Bare Your Teeth, Wicked Ones

1. Death Reaps Her Fill

William

No one knew Death like William. He danced with her most nights. Sometimes dared to defy her, though ultimately no power prevented Death from reaping her fill. She was Queen. Eternal. Limitless, especially so here where the stench of death hovered over agonized screams, smoking entrails, and broken souls.

William knelt among mud, blood, piss, and shit. They seeped into his trousers long since stained. The scent of burning leather seared his nostrils even through the heavy cloth wrapped tightly around his face. A soldier laid before him, insides painting his outsides. Gore and stench, vomit and copper, wafted from the open wound gushing a red river. Snow flurries clung to his frozen hair and frostbitten uniform.

Every corpse-to-be William stumbled upon reminded him of years ago, a child listening to war stories told by foolish gentlemen with nothing to do. The fantastical tales high society spoke of never painted reality. They gossiped of heroes and adventures, not shit stained trousers, maggot infested abdomens, and gouged eyes. Their nights passed easier without thinking of the many dead and dying protecting their borders.

"Did we win, Doctor?" the soldier croaked in a puff of white smoke. Blood caked his bruised and chapped lips. His left arm lay almost a foot away, revolver clutched between icy fingers.

"We did. The monsters of Lockehold are vanquished. The road to the Deadlands has been opened. The war will be over before we know it," said William in a carefully crafted voice perfected over five years. The serene and collected tone of a physician meant to ease the pain, and passing, of patients. Some patients.

The soldier wheezed. Blood gurgled in the back of his throat. "And I will join them, won't I?"

"After such a marvelous battle? Of course. King Ellis shall mark this day in history, our names laid among golden plaques within his castle walls. Children will sing songs of Lockehold's fall and speak of our accomplishments in history books. You will return home a war hero."

The soldier whimpered a delirious laugh. The dying didn't want the truth. They sought hope for Death had her claws in them. Her brisk breath nipped at their necks. A temptress guiding them to the other side, wherever that may be, and so the dying sought comfort, a ledge to uselessly cling to.

William tightened the leather strap securing the rifle to his back. The worn gray leather bag he always carried wasn't needed. None of the medical supplies would be of use.

Slipping off a glove, he flexed his fingers among the unforgiving cold, then set his hand atop the soldier's chest. The man's heart beat against William's palm, weak as an injured mouse caught between a ravenous cat's teeth. Whispering a soft incantation, he commanded that heartbeat to slow even more. The soldier offered him a curious stare.

"Comfort will greet you in a moment," said William, continuing the spell.

With a few short painless breaths, the soldier's eyes glazed over, and all went still. Tranquil. An end to suffering. Death swept another away, though William knew not where. He had long since discouraged the idea of Elysium, of a Holy Soul shepherding all to a divine light of eternal paradise. He couldn't fathom joy after brutal deaths or supreme beings watching over their miserable existence. If the Holy Soul were real, if all the supreme beings ever uttered truly existed, then they were malevolent. The bastards of all bastards, and he wholly despised them.

William didn't glance at the dead man's tags. In his line of work, distance was necessary. He needn't feel for these men, merely care for their wounds, end suffering to those who deserved it, and move to the next. As he did now, shifting through corpses of beasts and man alike in search of the next wounded or dying, though his gaze defied him by traveling north to Lockehold, a midnight black thorn scarring the horizon.