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”Here, use this.”
The shaggy man offered him a cumbersome-looking sword. The boy's slick hands slipped on the hilt; the metal rang off the shack's grimy floor. The heavy-set man in his rough sailor's clothes growled out a warning and the boy hastily bent down, wrapping his hands around the glossy leather. He tried to heft it, but it only just budged. The boy gritted his teeth and braced the sword on his knee. He pushed up with all his strength, using his knee as a lever. The sharp tip slowly swayed upwards until it pointed up at a small angle. He looked up at his papa, who gave him an approving nod.
Papa's features were strained; his once bright-gray eyes reminded him of a declining storm. His jaw was set in a stubborn fashion, hang-over stubble covering his face. In one hand he held an axe; the other one was clutching his chest, damming a flow of dull liquid.
”Why are we hiding?” the boy asked.
”So that they don't find us.” Papa's voice came out as a wheeze. His left hand tightened around the haft of his axe.
”Why can't we let them find us? Who are they? Tax collectors? Women you forgot to pay for-”
Papa cut in quickly. ”Del, I've no time to answer your questions. They'll be here any minute now.”
Del gave him a sullen look, but kept his curiosity in check. Papa never told him anything. Today, cloaked strangers had come to their door and Papa had made him go play outside. Then, ten minutes later, Papa had come running out, axe in hand, and shouted at him to move or else. Couldn't even make up his mind. Now they were crouching in the wood shack. It was damp in there due to the spring storms that came and went, and the dank smell of wet wood smothered him like an oily blanket. Del wanted back in. He said as much to Papa.
Papa shot him the look, the look that demanded absolute silence. Del exhaled perfectly audibly and focused on balancing the stupid sword on his knee.
As time drew out, Papa became more and more restless. His eyes never stopped moving and he was breathing heavier by the minute. His posture was constantly slackening. And he had the nerve to make Del keep a good posture. Arrogant old man. Del glared at the length of metal he was straining to keep aloft. There would be no sense to ask why he was supposed to do this. He'd get no answer anyway. He tried for the heck of it, to break the suffocating silence.
”Papa, wh-”
”Not now, Del. Don't you understand the importance of shutting up just this once? You don't, do you? I'll be frank with you. Those strangers out there aim to harm us. Damn, one already got me.” He held his chest harder. ”Just run the first thing to appear in that door through with that sword of yours. At least we'll go down fighting.” Papa looked at him with bottomless sorrow in his eyes. ”I'm so sorry, son.”
Papa's voice broke and he clenched his jaw, looking aside. A tear slid down his cheek as he took a deep breath. When Papa turned back to Del, a salty smile stretched his trembling lips. ”I failed you. I never gave you the love you deserved. But before we leave this earth, I want you to know...” Papa looked Del in the eyes, raw emotion shining through cloud-like eyes. ”I lo-”
”Papa, please spare me.” Del rolled his eyes with all the frankness of a nine year old. ”You've never loved me. You never played with me when I was small. You've never cared.” Del shrugged at the stricken look on Papa's face. Papa had gone all white and was staring at Del as if he were a stranger. It annoyed Del. So, he spoke the words he knew to be true, however painful they were to utter. ”Oh, I'm used to it. I don't need it. I don't need you. In fact, if you were to die right now, I think nothing would change.” Del smiled sadly.
Papa just kept staring at him in horror. It seemed he couldn't face the truth. Such a pathetic creature, Del thought to himself. Can't accept the cards that are dealt him.
His thoughts took one of those illogical leaps. ”I wonder where Mama is,” Del wondered aloud. ”She, at least, loves me.”
“Those monsters out there killed her,” Papa’s voice was hollow as a lightning struck tree. “They killed my darling, my Rose. Mine…” A rough sob shook his body violently. Del watched Papa rock back and forth, like he were in a rocking chair like mother’s, cradling the heavy axe in his hands.
“What does ‘kill’ mean?” Del asked. Papa just looked at him from underneath bushy eyebrows. Then a deep voice exploded from his chest, full of fury and promise of wrath.
“They killed my love! Come here and get some, you Devil-rejected sons of motherless goats! I’ll force feed you back into Hell’s open maw! By my good right hand I swear this to you; no more of my family’s blood will crust on your fingers!”
Papa looked down at Del, his voice returning to normal, a strange gleam in his eyes. A gleam that Del would later learn portrayed extreme desperation. “You may reject me, and maybe that’s rightfully so, but you will obey me this one last time. When those things come through that door, I want you to hit them until they don’t move anymore. Once they’re still, you’ll hit them four more times as hard as you can, okay?”
“Yes, Papa…”
“No. No grumbling. It’s very important that you do so. Do you understand?”
Del had never heard Papa so strict before. He decided it was best to play along. “Yes.”
“Good.” Papa tilted his head and stood still for a moment. He cast a look at his son, kneeling down with his old sword balanced on his tiny leg. Such a cruel world… He heard a small sound, a twig breaking underfoot. “They come,” he whispered.
A heartbeat passed; then another; then four more – and a sword plunged through a board three inches away from Papa’s hip. Papa let out a ferocious bellow and struck the length of steel hard with the back of his axe, bending it to a 90 degree angle. Del heard a grunted curse from outside as someone tried to wrench it out.
“Papa, behind you!” Del shouted in alarm as a shadow behind Papa raised a sword to strike him. With a howl like a wounded beast, Papa turned on him and caught the down-ward strike with the curve of his axe; he turned the sharp edge away from him and brought the haft into contact with the stranger’s face with an ugly crack. The stranger reeled away, clutching his bloodied visage. Del had never seen so much blood before. It sickened him, but at the same time, there was a wondrous awe to all of it.
The moonlight glinting off of Papa’s axe as he drove it into the stranger’s back; the arch of the hooded man’s back as the blow connected; the bucketfuls of blood that spurted from the wound. It spurred something deep inside of him to life. The rush of adrenaline that accompanied it gave him the strength to lift up his Papa’s sword in an awkward two-handed grip and the fuel to rush past Papa into the damp night air.
He breathed in the cool air and with it came a cold clarity. Rushing towards him were three hooded characters, all of them carrying naked steel in their fists. Laughing with the thrill of it, he met them at a dead run. Slipping past the first man’s sloppy blow, Del danced the cumbersome sword over his abdomen and impaled the next man through his groin. With a savage twist, he wrenched out the stained steel and whirled to face his next victim. The hooded man had stopped and sunken into a wary crouch; although his image was hidden, Del could smell his fear, strong and salty as the blood on his blade. Del let the tip of Papa’s sword plunge into the blood-spattered earth and grinned a wicked grin.
Suddenly, Papa sprang out from the bushes and buried his axe into the man’s hooded face. With a grim grunt, he shoved the corpse down onto the ground. Papa rounded on Del. “What in the blazes did you just do? How did you manage to pick up that sword? What sorcery is this?” he panted out.
The cold cloak of clarity was slipping off of Del’s slight form and left him shivering in the night air. He eyed the grounded sword in front of him and the blood that covered its smooth surface. He lifted his hands and inspected the dark liquid on them, tasting it to be sure. He shuddered with more than cold.
“I… I ran them through, just like you told me.”
“But… how?”
“I just lifted the sword and ran at them; it wasn’t that hard,” Del shrugged shakily, attempting a grin.
Papa just stood there, looking at him. He opened his mouth to speak – and blood ran down his chin. It bubbled on his lips and his storm-gray eyes rolled back, so that the moon shone off his whites. Del noticed the foot of sharpened iron protruding from Papa’s chest as it pulled out with a wet, sucking noise. Papa toppled over, revealing the last hooded man, gory blade in hand.
The cold, calculating numbness had left Del, so that all he could do was stare as the image of Death himself floated towards him. Blades of grass shirked back from the figure’s phantom like steps; the air itself seemed to move away from this shrouded person. It stopped within sword’s reach of Del. Moving slowly, it pulled back its cowl, revealing a shaven head with bright cold eyes of fire. Those eyes drilled into Del. When the man spoke, his voice was like velvet luxuriously shifting in the wind, easing away all of Del’s agitation. “How are you called, young one?”
Del licked his lips. “Del.”
“Do you know who I am… Del?”
Del cocked his head, his youth lending him dumb courage as he pondered the stranger’s question. “Are you Death?” he asked after a moment’s reflection.
A grim chuckle answered his query. “So some call me, but alas, I am but a man. I am merely a messenger. I come from a place deep in the desert, where no sane man would tread without good reason. I am an initiate of the Lord of All Ends, honed in the Temple of Homage, and sent forth to accept my destiny. I am, my dear Del, a Hashassin.”
Del was not impressed. “Haaashushi… Sounds stupid.”
“Hashassin,” the velvet voice corrected him sternly, “And you’d do best to remember that. Now, you must be wondering why I’m standing here talking to you, even though I could have just stabbed you and gone my own way.” He hefted his bloodied sword for emphasis. “Would you like to know why, Del?”
Truth be told, it had never even crossed Del’s mind. Still less than impressed by the weird stranger with a head like a melon, Del shrugged a shoulder.
“Foolish boy, such arrogance will get you killed faster than you could possibly fathom!” The velvet had faded from the voice, leaving nothing but outrage in its wake. Del felt the sword press against the tender flesh of his neck, blood dripping from the point and running down under his shirt. “I’ll ask you again: would you like to know why, Del?” The stranger spat out his name like venom.
”Yes, I would,” Del answered accordingly, if a bit faintly, deciding it was wisest for the second time that day.
“Good,” the stranger said; the velvet flavor had smoothly returned to his voice, leaving Del wondering if the sudden outburst had ever happened, even as the keen edge left his neck. “I saw what you did to those two,” he said, indicating the two men Del had run through, “and I have to say, I was more than impressed. They weren’t the cream of the flock, but neither were they any acolytes; they had years of harsh training behind them. That you managed to out-fight them is a miracle in itself, but it also looked completely effortless from where I stood.
Why I decided not to kill you was because I deemed it proper to bestow a choice unto you. I offer you the hospitality of my domain. I would see you taught to control what just happened, to master it and utilize it for glorious ends. The choice runs like so: you can accept my teachings and go through the rigours of my training with strict discipline and single-minded devotion, or you can refuse it and I shall unleash those same teachings upon you, granting you a quick death. Now, I’ll give you a few minutes to think while I dispose of the, ah, leftovers.”
With that, the bald stranger floated away into the dark, leaving Del alone. With nothing else to stare at, his eyes sought out the corpse of his Papa. A pool of blood was spreading from Papa’s prone form, hiding his death mask from Del’s view. Odd, Del thought, how peaceful Papa looked lying there, face down in his own life blood. His gaze shifted to Papa’s sword, which stood tip down in front of him.
He caressed its worn hilt, feeling every bump in the old leather. It felt good in his hand. He shivered. It had felt great under that strange feeling, which had whispered to him of power and strength unforeseen; for the first time, Del had felt truly alive. Yes, this was what he wanted; he was sure of it. What’s more, he hungered for it. He idly rubbed the crusting blood beneath his shirt as he waited for the freaky man to return.
When the stranger returned, he found young Del leaning on his sword.
“Do I have to shave my head?”
The stranger smiled a small smile. “No, you do not have to.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
“So you have chosen wisely, my young Del, as I knew you would.” The Hashassin threw a blood-soaked hand over Del’s shoulders. He reached down and plucked the sword from Del’s hands as casually as if he were taking a sweet from an infant. “Let me carry that for you. Don’t you worry at all; you’ll get it back when you learn to wield it properly. But for now, we have a long journey ahead of us. Come now, my child, and enter a world mysterious and forgotten. Learn what I have to teach and become what you were destined to be.”
Del looked up at the master of Death with wide eyes. “And what is that?”
A genuine smile spread across the Hashassin’s countenance as he gazed upon his new acolyte with pride. “The Wings of Death, my son, the Wings of Death himself.”
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