He ran until he couldn’t run anymore. And maybe he didn’t reach what he was heading for, but this time he knew what it was.
He knew what he was running for.
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BREAKING GODS
VIII And the gods perceived a great wickedness in humanity, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time, IX and that they would never be satisfied, and that they wished to swallow all the stars. X The gods saw what the human beings were building, and all that they had become, and all that they intended to become, XI and the gods said to themselves, “Come, let us go down to them and destroy everything they have built so that they will not swallow all the stars.”
Translated from the Ortus Deorum
2nd Song, 3rd Stanza
CHAPTER 0
BEGINNINGS
He sits in prison and his sentence is death.
He does not know who he is, or what he is capable of.
And yet, destiny hurtles towards him whether he knows it or not.
Before we see who this condemned man is, let us look back to who he was, just a few days before. Let us go back to a battlefield, and a scavenging crew, and a series of events that will place this young man on a path from which he can never come back. A path to discovering who—and what—he really is.
If, of course, he manages to survive that long.
CHAPTER 1
SCAVENGERS
The Truth and The Light were murdering each other in droves.
Perry and his outfit waited on a dusty escarpment to pick over their dead.
It was the month of the Giver of Death. At night, the Deadmoon waned, and the days were short. The battle had begun later than usual today, and already the sun leaned westward. If it ran long, the crew might have to scavenge after dark. Boss Hauten did not like to scavenge after dark, and so he stood off to the side, fidgeting impatiently as he waited for the slaughter to be over.
Perry sat away from the ledge, his back against a comfortable rock. Around him, the rest of the outfit waited, holding quiet conversations and occasionally laughing at a joke. At twenty years old, Perry had already been on the crew for three years. That made him a middleman, with only a few others having more seniority than him.
First, there was Jax. He was a crotchety, white-bearded old fart that had been on Boss Hauten’s crew since time immemorial. He held the job of “chief primer,” and he guarded it jealously because it was easy work and he was ancient.
Second, there was Tiller.
Tiller was an ass, and he got along with nobody. Least of all Perry.
Lastly, there was Stuber.
While the rest of them waited, backed away from the edge of the cliff, hoping not to catch a stray round, Stuber stood at the edge in his battered armor and looked down at the battle that splayed out in the valley below. He watched the violence, always with an element of yearning, like a captured animal pines for the ferocity of the wilds.
The clasps on the back of his spaulders still had a bit of Stuber’s old sagum cape.
The cloth was now sun-faded. Almost pink.
But it had once been a bright red.
Red for The Truth.
Staring at the ex-legionnaire’s back, Perry felt a mix of unpleasant things rising up in his throat like gorge. Fear. Hatred. Loathing.
All things best kept hidden. It wouldn’t do for anybody to guess Perry’s past.
Stuber turned like he felt Perry’s gaze on him. Those predatory eyes of his stared out from the rocky promontory of his face. A broad grin split the dark growth of his short beard.
“Shortstack,” he beckoned with one massive hand. “Come watch.”
Perry shook his shaggy, brown head. “Nah. I’m good.”
Stuber’s face darkened. “Come watch. Don’t be bleeding vagina.”
Perry grunted irritably, but rose up from his comfortable rock. It was probably the best seat on this ridge, and he was being forced to give it up. He dusted the back of his pants off and took a few steps forward, hunching his head down as he did, thinking about stray rounds from the battle below.
“You remember what happened to Hinks?” Perry griped, remembering how the poor girl’s head had just seemed to cave in, like an invisible hammer had struck it.
“Hinks was an unlucky bitch,” Stuber said dismissively. “She’d barely come back from the ants the day before.” He snapped his fingers impatiently. “Come on. You’re going to miss the best part.”
Perry glanced behind him. Back to his comfy rock.
Tiller had already slid into place there. He crossed his booted feet and stretched himself with a great, dramatic sigh of pleasure. Then he smiled at Perry and mimed jacking off, completed by flinging an imaginary substance at Perry.
Perry’s fingers twitched, and his brain tried to dip into the place where it always went when conflict was imminent—a place of flowing, red momentum that existed deep in Perry’s brain—but the second that his body tensed to react to Tiller, a huge, callused hand grabbed Perry by the back of the neck and pulled him up to the edge of the cliff.
Stuber’s hands were like iron wrapped in sandpaper.
“Look,” Stuber commanded.
“I’ve seen it before.”
“You’ve never seen this before.”
“I have. Many times.”
“Every battle is different.”
“They look the same to me.”
“That’s because you’re a peon. Here it comes.”
Down below them, three or four miles away, the two armies prepared to converge. Blue on one side. Red on the other. Their sagum capes brilliant in the afternoon sun. Smoke coiled and wreathed them. Flak burst like black blooms in the sky above them. Mortars launched with a constant thumping rhythm and were shot out of the sky by the autoturrets. Gales of tracer fire scoured back and forth, lancing the crowds of men. Every once in a while a mortar shell would get through and a hole would appear in one battleline or another. Stuber didn’t seem to care which side it was—when the bodies blew apart, he laughed.
The two armies were within a hundred yards of each other now. Their front lines were shielded phalanxes that inched towards each other, gaining ground stride by stride while bursts of bullets clattered back and forth, searching for a chink in the wall of shields. A body would fall, and the fire would concentrate on that hole, trying to kill more of the men behind it, but in seconds another shield would appear to plug up the hole, the dead soldiers trampled under their comrades’ feet.
The two armies had closed the gap.
“Foreplay,” Stuber said. “If the battlefield were a whore’s bed, this is the part when you finally get to stick your dick in.”
Below them, the gunfire intensified.
The mortars silenced, the two sides too close now for the shelling to continue. The autoturrets turned their focus on the front lines. Hammered shields. Created holes.
The space between red and blue was filled with bright muzzle flashes and glowing tracers and billowing smoke. It crescendoed, madly, and then, all at once, there was a break. A release.
The two sides crushed into each other.
“Haha!” Stuber thrust his hips. “Yes!”
Perry thought of the dead, crushed underfoot in the melee, in the stabbing, in the contact shots that would blow them open from the big .458 rounds. He thought about the way the mud would be a slick red-brown as he sloshed through it later, the dusty world watered by thousands of gallons of blood, but it would never be enough to bring the earth back to life.
At the rear of the two armies, further back than even the autoturrets, two armored command modules hovered o
n their turbines above blocks of troops waiting in reserve. On the deck of the modules stood the paladins.
Demigods.
They wore the colors of their side. Watching. Commanding.
Perry had never seen one of them die.
***
“Dogs and ants and spiders!” Hauten yelled at them.
Their buggy trundled its way down the rocky slope towards the carnage below. A warm wind blew crosswise, buffeting in Perry’s ears and making him squint against flying dust.
He could see the redness below. The floor of the valley had become a butcher’s house. Bodies strewn about. Both The Light and The Truth left their dead where they’d fallen.
How many dead in six hours’ worth of fighting?
Perry guesstimated that there were about a thousand bodies below.
Each body containing five liters of blood.
Draining.
Five thousand liters of blood in that valley.
“Dogs and ants and spiders!” Hauten bellowed over the wind and the rumble of the buggy’s tires, and the struggling whine of the electric drive.
The buggy teetered at a steep angle that made Perry’s insides feel watery and he clutched the roll bar nearest him.
“Keep your eyes peeled!” Hauten continued. “Watch what you grab! Watch where you put your feet! Don’t die, because I can’t afford to bury you!”
“What does he mean?”
Perry, still clinging to the rollbar as the buggy now listed to the right on what felt like a forty-five degree slope, looked over his tense shoulder at the girl riding next to him. Her name was Teran. She was new to the outfit. She’d come on with them at their last stop in Junction City. She claimed to have experience. Perry had discovered that that was a lie.
Perry doubted that Hauten had been fooled. Probably he kept her on because he thought he had a chance to fuck her. She was what they called “outfit pretty.” Which was to say, in a town amongst other women, you wouldn’t look twice. But in an outfit full of guys…yeah, you would.
“The crows come first, but they won’t do anything,” Perry answered, his voice wobbling with the shaking of the buggy. “Then the dogs. They smell the blood. They’re mean, but they won’t attack you unless you’re alone. Then the ants come up from underground. Don’t step on their hills—they’ll tear you up. Almost lost a girl a few months back because of that.”
Poor old Hinks.
“What about the spiders?”
“The spiders sometimes make nests in the shell casings. They jump out and catch the flies. But they’ll catch a finger too.”
Teran blinked a few times, facing forward. “Aren’t we supposed to collect the shell casings?”
“Yes.”
She processed this with a frown, and then seemed to hunker down. Her lips flattened into a grimly-determined line. The wind whipped a bit of her sandy hair into her eyes. She pulled it back and tucked it behind her ear, where it promptly came loose again.
The buggy lifted itself over a rock, and then started to tip.
Stuber, who rode on the backend of the vehicle slid to the left side and leaned out as a counterbalance.
Perry clenched down hard, knowing that if the buggy started to tumble, he’d be meat by the bottom. They all would be. Except for Stuber, who’d simply hop off the back.
Why did Hauten have to drive like such an idiot? There were a million other routes off the damn ridge, but of course, he had to take this one, because it was the shortest, and he was in a rush to make a profit.
All four tires touched the ground again.
Perry let the air out of his chest slowly.
A moment later, the ground began to level out.
“Why are you doing this anyways?” Perry asked her.
He half-expected a sharp response from Teran. Most women that he’d seen come onto the outfit knew that they were the outsiders and that Hauten was probably trying to fuck them. Hauten rarely hired a female that wasn’t outfit pretty. They were always a bit defensive, and Perry couldn’t blame them. That didn’t make them very pleasant to be around, but then again, there weren’t too many people on the outfit that were.
But Teran just shrugged. “All the places to make an honest living in Junction City were full up. So I figured I’d get on an outfit. This happened to be the outfit.”
“You gonna ditch us when you find a steady town job?”
It was loud enough with the wind and the tires rumbling, and other peoples’ shouted conversations that Perry wasn’t concerned about being overheard. He didn’t really think Hauten would care anyway. Turnover on the outfit was high amongst greenhorns, and nothing to balk at.
“Depends on how much Hauten pays,” she replied.
“You ever goin’ back to Junction City?”
This time she did look at him. “I dunno, Perry. You ever going back to what you did before?”
Perry stared at her. He didn’t care for the way she said it. Like she knew about Perry’s past. But that was impossible. No one knew. He’d never told anyone.
He quickly changed the subject. “When we get to the bottom, stay with me. Do what I tell you and watch where you put your feet and your hands.”
The smell of blood was palpable now.
Perry could taste it on his tongue.
It was more humid down here in the valley than it had been on the ridge.
Despite it being the Deadmoon, out here where the earth had been scorched, the sun shone hot, no matter the time of year. And when it baked a pond made up of five thousand liters of blood, then it turned the valley into something of a steam room.
“Dogs and ants and spiders!” Hauten reminded them one last time, and then began to slow the buggy. As it rolled to a halt amid a cloud of dust, he looked back at them from the controls. “Work quick and we won’t have to mess with any of that shit, yeah? Alright. Get to work.”
Perry slid out of his seat and over the horizontal bar of metal. The black paint on it was hot to the touch. Flaking off. Rusty underneath. He went to the back, and Teran followed.
“Jax! Tiller!” Hauten called out, exiting his driver’s seat. “Get some guns.”
At the back of the buggy, Stuber had dropped to the ground. His Roq-11 .458 rifle was strapped to his back at the moment. He pulled a long, battered, black case out to the edge of the buggy’s cargo bed. He undid the locks and lifted the cover.
Inside were two shotguns nestled next to each other, and a large, silver pistol.
The Mercy Pistol. Stuber left that where it was, but he grabbed the two shotguns in each of his meaty paws and turned, just as Jax and Tiller trotted up.
Tiller made it a point to shoulder past Perry.
Stuber shoved the shotguns in their hands. Jax ran his sunken, blue eyes over his, charged a round into the chamber, and then shoved his arm through the braided sling. He turned and walked off.
Tiller had the shotgun in both hands and he tried to pull it, but Stuber held on.
Tiller stared up at the ex-legionnaire, confused.
Stuber held the shotgun in his right hand. With his left, he jabbed an index finger like a dart into Tiller’s chest. Tiller let out an offended yelp and glared.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Stuber growled.
“I won’t,” Tiller grunted indignantly. He jerked hard and Stuber let him have the shotgun.
Tiller checked his action, just like Jax had, although the movements were not as sure. Tiller did most of what he did in an attempt to look as experienced as Jax.
When Tiller was satisfied that he had a loaded shotgun, he gave a baleful look over his shoulder at Stuber, and then marched off. He made another attempt to shoulder Perry, but Perry saw it coming and slid out of the way.
“’Scuse me,” Tiller said anyways. Kept walking.
Perry felt that flowing river deep inside of him.
The blur of red.
As much as Perry enjoyed watching Stuber mess with Tiller, it only meant that Tiller was going to be more p
issy than usual today.
“Come on,” Hauten hollered, reaching the back of the buggy. “Buckets. Work quick. Quick, quick, quick. Lezgo lezgo lezgo.”
There was a stack of buckets. They hadn’t made it down to the valley in their original, stowed position. Perry grabbed two from the jumbled pile and gave one to Teran. He started towards the battlefield.
“We’re here for the brass. Don’t try to loot the bodies: some of the legionairres booby-trap themselves before they die. Besides that, we’ve got a delicate understanding with several other scavenging outfits—they let us have the brass, we let them have the armor, or the tech, or whatever their flavor of scrap is. All you gotta do is pick up brass. If it’s severely dented, leave it. If you can see a spider web inside it, leave it—those things are poisonous. Don’t try to move anything that already has an ant mound on it. If you notice anybody that’s still alive, don’t touch them, don’t move them, and don’t talk to them. Just call for Stuber.”
The very first body they reached was still alive.
A man with half his face blown off.
His chestplate rose and fell with hitching breaths. His massive shield lay still attached to his left arm, dented and dinged, the edges chipped from thousands of projectiles that had skimmed by him.
But one had found him. And one was all you needed.
His blue sagum identified him as a legionnaire of The Light.
The dying legionnaire reached a hand towards them. He tried to speak, but couldn’t.
Perry first eyed the man’s right hand to see if he was still armed. Both sides left the bodies, but they were careful to retrieve the weapons. Funny how they did that.
Perry saw no weapons. He turned his head to project his voice back over his shoulder, but he kept his eye on the dying soldier in front of him.
“Stuber!”
The soldier knew what was next. Whatever he wanted, he forgot about it, and his outstretched arm fell to his side. He sat there with his chestplate heaving, his one good eye still looking straight at Perry.
Perry heard the sound of retching behind him.
Lee Harden Series (Book 3): Primal [The Remaining Universe] Page 35