Tau swung his scythe for the millionth time. The windrow beside him a little longer and the field in front of him stretching on endlessly. He personally was pretty sure harvest celebrations existed only because without them the entire county would revolt. His father had paid a cropsage good money to ensure their two scythes would be light and nimble, extensions of the body of the wielder. But after three days and six hours Tau couldn’t tell the difference his scythe and any other torture device styled after a weighted stick. The scythe was probably made of damned lead, and if at this moment someone offered to trade it for the shackles of an inquisitor he would have considered it just for a change of pace.
“Boy, you’d best keep moving if you want fed tonight.”
His father’s gruff voice rumbled through Tau’s chest like when Tau placed his hand on the side of the grindstone and felt the earth thrum through him. He could cover twice the acreage of any of the other boys else in town, he worked sunup to sundown and knew all their was to know about growing arakka, but it was never enough for his old man. Tau rolled his eyes and picked up the pace.
“I saw that. Roll your eyes again and you’ll find there’s worse than an empty plate at the end of a days work.”
“Come off it Da! You’re ten feet behind me. You can’t see me and I’m doing more work than you!” Barely. But his father sure as hell counted ‘barely’ when he was slacking so why not use it in his favor?
“I don’t need to see your eyes to know if they rolled or not. One more word out of your mouth and you can forget going to town for the selection.”
Tau bit off an outraged reply with a force of will. Selection attendance wasn’t even optional, every vassal of Empire from twelve to sixteen was obligated to attend, but he wouldn’t put it past his father to flout the law just to punish him. This was Tau’s last year to be noticed by imperial scouts and rise from peasantry to cultivator. If he caught the attention of the surveyors he would receive imperial training and, after a career in the army, return home a tax exempt hero capable of the work of ten men. The farm would prosper beyond imagining and he would -
The air rushed from his chest as something slammed into him from behind. He found himself on the ground with the considerable weight of his father pressing down into him. “What the hell! I shut up like you as-”
“Quiet!” His father’s hand closed over his mouth alongside the half whispered half yelled order.
“Da are you dru-” The side of his father’s hand connected with his neck just beneath the back of his jaw and everything went black.
Tau opened his eyes and saw the sun still high above, he hadn’t been out long. He tried to roll to his feet but was pinned to the ground by the rough hand of his father on his shoulder. When had Da gotten so strong? Da had always been the strongest man he knew, but this was something else. Pushing up against the weight of his hand felt like trying to lift a barn.
“Silence boy.” His father’s whisper seemed to come from nowhere. He could feel the hand holding him down, and knew roughly where the man had to be lying, but Tau’s eyes seemed to skitter over the space where his father should be. “Skal’in nearby. Circling in, so don’t have our scent, but they’re hunting. We’re gon’ crawl home boy. And we’re gon’ do it silently, or else I’ll knock you out longer next time and drag you home insensate. Nod if you understand me.”
Tau nearly spoke in protest, but the hand gripping his shoulder tightened painfully and he eked out a nod instead. The pressure vanished and he was alone on his back in a field of arakka. Skal’in didn’t come this far into Empire, they thrived in the barbarian wastelands of the far south and east. He was fairly certain Da was drunk again, paranoid and impossible to reason with, but something in his father’s voice he had never heard before held Tau’s tongue. If he didn’t know better he would say his father was afraid.
The next hour was spent crawling through the fields at a snail’s pace broken only by occasional stops when a hand would suddenly grip his mouth painfully and squeeze even harder if Tau attempted to so much as twitch. During these intervals Tau strained his senses for the sound of flapping wings or the storied stench of Skal’in. He never detected anything, but once he felt a chill run down his spine despite the heat of the day and fear rose in his chest like bile. He wanted to get up and bolt, but his father’s hand over his face held him in place until it passed.
Eventually they reached the edge of the tall arakka. The sun was low in the sky now, and an expanse of short grass dotted with cows revealed itself between swaying stalks and the short fence used to keep said cows from wandering. A half mile distant the silhouette of the converted barn Tau knew as home beckoned. Once inside maybe he could escape to his room and let his father sweat this madness out.
“Tau, I’m about to make a break for the house.” His father’s voice whispered out of the gloom, quiet and with a catch that made Tau’s stomach drop. “About two hundred feet out I’ll stop and wait for you. You’ll start running then and only then. Once you start you don’t stop no matter what you hear or see. You understand me boy?”
“Why-”
“I asked if you understand me boy.” His father’s voice was still quiet, but harsh and closer to the familiar angry tone Tau knew.
“Yes Da.”
His father took off running. Through the fence and past several disinterested cows, the man was fully visible now and running faster than Tau knew possible. Tau waited with bated breath. He didn’t think he believed his father’s drunken fantasies of wind born demons hunting thousands of miles past the border, but he had also never seen the man show any emotion other than anger at Tau, disgust at Tau, stoic sadness, and very very occasionally gruff affection. Before Tau knew it his father was stationary and waving at him to follow.
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After a moment’s hesitation Tau exploded out of the cover of the field and was sprinting for all he was worth. He cleared the fence with a leap and was in the open. The ground was blurring by and he didn’t think he had ever run this fast in his life. Despite Tau’s speed his father had a look of frustration and disgust on his face as he watched his son approach. The moment Tau caught up his father grabbed hold of his arm and yanked him forwards forcing Tau’s legs to move faster than he would have previously thought possible. Tau’s lungs burned even as the distance closed. He could never keep up this pace. They made it about half of the remaining distance before Tau smelled them. The putrid rotting smell hit him with an almost physical force and he stumbled, fighting not to gag. The only thing that kept him upright was his father’s iron grip on his arm and his own forward momentum. A moment later the Skal’in were on them.
A gray… thing… covered in feathers and mouths was in his vision, right in his face, but gone before he could even react. It was traveling faster than anything he had ever seen. There and gone before he could even register it, his father had knocked it out of the air without even slowing. Suddenly his burning lungs didn’t seem so important. Tau picked up his pace. Several more tried the same dive bomb tactics and were met with similar treatment at the hands of his father. He had gotten a better look now. Spheres of gray feathers with concentric rings of goat eyes and human mouths, they were a few feet in diameter with four clawed wings stretching easily twice that in each direction. Smaller than he expected from the stories, but still terrifying.
“The kits are out of the way. Pack full of adults will be on us before we make it.”
“Kits!? You’re telling me those weren’t adul-”
“Boy you are going to run faster or you are going to die.” His father released his arm and Tau ran like his life depended on it, which he guessed it actually might. A roar rose from his father next to him and suddenly Tau was ahead. He started to turn but was shoved forward with a curse filled command to run faster. Tau didn’t even know some of the curses his father used, and he recognized at least three languages in the profanity.
Pain exploded in Tau’s back left thigh. A few more staggering steps and gray feathers filled his vision. He was knocked to his back and felt something sharp and hard slicing through the muscles on his chest. His attacker flapped away and he got a good look at the sky. They were everywhere. Gray shapes circling high above and diving from every direction. His father fought to his left, knocking the creatures out of the sky as they came, but Tau could see six diving for his father at once now, and three for Tau himself, each of them as large around as a man is tall and that wasn’t counting their wings. Tau closed his eyes and felt his bladder weaken as he tried to prepare for death. A scream of pure rage sounded from his father and Tau’s vision was filled by a flash of yellow light that burned even behind closed eyelids. Then a hand hauled Tau to his feet and pushed him forwards.
“Run boy, you godforsaken pashbena!”
Tau’s left knee wasn’t working correctly but he stumbled forwards as fast as his legs would take him. He saw gray forms scattered around the field and burning with small green flames and the smell of rot intensified. Several more Skal’in dive-bombed towards him but his father seemed to be everywhere. At one point Tau would have sworn he saw his father take a step from midair to change direction and avoid a blow after already leaping several feet up to intercept a particularly large demon headed towards Tau.
Suddenly home was right in front of him. The barn doors opening into darkness like the maw of a great beast. He was inside and had to consciously make his legs stop before he ran straight through the doors on the opposite side of the barn. Full of exhilaration at the sheer joy of not being dead Tau turned in time to see several gray shapes slam into the wards surrounding the barn. Blue light shimmered as the creatures stopped with bone breaking snaps several feet from the open doors. Tau realized his father was still some distance behind him. How had he gotten so far behind? His father was covered in blood and visibly ragged wounds and fighting off what seemed like hundreds of the monsters. Despite his injuries the man was moving faster than Tau could track with his eyes, his arms and legs striking out in staccato flashes like a series of still frames, each strike dropping one of the feathered demons. The monsters were becoming more cautious now, pulling up from dives before they could come into range and only committing to their attacks if the man appeared to be sufficiently distracted by other feints or attacks. A hundred feet, then fifty, then twenty, for a moment Tau thought his father would make it. Then the deliverer landed.
Standing just in front of the wards, wrongness seemed to flow out of it. Humanoid but only just, the details of its form shifted faster than thought. Everything went silent. The Skal’in pulled off to hover in a pack above, his father stumbled to a halt, and even the wind seemed to still.
“You are being detained for suspected energy theft, unauthorized heresy, and destruction of imperial property. Any further action to resist lawful procedure will constitute resisting imperial process and investigation. Anything you say may be used against you in a tribunal of impartial citizens.” The deliverer’s voice came out in a feminine monotone, cool and calming in stark contrast to its unsettling lack of physical appearance. The deliverer’s body was in constant flux, blood red and covered in chitinous spikes one moment, and mottled blue gray metallic curves the next.
“Boy” His father’s voice cracked out against the droning of the deliverer. No anger or fear present now, the man’s voice just sounded tired now. “Do not go to the selection, whatever you do. In fact you are not going to leave that house for two weeks, I don’t care if it’s on fire or the emperor himself commands you leave. Afterwards head east to the city of Quaelas. Look for Nissa.”
“You will be provided complementary legal aid upon genetic proof of citizenship or extra-territorial baseline humanity.” The deliverer continued to drone gibberish as though it didn’t even hear Tau’s father.
“She owes me a favor or twelve. Tell her who you are. She’ll curse my name but she’ll get you set up.”
“Do you have any authorized questions or appropriate overrides?” The deliverer was walking forwards now, the vague bipedal form sloughing away as it moved. By the time it came within reach of Tau’s father it was a swirling mass of chaotic shapes and colors, a mist of unfocused appendages and material. Tau’s father’s arm shot out into the mass, quicker than sight again, one moment the arm was by his side, the next it was extended, fist crashing into a glassy orb full of swirling light. A metal arm shot out from the eye twisting wrongness and took hold of his elbow. With one twist Tau’s father’s arm was audibly snapped. Tau stood there. He should run from the protection of the wards, help his Da. He stood and watched. The scream of pain was cut short as a sword of purple rock slammed through the man’s chest. The deliverer turned and faced Tau, letting his father slump to the ground. More humanoid now than even when it first landed, it was almost bearable to look at. Eyes were visible now that it was facing him, two unchanging constants in a sea of flickering insanity. They looked human, piercing gray, and unbearably sad.
“Your biological memory volume indicates you have not yet reached legal maturity, I am allowed to use personal discretion to assign you a case worker in lieu of direct action. If you can provide a cryptographic key identifying yourself as a ward of empire child welfare will take the case. Otherwise animal welfare will contact you shortly. You may file complaint via form 14765A at your local artificial ley node.” Tau stood frozen, unable to take in the scene before him. A deliverer, a demon from fairy tales, impossible to pin down with his eyes, babbling the nonsense they were famous for and partially obscuring the view of his father’s body lying on the grass, the sky full of Skal’in. Tau simply stood. He tried to speak but nothing came out. Eventually the deliverer stopped talking. With something like a sympathetic nod to him it vanished. The Skal’in flew away. And he was alone.
Some time later he walked out to the body of his father, only belatedly remembering the instructions not to leave the house. Tau sat down beside the corpse, and wept.