The Iron Dirge

by Sam Sykes

  That night when he stood, a comrade and friend among comrades and friends. That night when he took my hand in his and spared me one of the smiles he never offered anyone. That night when that hand that I’d pulled out of trenches and fires and bodies so thick the birds feasted for days, took up that black blade and spilled me with it. My blood. My power.

  My sky.

  And in that moment, I very much wanted to kill him.

  But as the wind took the mist and the sun caught his shadow, he didn’t look like that anymore. He stood there, his sword lowered into the dirt, sweat down his brow, blood spattering the cracked lenses of his glasses. He was breathing too hard, looking too weak to be the Rogo I knew. But I knew that wound in his side. I knew that blood weeping out between his fingers as he tried to stanch it.

  And I knew I had him.

  I kicked Congeniality’s flanks. She looked up from whatever poor fucker she had been chewing on and swung her yellow eyes toward my target. With a cry that I genuinely couldn’t tell was me or her, we rushed toward him.

  I said a Mirrormage’s art was a poorly understood one and I meant it. Hundreds of people have died fighting these fuckers, never knowing which one is the real one and which one is a copy. But Mirrormagic is still magic and magic has rules. And the number two rule of fighting a Mirrormage?

  Their copies don’t bleed.

  Smart bandits ran to get out of way, dumb bandits ran to get trampled beneath Congeniality’s talons. Rogo’s eyes flitted, searching for an escape, and coming to the same conclusion I did. He raised his sword, planted his feet, prepared himself.

  My grip tightened on my blade. My pulse quickened. The pain and blood and everything seeped away until all that was left in me was anger. Hot. Hungry. Alive.

  It burned in my grip, in my chest, in my very bird.

  Until I caught a flash of movement out the corner of my eye.

  And promptly had it all kicked out of me.

  Someone came flying out of the mist. A foot caught my jaw, rattled my skull, knocked the feeling out of me. I fell from Congeniality’s saddle, tumbled onto the earth, too numb from the blow to feel the impact.

  I rolled with the blow as long as I could, scrambled for the rest, got to my feet, and beheld my assailant.

  Rogo the fucking Dervish. Of course.

  I forgot the number three rule of fighting Mirrormages: they’re fucking mages who can turn themselves into more of themselves so…

  I looked around for Congeniality, not unreasonably figuring that a giant fucking bird would be pretty handy right now. But she had just kept going and already had found something new to chew on.

  Fuck. Shit. FINE.

  I raised my sword, stood shakier than I wanted to. But as beat up as I was, he had it worse, courtesy of the big fucking shard of ice he pulled out of his side. Rogo the Dervish stood, bloodied blade in hand, alongside Rogo the Dervish, as Rogo the Dervish emerged from the mist to add his sword to his own.

  FUCKING Mirrormages.

  One of his copies flew at me, rushing with blade upheld and ready to strike. I caught the blow with my own blade, batted it away, shoved the copy off, and made a break for the real one. I couldn’t get bogged down with his copies while he escaped—my only chance was to take out the real one.

  My leg throbbed, my heart rasped as I barreled toward him, my sword aimed for his neck. He caught it, but not swiftly. Our blades trembled as I pressed mine closer to his throat. I could feel his arm buckling, his body trembling.

  Another second, I would have had my sword in his neck. But someone had to go and ruin all that.

  His copy’s blade broke our deadlock with a thrust I narrowly escaped. I darted, my leg searing as I did. His copy wouldn’t let up, pressing me back with each thrust, slice, and stab. I parried, blocked, sidestepped, my muscles slowing me down, but the copy never went for the killing blow.

  Killing me would have taken time and focus he couldn’t afford. He was trying to delay me. With every feint and dodge I tried, the real, bleeding Rogo limped a little farther away.

  I lunged, his copy caught my blade, pushed me back.

  Rogo—the real, bleeding Rogo—tried to limp away.

  I lunged for him, his copy caught me. I tried to dart around, his copy was there. Every strike was met, every dodge was countered. And each time I failed, the copy drove me back another step.

  Clever. The thoughts came between clashes of steel and surges of pain up my leg. Always so fucking clever, you little shit. His copy thrust, drove me back two paces. Trying to put distance between us won’t work. I hunted you down over two years. A few more seconds won’t—

  The wind shifted. The cries ebbed. I heard something behind me.

  Wait.

  The thought came as all the important ones did: soft, sudden, and desperate.

  There were three.

  I whirled without thinking, thrust without looking. My sword found a chest, pushed until the hilt met flesh. Rogo the Dervish held his sword aloft in shaking hands, his eyes fluttering as he tried to take in the sight of the sword grip jutting out of his chest. He turned a befuddled stare back at me before he dropped his sword and disappeared in a flash of light.

  A scream cut through the air. A pain so deep and so dear that it rose above the rest of the carnage.

  I turned, saw flashes of brightness as the remaining copies disappeared. Rogo was collapsed on his knees far away, clutching his chest. And screaming. He threw his head back in agony, clawed at his clothes until they shredded.

  I saw the wound in his side. The skin of his flank was translucent, drained of blood and bone and organ, and had left behind only something brittle. His Barter; he’d used too much magic, lost too many copies.

  His entire body trembled as he stared in disbelief at the glass-like substance in his side. He reached down with a shaking hand, as if he couldn’t believe it was actually there. His fingers alighted briefly upon the glass.

  And it shattered.

  “All this running…”

  He looked up from the fragments that had once been his skin, scattered carelessly on the blood-stained earth. I advanced toward him, sword in my hand and smile on my face.

  “All this fucking fleeing, this cowardly running, and you’re still going to die,” I said.

  He started to crawl away.

  “Even now?” I shouted. “Even fucking now? You’re going to run? You’re going to act like you don’t deserve this?” I gestured out to the carnage. “Did I deserve this, Rogo?” I pulled my collar down, showed the scar. “DID I?”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t get up. Didn’t even fucking look at me.

  “That’s fine,” I whispered as I closed in on him. “Die with your eyes in the dirt or on the sky. I don’t fucking care. But when you go to the black table, Rogo, and in every agonizing second it takes you to bleed out, I want you to remember this.”

  I raised my sword. I aimed for the spot right between his shoulders.

  “You earned this steel. Every inch.”

  Okay, so…

  Contrary to what I’ve been telling you, fighting Vagrants isn’t as simple as following a set of convenient rules. It certainly helps, but there are other factors to consider: vigor, terrain, morale, you know the ones. That said, while most of them are a little opaque, there are a few rules that are just plain sensible, no matter what situation you’re in: watch your back, get plenty of rest, and most pertinently…

  Wait until after you’ve killed them to make your big, dramatic speeches.

  Glass shattered. Flame erupted. A wagon I hadn’t noticed suddenly belched out great tongues of flame, green-tinged tips licking at the fallen goods, the dried trees, the dead bodies.

  “What the fuck did I tell you, Cacophony?” Dread Niri’s voice, shrill and sharp, carried over a smoke-tinged sky. She stood not far away, a small squadron of bandits armed with unusual-looking flasks standing nearby. “Didn’t I fucking say they’d choose their metal? Their precious little trinkets?�
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  I glanced back. Rogo had disappeared behind the flames. But he was wounded. I could still get him if I hurried.

  “And what else did I tell you, Cacophony?”

  And if this bitch would shut her fucking face.

  “I told you to stay out of it! This isn’t your fight!”

  “I agree,” I replied as I fished out a shell and jammed it into the Cacophony’s chamber. I aimed, squinted, drew a bead right on their little panicked faces. “So kindly fuck off and die so I can get back to mine.”

  “Wait! No! We’re carrying—”

  If she had said “highly volatile alchemics,” I probably wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.

  But it was an awfully long word and I was in a mood.

  The hammer clicked. Brass sang. The shell flew across the battlefield.

  Fire followed.

  The Hellfire shell exploded, a burst of cackling flame that filled the air like a drunk laughing too loud at his own joke. Flames reached out in great claws to caress skin and earth and wood and leave behind blackened, smoldering messes. And with every sound the flame swallowed, with every body that disappeared beneath its red fingers, it grew.

  The flames swept across the battlefield. Desperate defenses and furious assaults alike were abandoned, every bandit and townsperson and bird suddenly swept into the same slavering blob of terror as they struggled over each other, abandoning their possessions and their steel alike in a desperate bid to flee back to town, back to the woods, back to anywhere that wasn’t currently being swallowed by flame.

  “ROGO!”

  But I didn’t care.

  “ROGO!”

  I didn’t care about the smoke in my lungs as I screamed or the heat licking at my beaten body.

  “ROGO!”

  All I cared about was that name, that blade, that man who I had hunted for so many days of tracking down leads and breaking arms and so many nights of dreamless sleep and cold aches on my scar…

  Gone.

  Not dead. I’d know if he were dead. But gone. Fled. Run. Hidden. Who gave a shit how he did it, Rogo the Dervish was fucking gone and I was so fucking close and now all I had to show for it was a mouthful of smoke and hands trembling with rage and a sword that wasn’t nearly bloodied enough.

  And no one—NO ONE—to take it out on.

  Until I saw her. Skinny, blackened, her clothes burned into black scraps and her skin painted red with heat and that big, blue spellwritten eye of hers.

  A nice blue sign flashing “come kick the shit out of me,” bright and glowing even in the darkness of the woods as she fled back into the trees.

  I didn’t think as I set off to follow her, walking through the flames and the carnage. I didn’t think about what I had been doing or where my quarry had gone or the big fucking monster about to crush us all. I thought only about my muscles bunched up so tight they hurt and my scar aching on my chest and my great fucking gun still whispering on a voice of steam and cinders.

  Rather nice of her to invite us to follow her like that, it said. Let’s not keep her waiting, yes?

  And without thinking, I muttered in reply.

  “Let’s not.”

  SIX

  The Scar

  Life isn’t like opera.

  I know that seems obvious, what with how often I say it, but people never seem to quite get it.

  I know they think they get it. After all, it doesn’t take the greatest mind to realize that the painted actors, the sweeping musical numbers, the magical effects are all fake. But where everyone fucks up is in thinking that opera is emotional, raw, and heavy to alleviate from the trudgery of a world that keeps on going beyond a velvet curtain.

  But it’s the other way around.

  Opera is clean. Opera is neat. Opera is satisfying. The actors come out, tell you their problems, you watch them figure things out and eventually it ends. Sometimes the hero dies, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes love is the answer, sometimes it isn’t. But every opera eventually ends.

  People don’t.

  People are messy. People contradict themselves. People lie for good reasons, tell truths for bad reasons, and even if you do everything right and say all the right words and speak to the right people, it can all come crumbling down. All it takes is the wrong word at the right moment for the worst reason.

  Opera isn’t there to make you feel like you’re boring. Opera is there to show you what life would be like if everyone did what they said they’d do.

  It’s all lies—pretty lies, important lies, necessary lies—but if you learn only one truth from this story, let it be this.

  People don’t end when you put them in the ground.

  They’d call what happened outside of Paarl’s Hollow by a lot of different names. The Hollow Massacre. The Children’s Revenge. In some versions, I laid waste to an entire town trying to escape. In others, I wasn’t even there. And in the hard times that would follow, maybe I’d lose track of which parts were true, myself.

  I wasn’t there for what happened when Rogo the Dervish, trailing twinkling fragments of glass from his wound, pulled himself free of the carnage. I don’t know what happened that made him do what he did. No one does. No one knows what he thought or said or felt.

  Maybe I’m just trying to make sense of it, myself.

  But here’s what I think happened. What I hoped would happen. What I knew wouldn’t happen.

  The night that fell over Paarl’s Hollow was darker than normal. The lights inside the town were few and dim—many had escaped into the woods, many more hadn’t. The woods outside the East Gate were blackened by ash and flame, limbs of seared and devastated trees stretching upward as though they were begging an empty sky for help.

  Rogo probably looked at that sky. Mapping constellations had been his hobby, even back in the military. When we went out drinking to celebrate grinding some poor fuckers into the earth, he would go onto the roof of the barracks with his copy of Edevard’s Alamanac of the Heavens and map them.

  He found it soothing, he said, to find the harmony in their multitudes.

  Pretentious little prick.

  But on that night, there were no stars. They were masked behind smoke-choked clouds. Or maybe they couldn’t bear to look down and see the mess he and I had made.

  And I wonder…

  As much as I hate myself for it.

  I wonder how he felt looking up at that same familiar sky and not recognizing it anymore. I wonder if it hurt.

  Possibly.

  I’ll tell you this much, though, it couldn’t have hurt worse than the gaping wound in his side.

  He ran his fingers along it, pulled back the tiniest of cuts. The edges of his wound were shattered glass, sharp and spiteful. And inside the parts of him that were still flesh, the blood and skin throbbed angrily against the chill of the night. He’d treated it as best he could—cleaned it and bound it, enduring the feeling of glass slivers sliding deeper into his body. But he knew it was nothing more than a hole in the road on the way to death.

  Mirrormages aren’t discharged from the Imperium. There’s never been one who made it to the end of their duty. They simply fight until they break. The battlefields are littered with the glistening shards that had once been Mirrormages.

  I wonder if that’s what made Rogo do what he did: traded his life of wealth and glory for one of chores and bills. Maybe the novelty of being the very first Mirrormage to die of natural causes (or as natural as they get for a mage) was alluring to him.

  “Rodaya.”

  But I know that’s not why.

  He looked up at the sound of her voice, hiding his wound. It was instinct, not pride, that made him do it. He’d never let her see him injured. She’d never snuck up on him before.

  “Virian,” he said, clutching his wound, “you shouldn’t—”

  A scream. The shards moved inside him, cut at the sinew and skin. He collapsed to his knees, wincing. A grimace painted his face, he shut his eyes tight, awaiting the sting of
her comforts. For years he’d been unshakable, invincible in her eyes. He couldn’t bear to see that slip away from her as she tended to his wound.

  Only… she didn’t.

  He opened his eyes. Virian hadn’t moved from where she stood. She stared at him. Neither fear nor hatred in her eyes, she simply stared, unmoving and tense, ready to run if he moved.

  And even though I wasn’t there… I know of no wound I could give a man that would hurt as bad as that look.

  Every Vagrant knows it. Every Vagrant’s seen it.

  We all made the same decision to turn our backs on the Imperium. We all struck out to carve a new life from the Scar. We all knew that nothing gets carved from the Scar without a lot of blood.

  But sometimes… sometimes, someone comes into your life who makes you want to forget.

  Every Vagrant has someone like that: someone who makes them think beyond money and liquor, someone who makes the wars and the bloodshed seem trivial and pointless, someone who you can’t protect with magic alone.

  We take them into our lives. We pretend we can leave it behind. We pretend that they’re all we need, or ever will need. And then something happens. A fight, a memento, a few drunken confessions—it doesn’t matter what, the outcome is always the same.

  That person we try to leave our swords behind for finds our names, our scars, and suddenly they realize that the person they thought we were isn’t who we are. They realize we have a body count a mile long behind us and they wonder—even if they try their hardest not to—what strange quirk of fate was it that kept them from becoming just another corpse left in a Vagrant’s wake.

  Every Vagrant knows the look that Virian gave Rogo.

  Because every Vagrant has someone like Virian at some point.

  And every Vagrant loses her.

  “I’m…” Rogo, swallowing back the pain, steadied himself on his feet, addressed his daughter. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “You too.” A pause. Painfully long. And a name. “Rodaya.”