Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  The White is watching a recorded hologram of a severe man nearly Sefi’s height, but much thinner and full of that tensile Gold terror. His face is thin, his eyes perfect crystals behind slanted lids. There’s a man who knows pain. Atlas au Raa. My heart drop-kicks a beat.

  “Salve, Xenophon, the product of all your toil amongst the flea-bitten is nearly at hand. The asset is hidden within the crags at the coordinates you detailed. He will act only upon your signal, which is to be given only if the greater sum of Obsidian warbands are upon Mars. If they are not, postpone incitement. Our window is narrowing, but he will listen. He knows you are my hand. Follow my design and soon you will be home on the Palatine. In a world of protean hearts, your steadfastness does not go unnoticed. When you return to the fold, you will be honored by the Dictator with the Iron Pyramid. It will be much deserved. Destroy this message upon receipt. Per aspera ad astra.”

  “Per aspera ad astra,” Xenophon echoes, and then plays the message again. I watch it twice from above. I pieced it together the first time, but it beggars belief. I drop in front of Xenophon, and stand amidst the hologram. Those pale eyes go wide and I pistol-whip the White in the face.

  Xenophon sprawls backward. I kick them between the legs, forgetting nothing’s there but a tiny aperture for piss. The slender creature stumbles back, not calling out in pain, not showing a lick of anger upon their face.

  “Mr. Horn. I did not expect you to return. I knew I was missing a crucial factor.” With a glance to the door, Xenophon knows the guards have been dispatched.

  I flick the disabled tracker into their chest. “You little rat. You’re a fucking Gorgon.”

  “The proper term is Pavor Nocturnus, a night terror. But colloquialisms do rule the day.” The White folds their hands over their tummy and stands erect and pacific as a priest. “Xenophon, First Frumentarius, Legio Zero Pavor Nocturnus, at your service.”

  “And a frumentarius? I should have guessed it was one of you psychos.” Special forces spy. The kind that could end even a centurion’s career with a keystroke. I’d put a canyon in their face if I didn’t want to watch Sefi do it herself. “Sefi will love tearing you to ribbons.”

  “I imagine she would. Ever has she feared the Gold masters. She was wise to fear them. They know all. Of course, I knew it was a risk to keep the message. In sixty years, it is the only order I have ever refused. But even I grow weary in the cold isolation of my duty.” Xenophon gestures to my gun. “Must you threaten? A little redundant, considering your skill set. I’ve little chance against you. Though, if I call the guard, they would pull you apart like cake.” My eyes dart to the door. “You’re wondering what to do. This evidence is incriminating, I agree, but two death sentences are hardly worse than one. And I hear you already have mine in your belt pouch. A holo of the incriminating variety.”

  I shove the gun against the White’s forehead. “How do you know that?”

  “It is my purpose to know.”

  It’s a bluff. The skuggi hate the creep, they’d never rat me out. They need time, and I need answers. I jerk my head at the hologram. “You been that bastard’s mole for years? Since Sefi brought you in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it wasn’t that poor Pink who was supposed to kill her.”

  “Oh, no, Amel certainly was an assassin. The peril of current affairs, I fear. Many Golds pulling strings against one another, causing all to fray. I detected him quite early, but when Atalantia activated him, it was necessary to expose him.”

  “The hell are you doing here if not to kill Sefi then?”

  “Death is sloppy. And my dominus does not abide sloppy. With a dead queen, the Obsidians would seek the strongest to lead them. Who is stronger to them than the Morning Star? Valdir? He loves Darrow. It would do little good to the Society for the Slave King to be bestowed with such a gift. Sefi must die the proper way, at the proper time, on the proper planet, with her people along the proper trajectory. For that, only a frumentarius would suffice.”

  “And Volsung Fá…”

  “But another piece of the puzzle.” Xenophon considers, enjoying this little bout of honesty. “Perhaps more. Dominus au Raa learned much in his banishment to the Kuiper Belt after his…indiscretions. Not the least of which was the impossibility of his task in subduing the Ascomanni there. Octavia sent him to die, he soon realized. A fact I witnessed firsthand. I remained behind as his factor, and saw her appoint another Fear Knight in his absence—one Darrow easily dispatched of. The second thing my master learned was that the Ascomanni could not be conquered from without, only from within. Ironic enough. So he left his most cherished Gorgon amongst them, not to destroy them, but to rise amongst them.”

  Keep him talking, let Ozgard get Valdir. They may already be en route to Sefi. Keep the little bastard’s mouth here, where it can’t do any talking in Sefi’s ear.

  “He Who Walks the Void was a Gorgon?” I ask.

  “Is a Gorgon. The master called him the most talented of that martial breed. Grimmus was good to loan him to us.” The White’s lips make a thin line as it attempts a smile. “You are a clever Homo bellicus, Mr. Horn, as I am an efficient Homo logicus. But do not compare yourself with the best of the Homo aureate. My dominus’s designs are painted on a horizon we will only see in time. My science is logic, his is illogic—humanity.

  “The Raa are in motion, you see. They come for the Republic to repay old debts. But there is hubris in their blood. Thinking themselves fresh to the tired fray, they will find themselves undone. With one stroke, my master fells three.”

  I check my six. No one is behind me. Yet Xenophon’s bragging like the gun’s to my head. Maybe it is. Maybe all I’ve felt, all I’ve seen, is part of this little game the White and his master cooked up. Sefi, the skuggi, Valdir, Freihild, Ozgard, are all just wriggling as the snake chokes the life from us. I want to scream in frustration. I thought I was being the hero. I’m just the fool in their game. But maybe I can stop it. Tell Sefi. Find a way to unwind all this, and let her dream continue on its course.

  “Why did you come back?” Xenophon asks.

  “Couldn’t stand to see a little shit ruin something good,” I say. “Been there. Done that. World’s better off without the likes of you and me.”

  “I understand the conflict you feel.”

  “Nah, you really don’t.”

  Xenophon thinks for a moment. “You cannot stop this. The reason I tell you all this is to disabuse you of that delusion of grandeur. You are small, as am I. But you can be a part of something, Mr. Horn. A part of the solution to this dark age.” The White’s voice quickens. “When you first arrived, I thought you were a liability. And you were, thanks to that meddling shaman. The conquest of Cimmeria was meant to be a massacre led by Valdir. Millions of Reds were to die. They were to flock to the Red Hand, which was to carve Volkland from the inside, and pit the Obsidians against the people and each other. So that when Fá came, it would be as savior. Instead, he must come as terror.”

  “Let me guess, you needed the children on Luna, not here. Poor Fear Knight. His Syndicate stooges didn’t get to play with their toys.”

  “They were upset. Baying for your blood—as those cretins would. I could have killed you with a nerve agent in your wine, in your food, as you slept at any time. But I saved you. I convinced my master of your utility. You more than any other jeopardized his plans. On accident, of course. Still, he knows this. He respects this. He desires you in Zero Legion.”

  “Me? A Gorgon? Don’t make me laugh. This dog don’t collar.”

  “He does not wish to give you a collar. He offers you opportunity. The Obsidians never knew how to use your skills. Never respected what you are: the greatest infiltrator of an age. Yet you came here to save them. You crave something that will be loyal to you, so you can be loyal to it. Join us, and help us bring order back to mankind. Is humanity better of
f than it was ten years ago? The irrevocable answer is no. Become a shepherd. Become a savior.”

  “Humanity isn’t an it.”

  Xenophon sighs. “You stall for time because you are recording me, and think I don’t know about your prison break.” I go cold. My finger grazes the trigger. “You mock me, because I am different. But I have always respected you—I see the rigors of your training, the loss of your husband, how you float adrift and search for meaning. These savages only respect you for what you have given them—skillgift, the mines, amusement. Do you so easily forget the violations they have reaped upon your race? How they conspired to use Volga? They are monsters.”

  “Sefi is not a monster,” I say. “She wants something different for her people. It ain’t a clean world, but she’s trying to do right by them, by Mars. You, you greasy little larva, are trying to rob that from them.”

  “No. They will rob themselves. You will see. It is in their nature. As duty is in ours.” Xenophon’s eyes flick over my head. “Nakata. Hold.”

  I turn to see three lanky monsters, with crowns equal parts metal, asteroid, and diamond fused to their skulls, perched on a windowsill. Two more, barely taller than children, with huge skulls, thick, long, apelike arms, and stunted legs, swing through a second window.

  Ascomanni. Not the rabid offshoots of the Iceborn. But aliens five hundred years separated from the human genome and mutated by radiation. Their eyes are huge and black as their hair, their foreheads pronounced like proto-humans. Their noses little more than nostrils. They hold weird, twisted weapons. Their skin, thick as hide and ribbed with ritual scarring and metal implants, is the deep red of a Bordeaux-fortified sangria.

  “What. The. Fuck.”

  “Mr. Horn, they will not attack you unless I command them—” Xenophon steps back from me, fingering something concealed in a sleeve. My reaction is all instinct. I snap the gun up and shoot the closest stubby one in the face, then shoot at the largest of the three at the window. I miss as they vault to the ceiling like gymnasts. I point the gun at Xenophon. I can’t win this fight. No matter how much I want to shoot Xenophon in the head. The long play is the only way.

  Xenophon pulls a controller from his sleeve and twists a dial.

  That must be for the heartspike. I play along, spasming and falling to my knees as if suffering a heart attack. Xenophon spins the dial more, likely to render me unconscious. I play dead. But, shittily, one of the Ascomanni decides to kick me in the head for his dead friend and everything goes dim.

  * * *

  —

  I wake on stone amidst a distant roar of voices. A newly carved stone griffin glares down at me from the ceiling hundreds of meters overhead. I am in the private chamber off Sefi’s newly appointed throne room, my hands bound behind my back by magnetic cuffs. Still in my scarabSkin, though stripped of all my gear. Ozgard blinks beside me.

  Sefi stands above me. “Xenophon—” is all I manage, still woozy from the blow to the head.

  “Why?” she asks, her face cold to me. “I welcomed you when the world wanted you dead. I gave you aeta. Why try to install Valdir in a coup?”

  “I—didn’t.” Speaking is like trying to form castles out of dry sand. I want to tell her I respect her. That I came back to help. That I may not be aeta, but I believe in her. In what she stands for. But all that trickles out is: “Volsung Fá…the Fear Knight…”

  Come on brain, work!

  “His master,” Xenophon says from her side, concealed hands twisting the dial on my heartspike. I try to fake a spasm, but I feel like I’m going to puke from the concussion anyway. “After delivering the children to the Fear Knight, his orders were to create chaos. I warned you about him.”

  “Yes. You did, Xenophon. You did.” She looks on me in sorrow and then spits in my face. “We are not monsters, Mr. Horn. But our mercy is not infinite. Skin him and the fraud and hang them from the tower.”

  “Ascomanni…” I grunt.

  “If I may suggest he witness your speech, so as he hangs, he can know the unity of Obsidians in the face of his schemes?”

  “Very well,” she says and walks off.

  * * *

  —

  I am dragged by my hair with a bloody Ozgard into Griffinhold.

  Morning sunlight filters through high windows. Nearly six hundred warjarls, all the chieftains of the tribes Sefi united into one, cluster before the giant Ice Throne. I’ve never seen them fully assembled, and until now did not realize how even Valdir showed signs of the encroachment of modernity. More than half of the leaders are stark savages. They wear bones in their hair and hilarious ostentatious signs of wealth pillaged from planets—gold chains, ruby-hilted axes, breastplates studded with diamonds. They have tattooed faces, fur cloaks, trophies of war brought out from the pristine confines of their bounty chests to flash their tail feathers to the other warjarls. Most are women, though a minority of taller men knot together. Alone, the six hundred fill barely a fraction of the cavernous chamber.

  Two thick columns of Obsidian honor guard, mostly high-ranking men from the tribes, stretch all the way to the Bellona Doors. There must be thousands. Silence falls on the jarls as Sefi stalks up to her throne where two dozen of Sefi’s Valkyrie women form wings to either side. I’m tossed with Ozgard on the floor at the far wing of the dais.

  “Ozgard…” I mutter, managing to crawl to my knees. He’s flat on the floor, his broken hands bound behind him. His lone eye blinks at me. “Oldboy, the skuggi…”

  “Dead…most. They were waiting for us as we left. Valdir broke through…”

  “Escaped?”

  “I know not…” His mouth twists in despair. “I know nothing.” His eye turns to Sefi, who stands before her throne. I reach for my right heel with my hand and find the sealant there intact. I still have my last play.

  “They’re here,” I murmur. “The Ascomanni.”

  A Valkyrie hits my ear to silence me.

  “Your hearts beat for war,” Sefi bellows to her chieftains in Nagal. The acoustics of the room work in her favor. The jarls pound their axe hafts on the ground. “War is what you desire. But against who? The Republic? The Golds? This Volsung Fá? Ourselves?

  “Are we savages who bay for war like dogs?” She glares at them. “Ragnar did not die for war. He died for the future of the Volk! Many of you cannot see past your axes. War is our blood, yes. But no people can war against all. You know of the treason that bathed these halls last night in blood. My own mate, whose name is forgotten to us, thought I was too weak to face our enemies. Behold his conspirators…” At her order, the Valkyrie drag the skinned bodies of the skuggi and throw them down the stairs of the dais to splay like grisly, giant fetuses. I choke down vomit. I can’t even recognize any of them. First Freihild, now everyone else. Here I am again. The teacher of corpses. I never should have left you, Volga. I never should have left.

  “Am I weak?” Sefi whispers. I see the hatred in her eyes for herself, for caving in the end to the cruel ways of her people. So much for progress. So much for the future. The jarls eat up the violence. They slam their axes and laugh. I work my hand on the heel, trying to break the sealant.

  “This Volsung Fá, this barbarian king, put fear into Valdir’s heart. But not mine! I know what he is. A vulture. He came to our land thinking it his. But he is no more one of us than we are Gold. This land belongs to the Volk! We purchased it with our blood! While he lurked in the asteroids beyond the Rim, we broke the might of Gold, the machines of Silver! Now he comes a thief in the night, to murder Freihild, may she feast in Valhalla, to claim with heretical tongue there is no Allmother, only an Allfather.” She spits the word, and the jarls stomp their axes in fury. “He is our enemy. A heretic! I will drink from his skull before the moons grow full.”

  They roar.

  “All know the wisdom of Baldur. It is not wise to fight an enemy with anot
her at your back. This heretic king has poisoned the blood between our Republic brothers and sisters. Today we cleanse that blood; tomorrow, we turn our axes on him.”

  She lifts the razor of Aja and points it to the Bellona Doors, sparing a nod for Xenophon, who must have arranged this. I know in my belly what’s coming. Xenophon stares at the doors with intense contentment.

  They say the Hall of Eagles wasn’t built to reach the heavens, but to fit its doors. The famed Bellona Doors, the last great treasure of House Bellona not sold off by looters or sculpted by the Obsidians in their own image, begin to open. Formed from the trunks of two of the tallest godtrees ever grown, the interlocking wooden wings that close off the eastern façade of the hall are pulled open by infernal machines. Raw rusted iron clatters and rattles now, as it used to for the damn Bellona family so that they could sit in their pretty armor and remember the horrors of war. As if it wasn’t the definition of their own name.

  The chanting of the crowd gathered in the city to protest the Alltribe’s looming war with the Republic flows in. They chant for their Reaper. How far away he must seem.

  On the floor, a long needle of daylight splits the Obsidian jarls and stabs toward Sefi’s throne, dividing the shadows of the room before widening to melt the shadows away. All except one. As the Republic diplomatic shuttle taxis for landing, it casts a stain on the floor the shape of a bird.

  “The raven shadow,” Ozgard murmurs.

  I’ve seen men snap during bombardments. It’s like a physical switch has been thrown, and they go manic as an addict. Ozgard’s switch goes. He bolts to his feet. Rushes for Sefi, frothing for her to shoot down the ship. To not let it spew out its evil. He is knocked windless on the ground before he can even make it four steps. The sealant on my heel won’t come off. Dammit.