Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  As peaceful as a man cleaning a fish, Volsung takes a handful of salt from a pouch and throws it on the wounds. Sefi spasms, the muscles of her limbs balling up in cramps. Not one of her warjarls comes to her aid. They watch the Valkyrie being slaughtered without drawing their axes. I grow sick with hate for them, for the betrayal and horror in Sefi’s eyes. When Volsung realizes she will not scream, he nods with pride and kneels to dry the tears from her face.

  “Valhalla will welcome you, child. Go to our Fallen who feast, go to your brother in the Skyhall, you are freed on Allfather’s wings.”

  “Tyr Morga will eat your heart,” she rasps.

  “Perhaps,” Volsung whispers. “My god is fickle with his favor.”

  He reaches into her opened back with both hands, and knowing the end is here, Sefi shouts with her last breath: “Hyrg la Rag—” Her words turn to a gurgle as Volsung tears out her lungs and hurls them on the ground. She blinks at them. Her eyes drift closed, and only the tattooed spirit eyes look on.

  I shut my eyes and hear the crunch and hack of steel on flesh as Volsung continues his work. When I open them again, he has taken her heart. He holds it above him to show the warjarls. Blood sluices down his biceps into the white hair of his armpits.

  “Allfather!” he cries out. “Allfather! I offer you these stains!” It takes him two minutes to eat her heart. When he is finished, he shudders in satiation. “Worthy.” Then he grabs Sefi by the ankle, forming a red trail as he drags her up the stairs to the Griffin Throne and takes his seat.

  I seize the moment to crawl toward a fallen Valkyrie. With the angle, I can’t free myself from the cuffs, but with her blade I’m able to pry open the heel of my boot and palm the heartspike Pax altered for me.

  All kneel for their king except for Ozgard, who is allowed to stumble toward the remains of Sefi. He looks at her and finally screams. It’s more than a scream. It’s a soul dying. He falls to his knees in horror at the sight of his Queen’s ribs splayed out like bloody wings. Volsung tosses him the knife he used on Sefi. It skitters across the floor to slide to a stop in front of Ozgard. But he’s no longer Ozgard. Spit drips down his lips. His remaining eye is glazed.

  “A red griffin, wasn’t it, shaman? I have fulfilled your prophecy. Fulfill mine.”

  As if under a spell, the shaman picks up the blade, turns it around, and buries it into his remaining eye. As what was Ozgard weeps on the ground, Volsung takes the razor of Aja into his hand.

  “Seven hundred years of slavery. Seven hundred years of war. Seven hundred years of anguish for them.” Seated on Sefi’s throne, he closes his eyes and the distant roar of the crowd, ignorant of the horror coming for them, laps through the defiled building.

  “Reaper. Reaper. Reaper,” they chant.

  Fá opens his eyes. “Sack the city. Take their treasures. Rape their men, their women, their children. Remind them the Allfather’s truth: the world is yours, if you can take it.”

  THE BIRDS CHIRP. Early beams of sunlight warm the frosted stone of the plaza at the top of the Bellona Stairs. The scent of bonfires and crackling boar meat thickens the air. Two thousand Ascomanni feast beside their king as the city trembles with screams. I should be sitting across from Volga watching her try to impress Pax. I should be with my friends. With my aeta. Instead, I suffer the banquet of a beast.

  I have never been more disgusted with our bipedal species.

  Was Sefi all that held the monster inside at bay?

  In the shadow of Griffinhold, airborne Obsidians rove in packs, lighting fires with phosphorus bombs, savaging citizens who thought the roofs shelter from the marauding hordes below. Not Ascomanni, but the very Obsidians who drank and sang in the streets at Winter Solstice, who shopped in the markets and waved at the Reds who rebuilt their city.

  I’ve seen genocide. I saw the Jackal’s bombs go off. The ghost of the flash stayed burned in my eyes for two years. But this is not a flash. It is…more human, and worse for it.

  I understand us now. How easy it is to follow a pointing finger.

  “Have you thought about my offer, Mr. Horn?” Xenophon asks. The White watches the burning city with zero connection. A line of slaves in chains five kilometers long stretches toward the former Julii flagship parked south of the city. Will the Republic just watch the rape of Olympia?

  “I have thought about your offer. At the right price, it could be interesting.”

  The White doesn’t believe me as I watch the slaves load into the starship. “Are you aware there is a species of bat on Mercury that begins life as mammalian larva?”

  I ignore the fool and turn away to look at Fá. The odious shit reclines on his throne as braves from the city bring him women one by one to add to his harem. Sefi had more dignity in her little toenail.

  Xenophon prattles on.

  “In order for the larva to mature to its destined form, it must find a host to grow inside and then consume when it is ready to fly. Fá was a catalyst. But a rich, haughty city fallen from grace was the necessary chrysalis for this transformation of the Obsidians to their former selves. Where else could a tribal people be nurtured with such discontent? Olympia had every opportunity to spare itself this fate. But without a shepherd, mankind cannot help but succumb to its own greed.”

  The White surveys my face.

  “You are in pain. How could you of all people look down and wonder how they can do this to a city they uplifted? Fear made Olympia polite, Mr. Horn. But when they realized there was nothing to fear due to Sefi’s manners, they partook in incremental predation on the Obsidians. A Hyperionin should know: a city is a thief. Designed in every facet to part coin from purse. The only difference is it smiles when it does it. Did Olympians thank the Obsidians for ten years of frontline horror? For their generosity in pouring capital into the rebuilding of their city? No. No, they gouged them in shops, cheated them in casinos, mocked their race, and then, after all that, turned on them in an instant and chose the Republic that could not even put food in their mouths, and a hero who abandoned them for the Core. What greater insult is there? The question is not, how could they do this? It is, why did they not do it sooner?”

  “Because Sefi was a decent woman.”

  “No, she was remarkable, as are you. But she was crushed under the guilt of being seen as the voice of the man she admired, when really she barely knew him much at all. She let her past overrule her nature. As do you. Why?” I ignore the White until those pale hands grab my scarabSkin. “Why?”

  “Because we’re something you’ll never be, shithead: human.” The reply breaks something inside the White. Xenophon turns away, wounded. I activate the power switch Pax put in the heartspike. “I want to speak to Fá.”

  “Why?”

  “That, dear asshole, is between me and the ogre.”

  “Very well.” Taking his heart controller in hand, Xenophon brushes past me. I turn at the last second and release the heartspike into his pocket. He leads me past Fá’s guards. We wait for the man to finish picking a Pink for his harem. He waves us forward in amusement as the terrified girl is dragged away.

  “Salve, Xenophon,” he says with a smile. “I see my heir’s guardian returned.” He notices the cuffs. “Not as friend, it seems. Still. He protected her from the savagery of the heatlands. It is no good for him to be on a leash.” He motions for his men to remove the cuffs.

  “He is a substantially dangerous man,” Xenophon warns. “Despite his size.”

  Volsung considers me. “So I have heard.” His men unshackle me.

  “Cheers, oldboy,” I say to Fá with a wide smile. I rub my raw wrists and eye the weapons on the Ascomanni. I wouldn’t make it halfway through a lunge. There is no other way. It is not a great decision, not the sum of my life, as I thought of Trigg’s death. It is a small choice to simply say: Fuck you.

  “Is my heir alive?”

 
I frown. “Didn’t you kill her?”

  “I had no chance to mold Sefi. She is not my daughter. When you have so many, they matter very little. Ragnar was my first. I taught him to hunt before I was taken back to the stars. Volga will be my second. She will be like clay. I will make her in my image, so that when the time comes, she will inherit the worlds.”

  “Pity she sunk to the bottom of the sea then,” I reply. “Sloppy work, that. Should have hired me. I’m the tits, didn’t you hear?”

  “Bottom of the sea, you say?” He comes down from his throne and sniffs me like a dog. “Then you must be a nøkken. For I smell her upon you.” He runs a nail along the scarabSkin, leaving flakes of Sefi’s blood. “She dressed you in this very armor.” His whiskers scratch my chin. “She kissed you upon the cheek.” He draws back and looks at Xenophon, lowering his voice. “Does our master still wish to tame this dog?”

  “He would prove an asset. But his nature makes it decidedly unlikely, regardless the collar. The master trusts my discretion.”

  His nature. I chuckle. Validation after all.

  “He is not worthy for me. Xenophon, kill him without marks. We will make it look as if his heart gave in to his depredations. When Volga comes for him, she will weep, but not hate.” He cups his hand. “And she will be like clay.” He gives me a mocking smile. “Thank you for your service, Gray.”

  He climbs back on his throne to continue filling his harem as Xenophon readies the controller for my heart. Fá’s beasts grip my shoulders to drag me away. “Well, aren’t you a cockless little yeti,” I say to Fá. His big head turns toward me. “At least have the testicular fortitude to look me in the eye as I die.”

  Volsung grants me that honor. His men back away as Xenophon thumbs the control and activates the kill switch. I glance over at the White. Xenophon frowns when I don’t fall to the ground from heart failure. “Hey, milky. You like riddles. What do you call a piece of shit with a bomb in his pocket?” I unzip the front of my scarabSkin to show the scar Electra left. “Oops.”

  Xenophon frowns and looks down a sleeve. “Oh…” Xenophon disintegrates as the signal to the heartspike in his pocket activates the explosives Pax wrapped around it. The heat hits me before the roar.

  The world turns over as I’m thrown like a rag doll.

  I can hear nothing. My whole body is cold. My right eye sees washed-out images. My left eye nothing. Half-melted men stumble around me, screaming soundlessly. Smoke twirls up into the blue sky. My spine is broken. My legs do not work. My right arm gone. I am cold but afraid. But not as afraid as the first day at the ludus.

  The most afraid I have been in all my life was seeing those cold halls and colder boys and lying down to bunk. I don’t have to go back there ever again. I feel the metal of Trigg’s ring on my finger. The warmth of warm water. The sound of it lapping against a raft. Soon it will be the starry sky. And we will lie beside each other forever. Fá is dead. Volga is safe. Good luck, Snowball.

  I stare up at the sun and wait for it to darken.

  Then a shadow eclipses it.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  Half the monster’s face is melted to the bone, baring his bottom teeth. His nose is gone. The iron crown melted to ruin and steaming, fused with his hairless skull. He looks into my eyes, and I see the abyss in his as he laughs at the pain. I moan something in fear. There’s a lurch. A sudden pressure in my chest. He pulls away, his hand holding something red as he mouths a word dead to my ears.

  “Worthy.”

  Then he takes a bite of my heart.

  The world is a maze without a center. Become it, or be forever lost.

  —SILENIUS AU LUNE,

  SILENIUS’S MEDITATIONS, 25 PCE

  IT IS TIME.

  After days of waiting for others to enact my will, the hour fast approaches for my own flesh to enter the fray. Glirastes has informed me that Darrow’s departure is imminent, as is Atalantia’s attack. Somewhere out beyond the mountains, her bombers fuel to deliver their payloads.

  It is now or doomsday.

  “The dinner is prepared, dominus,” Exeter says to me as I close the book of Shelley’s poems and rise from the orchard bench. It is late afternoon and the songbirds have begun to croon for night. Rising guards patrol the fringes of the estate, looking at the sky, not knowing that the attack will come from within.

  I smile at a mismatched pair of guards as I fall in step with Exeter along the gravel path back to the house’s southern portico. The pale man gives no sign of his week’s labor. He has been busy on my behalf.

  While it would have been easier to negotiate the compliance of Glirastes’s wary loyalists in person instead of through a proxy, it would have exposed us to dangerous levels of scrutiny. I dare not tempt fate by playing more games than necessary with Darrow.

  Soon, I’ll be rid of the spike. Until then, the perfect libertine I have remained.

  The dining table is set for two. Glirastes and I make idle banter of the predictable sort, but it is peculiar seeing him smiling across from me when inside I know he is churning with fear and doubt.

  Neither my friend nor I have much appetite. So it is a relief when the servants take away the barely touched remains of our dinner. Glirastes stands. “I must return to the spaceport. Be a good boy and see me off.”

  At the boarding stairs to his shuttle, I smile at the old man. “You know what they say about you?” I ask.

  “My boy, you should know I haven’t the faintest care.”

  “You found Heliopolis a city for men, and made it a city for gods.”

  He snorts. “If there are gods, they are in brighter worlds than these.”

  He has little appetite for banter. He knows the dangers of the path I have chosen to walk, and he doubts me because the old do not remember the necessities of youth. They see only the years on our horizon to which they think we are entitled. But we are entitled only to the moment, and owe nothing to the future except that we follow our convictions.

  I am finally following mine.

  The desert taught me that the only path is forward.

  “I left you a gift in your room,” Glirastes says. “Something for the occasion.” He lingers on the shuttle steps, unwilling to say farewell.

  He nods, sets a hand on my shoulder, contemplates a parting word, and then enters the shuttle.

  Night comes not soon enough.

  At seven o’clock, Exeter’s ship takes him down to the city, along with most of the servants, who are concealed in the cargo hold for their rendezvous with our loyalists. A skeleton crew remains behind. The guards are none the wiser. They watch me.

  At eight o’clock, the clone program Glirastes’s loyalist Greens cooked up hijacks the feed from my security spike and transmits falsified data back to them, showing that I am in the library reading. I cut it out of my shoulder with a small knife from the dresser.

  Then I sit on the edge of the bed and take the card off the smoked-glass box that Glirastes left for me. The note is simple: This summons legions.

  Inside the box is a silver horn inlaid with gods and goddesses and racing chariots with wild steeds pulling the sun. The Horn of Helios, which has begun every race in the Hippodrome since it was built. It is a priceless relic. I set it on the bed as I open a second, far larger container that conceals the gravBoots, razor, and military hardware provided by the loyalists. I’m about to slip the gravBoots on when a knock comes at the door. I frown as a servant’s voice comes through the oak.

  “You have a visitor, my liege.”

  I open the door. “A visitor? What the devil do you mean?”

  “Alexandar au Arcos and his maidservant are in the atrium demanding to see you, dominus.”

  Alexandar? The timing could not be worse. I don’t have time to wag jaws at the crown prince of the Free Legio
ns as he thanks me for his deliverance.

  “Tell him I am indisposed.”

  “He knows you are on house arrest. He can see you’re in the library, dominus.” He looks at the equipment laid out on the bed. “He will be suspicious if I send him away.”

  That suspicion will lead to a cascade of consequences that may upturn the entire venture. I am supposed to be at the Hippodrome in ten minutes. With Glirastes in motion, there is no secure way to alter the timetable.

  Dammit.

  “Admit him into the library in two minutes. Tell him I am finishing a chapter.” I shut the door. There’s absolutely nothing to be done about the spike. I have no way of contacting the Greens.

  I hide the loyalist razor in my boot and race to the library.

  I’m sweating by the time the door to the library bursts open, and Alexandar waltzes in as if he owns the place. Behind him trails the child soldier Rhonna. Darrow’s niece gapes at all the books. I find her particularly offensive today. She wears her arms bare to show off the unnatural bolts that permit lowColors to parody the Blue mind-sync with their vehicles. This condition, compounded by her Color’s adverse disposition to disciplined warfare, creates anarchy in a single individual. A sort of dissociative mania, which I can see behind her eyes.

  A zealot, this one. I must tread carefully.

  “This is where they keep the renegade libertines, in the library?” Alexandar asks, running his tongue along his new teeth. “I hope it was an interesting chapter to keep us waiting, you tart.”

  He greets me like a brother, wrapping me in a hug and slapping my back in a sort of thuggish display of camaraderie.

  “You may have heard,” he goes on. “Departure is imminent, and I told Rhonna it would be a crime against culture to depart without a tour of the Lady Beatrice. It will likely be months before we’re back again.” Even the thought of the Rising returning to claim Mercury sets my blood to a boil.

  “What a splendid idea,” I say before making an apologetic face. “But I fear I am rather indisposed at the moment.”