Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  Boots over the edge of the ship door, Ozgard laughs uncontrollably. Possessed. As if this were all his making, and he were a god overjoyed with the fidelity of his children. He points to me and reels my soul toward him. I clutch my terrible rifle tight and abandon my safety. As his arms wrap around me where the floor ends, I feel my terror flee and the evil in him disappears. My jacket whips in the wind. My pants are pierced with freezing air. But I feel nothing but warmth and love and acceptance from his laughter and from his naked body as we stand together overlooking the face of a living world.

  “See!” he roars. “See! Do you see with your spirit eyes?”

  Mars is captured in twilight. Her two moons watch us on the horizon. Beneath our metal feet is a great white shield mountain of northern Cimmeria. It seems the head of a giant standing with his feet warmed by the molten core of his world.

  The city of Nike sweeps from his northwest shoulder toward the sea like a cape of stardust. Explosions flash in the city near its spaceport. Across the landscape, lumps of metal lit by lights hunch in the gloom like little lonely goblins. Mines. They spit no fire. Only their warning sirens flicker, staining the ground red. Their sky guns are down. It’s working! Triumph swells in me. The skuggi did it. Freihild lowered the defense grid. That beautiful maniac. It’s working!

  I’m not going to be executed!

  Ore freighters on the horizon drop assault shuttles and airborne Obsidian over the winter landscape, over the shield mountain, and along the plains, spitting Sefi’s children down on the mines my plan and the skuggi prepared for them. The Republic defense fleet won’t be able to react. Quicksilver’s missiles streak up out of the mountains from hidden installations, but Alltribe ripWings swing down to silence them. All the colors dance in a wild, vivid frenzy. The ground, the sky, the ships, the mines, the air itself, are alive with spiritual fire. This is the domain of the Obsidian. A world within an unseen world.

  Beneath the hallucination, I feel the beauty and inevitability of this day.

  For ten years, the Obsidians were to the Republic as Volga was to me. Doggedly carrying the weight of all the rest. Only to be denied the fruits of their labor. Fight, the little ones said to them. Kill for us, Valdir. Leave your homeland, but have none of our land, Sefi. Don’t shop in our stores, Volga. Don’t stand too tall, Volga. Because we are afraid of you.

  Well, a pox on hypocrites one and all. They had their chance, and now the Queen of the Valkyrie has come for their helium mines. I find myself proud of them as I laugh with the mad shaman, because in all this stupid, greedy world, the spirit comes alive when you see someone say, no more.

  “Do you see!” Ozgard shouts beside me with tears in his eyes. His face is like that of a child, not a monster. “We have come home! Do you see! This is our Volkland!”

  “Yes!” I proclaim, pumping my dread rifle in the air. “Yes!” He pushes me back and says he must join. “Yes!” I shout. “We must!” He bellows at me, and only after I jump off the edge of the transport ramp do I realize he bellowed at me to stay, that I wear no armor. But I do not care, because the gods protect me. He has seen my fate in the firebones, and I do not die here from the missiles that streak past me. I do not die from the railgun rounds that tear apart the sky. I fly toward a pack of falling Valkyrie, screaming for the glory of the Obsidian people and all their justified vengeance. I fall in amongst them. Armored women and men look at me. They gesture with eyes wide through bone helmets. They are laughing.

  “Onward, Valkyrie!” I scream as wind pulls my lips back from my teeth. My gravBoots accelerate with a twist of my toes, and I dive toward the vanguard, streaking past Sefi and Valdir, filled with righteous glory as I tear toward the burning mouth of an open mine, unscathed through tongues of fire, and pierce the crust of the world to land amongst towering behemoths of metal.

  They turn their glowing evil red eyes toward me, and I laugh when they do not fire, for I am a spirit warrior and I point my rifle at them, pull the trigger, and shit down my leg, because I am alone amongst a pack of hunterkiller robots and it is no rifle in my hand, it is only a mop.

  Then Sefi and Valdir land, and the world goes mad.

  During war, the laws are silent.

  —QUINTUS TULLIUS CICERO

  I RUN THROUGH THE WATER I stole from Ajax’s assassins in two days. Though heatstroke is unlikely due to my physiology, dehydration plagues me and obscures even the most basic mental and motor functions.

  Though my eye was not blinded by the firebrand due to avoiding its core flare, my vision is dreadfully impaired.

  Three times I nearly lose my way when the features of the desert mislead me and I lose sight of the mountains. But I keep as straight a path north as I can, knowing I must eventually run into Erebos if I stay along the mountains.

  I could not accept Apollonius’s help, but I might find some unaffiliated aid in Erebos. If I recover enough, I can decide how to reach Atalantia without chancing Ajax’s interference.

  I eat the meat of cacti, and suck the water from desert lotus, but I feel myself fading. I find myself wishing I were back on the Archi, listening to Cassius and Pytha bicker as I lie reading in my bunk. I wish Kalindora were with me, that she hadn’t assumed I died.

  I wish Seraphina had simply stepped to the right.

  Only my anger at the desert itself keeps me going. Everything seems like a bleached mirage now. The sun is a malevolent fat troll that squats over the desert, burning any uncovered skin in fifteen minutes and punishing me when I dare walk in the day. I sweat and sleep when I can find shade, and walk through the mornings when the playa is barren of grace. On my fourth day, I find the rotting carcass of a glass leviathan somehow swept in from the sea. The translucent flesh of the giant sea creature writhes with clouds of predatory bloodflies and a wake of buzzards thick enough to blot out the sky. I steer well around it.

  When the northern storm sweeps rain showers over the desert, I lie down in joy to let it soothe my mangled face and the razor cuts Seneca and his men opened on my thighs and hip.

  Mercury is a lovely planet, with temperate coasts, and mountain hotels, and hot springs, and cool valleys, and coral seas, but to have all that, it had to have the hell of the Ladon around its equator.

  I curse the bastards that terraformed this planet. I curse the rocks. I curse the sun, the sand, myself for needing so much gorydamn water. And I curse Ajax. But more so, I curse the culture that let him grow wicked.

  The Peerless scar was formalized by Silenius to mark a Gold worthy of respect, not worship. Our rigorous Institutes were built to educate us to be shepherds, not cannibals. The world provided Darrow to show us how far we’d lost our way. To fight him, we did not find our path again, we strayed further and further, learning all the wrong lessons.

  Gradually, the desert gives way to a semi-arid climate as I make my way to more northern latitudes. The transition is subtle, barely noticeable at first. But even the smallest signs of life give me hope. Torrential rain has eroded hillsides but also seduced weeds and flowers to spring out of the rocky soil. My vision returns enough in my right eye to see green interspersed with brown. The ground is still unforgiving and spartan, but the worst danger is over. Where there is water, anyone can survive. Deerling with spiraling black antlers and birds shaped like faeries feed off the orange berries of gnarled geran shrubs only to zip home to their hivecastles amidst cacti the size of houses. While I haven’t the strength to hunt either with my razor, I eat as many berries as I can find amongst the thistles, never minding the cramps the excess fiber causes in my belly. I eat grubs from underneath boulders, and swallow the yolks of bird eggs I find in low shrubs. Tubers and roots make the bulk of my diet, which causes more cramps, until I find a sulfur viper basking in the sun beneath a dead olive tree. I crush its head with a rock and drink its blood, knowing my immune system will likely handle the pathogens it carries. The mild nausea is well wo
rth the valuable vitamins. When I’ve drained it, I roast its meter-long body over a fire. Its meat is tough and elastic, like langsat flesh, but the calories give me fresh optimism as I make my push toward Erebos.

  Pausing on a ridgeline that leads to a fertile valley, I look back at the desert one last time. It waits there in the distance, patient, eternal, the graveyard of armies. But not me.

  I turn my back on it, but carry its lessons with me.

  The next kilometers are almost pleasant. While the temperature hovers around fifty degrees Celsius in the morning, frequent showers from the roiling clouds keep me cool and soothe the agony of my burn. Birds twitter in orderly citrus groves, which I eat heavily from as I pass.

  Following the tracks of an abandoned combine, I find a shed and a small farmhouse that looks to have been abandoned in haste. It has been looted at least once, and I’m unable to find medical supplies. But in the garden, I find an aloe plant, which I’m able to distill into a paste for my burn. It takes the sharp edge off the itching sting, but does little for the deep nerve trauma, and nothing at all for my eye, which throbs down to the very root of the ocular nerve.

  * * *

  —

  The power is out in the farm, but it is nice having a puzzle to solve that doesn’t include imminent death. In a few hours I’m able to rig the solar panels of the combine to work with the stove, on which I cook dry-pressed curry from a freshcan. I also manage to power the ancient HC in the living room. The HC won’t link with the holoNet, and instead shows only a Society emergency broadcast message, giving instructions for all citizens to evacuate Erebos and the surrounding lands for Naran, a hundred kilometers northeast.

  I think of the tight showers on the Archi as I draw myself a bath. I slip into the cold water and shudder. It is the most pleasant thing I have experienced since the caldarium with Cassius. My legs are too long for the tub and splay out awkwardly against the fraying wallpaper. It’s only then I realize how much weight I’ve lost. Twenty kilos maybe? My body looks like it belongs to a rust lung victim. It is emaciated, any skin exposed to the sun swollen and peeling. I doze lightly in the bath for hours. After drinking another liter of water, I collapse onto the formaFab bed and sleep for an entire day.

  I set back out two mornings after arriving at the farm. I have changed the tattered pulseArmor underlining for the farmer’s clothing. I look ludicrous, the sleeves barely coming to my elbows, and the pants to my shins.

  I look back at the farm, sorry to leave it, and wonder for a moment if I shouldn’t just stay there. What am I rushing back to? A future as Atalantia’s rival? A duel with Ajax when he must face what he has done? A short life of politics and betrayal? Revenge which I don’t want, even after Darrow took half my face? To be with my people? Why? Gold has grown sicker in my absence. But even knowing all that, there is still an undeniable itch to return, as if my spirit were drawn by gravity.

  I need to realize the promise I made to Dido, the excuse I gave to Cassius when I betrayed him. I must unite Gold. More than that. I must change it. That is what makes me leave the farmhouse behind. That and the understanding that I must help liberate Kalindora, Rhone, and the Praetorians from Heliopolis. It would be immoral not to help those who risked all for me. By the good repair of Seneca’s gear, it seems the Ash Legions weren’t broken entirely. An invasion will be coming for Heliopolis. One I doubt my friends will survive.

  The walk to Erebos is leisurely compared with the desert. I cut through groves of wild cypress, and orchards redolent with the smell of starheart blossoms. At times I see hovercraft on the horizon, or the occasional Society patrol in the lower atmosphere. Though black clouds brood to the north, the worst of the storm seems to have passed.

  I pace myself, stopping frequently to gorge on the food I foraged from the farmhouse and the pack of tangerines pulled from the trees. My route takes me parallel to the Via Gloria, the white frictionless highway that connects the cities that border the Ladon by land. It is broken by bombardment and littered with blackened Republic assault vehicles and desiccated corpses.

  I sleep under a grapefruit tree and the next morning come across a family of sunbaked Red natives walking along a country road pushing a cart full of their life’s belongings. They watch me approach with unease. I greet them politely and comment on the weather, as Mercurians always do. They look at each other, then up and up at me and my melted face, and then they bow.

  “Odd weather, yes, dominus,” the man says quietly.

  “Devil weather,” the woman says with a little more heat, much to her man’s distress. “Greedy Martian thought he could break our spirit. Not this spirit, dominus,” the woman says. “A little weather won’t tame us.”

  “Darrow you mean?”

  “Don’t even give him a name, dominus,” she says bitterly. “His men ransacked our employer’s latifundia. Took him away, saying he harbored the Fear Knight—Vale bless the man. Did it all with smiles, of course, but when they were done, what’ve we got left? Just what they left us. We work for our share. We don’t take the pity of Martian marauders.” She spits. “Latifundia went to bits. Our headTalk started running the place, but no one ever came for the haul. It’s just sitting out there rotting. You with the legions?” she asks. “You look like you’ve seen Hades itself, dominus.”

  I scan the road behind her. “Only its gatekeepers.”

  “If there’s anythin’ you desire…” Her eyes dart to my burned face and she waves to her cart, again to her husband’s distress. They barely have enough for themselves.

  “Just information. Have you seen any Society forces?” I ask.

  “Fear Knight’s men were through here not too long ago, dominus. Never know where you can find them, though. Like Vale spirits they are. Rest of the legions are out to the east last I heard. A bastion’s set down. Hear there be Ash Legions in Naran. It’s flooding with refugees from Tyche and the coast. Poor souls. Whole city’s gone. We’re heading east to the riverlands, hear they’re hiring folk out there for the cleanup.”

  “There’s no legions in Erebos?” I say in confusion.

  “Erebos? It’s drowned, dominus,” the man says.

  I frown. The waves couldn’t have come this far. “What do you mean, drowned?”

  * * *

  —

  By late morning, I summit a hill that looks down into the Valley of Erebos, and see for myself.

  Erebos was a proud library city once, a serene and bucolic vanity created as a gift for my grandmother by the Master Maker Glirastes. The high city, all in thrall to the great library, was hewn from the back of a low mountain just beneath a great dam. The dam protected the city from seasonal floods caused by the melting of mountain snow, a quick affair under Mercury’s sun. When I saw it as a child at Glirastes’s side, I deemed it a giant turtle with a vine-wrapped city upon its back. He grumbled that it was a tortoise representing the patience and inevitable victory of knowledge.

  Now it is a watery necropolis.

  The great dam has broken, the pulsefields likely failing during the storm. The rush of water left a path of destruction across the city so thorough it would be a wonder if anyone survived. Carrion birds rule here now. There are no medical teams from either army, only bands of refugees across the flooded valley and plains beyond, trundling north in lines by the thousands. I sit down, finally feeling the exhaustion of the last week in my bones.

  Darrow has broken the planet.

  A sense of futility rises in me. What could anyone do to fix this?

  Resolving to refill my water and connect with one of the refugee trains, I stumble down the foothills, passing through forests entirely scalped by the wind. Not a tree stands. I wade through fields of lavender, where bees still pollinate, and draw to a halt. At the foot of the Via Gloria a peculiar arrangement sprawls around the Arch of Octavia, which leads into the city. Even with my blurry vision, I know what i
t is.

  I walk down the hill.

  There beside the great archway, I find a scene of horror. Amongst a sea of lavender, the remains of more than four hundred humans hang upon metal poles blistering and naked but for the wake of buzzards that clothe them in feathers of yellow and scarlet.

  The poles that puncture the humans are as thick as my wrists, sharp at the point and tapered. Each has been driven into the anal cavity of the victim to the point of perforating the mid-torso. In death, the legs droop, the back arches, the arms wing out and downward, and the head reclines backward, as if each victim perished in exultation. Sockets picked clean by the birds stare at the sky.

  A great hunk of stone stands at the entry to this atrocity bearing the message:

  Here lie Martians all

  Thralls of the Slave King

  Who thought with wicked delight

  to take your planet’s treasure

  and break their Master’s might

  All ye who enter here:

  witness their work,

  and despair

  The flooded city is their work. And the impalement ours.

  Is this what the Society thinks will inspire the people to return to the fold?

  Atlas was no monster in the court of my grandmother. He was odd. Always rather cold to me, and quick to leave the room when I entered. He despised children. Though he and Aja made Ajax together, their coupling entailed no relationship from what I understand. In fact, Aja could barely stand the sight of the man. But I cannot believe my father’s best friend would be this new monster.

  Though he was formally a hostage, my grandmother trusted Atlas without equal. He spurned galas and festivals, and seemed only to stir himself from his library when my grandmother required his unique services. What they were, I never saw until now.

  I have always held in respect those Golds who do not relish their station. Atlas never seemed to. Yet he has let his Gorgons loose in ways that demean any claim we have to dignity. So my judgment on him is harsh.