Weekly Drabble #400: Cost of Mercy

This week's prompt is from preston with "inhuman kindness", and it brings us back to Horrak-Sarn and Robert's gang of fellow children. The dark season is only days away, and its arrival means the struggle for survival in the City will get even more dire. Enjoy!

~

Cost of Mercy:

Robert blew on his hands, working them over one another to warm them. He’d be needing to wear gloves pretty soon. The dark season was coming in fast. Nights in Horrak-Sarn were dangerous enough, but during the dark season the temperature could drop to a lethal cold startlingly quick. Even when it didn’t snow, the dry chill could sap the life right out of you. He wasn’t so young that he didn’t remember other dark seasons and the stiff bodies that would be found after a snap chill.

On those nights, even the worst of the City’s denizens stayed home. Enzo, Tuyen and Lopika talked about what winter was like on Earth. It sounded nice. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Joshua had admitted that it would be nice to see a tree, catching himself a moment later and adding ‘just to see what all the fuss’s about’. The City had its own plant life, but nothing like on Earth. On Horrak-Sarn, nature survived in spite of the all-encompassing urban sprawl. “Life finds a way,” Enzo would say. It was something someone on Earth had said.

Thinking of the others brought a brief smile to Robert’s cheeks. The boy’s gang had stayed intact, a minor miracle given that they were seven children on their own. Horrak-Sarn wasn’t a forgiving place. Life was rough enough for adults. By all rights, Robert and his companions shouldn’t have lasted this long, not with the unstable situation in the region.

They weren’t quite on their own though, were they? They stayed together, they played things smart. They avoided the dangers around them – dangers that had mounted once Butcher Betty decided she didn’t like a band of orphans causing problems in ‘her’ territory and had conned the spineless cocksuckers of the Kings into hunting them down for her.

Plus, at least Robert and the rest weren’t entirely defenceless.

As if summoned by those thoughts, a shadow passed overhead. Robert looked up, but only caught a silhouette gliding between buildings and out of sight. He thought it was Snowy, but he couldn’t be sure. Watchers usually came out at night; between their natural vision and the enhancements in their helmet, darkness wasn’t a problem for them. They did come out during the day, usually to patrol their territory or stalk their prey in preparation for sundown, but darkness was when they truly set loose. Even the things that went bump in the night, as his mother called them, were scared of Watchers. He’d seen a five-hundred pound Ugly piss himself from just a flutter of wings and Cass’s staccato call. He’d also seen a horde of waking Craven swarm around Snowy like curious hummingbirds. At least, that’s what Enzo said the sight reminded him of. Robert didn’t know what a hummingbird was, so he took the other boy’s word for it.

Cass liked to keep an eye on the children. Snowy certainly didn’t, but she did it anyways and she was just as proactive about threats to Robert and the others. She pretended she didn’t care, but Robert thought they were growing on her. At the very least he knew she had some respect for them as survivors.

The Watchers didn’t constantly monitor them but when they patrolled, they would sweep the area that Robert and his gang were likely to operate in. If they saw trouble, like Cass had on the day that those Trappers had cornered him and April, then they’d intervene. Sometimes, like with the Ugly, all that was needed was a shadow, the flutter of wings and the clicking hiss of their hunting call. He could almost hear his mother’s voice. There are things that go bump in the night, Robbie. Only his mother and father had called him ‘Robbie’. And there are the Watchers. Even monsters are scared of something.

Without Cass and Snowy, Robert knew he wouldn’t be around. The rest of the gang probably wouldn’t, either.

It had been just after the gang war in Kinside when they’d found her. Half-dead on the ground, left wing broken, unable to stand. She’d been hit by something big, but they never knew what it was. Probably one of the Masters’ vehicles. Her previous nestmate, the male, had been killed by the same collision, but they’d found his body. Her armour was broken, helmet half-shattered. She couldn’t do more than left herself half off the ground with her good arm, hissing at them warningly, but unable to back up the threat.

Joshua had wanted to bash Cass’s head in. Robert had looked at her, one good eye staring half-blind at the group of human children. He didn’t even know if she could see them. Based on what he’d known at the time, killing her had been the obvious thing. Watchers killed people, hunted them like animals for both food and sport. They didn’t know mercy, the stories went. They didn’t know compassion or empathy or honour. They just killed. If they let this one live, she’d be a danger to them and everyone else in the area.

It would have been so easy, just pick up a brick and start hitting until her head was paste. Even a child could do that. A group of them certainly could have. Robert almost had, but something stopped him. He liked to tell the others, especially Joshua when he got on his ‘I should be in charge’ kick, that he’d seen a better decision, but in reality it had been a gamble. His upbringing, like every City-born child’s, had been harsh and quick, but he’d still been unable to see something in so much pain and so helpless and add to that.

So he’d risked everything. Not just his position as leader of the gang, but his life and everyone else’s on the chance that no one, not one person, said even existed – that a Watcher could feel gratitude. They’d taken her back to their camp, offering her some of their meager supplies, stealing medicine and disinfectants. She’d healed faster than they thought.

A dire rat had gotten into the camp. This was just after they’d brought in Tuyen and she’d been alone with what they’d thought had been an unconscious Watcher. They’d heard her screams and run back, seeing her cornered by the rat, as it snapped and hissed with bared, drool-dripping fangs...

...and Cass’s hand tight on its tail, keeping it from getting at the girl. It had spun, sinking its teeth into her arm as she stabbed at it with a stolen knife. With a war-cry, Robert had run in, smashing the rat in the head with a piece of pipe. The rest of the children had followed.

Cass had showed them how to clean and dress it, removing the bile glands so that its meat was edible. She’d done a lot more for them since then. That one act of human kindness had been repaid tenfold, proving that, if nothing else, Watchers did understand gratitude.