Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  “Is that true?”

  He makes no expression. “Of course. I am a heatlander, and a man. It was expected I would draw the gods’ ire by joining the sacred hunt. I forgot my duties to my wingleader.”

  “When was the last time you forgot anything?”

  He looks over with a chiding expression. “Sometimes it’s better to let a wheel squeak than break the cart trying to fix it.”

  The truth sits unspoken between us. Either the bowstring was tampered with, which seems an awkward way to assassinate Sefi. Or something is wrong with Sefi herself. But how wrong?

  “Oh shit…what is that?” I cry as harvesters pull two brain-sized gelatinous sacks from the drake’s belly.

  “The testicles, of course. They have intense hallucinogenic properties when dried and ground down. Berserkers used them to summon the winter rage. Now they are forbidden, per Sefi’s decree.”

  I wince as the testicles are tossed onto a fire by a shaman. “No wonder the men never speak up around here.”

  At a jingle behind us, Pax’s face lights up. “ ’Lo, Ozgard!” he calls as the shaman arrives on a sleigh pulled by two blue-painted aurochs, each with tiny bells hanging from their great ivory horns. The shaman drinks from a hollow tusk and jumps down from a bed of furs to greet us.

  “Stupid heatlander,” he snaps at Pax, striking at him with his riding crop. “Everyone talks—brave to pup. You forgot string-guard. You embarrass me. You embarrass all men. You nearly killed our Queen.” He gesticulates drunkenly. “They think I am stupid. Teach you nothing.” He tosses Pax a hooked blade as long as Pax’s leg. “Do not sit back in shame. Go harvest. Unless you forgot my instructions. I need two kilos liver, ten kilos lung, one kilo spleen, two-ounce flame ichor, and four gonad veins. Do not embarrass me again, stupid boy.”

  Without objecting, Pax departs at a jog. Good little soldier.

  “Bit late,” I say to Ozgard.

  “Should have used boots or ship.” Ozgard sighs and punches his most muscled aurochs on the flank. “Preparing for my Godspeak in ruins of Spires. Nefelfjar sensed evil sprits within a crag. Became frightened. I gave him grog. And he found his courage.” The aurochs sways back and forth, drunker than his shaman. Ozgard squints at Pax joining the harvesters, who make a show of excluding him.

  “It is sacrilege to kill a high beast with a firearm,” Ozgard says. “Valkyrie nailed two poachers to a rock and had a buzzard eat their liver for just that two weeks past.”

  “I’ve been told,” I say as another group of skyhunters come to pay their respects to me. “What’s wrong with Sefi?” I ask as they depart.

  He doesn’t hear me. “What was the alien doing during this?”

  “What is it with you two?” I mutter. “Xenophon didn’t cast a spell. And you know as well as I do that Pax can draw Olympia by memory from a single glance. Kid didn’t forget to warm a stupid string. So what’s wrong with Sefi?”

  He pours himself more grog and pretends not to have heard me. “When the sun dies tonight, I go to read the firebones. It is custom for the drakeslayers to bear the bones. I expect you will observe this custom at least?”

  * * *

  —

  That night, in the small city that has grown about the remains of the dragon, the Children of the Spires, last of Ragnar’s people, throw one hell of a party for the dying sun.

  They light a great bonfire of dragon fat and mountain pine. In the flames, great hunks of flesh are roasted on long skewers and served with wild tubers, mountain berries, oysters, and great horns of grog passed out by a stout Obsidian man with no nose.

  Freihild and I are given fresh necklaces of dragon’s teeth to mark us as the drakeslayers. Mine is given with a degree of comedy, and grumbling from Valdir’s conservative cohort, but not Valdir himself.

  As the Obsidians feast and laugh, Ozgard leads a troupe of braves wearing masks made from the bones of sacred tribal creatures. They pretend they are ice sprites, dropping little diamonds in cups or tucking thin bars of gold behind ears. The warriors wheel about, trying to catch the sprites, only to snag empty air and roar with laughter. If they are caught, the sprites must drink until their captor is satisfied. I catch three, including poor Gudkind, and send them reeling from grog to pass out by the fire. Sprawled on furs, Electra listens to Obsidian veterans tell stories about their days with the Goblin. Pax bickers back and forth in Nagal with one of Sefi’s warchiefs about the strategic necessity of his father using the Storm Gods on Mercury. I sit in comfort, warmed by the fire, light-headed from the grog, and satiated by the meat from the hunt. I’ve not felt this tranquil in years.

  There is a joy here. A sense of eternal family, with no worry of the world that seeks to destroy them. They are home and free.

  Is this what it is like to be them?

  Mars is not what I expected—neither Olympia nor the Ice. It is simpler here, sure. But my mind is quieter without the peripheral madness of Hyperion. There the current demands you do something to define your own essence, to rise above the human rivers in the street, or be drowned under them.

  Here you can simply be.

  I wish I could give this to Volga. Poor girl has always feared her own people, what they would think of her birth, but maybe she would find this to be the home she was always looking for.

  Hell, part of me wishes Lyria could feel this again, what with her family all gone. I’m in such damn good spirits that I wish even Xenophon could share in the feast. The poor creature is always standing to the side, never included unless Sefi needs information or a task fulfilled. Not that Xenophon seems to mind.

  This warm peace is an illusion, I know. My time in it is fleeting. It will not last, not the night, not the celebration, not the hunt, not my friendship with the Obsidians, nor Cimmeria’s acceptance of Obsidian rule. They give them jobs, a percentage of the mine profits, chase the Red Hand north, but more and more Obsidians flock to Mars by the day. How long till the Reds resent them? Or Agea feels the power balance shift?

  In the morning, the Echo of Ragnar will absorb us and lift off. Then back to Olympia we go. Sefi to her government. Valdir to his hunt of the Red Hand. The children to their lessons and grim future.

  Me to being me.

  Part of me wonders if I can’t stay in this moment. Find a place in Olympia with these people who have welcomed me. They have a dark spirit in their nature, sure. We all do. At least here seems a people, seems a leader, intent on finding their better virtues. I play with the dragon’s teeth and watch Sefi across the fire for some sign of ailment. There are none except the long glove she always wears. She pulls it up as she watches Freihild hold court from behind her chalice of wine. Sefi’s eyes wander to her mate. Valdir is drunk, and worse than ever at hiding his lust for Freihild. It’s so obvious why the big man watches her. While Sefi is by nature reserved and seems aged prematurely from the weight of her crown, Freihild brims from life. She fends off long-haired suitors with a stick, swatting them toward the fire before twirling around to lead the braves in song. Sefi is the past, the present, but more and more it seems Freihild is the future.

  Dizzy from ale, I use Pax’s head to help me stand and excuse myself to take a piss. I wander away from the fires to where their warm light licks at the darkness beyond. It’s so cold I pull up my hood and watch through the thermal vision as my piss carves runes in the snow.

  I hear the jingle of metal behind me, and pull off my hood. Valdir unbuckles the huge ruby clasp of his belt. I step back in surprise. “Do not fear,” the big man rumbles, “I am not here to rape you.”

  “That is a very odd thing to say.”

  He drops his pants.

  “Oh.”

  His huge thighs are moon-pale in the gloom, as thick as tree trunks. As he squats to shit, long muscles ripple beneath tattooed skin notched and striated from old wounds. Drunk, he drinks more from a huge horn
and nods to my hood. “Does thermal vision make it look bigger?”

  “It’s not the bark that counts, oldboy. It’s the bite. I’ll leave you to your defecation.”

  “What is ‘Horn’ for?”

  “Surname of the seed donor.”

  “Your father?”

  The earthy scent of his shit wafts over to me. “More or less.”

  “Was he a great man?”

  “No.”

  He wipes his ass with snow and pulls up his trousers. He considers me and nods in approval. “You come from no one. I too come from no one.” Then he turns and stumbles back to the fire.

  “The Queen knows about you and Freihild,” I say.

  He wheels back, and with one step closes the distance. I have to step back to look into his eyes.

  “It’s not my business what you do with your cock. But at least have the decency not to undress Freihild with your eyes like a titanium-hard teenager. Your Queen doesn’t seem the forgiving kind. And others notice, even if they’re too afraid of you to say it.”

  I slip past him and leave him to his dung.

  THE OBSIDIANS ARRANGE THEMSELVES in a crescent and groan a song of farewell to the last sliver of sun as it dips beneath the horizon, not to be seen again until summer. It has a faintly tragic quality, this sendoff. The dark months of winter are a reality the Obsidians have left behind. While Olympia undergoes repairs, they will return to their cities and highrise penthouses and skyhook bars and brothels in the cities of Cimmeria, leaving only the sparse remnants of savage clans to suffer the season.

  Sefi gives us a blessing before we go, dipping her finger in blood and pressing it to my forehead, then Ozgard’s. When she comes to Freihild, her jaw locks and she presses hard enough with her nail to leave a small gash.

  I wave dramatically at Pax as the Snowball takes off to the clamor of drums and horns, the skull of the dragon dragging behind on a tow cable. As I fly, Freihild looks joyfully ahead while Ozgard plays with his jeweled rings.

  Half an hour’s flight finds us beside the ruins of the Valkyrie Spires. We drop the skull by the site Ozgard and his acolytes have prepared for the Godspeak at a rise. We set down south of it and hike up. I raise our thermal tent while Ozgard and Freihild douse the skull and timber with dragon fat and lay out a circle of scales etched with runes.

  Soon fire leaps along the skull and the pine beneath. Freihild and I sip heated grog to ward off the chill as Ozgard finishes laying his runes. She looks so young in the firelight I can barely remember thinking her a savage. She catches me watching her finger the small scratch Sefi gave her.

  “I saw you and Valdir speaking in the shadow,” she says. “He returned haunted. Did you give him some Gray wisdom?”

  “Nothing he doesn’t already know.”

  The fire crackles between us. She knows I know.

  “I have tried to end it before. It is a war in here.” She opens her hand over her heart. “Sefi gave me purpose. Valdir…everything else.” She looks out at the snow. “She is stubborn. She is the strength in the bond. She must release him. But she will not. I do not know what to do.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” she mocks. “No funny joke? No cruel cuts? Just ‘yeah’?”

  I rub my hands together trying to soak up the warmth of the fire. “I don’t know what you want me to say. It is what it is. Maybe she loves him too. I don’t know. But you know it ain’t just between you and Sefi and Valdir. How many others have found out?” Her jaw clenches. “Take that number and triple it. Hell, multiply it by ten. Gossip like that…exponential echoes.” I sigh, knowing I should mind my own business. But I care about this weird assassin, and I guess I care about Sefi. “Seriously, what’s Sefi supposed to do? Have you killed?”

  “No. That is dishonorable. My Queen is honorable. She would challenge me. Out here, I would win. In a circle, no.”

  “Lucky for you, she’s forbidden challenges, remember? Her New Path? Alltribe no kill Alltribe. Anyway, do you want to kill your Queen?”

  “No,” she snaps. “She is all.” Her face goes blank. “Maybe she will find another mate.”

  “And what does that tell the others? You saw her fail to draw that bow. Others did too. Some’ll buy the Pax bit, but not all. Are you trying to be queen?”

  She reels back, offended. “No.”

  “Well, maybe you make that clear to everyone, especially Sefi. Right now, she’s being the big girl. You’re spitting in her eye. She might have the throne, but you’re the only one who can fix this.”

  She weaves a dragon tooth into her valor tail. “I have never feared the enemy. But speaking to Sefi…” Her expression becomes tragic. “Valdir is my heart. I do not want it to be so, but he is. When I wake, when I sleep, he is a warm shadow that goes with me always.”

  “Well, kid. It’s on you. I’d like to say there’s another shadow or whatever out there for you, but I found mine and he’s stuck with me….”

  “But some things are more important,” she says.

  I stare into the fire. “Maybe.”

  “Alltribe is more important than me. I know what I must do.” She claps my shoulder hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Like I said. Gray wisdom.” She grows dour, sinking into the weight of her decision. Restless from all the thinking, she stands up and tells Ozgard she will find the nightgaze, and he can warm his old bones by the fire, and maybe learn something from the Gray.

  The old shaman wheezes as he sits down. “What did you say to her?”

  “Oh, just being wise. You know. Like a fox.”

  I tighten my jacket, feeling chilled under the gaze of the hollow towers. They hunch together, lording over the scattered stone and shadow, the many empty doors and windows like so many eye sockets. Once this was home to Sefi the Quiet, Ragnar the god. Now only wind moves in the dead city.

  “Do you hear them?” Ozgard cocks his head to the wind. “Not all the people of Alia had heart to follow Sefi to the stars. Those who remained felt the wrath of Gold. Their spirits are trapped in the stone, shamed for all time.”

  “Poor sods.”

  He snorts. “If it were true, yes.”

  “I’ll be damned. Is that skepticism I hear from a shaman?” Ozgard shrugs and prods the crumbling pine of the fire with a distant look. His mood is different than amongst his people. Less frivolous. I shift closer to the flames. “So…what now?”

  “We drink until Freihild returns with nightgaze. The gods must be offered strength of the beast and beauty of the land to speak.” He sounds bored.

  “Right.”

  He sighs and looks at the darkness creeping around us. “I confess, I hope she does not hurry. It is good to be alone in the snow.”

  “Thought you liked Freihild.”

  He chuckles. “Freihild is clever woman, but she is blind, not like us.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The more blessed the creature, the less they question life. She is like Valdir and his big muscles this way. Blindly forward with purpose. Guided by the trough of expectation.” Ozgard plays with his rings. “But us…that which is thin to us is thick to others. Dull to us, resplendent to fools. I envy the blind. To accept mystery. To witness a corpse and think Valhalla instead of maggots.

  “Did you know I was born to a woman of power? You would not think it. Brood of a great queen. Destined to fight the gods’ battles in the stars. But I was cursed for my mother’s impiety. So our shaman said.”

  He brandishes his twisted hand.

  “Amniotic band syndrome. Agony. Bred out of the other races, but not ours. My fingers were never formed. My spirit berries dull the pain.”

  “Why not just get an upgrade?” I pat my new leg.

  He turns the twisted hand. “Many of the braves believe it is the root of my power. At four, my mother found me amputating my own hand
with a fish knife to stop the pain. They said a dark spirit was within me. Fools. Shaman pressed coals into the soles of my feet, and I was given to the Ice. No Valhalla for a cursed child.

  “They now say spirits found me. Raised me with their arts. That I sacrificed my hand to Mimir for a drink from her well of wisdom.” He spits into the coals in disgust. “Cruelty is the heart of myth.

  “There was no Mimir. I could not walk for the wounds. So I crawled, dragged my child’s body with one hand until my fingers blackened. No spirit came. No gods. It was the kindness of a noman that saved me. A shamed man cast out from his own people who lived as a hermit in the mountains. He became my father, my mother. But his life was withering. Hepatocellular carcinoma, I believe. Soon I would be a boy alone on the ice. So he gave me all he could to survive when he left. Omens, prophecies, tricks. He taught me religion is a lever. With a slight force at a clever angle: immense power to shift tides of humanity. When his andi returned to the Allmother, I gave his flesh to Sky and bones to Ice, and went to find a people.”

  He passes me a horn of grog. I take a generous swig, then another, and scoot closer to the fire, intrigued and a little mystified he’s letting me see beneath the mask. Risky business, that.

  “The first tribe found value in my father’s tricks. I was clever, but reckless and cruel. Their shaman had a trick in wooing ice serpents. He would light a fire of bitternettle to make them sleepy. I changed the nettle for a mangroot. I declared him a falsifier. When his snakes killed him before his Queen, I became their shaman. Soon, they were conquered, and I became shaman to that tribe, and the next. To survive, I replaced other clever men. I used the lever. I learned to say what queens want to hear. In time, I learned to say what queens need to hear. And when I came upon the shaman who put coals to my feet, having left my mother after her tribe was conquered, I fed his manhood and liver to him and burned his body on the tundra. But I despaired. I felt no joy. The river of blood flowed and flowed. Tribe fighting tribe. Queen fighting queen. Shaman unseating shaman. We were cannibals. When Sefi and Tyr Morga slew our gods, I saw a queen who could tame the darkness inside us.”