Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  Sefi tightens the glove on her right hand and crouches to peer into the beast’s eyes with the tattoos on her closed eyelids. Apparently it only takes a minute to see the aurochs’s “spirit.” She whispers some alien sacrament that sounds like a pressure release on a gas rifle, and then rears back with the axe and splits its skull down the center in a tremendous blow. Blood sprays on my boots. The blade is so long it divides the aurochs’s neck halfway down the spine. I watch in mild horror as the beast shudders and sways and crashes to the floor, spurting blood everywhere.

  Sefi reaches into both sides of the split beast’s head and rips out its tongue to show that it has been divided in half. Impossible precision.

  The Obsidians rattle approval with the torcs on their left arms as Sefi hands one half of the grisly appendage to her varKjr, Valdir. The two eat the tongue raw, staring at each other with feverish enthusiasm that borderlines on erotic. My stomach twists as blood and juice trickle down their chins.

  Seems excessive.

  But these maniacs are just getting started.

  As the dead beast twitches on the floor, Ozgard cavorts around it in some mad, spasmodic dance that would be funny if anyone but an Obsidian did it. The great folds of his skin ripple and flap as he waves his arms and shakes his bare torso. An atavistic song rumbles from the back of his throat. His circuit increases in speed, until the aurochs’s hooves no longer scrape the ground. When it is still, Ozgard walks one more circuit. His footprints in the blood have made an intricate, spiraling shield glyph for protection.

  Utter nonsense.

  Then the vynKjr—Valdir’s four wind lords—come forward to each take a leg and together roll the aurochs on its back, where Ozgard slices open its belly and butterflies its torso. He takes a black jar full of Jove knows what and fills his mouth before spitting it down on the aurochs’s organs. Two hatchets appear in his hands and he smashes them together until their sparks catch on his spittle. A fire mushrooms in the belly of the beast. Its organs crackle. The fat under its hide catches fire and curls the white hair. Soon it is a conflagration. Flames dance over the faces of the Obsidian war leaders as they chant together.

  Not even the incense can keep the claws of the burning intestines and liver from scouring the backs of my eyes. Tears stream down my face. At least the Syndicate were a familiar fright.

  They chant until the fire subsides and leaves nothing but charred tissue and marrow leaking out of cracked bones. The rib cage of the aurochs curves outward and reaches upward like a pair of fossilized hands.

  Ozgard crouches amongst the steaming debris and lifts his arms, shouting some nonsense in Nagal about a prophecy of fortune in the firebones. He then asks for the Kjrdakan. The Lord Wager. It starts with the vagKjr—the lowest-ranking wing lords. Two women, dressed in more modern garb, drop strands of hair into the rib cage. Wagering their honor against the battle’s success. Their hair will be shorn in failure and they will lose their ranks and become braves who must earn command all over again. A bold wager, and the one Pax recommended I take. Then the third, a man in tribal garb, looks at me, looks at Valdir, then Sefi, and drops a single golden torc. There’s silence. Sefi looks like she’s about to murder the man. Only Pax’s rushed lecture on the way here saves me from turning around in bewilderment. It’s the lowest form of wager. A single torc. A fraction of battle honor.

  An insult is what it is. Some of them don’t believe in this gambit.

  As all the male vagKjr, then some of the higher-ranking vynKjr, give their meager wagers, I realize why. I could give a shit if they don’t like Sefi’s plan for modernization or her betrayal of the Republic. But the men are protesting me. Calling my plan bullshit. With each clattering torc and arrogant giant, I find my insides heating up at the professional insult. Barely off the ice, and already superior to me. These savage idiots.

  When Valdir throws in a single torc as well, I nearly leave. He spits on the floor in my direction. Ozgard translates his Nagal for me.

  “You are noman,” he echoes. “No aefespakr for the Volk. You are parasite. You have nothing to teach us but weakness.” He looks at Sefi and lifts his chin to expose his throat. “You are my Queen. I stood against Gold with Nakamura, Arkadius, Vesuvian. Noble Grays. But this…dog belongs in gutter. His scheme will fail. And skuggi will die for nothing.” He slaps his arms. “We must show strength, not tricks, if we are to betray our oaths.”

  His supporters, mostly men, rattle their torcs in agreement.

  Sefi does not reply. It is a sort of betrayal I’m not sure I understand completely.

  Ozgard gives me a little nudge forward to make my wager. Valdir’s protesters laugh in derision as I pull a piece of hair, and they mutter there is no honor for a thief to risk. The anger boils up in me mighty fast. These uppity barbarians. Laughing at me. They don’t even know what a rhetorical question is.

  “You all know what I did,” I say, turning and looking at the giants in their obstinate black eyes. “I stole those Gold spawn twice. You just scraped us up like vultures. And you call me a parasite? I was a Son of Ares when you were still in the dark age, shitheads. I hunted Peerless while you were still serving them or pulling your people off the Poles. But you call me a dog? Fair enough. Spit on my honor. I don’t give a damn. But don’t you ever! Ever! Insult my work.”

  I jab my hand against a fragment of rib cage bone. Bright blood leaks out the meat of my palm. I hold it over the rib cage and let it dribble down. The Obsidians are stricken with confusion. Even Valdir looks like he swallowed a turd.

  Having seized the greatest claim to valor if today is a victory, I stalk back to my place as the Obsidians murmur, and some put their hands to their foreheads in signs of respect. Ozgard whispers in my ear.

  “Your faith inspires me.” He’s mocking me.

  The hangover of regret comes hard and fast. The anger floods out. It wasn’t just memories Z protected me from. It was always myself. Always the overcompensating pride of a street dog who can’t bear to be laughed at, so he buys nice suits, drains his account on fashionable flats, yaps at monsters, gambles with people who can afford to lose. Well, Volga would be laughing her ass off now.

  The Obsidians quiet as Sefi walks to the rib cage. She plays with her long hair, then gives me a sinister smile and very casually draws a dagger to slice a chunk of flesh from her left forearm to toss into the ribs and match my wager. When she speaks, she does so to Valdir in Common. “My way in victory. My head in defeat.”

  After the Obsidians depart, Sefi stands watching the remains of the bones smolder. “You will not be with your skuggi. They must move faster than you can follow.” I nod, happy with that. “You know you will be killed if we fail?”

  “Seems we both will.”

  “Pride blinds,” she says. “But sometimes it leads.” She sets a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I know our ways are strange to you, but hard ways are necessary to govern wild spirits. If we win, you will be my guest at the Hunt of the Last Light. You will have much treasure. You will be honored. They do not see your worth. But I do, Horn. I see fear in you. Most run from that fear. But you, you spit in its face.” She lowers her face to mine. “As do I. As do I.”

  WARSHIPS ROVE OVER THE birthplace of the Rising.

  “So ends the tale of Ephraim ti Horn. Ritually murdered or atomized by a particle beam.” I stick my hands in my pockets. “Lovely.”

  The greatest heist of the war rumbles slowly into gear and I’m pinned inside a fatass Julii ore hauler heading toward Mars with no escape plan, no intel except what the Obsidians give me, and no weapon, not even a wrench.

  To put the olive on top, I’m stone-cold sober.

  Far from kicking my Z habit, I must have begged half the shadier-looking braves on the Heart of Venus for just the dust of a cut gram. Seems Sefi put the word out. Not even the former berserkers in their ranks will trade me some of their Republic stimpacks
.

  I stare out the cramped bridge with doom squatting on my spine. The lights are dim. The pilot, a crack ripper Blue from Sefi’s allies, the Rho Sect, hunches like a Karachi player in concentration over his controls even though a mentally disenfranchised elephant could fly this tub. Behind him, Ozgard stands there stroking his braided beard and eating walnuts without a care in the world. He’s painted in his blue berry juice.

  Idiot.

  “You will not be ritually murdered or atomized,” Ozgard replies. “The breath of the Allmother herself will carry you to Valhalla.”

  “Pass. I’ll take a nomadic island on Venus with limitless Pinks.”

  He turns. Behind the annoyance in his eyes is a confidence that leaps far past the border of sanity. “Is that the depth of your soul?”

  “Just the warm shallows.”

  He sighs. “You will not die, tinman, because if you die, we have failed, and Sefi too will die. She cannot die.”

  “Let me guess, you saw her fate in the firebones.”

  “Be careful not to insult a shaman on the eve of battle.” He comes so close I can smell the eggs he had for breakfast in his beard. “You do not know what I have seen.”

  “No offense, but I find your faith a little disturbing.”

  “Bah.” He reels away. “I find your face disturbing. It is soft. Like goat cheese. But I do not complain. You prepared skuggi. You are good at what you do. So are they. To fret now is seed of angst.”

  Prepared. Please. Like a few weeks’ instruction will ready them for this.

  It would be so easy if Sefi didn’t want so many mines. We could fly the haulers into the mines’ loading docks and pump Obsidians out. An old Reaper favorite. Problem is, to do that, we’d have to land hundreds of haulers at the same time at mines across a thousand-kilometer theater before the mines go into lockdown. Quicksilver’s defense computers would quickly see the breach and eviscerate us. So a quarter of the mines will be taken that way. The rest require more creative infiltration by the skuggi. As for the hunterkiller defense robots? Well, there’s a reason the Obsidians are in full armor.

  If they follow my instructions, the skuggi and Quicksilver-hating Reds will bypass the sensor grids in retired tunnels, infiltrate the exhaust ducts, access the power grid, and disable the anti-aircraft guns. Piece of pie.

  But the skuggi aren’t even close to ready for this kind of coordinated infiltration. I hear the steady drip drip drip of the bloodbath filling up.

  The Obsidians think I believe in Sefi enough to risk my life on this gambit for the mines. It’s gained me some respect from her bodyguard of Valkyrie, but not from Ozgard. He knows I’m full of shit, because I’ve long suspected he’s full of it too.

  Ozgard sets his bag of walnuts on a gear box and leans toward the pilot to whisper something. I pull out my burners to settle my nerves and find the pack empty. I left my stash in Olympia. Damn. I grab one of his walnuts and busy myself trying to open it as I stare out the duroglass. The moon of Phobos and most of the remaining Republic defense fleet are on the opposite side of the planet now, along with Volga. Ozgard eases back from the pilot and nudges me.

  “Have you seen a nightgaze upon the pole with your flesh eyes?” he asks.

  “Never been to either pole. Restricted zones. Savage locals.”

  “Nightgaze are the most tender of the Ice’s life. They grow only in darkness, but oh, the light they make of their own ichor…They are truly a gift from the gods.”

  “Gift from the gods.” I roll my eyes. “We’re flying in a spaceship. Your ancestors were made in test tubes. The nightgaze by a drunk Violet. And you believe in gods? Hell, I get the racket. For a man you’ve done right fine by yourself with the matriarchs. But stop trying to con a conman.”

  He shrugs, ignoring the insult.

  “Human knowledge is small. Universe vast. Mystery infinite. My gods were true before they were stolen and used against us. They are still true. And will be true long after we are food for the—” He freezes as he sees the walnut shells around my feet. His eyes flare wide and he grabs me, manhandling his fingers down my throat. I fight against him until I sick up all over his chest. I shove him and push too hard with my new leg, flying backward into the wall. I hit my spine on something sharp and hard.

  “What the hell!” I gasp.

  “You ate from my bag.”

  “I’ll buy you another walnut, asshole.” I spit the bile out and wipe it out of my goatee. “Jove on high. Who does that!”

  “Walnut?” He squints at me. “What is walnut, jackass? These spirit berries from home. These for shaman only.”

  I squint. “I thought spirit berries were berries…”

  “No!”

  “Oh, well…” I hiccup. “What’s spirit berries do?”

  “To see spirits and hear gods.”

  “Literally?” He’s threading his hands through his beard in worry. It’s some sort of hallucinogen. That’s about all I know. I look at my hands. Are they vibrating? The roof of my mouth tastes like chalk and asparagus and ice cream. “Will I die?”

  He shrugs. “We will see!”

  * * *

  —

  The walls turn to pulsing jelly as Ozgard leads me through them like a drunk puppy. Sefi’s war council was a blurry dream. All the orders fragmented in my head. If I focus on anything longer than a moment, the world pulses between reality and into some peculiar hidden fourth-dimensional plane. Keep the eyes moving. Stay lucid, oldboy. Stay atop the high.

  You love drugs. You love drugs.

  We enter the mouth of a beast. No, just a hangar, empty of helium crates and filled with warriors. They vibrate like dark teeth. My head is spinning. Whole body flushed with electricity. I’ve never liked psychedelics. Too little control.

  Ozgard jerks me out of the way as a column of Valdir’s Stormbreakers jog past us in gray heavy armor painted with blue runes to load into the assault transports. A goddess with a luminous headdress of white feathers floats before a pack of Valkyrie in sky-blue armor. “Who is that!” I cry.

  “Sefi.”

  “She looks fantastic!”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s going down herself? But there are killer robots!” He looks at me and I almost scream. The shaman has become a demon. His face is bright blue and his beard smokes. Fire leaks out his eyes and his mouth rumbles an orchestral thunder that is made of semisolid mutating colors. “What if she dies?” I hear myself weeping. “What happens if Sefi dies?”

  “A queen that does not ride at the vanguard is no queen!” he bellows as Valdir stomps past, looking as big as a thunderhead. His hydra skull bubbles cruel laughter. “This is not her death! I have seen the griffin ascend on Red wings!”

  “I mean what happens to me!” I cry.

  “You are high, my friend! Have courage and ride the tumult!”

  His laugh is cruel and mocking, and when he looks at me, lightning flashes in the veins of his black eyes. The whole world goes dark behind him and begins to tremble and distort. I fall down. The hard steel jars me out of the reverie. It’s just turbulence, you fool! Ozgard picks me up like a toy and wraps my hand around a rung. “Stay and witness the griffin rise!” He bats my arms away and runs off toward Valdir and Sefi.

  “Don’t leave me!” I moan. “Oh gods. Oh gods.” I curl up on the floor as the monsters trample past. Stay atop the high. Stay atop the high. I dive for safety into a pack of crates. Armor. I try to strap it on. Too big. GravBoots. I don’t want to fall into the ceiling. Lightning crackles there. I strap the boots on. They’re huge, but the ankles manage to lock high up on my calves. That’ll keep me safe. I grab an insidious weapon from the wall. A rifle of unknown and horrible power.

  Oh Jove, what’s that?

  Iridescent sea creatures from the depths of the ocean swim through my eyes, mingling with the wa
rriors. The creatures disappear inside the metal bodies and entwine their souls with the savages the world thought to tame. A dark torrent streams from their mouths and forms a crackling cloud of lightning and unruly thunder over their snowy heads. The song! The death chant of the Obsidians! I’ve heard it before in the ruins of Luna, but not like this. Not ever like this.

  I don’t just hear it.

  I feel it. The vibrations grip my bones with their terrible beauty.

  Before the soldiers of the gods, Ozgard takes a creature from a pouch and lets it bite his tongue before devouring it whole. The chanting thickens. The clouds swirl. Suddenly he throws off his cloak. He is naked beneath, his whole body painted blue, manhood swinging between his legs like a pendulum of power. He roars a horrible creed as he walks through the Obsidians, his arms uplifted, stomping his gravBoots. The Obsidians join him in stomping so that it feels like the heartbeat of a dead world awakening.

  “Baga duna!!!!” he screams, and throws down his arms.

  “Duna fiel!” Valdir and Sefi scream at him.

  The hangar doors retract. Freezing wind pours in like the breath of a cold god, and Sefi is baptized in moonlight ahead of her bloodguard Valkyrie. Valdir and his worldbreakers slam their heads together. I close my eyes, praying for it to end. Knowing it isn’t real. Am I real? Am I real? The darkness seeks to swallow me. “Witness!” It rumbles to me in Ozgard’s voice. Terrified, I open my eyes, squinting into the maelstrom of wind.

  “Njar la tagag, syn tjr rjyka!” Ozgard shouts.

  The Obsidians echo him.

  He points at Sefi and Valdir and flails his face, summoning the demon from the Queen and her mate.

  “Hyrg la Ragnar!” they scream, and the Queen of the Valkyrie and Valdir the Unshorn run forward, two dark blades cutting through the light of the moon. Their acolytes follow in a blue and gray tide, jumping out the back of the ship in tight, beautiful martial lines that’d make any Gray proud. The assault shuttles follow.