Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  She bled out instead of accepting our help.

  The ruins of the Martian city of Olympia remind me of that woman. Beautiful, regal, tough as a bare-fisted brawler, and pissed at the world for breaking her perfect nose. I watched on Luna as the Minotaur made his stand here against Sefi, holding out until the Reaper himself came with the bloody Seventh to wreak a path of hell all the way to the old seat of Bellona and send the Minotaur scurrying like a kicked puppy.

  What a sight. What a city. But while the war moved on, Olympia didn’t.

  I know her cloud towers fell to become squatter havens west of the city. I can see their humps in the distance. The rest of the old Bellona capital spills against the northwestern lip of the Olympus Mons, and shimmies toward Loch Esmeralda in an hourglass shape. Each war-battered kilometer reflecting the architecture of six centuries of stately Bellona taste. And it is a fine taste, despite her broken skyline.

  Only fascists should make cities. Demokrats never have a salient thesis.

  Her air traffic is sparse. Cooking fires twirl from broken buildings. Land traffic congests the northern gates. Markets, overgrown grottoes, and old statue parks are filled with bonfires and vagrant tents. People live here, but not well.

  I turn back toward my room and look up in awe. Eagle Rest, citadel of the fallen Bellona, yawns up the tallest mountain in the solar system. Libraries, government buildings, dancing halls, and villas ascend the winter mountain, held up by the wings of a dilapidated stone eagle.

  What the hell is going on? Why am I here?

  The old senses are triggered, and I feel someone inside my room. He’s not trying to hide. I just didn’t see him at first. I thought he was a sofa. One of the biggest men I’ve ever seen lies on a beast skin in front of my fire, roasting walnuts in the coals with his bare hands. If you can call those hands. The right one is huge and twisted like ginger roots.

  “Do you see your fate in the bones, Grarnir?” he asks in a low, sibilant voice. He is bald, black-skinned like many tribes of Mars’s North Pole, and incredibly fat. His eyes focus on the coals. I glance to the ajar door. “A man may run, but none has escaped his fate. Yet.”

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  His eyes scour the room. “I see his fate. A young eagle’s nest was this. To plume his feathers, he went away, and met the man around whom all fray. Now he lies in memory’s cavern, head a blossom, heart judged by Saturn, on a cold stone floor he found an early autumn.” He breaks a piping-hot walnut shell with his fingers and slurps out the meat as if sucking down an oyster. He is a living tattoo. Bright blue runes swirl across his face, down his bare arms in interlocking patterns. Seven ridiculous rings weigh down the fingers of his left hand with rubies and diamonds. There is nothing left of his ears except keloid-rimmed holes in his head. But what he lacks there, he compensates for with arcane eyebrows thick enough for dung beetles to disappear behind. Greased leather bags litter a scarlet scale belt underneath a glossy cloak of raven feathers.

  A shaman.

  I would see the freaks on occasion in the Block Wars, charging naked and high on God’s Bread toward the enemy, with their engorged pricks out like a lance. They were always surrounded by insane spirit warriors called skuggi. As important to the warbands as the legionary eagle is for a legion. Maybe more so. After all, Grays don’t believe in magic.

  If he’s here, skuggi will be outside that door. My prey instinct shrieks inside me. In full kit, I’d take the window. But I’m wearing slippers and bear fur, so I sit beside him as he gestures. I’m smaller next to his mass than a nine-year-old Gray is to me.

  “Your fate is not in these bones, Grarnir.” He gestures toward the coals. There’s bones amongst them. Marrow seeps out of fissures as they heat and crack. Human bones. Is that an eye socket? I swallow. They hiss.

  “The men that came for you,” he says.

  “Syndicate?”

  He nods. “Price on your head so big, they lost theirs.” He chuckles. “Freihild and the skuggi castrated them and, once they spoke their truths, fed them to the sky queens to make them strong. They had much fun.” Marrow bubbles and trickles down what looks like a femur. The shaman leans toward it, so close his eyebrows begin to curl. “I have seen your fate in bones, Grarnir. Sometimes gods speak, but you never know which one. Some play more tricks than others.”

  “Name’s Ephraim, oldboy.”

  The eyes slide in his huge head to look sideways at me. He chuckles again. “Shhhhh. He comes. He likes fear. Show none. Perhaps his wrath will not come undone.”

  “Who?”

  He submerges his whole left hand in the coals, reaching around as if rummaging through a backpack, and pulls out a steaming walnut. This he rips open and shows me the bronzed meat.

  “Unshorn.”

  I stand up in sudden panic, almost losing my balance on the untested new leg. It’s got some thrust. “Valdir the Unshorn?”

  “Be wise, Grarnir. The Queen’s concubine has much power. Little leash.”

  I look for somewhere to hide. I hear boots. Heavy fucking boots. The candles on the wall shiver. A shadow moves in the hall outside the door. Torc rings make an unholy clatter, each taken and melted from the sigils of a fallen Gold. They don’t even bother with Grays.

  “Silly man. Your destiny is not out the window,” the shaman says without looking up. “But find out for yourself if you must.”

  I glance down at him. No way he’s fast enough to stop me.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Shaman.” I run out the terrace, my gait uneven on the new leg, my fur coat streaming behind me, and hurl myself over the balustrade.

  I grab two handfuls of vine and feel them sag under my weight. My feet dangle over a kilometer drop down the snowy cliffs. People always make such drama of heights. Still haven’t met one worse than the Unshorn.

  I climb down the sheer face of the parapet. High-altitude wind nips at me. My hands are already going numb. The vines are beginning to fray. A thick stone support column upholds this section of the castle. It too is covered with vines. I shimmy to the right and plant both feet on the stone and shove off, trusting the acrobatics that helped me become a legend of the underworld. Ephraim the Reptile. Ephraim the Climber. Ephraim the…oh shit.

  I fly straight past the column.

  My right leg is a freak. When I pushed off, it didn’t push. It shot me like a bloody ballista. Three times as strong as the old one ever was. Two-comma tech. Maybe even three. I’m going to sail out into nothing—

  I slam into solid stone. Another column! Ah that hurts. Fingers scramble on bare stone for a grip as I bounce off. I snag one as I fall. The vine begins to unravel. I plummet down, breath stuck in my chest until I come to an abrupt halt. Skin tears off the palm, but I hold on to the vine for dear life. My slippers drift off into the expanse below.

  O blight my balls.

  I’ve fallen past safe harbor, at the extreme west of the network of support columns. There’s nothing beneath but jagged cliffs and twirling snow. My only salvation is to the left, toward the western edge of the foundation of Eagle Rest. It’s more than twenty meters away. Not far enough down. I rock myself toward it. The vine sags. Keep at it. Better than Unshorn. I swing in a parabolic arc, not close enough yet. The vine begins to fray. Hold on, vine. I rock back into nothingness, sagging a little. Rock back toward the eagle wing, reach the zenith of the parabolic arc. And let go the vine. Gravity tugs. I fly feet-forward, body perfectly horizontal, and then jerk my shoulders back, pull my knees up, twirling into a flip. Stick it, stick it, stick it…

  Jarring force shoots from my heels into the knees as I land barefoot on the stone. Haha! Then I slip on a patch of ice and twist sideways just before a fall that would mean certain death. I scramble to safety. Bloodied, freezing, and cackling, I glare at the drop and spit.

  Now, time to descend the cliff face, get to the city, get some s
hoes, a ship, and get out of Dodge. Do I know anyone in Olympia? Hope not, Syndicate will have a price on my head.

  Then I hear something in the wind. I look up at the sky. Nothing. I can’t even tell which parapet was mine, I’m so far down. No one pursues. See my fate in your bones now, shaman? Then the wind wails behind me. I turn around to face the city, cupping my eyes against the sun. It winks off the distant loch. Must have been…

  Oh.

  Jove.

  On.

  High.

  Six monsters rise from beneath the edge of the stone eagle wing. Pale blue feathers. Wingspans of twenty meters. Huge birds of prey with bodies of feathered lions, wrapped in rune-laden pulseArmor.

  Griffins.

  I run, because what else do you do?

  A missile of fur, feather, and muscle hits the stone in front of me. I sprawl backward. From amidst a cloud of spitting snow the biggest damn thing I’ve ever seen uncoils her white mass. I’ve seen the monster once before as it devoured Euripedes au Votum atop the Dome of Endymion. It is Godeater, the albino steed of the Obsidian Queen. But no one rides in its saddle.

  The griffin’s razor-scarred beak is the size of me. It opens to scream into my face as a mountain of a man lands in its shadow. My cilia wail. The man’s armored boots are big. His tattooed arms like tree saplings, and ringed with gold torcs. His helmet is three times the size of a human head. Made from the skull of an African sand hydra, and plumed with green meter-long poison feathers of a Pacific archipelago jungle dragon. His pulseArmor is battered and white, shoulders set with the skulls of the Peerless warlords he killed with the man-sized greataxe strapped to his back.

  The Reaper’s greatest armored cavalry commander stomps toward me. The long valor tail of hair from which he gets his name falls down his back to his tailbone, sewn with trophies. I pick myself to my feet.

  To his people: he is Big Brother.

  To Golds: the Sky Bastard.

  To everyone else: Valdir the Unshorn. Warlord and royal concubine of Sefi the Quiet.

  “Well, this isn’t where I parked my ship,” I say up at him. Black eyes within the hollows of the hydra skull flick toward the mountain face and stone columns where I made my passage. “Have you seen it? Shiny, long, two swollen engines at the stern. Plenty of thrust.” No reply. “Listen, I was working with the Sovereign. Your ally. Give her a call. I ain’t saying I haven’t made mistakes, just don’t give me to Barca. I ain’t earned that.”

  Now he looks back at me. “Earned?” The voice filters through the sonic chamber of the hydra, each decibel contorted.

  “Well, I mean, I did go face down the whole Syndicate. Ask the kids. Either of them. I was pretty impressive.”

  “In the land of my mothers, those who steal children declare ashwar. A holy war against the spirit of tribe. So their covetous juntak are shorn from their bodies and cast into the fire, so their seed may not spread, but crackle pleasantly and share warmth with tribe. Children peck their eyes from their skulls with crow bones, so the nomen shall be at the mercy of the tribe from which they sought to steal. This is what you have earned.”

  “Crow bones?”

  “Crow bones.”

  “Well, that sounds insidious. Lucky for me, we’re in Republic territory. If you would just call the Sov—”

  He shoots me point-blank in the chest with a tacNet. It knocks the wind out of me and contracts. He drags the line to Godeater’s saddle and barks at the griffin. Riderless, it springs off the stone wing and into the winter air. Valdir flies beside it on gravBoots, keening a savage song. I’m dragged beneath as we climb back to Eagle Rest, pissed beyond all belief.

  Last place I wanna die is Mars.

  VALDIR’S GOONS DUMP ME unceremoniously onto the gravel. The tacNet retracts, leaving patterns of duress on my skin. Griffins set down and Valkyrie women slip from the saddles. Male braves with red runes on their armor land beside them in steaming gravBoots. One of them kicks my ass until I stand to my bare feet. They ache from my failed escape and the cold. Did I fracture them when I landed? “Anyone got slippers?” I ask. None pay me any mind. “Fine. Socks will do. You got socks?”

  “They do not like Grays, Grarnir. Especially the men. The braves were slaveknights in your legions, or gladiators, or worse.” I turn toward the voice. Wrapped in his raven cloak, the shaman sits in the lap of a giant headless statue eating walnuts.

  “Oh, you again.”

  He slides down from the statue and wobbles toward me. Valdir barks something in Nagal at him to the effect of “Try not to lose your idiot again, idiot.” The shaman flaps his crow cloak at the warlord and covers his earholes.

  “You got any more slippers?” I ask him, tightening the fur coat around me for the chill. “Lost the last pair.”

  “Only a fool gives a gift when the first is valued so little,” he says. “I told you your destiny was not out the window. Now you suffer.”

  “Yeah, well. I’m Hyperionin. We’re natural skeptics.”

  He tilts his big head and laughs. “Maybe next time you are given something, you will value it.” He flicks walnut shells at my right leg.

  “You gave me this?”

  “Idea, not money.” He touches his chest. “Ozgard.” He points at me. “Grarnir. It means—”

  “Hold up. You’re Ozgard?”

  He grins. “Ozgard the Mad. Ozgard the Bad. Ozgard the Berryclad.” He bows.

  “You’re not as blue as I expected.”

  “Berries only for when gods dance,” he says, glancing at Valdir.

  “When do they dance?” I ask.

  He smiles. “When blood spills. Worry not. Today for talking only.”

  Near Godeater, Valdir has taken off his ridiculous helmet. The champion’s face is unusually delicate for an Obsidian. His nose is twice broken, his cheeks gaunt and freckled. But all the savagery can’t hide the avian structure of his bones, the motes of silver in his black irises, his full, notched lips, and the haughty grandeur of the only human besides Darrow to have survived a duel with the Minotaur.

  Gotta admit. He’s damn slick.

  Valdir barks at Ozgard, this time motioning with his fingers, and we set off toward a large triumphal arch. The women lead and pay me no mind, but the trailing men catcall me and shove me with their axe hafts when I slow. The path ascends up the spine of the mountain. My raw right foot is yet without calluses and is agony on the stone. “What’s this all about?” I ask Ozgard, panting a little for the elevation.

  “You will see.” He begins ticking off fingers as we walk. When he’s reached his twelfth, I curse.

  “By Juno’s dilapidated tits…”

  The path opens up to a damn impressive sight. Above Eagle Rest, the stone training squares of the Bellona ludus rib the mountainside, the highest disappearing into the clouds. Where once generations of genetically modified fascist knights trained in the arts of subjugation and extermination, now thousands of Obsidian youths practice calisthenics, climbing courses, and weapons training.

  We make for a lower training square where a huge crowd of warriors and older students have gathered amongst broken statues. A lone crest of dirty-blond hair moves amongst the white manes. Two trios duel as teams on the training square. Electra, fighting in sync with her trio, is dismantling an Obsidian who must have her by fifty kilos. The lad looks as young as you can look while still having a full beard. It’s coated in blood from a nose smashed flat. They wield traditional aurochs’ femur practice staves. The opposing group seems to be trying to reach a large skull in the center of the training square while Electra’s lot defend.

  Valdir holds us up out of respect for the bout. The Obsidians murmur amongst themselves, unable to pass up a wager on bloodsport.

  I’ve seen kids fight before. It’s a bit like drunks fighting underwater. Electra’s like that except switch out the water
and put in an elastic rubber room, a human-sized needle, and flick it. Yet for all her mania, she fights as part of her group, switching opponents, using her own allies to guard her blind spots as she strikes. The instructor calls the fight when the last manboy of the opposing trio stumbles back from a stave to the temple that makes him all soupy. Electra doesn’t pursue.

  Electra and her wingwomen help the fallen up. All six bare their throats to the instructor, a lithe young Obsidian woman with a topknot and black skuggi runes on her face, and to another in the crowd before jogging to sit with other students around the square. The little demon, Electra, looks right at home. “Children of the tribe are hard,” Ozgard murmurs to me. “Sent back to ice to learn our ways. Hunt many days. Fight with axe from six summers to death. Yet Valdir could not put boy and girl with children of tribe. Their spirits are those of wolves.”

  “Boy’s all right. Girl’s straight psycho. It’s in the blood.”

  Ozgard makes a small sound of disagreement. “The lesson is called the Three Seasons. Do you know this?” I shake my head. “Three seasons of war exist. Wind, Fire, and Ash. Pride, possession, annihilation. Freihild—”

  “The one who cut off all those Syndicate balls?”

  “Yes.” He gestures to the young instructor. “She gave secret order to attacker, sweep enemy from square, reach skull, or destroy enemy. Girl saw them advance for skull. Girl listened. She became ice, and the enemy wing in the end accepted it was her wing’s skull. Ownership was respected. A balance found. This pleases the Queen.”

  I follow his eyes to a patch of grass spotted with snow. I’ve never seen Sefi the Quiet in person. She looks almost inanimate as she sits amongst her Valkyrie on the knoll. All legs and arms. No contained, kinetic violence like the Golds—who always seem a hair trigger away from atomic. Only a subdued, sleepy grandeur. Like one of the statues that surround the training square. Her shoulders are broad but bony under a fantastic high-collared white cloak with a blue fur collar. Her right hand is gloved. A crown of what looks like ice sits on her head. She watches intensely as a new batch takes the square, sparing a long look for Valdir, who tilts his chin upward toward his mate.