Green is the color of death. Hans knows this. He's known it since he was a small child. Everyone Vertot knows it, too. The green that lay outside their Bello’d city is a wasteland. Hans shudders as he looks at it. He's seen what green could do firsthand, watched it choke life out of human and animal alike. It only made sense that he should fight it.
The job isn’t one that requires his complete attention. It’s more draining than that. The vigilance drains him. He knows that green is death and death can come at any moment. Vigilance, then, gives way to anxiety. Anxiety drifts to exhaustion. Exhaustion is the mortal enemy of vigilance. It is also the end result of its entropy. The decline that befalls any life that requires vigilance.
Hans isn’t sure how to express this feeling. At least, not directly. It comes in half-formed thoughts and unrelated observations. Unrelated only to people who do not know what rails his train of thought travels on. He frequently derails his friends when this train arrives.
“It’s kind of pretty, isn’t it?” he says to Martin.
They sit together, drinking wildwine outside of Martin’s cottage near the green. Hans stares into it, watching the wind ripple its blades and tendrils. The reflective blades shine directly into his eyes. The tendrils curl. Red and old sparks flash from deeper within. There is death, he thinks. In everything it is and isn’t, he truly believes he sees some beauty there. A whisper where too often he’s heard a roar.
“No,” Martin says. He fights the natural urge to spit in disgust. “You’ve seen it before. You know what it does.”
“I’ve seen a man kill someone before, too. Still find people alright.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Man needs a reason. Green’s just death.”
“Guess you’re right.” Hans turns from the green to the blue. It’s turning into the black. “Tonight?”
Martin looks up.
“Maybe. If the Bellos fail.”
“They won’t.”
“Wishful thinking won’t change things if they do.”
“Not if you don’t mean it.”
“Huh.” Martin scratches the back of his neck. “That’s what keeps you fighting, then?”
“Maybe.” Hans finished his wildwine. “Someone has to, right?”
“What they say, at least.”
“What happens if we stop?”
“Death.”
“Comes anyway.”
“I guess.” Martin looks down at his half-empty cup. “Maybe I should stay sober.”
“Bit late for me,” Hans says through a laugh. “All the good it does. Wishful thinking?”
“Right again.” Martin drains his cup. As he does, the cannons open fire. “Lot of good it will do to have a useless Icide. You know what happens.”
“I know. Won’t have to worry about it if the Bellos hold.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“They’ll win,” Hans says, giving his cup back to Martin. “If not, we will.”
“Right. We will.”
The cannons fire again as Hans walks back to his cottage, on the opposite side of Vertot from Martin’s. He listens to their rapport, trying to discern purely from sound whether or not they’re firing blanks. The rippling in the blue and black above him is what confirms that this is real. Ricocheting bullets dance and spark against the Bellos’ fields. Sparks in the sky accompany the falling shot. Flashes from cannon fire.
The Bellos would win. They usually won. If they didn’t, Hans knows, then it would be his turn. Their turn. The Icides would fight.
There was the anxiety.
Born of vigilance.
Destined for exhaustion.
Hans feels his back bend under it. The cycle feels as threatening as the shot bouncing off the Bellos’ field. He wonders, as he watches the ripples and the sparks, if there is a way to break it. He feels that one can only live so long in a state of exhaustion. He is tired. He feels it. There’s a void threatening to consume him. Only the terror of an Icide fight seems to alleviate it. but that’s not actually relief.
“What is?” he asks himself through a chuckle.
There were moments, he reasons, where he felt restful. He likes sleeping, and does a lot of it. More lately. The more wildwine he drinks when he’s not fighting the more he sleeps. Now he feels guilty. People died in the green getting wildwine back from the green. For what? That he should feel some relief from the cycle? But it’s all they can offer the Icides for the fight, so he accepts it. He drinks it, he sleeps, and he feels some relief.
At least until the terror begins.
The terror that comes with the sound he now hears.
A cry that chills his hot blood, that makes the hairs on his neck and arms stand near on end. The icy shriek of shot piercing through the Bellos. Hans follows the sound to its source near the edge of town. His pace surprises him. He feels too tired to run, but runs away. Terror drives him towards the spot.
He sees the green. Blades and tendrils grow from where the one missed shot feel. There’s a woman on her knees before the scene. Hans grabs her, pulls her back. She fights.
“I’m an Icide!” he says. “There’s still time. But you’re too close.”
“I don’t know what happened,” she says. “What’s happening? Why is their green?”
“Shot,” Hans says. “It got through.”
“We can help.”
Martin helps Hans pull the woman back from the expanding green. He looks sweaty. Hans wonders in the space between helping the woman sit and grabbing for his blade if Martin ran the entire distance from his cottage to this breach. It doesn’t surprise him. That’s what Icides are for. When the Bellos fail. When the fight begins.
“It’s still young,” Martin says. “I don’t see anyone else. Think we can do it?”
“We have to,” Hans says. He tests his blade on the dirt beneath his feet. It’s sharp. He feels readier. “It’s still young?”
“Yeah.”
“You can cover me this time.”
“Alright.” Martin raises his blade. “You know what happens.”
“I know.”
The two Icide advance. Hans focuses on the blades. They’re small, and sharp enough to be reflective. They are beautiful. The cuts that appear on Hans’ arms from the ones he misses are beautiful, too. Red. Thin. Almost painless. There isn’t time for Hans to feel how painful they are. Not while already feels the cold, the force against his blade, and the terror that, if only for the moment he feels it, replaces his exhaustion. His blade does its job and severs any green blades it finds. The green shrinks.
Martin deals with the tendrils. They curve and beckon. Their motion roars. They threaten capture, consumption. A leg or an arm that meets a tendril is a leg or an arm lost. It means more wildwine when the fighting stops, but that’s not so much a promise as it is consolation. A limbless Icide is a useless Icide. The wildwine helps them sleep.
Hans and Martin reach the remains of the woman’s door. The green retreats within. Contained, for a time. Hans hears the same whispering he hears every time he stares outside of the Bellos’ fields. It sounds closer now. Less beautiful. The distance that helped enchant it is gone. With it, any of the comfort it might have offered. The reality is only terror. Terror that alleviates exhaustion.
But Hans wonders why he still feels tired, or if tired is even the right word for what he feels. His blade arm is tired, sore. He’s breathing heavier than he has in weeks. The Bellos had done their job so many times before. Maybe exhaustion leads to something else? Atrophy? Weakness? But he can’t be weak. He needs to fight.
And he is fighting. It’s what an Icide does. It’s what they are. He knows that. Martin knows it, too, even if he’s only supporting Hans this time. Hans is the one charging deeper into the house, looking for the shot that spread the green. There are blades and tendrils about, still. They retreat after the initial shock of death, but he knows they’re there. Whispering about the house. Growing. Spreading.
He feels Martin’s back against his. It’s damp with sweat, and heaving with his breath. There’s a jitteriness to the touch. Anxiety. Borne of vigilance. But now is not the time for exhaustion. Hans jerks his head to get Martin’s attention.
“There’s the hole,” he says, pointing to the ground.
Martin looks down, then up. Light from the rippling, sparking shot above shines through the hole where this one fell.
“Bellos are back at work,” Martin says. “Only one got through.”
“One’s enough,” Hans says.
He flexes his blade arm. His blade drips green liquid onto the floor. It’s the same liquid that’s making his cuts burn. The cleanup after the fight is never fun. He chuckles.
“What?” Martin snaps.
“We must look terrible.”
“So what?”
“I’ve never thought about that before, is all.” Hans straightens. “Basement, then?”
“Somewhere in touch with the ground. Look for stairs.”
“Alright.”
Hans keeps his blade high as he walks through the house. A green blade whips around the corner. He cuts through it without trouble, and watches the tendril that held it fall limp to the ground. Following it brings up to another shattered door. Beyond it he hears whispers.
“Found it,” he calls to Martin.
The other Icide arrives beside him. They stare down into the darkness, and listen to the whispers threatening to become a roar. Martin leans on the doorframe, sighs, and wiggles his blade. He looks up when Hans steps back.
“Do we have a chance down there?” Hans asks.
“Is that the point?” Martin asks back. He takes a step down. “It’s down there. We have to fight. Isn’t that what we are?”
“I guess you’re right.”
Hans pushes past Martin.
“Why do you fight?” Martin asks.
“Because we have to.”
“Otherwise?”
“There is no otherwise.”
“You know what happens.”
“I know.” Hans smiles. “But you’re supporting me, right?”
“Right.”
Hans takes another step down. The stair beneath his feet creaks. He doesn’t see the blade that finds his heart, but he feels relief now that the fight’s over. He’s tired.