Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  He grows quiet and watches the stars.

  “That’s some story.”

  He glares. “You doubt me?”

  “Well, you’re not exactly Victra au I-cannot-tell-a-lie.”

  He grins. “And what can bond sinners but their sins? None of my people would understand. Secrets are weight.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” I take down another gulp and pass the horn. “Quite a pair, eh? Two con men just trying to stay above water. Was wondering if you’d ever drop the mask.” He laughs and drinks deep. “Was the Alltribe her idea or yours?”

  “Mine. Sowed over years. Too long she listened to Xenophon, thinking Gold wisdom wisest. And to Valdir, guide of her heart, a stonebrain who worships the Reaper because he is master of violence. Were it not for the cost of the Mercurian Rain…”

  “A fool could never have made a kingdom.”

  “You listen too much to others. I am not a fool.”

  “Naw, you really aren’t, are you? Fair’s fair. What are you then?”

  He chooses carefully. “Liar. That is what I truly am.” The sigh of a man disappointed in himself eases out of him. “A liar who lied because he did not want to die. Because he did not want to live in the ice without a people. Is that a sin?” He sits in penitence and stirs the coals, searching for something. “I know you laugh at firebones. Others see you fall in mine victory and think you blessed. But we know how lucky you were to live. All my life, I looked in firebones and saw nothing. Nothing but my own spirit growing darker and gods more distant. Not once did they answer me. My father said they were not real. Only the chains of our masters.” He grasps his chest. “But inside this heart, a coal burned. Wanting them to be real. Something to be real. This world is so cold, you know?”

  Freihild knows. It’s why she fears to lose Valdir. And I know. I know all too well. He reaches into the fire to take a coal brighter than the rest. The stink of burning skin fills the air.

  “I do not know if the gods are real. But something, someone, spoke to me, and the coal long dormant ignited. It was on Mercury. Using the bones of our braves fallen in the Rain, I saw a griffin in the flames. Winged and stained red, red as the eyes of a Helldiver. And the gray smoke that formed above the griffin took the shape of a fox, one old and cunning, but held back by thorns of darkness.” He looks up at me, the reflection of the coal burning in his eyes. “Fear became me. After so long…so long, my gods had spoken. But I feared knowing their origin. Feared my own doubt. And then I saw you on Luna. And I knew. I knew our path. Your path. And my Queen set sail for Mars. It is our destiny to be here. Yours, mine, Sefi’s.”

  The fire crackles. In the dark, wind whistles through the ruins.

  “You want to know what insanity is?” I pull out a gold ten-credit piece. I wave my hand over it, and it disappears. I pull it from behind his ear and feign awe. “Falling for your own con. You weren’t seeing the gods, you were high, oldboy.”

  He takes no offense.

  “There is a world to be seen through god’s breath. It is a real world. Vibrations. Energy. Fear. Exultation. But all that is in serotonin, prefrontal cortex, easily manipulated. Xenophon has told my Queen this many times. But my Queen knows something Xenophon does not…” His bones creak as he leans forward. “I took no god’s breath that day.”

  He puts the red-hot coal in his mouth. Then he seizes my hand and spits the coal into my palm. I almost drop it. But he holds my hand closed. The coal is cool as snow. I’ve never seen that trick before.

  “I know tricks. More tricks than you.” I turn the coal over in my hands. It glows with light. “What I have seen was no trick. Fire and ash will come. And end of worlds. Serpent will strangle wolf. Lion will battle lion. Darkness will battle light. Sister murder brother. Son murder father. Father murder daughter. This is what the fire told me. All I have seen has come true. As others are consumed, Sefi will rise from the ashes to bind the Obsidians, to become one with Red, to found a kingdom watched over by a gray fox. Watched over by you.”

  An uncomfortable silence grows between us.

  “There’s a lot of Grays in the worlds, oldboy. This one’s just passing through. I get my girl, and I’m gone.”

  He shakes his head. “You have your games. I had mine. But a man must someday stand his ground, or he is no man. Soon, when Volga is returned, you will have a choice to abandon us or to stay. I know you will choose to be a man. You are here to watch over Sefi. It is your destiny, and we are your tribe.”

  We finish the rest of the grog in silence. Bored of waiting for Freihild, Ozgard retires to our tent and tells me to wake him when she returns. I remain at the campfire as it dwindles, listening to him snore and creatures howl in the shrouded mountains.

  Ozgard is a liar. A fraud. A charlatan running on thin ice. We’re too alike to ever trust each other, but also too alike to miss the chance to try. I envy him now. He’s found a cause. Where is mine?

  Save Volga, then what?

  Abandon my contract? Carve out a life on the run? Could I really stay?

  Freihild is taking forever, and the fire is doing little to keep me warm. Remembering I have another coat in the ship, I head back. In the darkness, I lose my way, and wind up along a scree of rubble from a fallen tower. My hand light illuminates a rock carved with griffins.

  The Gold orbital strikes from a decade ago melted most of the carvings away. It’s not right. The wings are unique to each griffin. Someone took care to carve this. And then, with a push of a button, a drone of a human wiped it all away.

  A faint silver glint in the rocks distracts me from my melancholy. I climb up and shine my light on it, thinking it might be some relic or a starShell fragment. It’s neither. I almost laugh at my dumb fortune. How could Freihild miss this? It stretches in the darkness all the way to the base of a pale tree set against a jagged obelisk.

  A few minutes later, I retired to our camp. I stir Ozgard gently from his sleep. He wakes with a snort, clutching a dagger under his furs with his good hand. “You want to see some magic, shaman?”

  He grins. “Always.”

  * * *

  —

  We retrace my path through the rubble and climb the pillar. The silver light washes Ozgard’s face of its creases. As he witnesses the field of nightgaze amongst the ruins, his expression becomes that of a child jumping into a public fountain on a hot day. The flowers are like pools of liquid silver. Ozgard’s thick hands stroke the petals with tender care. They curl around his dark fingers. A great laugh escapes him, and he walks in rapture, following the veins of flowers that skin the rubble and leaning towers in mutinous silver light.

  He glances back at me. “Thank you for this gift. It will never be forgotten.”

  I’m about to reply, when a subprogram in my brain flickers a warning. Something has changed. Ozgard senses the tension and frowns as I walk past him to the shattered obelisk I spotted earlier.

  “What is wrong?” he whispers.

  “There was a tree here…”

  Ozgard comes to my side and squints at the obelisk. It is a fractured piece of a throne. A broken wing is all that remains of one of the armrests.

  “This was the throne of Alia,” Ozgard whispers. “Sefi’s mother.”

  He leans to pick something from it. Several dark stones roll in his palm. They are shaped like humans, but wrong. Their phalluses are engorged, their craniums far too large and studded with spikes.

  “Ozgard, don’t react. We got company.” I motion down with my eyes.

  In a silvery pool of crushed nightgaze blossoms lies a single bootprint. Next to it my boot looks no larger than a Red child’s.

  Ozgard drops the dark stones.

  I lift my hand as if to scratch my head, brushing off my pistol’s safety and activating my ear com. Static washes. We’re being jammed. The wind whispers through the dead city. Someone is o
ut there. “Ozgard, I want you to stay on my six. When I give the word, we go as fast as we can back to the ship. Stick together.” He nods. “Now.”

  Fear claws into my chest as we sprint back the way we came. It is unexplainable, total, like the shrieking of cat claws on a windowpane.

  We race under the looming towers. Silver pollen sprays around us as our boots turn nightgaze petals to pulp. Then Ozgard stops. I wheel around, hissing at him to keep running. Coated in silver pollen, he looks like a skeleton made of mercury as he stares at something. I rush back to him and find him looking through the open face of a fallen tower. Inside, illuminated by the phosphorescent flowers, a body pierced by three huge arrows hangs off the ground like a fish on a line. A rusted iron hook punctures the neck, loops through the jaw, and protrudes out between shattered teeth. As the body sways on the chain, its face turns to us, lower jaw hanging broken and unhinged.

  It is Freihild.

  Then I smell the stink of breath, feel heat on the back of my neck. I stick my gun under my left armpit and pull the trigger. The gun explodes in my hand as the barrel is crumpled shut by a huge hand. My index finger twists like kindling as I try to tear it free of the mangled gun.

  “Ozgard! Run!”

  I try to follow my own advice, but three dark shapes fall to block my path. I fall to a knee in case they fire, then strip a thermal flare from my belt and toss it, hoping they’re wearing optics. I roll right, turn a corner, the thermal ignites. A rippling tide of inky black rolls through the nightgaze veins as the delicate petals are exposed to the high-frequency light waves. I turn into a dead end of rubble. There’s a soft thump behind me. I turn around and find myself staring eye to eye with two pits of darkness. They are set within the giant head of a pale nightmare, and it is crouching.

  When the nightmare uncoils from its crouch, my eyes are no higher than the melted face of an old tattoo obscured behind its white chest hair. The Obsidian is big. Bigger than Valdir. Bigger than any man I have ever seen. Metal mingles with the pale flesh of his arms and pectorals, and ribs his trachea. His huge mouth is a blood-smeared maw. And the language that seeps sluggishly from it is alien to my ears.

  “Ginjik kheljheenii nokhoinuud kjhichneen jijig ve.”

  I try to step back.

  A hand as large as my head seizes me and strokes my cheek with its thumb. A metal nail sharp enough to fillet bone traces paths along my cheek, gently, almost affectionately. “Shhhhh.” The thermal flare goes out. Darkness again. The giant forces my right hand open and puts something heavy and hot in it. Warm fluid drips between my fingers. The iron smell of raw meat. “Stay.”

  The giant flows past me to stand in front of a witless Ozgard, who has been dragged to us by several tall shadows.

  “We have heard your prophecy, shaman.” The giant laughs at Ozgard’s wilted arm. “Who is a mongrel to speak for the god? The Allfather speaks one truth, and that is might.”

  Ozgard comes alive and with a wild screech jerks his knife toward the giant’s ribs. The giant catches the hand and squeezes it against the knife hilt until Ozgard shrieks and there’s a wet crumpling sound.

  “You like prophecies, shaman. Here is my prophecy.” The giant presses a metal-nailed thumb into Ozgard’s right eye and submerges it to the knuckle. Screams bubble out of Ozgard’s mouth as his eyeball collapses and dark fluid leaks down his face. “When next you behold me, you will take the other.” The pale giant laughs. “Only blinded do liars finally see.”

  He tosses Ozgard to the ground as a spoiled child discards an old toy. My friend paws at his mangled eye with his broken hand. My own shake around the warm mass they hold. I’ve seen war, but never felt this afraid. The Obsidian gestures to my hands as ship lights carve the darkness. It is a heart that has been gnawed upon. Freihild’s heart. I feel the bile rising.

  “The skuggi was worthy.” The giant bares a narrow scratch on his neck. “I have honored her strength. It is a part of me now. Gift her heart to your Liar Queen. Tell her I have heard in the Ink she is Queen of All Volk. I have come to contest her claim. Tell her: she is now prey.”

  The ship lights silhouette the monster. The shape of a man barbed with metal eclipses me. “Who are you?” I call after him as he walks to his ship.

  Laughter corrupts the darkness around us. The giant smiles as the darkness answers for him with a long groan made of a single, distended syllable. “Fáaaaaa.”

  THE ASCOMANNI ARE REAL. And so is their king. It’s all I can think about as a whirlpool of carrion eaters churns over the body of Freihild. On the shoulder of the very mountain where she was born, the host of Obsidians watches in silence. Only the light of braziers holds back the winter night. When the last bit of flesh has been stripped away, the great host melts into the gloom back to their ships. They are solemn. Freihild was much loved, and this was a bad death. One by one, the skuggi drop strands of hair onto her bones and whisper something to her they never said to her in life. They invite me to do the same. When it is my turn, I look at the grisly remains and see Volga. I cannot shake the feeling this is my fault instead of that of barbarians from deep space. How ridiculous that sounds. Only hours ago, Freihild was so full of life. So in love with her tribe, her Queen, Valdir. How can I keep Volga from this fate, when horror seems to follow me everywhere I go?

  “I wish I could have seen you grow old,” I say, and sprinkle several hairs over her bones. “You would have been a sight.”

  My chest tightens as I leave her to her last mourner. Sefi watches from the distance as Valdir collects her bones to sew them together with the hair given by her mourners. Afterward he will hide her bones away in the high mountain tombs of her kin. The bones clack like wet wood behind me. Then an inhuman shriek comes from the man. I glance back to see his great shoulders convulsing as he saws off his hair, the great valor tail that no Gold could shear, and with it ties together the bones of his lover.

  Sefi flies away.

  * * *

  —

  A feast is thrown in Freihild’s honor in Sefi’s newly appointed Griffinhold. It is a dour, ugly little affair held under the stupid faces of griffins carved by Olympian artisans. More than anything, the Obsidians are confused by my tale. They knew the outcast tribes of Mars and Earth were pirates. Like the Republic, they called them Ascomanni after the old legends. But now they must take my word and Ozgard’s that the myth is true. That there’s another breed out there. That Volsung Fá is as real as a heart attack. It is a tough pill to swallow. Especially to Valdir and his male warriors. They liked Freihild. They don’t like me. And they like Ozgard even less. How convenient it is for us to blame her death on myths from deep space.

  I sit amongst the skuggi at a low table in silence, nursing a cup of hard liquor. Gudkind is missing. Sefi selected him and several other pathfinders to assess the scene and check the story Ozgard and I gave her.

  At the high table with Sefi, the children, and the highest-ranking female jarls, the tribal leaders, Valdir drowns his agony in endless horns of azag. His rage ferments like the berry liquor that stains his lips purple. Not even the old rough bastards with the long valor tails dare speak to him. He stares across Sefi to Ozgard, the only other man at the high table. The shaman, his eye patched, his hand in a cast, withers under that hard gaze. Neither man listens to the braves who stand one by one to toast Freihild’s memory with trite little expressions of respect.

  Deft in all things, but not dying, it seems.

  Some deaths make all feel terribly mortal.

  Xenophon, who stands by the cupbearers of the high table, seems as unimpressed by the funeral toasts as I am. The White spares me a grim nod. Of Sefi’s council, the logos was not the only one skeptical about the tale of Ascomanni but he was the most vocal. From the far end of the table, Pax watches Valdir with narrowed eyes. Sefi stands and lifts her horn.

  “Freihild was born in bondage, but made herself free.
Her worth, if weighed, would make a mountain light as air. She drinks now beside Ragnar, and feasts in the halls of Valhalla. I swear on my brother’s blood, the creature known as Volsung Fá will hang upon Griffinhold by his entrails. His skin will be fed to mice. His heart to fish. His balls to dogs. He and his Ascomanni are nomen. I declare ashvar upon them. Forevermore, they stand enemy of Alltribe.”

  “Skol!” the room grumbles. She sits, and as Xenophon brings her a message, she fails to see the choleric rage corrupting Valdir’s face.

  “Lies,” the champion mouths. He stands, draws his axe, and slams it through the table, breaking it nearly in half. Cups of spirits and plates of meat tumble to the floor. Sefi’s jaw flexes as, to the horror of the host, he repeats his accusation. “Lies.”

  She whispers something to Valdir, and reaches for his shoulder. He rips away from her. “Ascomanni?” He spits on the broken table. “Ascomanni are scavengers. Flea-bitten raiders too weak for our warbands. They have no king. There is no Volsung Fá.” He thrusts a finger at Ozgard. “You spun him from rumor. Like you spin all your shit.” He flings a hand at Xenophon. “The White does not believe your lie. When has the White been wrong?”

  Sefi remains seated, and turns to look out at the host instead of her fuming mate. Maybe she thinks if she ignores him, she can let this insult slide, and that Valdir will not go too far in his accusations.

  Big fool just might. “I saw the tracks myself. I saw no hunt signs. No traces of evil Obsidian from the dark. Freihild would never be taken unaware, even by myths. She is not blind.” He looks at Sefi, then back to the shaman. “She was shot from the front by a bow at no more than twenty paces. How would Freihild, skuggi, Minetaker, Drakeslayer, be so stupid? How could she die when two weaklings did not?”