Guilt has a corrosive effect on self-confidence, particularly for warriors. The Obsidians could kill us without losing a man. But they eye the gloom and fury of the volcanoes as if waiting for an army to emerge. That is not all that restrains them. Obsidians delight in war. Not only for the violence, though they love that, but for the truths war flays bare. When the enemy is closing in and you’re on your back foot, that’s when you discover who your brothers and sisters really are. For ten years, wherever the fighting was the thickest, they needed only to look to the sky to find me on my way.
I know the Rain phalera on their armor because I pinned it to each of their chests. I see three who wear the platinum pendant of a rat, eleven with the white fist of the Earth campaign, others still wearing their horse helms with the white horsehair crests of Pegasus Legion.
“Is it working?” Cassius asks. “That all seemed a terrible amount of provocation, Darrow.”
I ignore him. “What have you become, Hafnar…and you, Lothgar…and you, Loka. It is Loka, yes? I see a rat badge. You fought with me in the tunnels of Mars. ‘Big Cousin,’ wasn’t that what the Red children called you? You wore their ribbons in your hair. Now…what. You take little boys and sell them at market? Or do you keep them for yourself? Have you learned the ways of your new master? Will you sell me to him too?”
Instead of facing their own guilt, they embrace denial.
“He cannot be Tyr Morga. He is too short,” one says.
“That’s Sun Industries gear. Eight-bit screws. Maybe it is him.” I know that voice. Sigurd, Skarde’s son. An amiable young man, neither as clever nor as greedy as his father, he adores the arcades and nightclubs of the Republic and was once in love with Thraxa. “That’s Bad Lass in his hands.”
“It’s a Gold trick! Shoot him and let’s take their gear. I want to go back to the Garter and play in the orchards with my new nymphs,” another rumbles.
“Flay him, the cur who takes Ragnar’s name in vain,” a berserker whispers. “Flay him. Flay him. Flay the pretender.” The berserker comes at me in a rush with two armor-boring fists whirring. Sigurd calls for him to stop. He does not.
I bend under the berserker’s left jab and come around his flank where I hack off both his legs at the knee and then take off his head for good measure. My helmet’s sensors warn me. Two more descend from above. One like a hawk, the other a tiger. I shoot straight up past the hawk, split the tiger in half, then come down on the hawk from behind like a needle. My blade goes through his back armor and into his spine and I drive him down and stake him to the crusty ground. To them, it might look supernatural. But they don’t feel the hamstring I just strained. The left one. It aches like a snakebite. I went for drama, not form. I hear Cassius going. “Tsk. Tsk.”
The wind howls as the men die at my feet. No longer interested in testing me, some of the braves make signs of protection. Sigurd, slender for an Obsidian with kudo horns jutting from his helm, rushes forward and bares his throat. Skarde jerks his son back and calls him an idiot. Skarde’s voice is barely above a murmur.
“Tyr Morga. How…”
“Why, Skarde. Not how. I am here to claim what is rightfully mine. The life of Volsung Fá. He killed Sefi. The sister of Ragnar. Your sworn queen, last I checked. I’ve come to declare ashvar upon him. I’ve come to claim the contest of blood that is my right as a son of the Valkyrie Spires.”
“Tyr Morga…that will not happen. You must leave this place. When Fá learns you live, he will offer a mountain of helium for your head. He will not fight you. He will drop atomics on whatever city he believes you inhabit. He will scorch a continent from space to kill you. He does not abide by ashvar.”
“So he is a hypocrite. Is that not how he rose? Claiming to avenge Thalia, a dead wife?
“Here is my head. Come claim your helium, Skarde.”
He wouldn’t dare, not in front of his men. They might even kill him for it. Not all of them, but someone. Maybe in his sleep. Maybe when he’s bedding his new slaves. He knows that, so it’s impossible to tell if he really does have honor when he says, “We will not fight the man who gave Ragnar the razor. No. We are not savage dogs. But you have no place here. The Rim is your enemy too. Let us play with it. We are helping you. Go back to Mars.”
Is that how they justify it to themselves?
Sigurd approaches his father. “Father, how many times have I heard you moan on about Fá? His favoritism of the Ascomanni. His rigid hand? His Bloodguard? Is this not a sign? Is this not what we prayed—”
There’s a fizzing sound and then a triplet of noise—panng, fffttt, bshhhhhhh. Sigurd stumbles. The Obsidian to his left jerks. Lines of blue fire arc across that man’s pulseShield before the shield collapses with a shriek. Something slams into another Brave’s breastplate, punctures it, then detonates. Gore sprays out. Skarde uses his own body as a shield for his son, Sigurd, and slips back into the protection of his men. “Snjeg! Snipers! Testudo!”
I’m so startled Cassius has to tackle me to the ground. Slugs scream overhead.
56
DARROW
Dust Mice
AS THE OBSIDIANS BEGIN making their formations, two specters bound in and leap over the nearest magma river. They are shaped like humans but made of distorted air. GhostCloaks paired with skipboats, and moving fast.
One of the ghosts rushes for one of the main clusters of Obsidian and fires a blinking object onto an Obsidian forming the side of a testudo before bursting away. The second blur hurls an EMP bomb. It pulses, but only two of the suits go down. A hail of sniper fire slams into the testudo. The overlapping shields absorb the worst of it.
“Mice! Mice! Mice!” bellows an Obsidian.
“X testudo! Bastion! Bastion’s by prox! Thorns west!”
Then the first explosive detonates white. The second detonates a heartbeat later and both ghosts disappear in the resultant smoke. They were short, the ghosts. Short enough to be Reds. It’s not Dustwalkers at all.
“The Daughters,” Cassius shouts from atop me.
“No shit!”
A terrible sound rumbles over the plains as a missile strikes one of the Obsidian ships. It crashes fifty paces to my left, crushing a brave. Its missile stores detonate. The shockwaves send Cassius spinning off me. The explosions flash-melt a pack of sulfur ice. I rise to my knees. Yellow fog cloaks the battlefield.
Nearly blind, I find Cassius sprawled on the ground nearby. I help him up. Thermal is useless with all the magma on the periphery of the battle. The fog of war becomes literal, the fighters, indistinct golems and spirits—bizarre, atavistic silhouettes appearing and disappearing at random. A hulking mass rushes for me, and then mysteriously sheds his right leg from the left knee down. Cassius swears in shock as a four-legged shadow scrambles atop the Obsidian, savages him with huge, flashing claws, and then heads our way with a weird, loping gait. Cassius raises his razor.
“Kuon hound,” he warns. I shove him to the side as the beast scampers past on all fours, knives glimmering in either hand and disappears again into the yellow murk. “What the fuck?”
“Sevro,” I reply with a grin. Athena had assets on the moon after all. “Let him hunt.”