of night, she could follow its stately progress with ease. Far above them all, the stars began to twinkle as the sun’s light vanished entirely and silvery arcing threads of starfall became visible in the clear air.

  The shafts fell left and right, streaking white down to earth. The tails faded in moments, the glimmer and burn of stardust as it dissipated – spent of energy. One dropped close, perhaps twenty yards away. Close enough for Shell to hear the sigh of the starfall dropping to the ground. She resisted the urge to get up and find it, knowing from experience that all she’d find would be a faint scattering of bone-white dust.

  ‘I used to think they were angels, falling,’ she murmured. ‘My mother said I’d earn a wish if I could repair their broken wings like you might a bird’s.’

  ‘If we found a bird with a broken wing when I was young,’ Moss said, ‘it’d be in the pot before you could’ve made that wish.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Most o’ my adult life too I s’pose.’

  ‘It is not angels falling,’ Ice announced. ‘The fall of angels is a terrible thing – the death of an angel poisons the earth, just as our fall will split it asunder.’

  ‘I know that. Children don’t know any better though.’

  ‘Do not approach a wounded angel,’ Ice persisted. ‘It would most likely kill you in a heartbeat.’

  Shell gave up and looked away, leaving Ice to stare sternly up at the pale brightness of starfall.

  ‘Cold Crown of the God,’ Moss muttered, scowling up at the dark sky. He pulled a blanket from his pack and pulled it over his legs. ‘Beautiful it might be, starfall means a cold night ahead.’

  ‘Not too bad,’ Shell replied. ‘Not after such a warm day. We’ll be fine.’

  ‘I ain’t sharing my blankets with him,’ M
oss said, nodding towards Lichen, ‘only you, my blade’s muse.’

  ‘How about we all just get some sleep.’ Shell hesitated. ‘Do you sleep, Ice?’

  ‘I have no need of sleep. I will watch over you all.’

  ‘Bloody typical,’ Moss grunted. ‘My mum used to say there was an angel watching over me while I slept. Never thought it’d be such a bastard at the time.’

  ‘Moss.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  SHELL JERKED AWAKE to a blood dawn. Beside her Moss put a hand over her mouth and hissed softly. With an effort she didn’t cry out or ask what was happening – but the sky had already told her.

  A soft dark red haze overlaid the lambent glow of morning’s first breath, the cloudless sky a warning eye above.

  A blood dawn – the wisphounds are hunting.

  Moss slowly removed his hand and indicated down between them. His sword lay there, the inscribed name “wisdom” only just visible down the blade. Beside it was the leaf-blade spear he’d given her and Shell reached for it as surreptitiously as she could.

  ‘Ice?’ she whispered as softly as she could.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Shit. What now?’

  ‘Depends how many.’

  Shell craned her neck to look past the top of Moss’s head. She could see the silhouettes of trees and clumps of grass. Nothing unnatural moved so far as she could tell. No insubstantial figures shimmering in the dawn light, but no faint angelic radiance that illuminated Ice’s pale feathers either.

  ‘Can you see anything?’

  Moss gently lifted his head and looked over her. ‘No,’ he breathed after a moment. Perhaps they’ve passed.’

  ‘One of us needs to stand up then, look around.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Shell blinked. ‘Not very brave of you.’

  ‘You ever fought a wisphound?’

  ‘No.’

  He grunted. ‘There you go then, I have. You bloody stand up. If you spot one, start running. No point leading ’em straight to me.’

  ‘Thanks.’