“Where’d he come from? Where’s the Archi?”
“Dunno. We need to end this fast. Find Skarde and put him down. Stick with me.”
Together we hunt through the fog. Ghosts flicker. Obsidians leap like gods. One soars into flight and then disappears in a flash that refracts in the fog—already freezing back into crystalline form—to make tears of white fire as his ruins rain down.
“Skarde, five o’clock,” I tell Cassius. A huge, horn-crowned mass runs at top speed after an escaping ghost. Skarde lands and his spear penetrates the ghost to pin it to the ground. He tears at the ghost, rips off its helmet, and the ghostCloak guise ripples away to show a screaming Red woman impaled on his spear. Skarde hurls her into the magma flow and then swings a heavy fist at nothing. His punch summons a spray of blood and then a corpse from the ether. Sulfur crystals spew back as the ghost’s skipBoots fire against the ground, trying to escape even though their wearer is already dead.
There is no escape for our would-be-rescuers.
That’s the problem with getting the undivided attention of Obsidian air cav. They can take a punch, and once their teeth are in—whether on the ground or in the sky—they don’t let go. They chew until you wish you never had the idea to test them at all.
For the first minute the Daughters had the upper hand. After that the tide started to turn, and turn bad. But I see our opportunity as Skarde pulls his spear from another corpse and tosses the corpse into the magma river. He’s alone. Three braves are rushing to bring him back into their formation. I claim Skarde, and give Cassius the braves. I goose my boots and shoot toward Skarde like a ballista bolt. Skarde’s battle sense is uncanny. Somehow he sees me coming. Backlit by the pulsing red river, he fires at me as I fly at him. Energy crackles across my shield, but the shield holds.
I invert, flying with my back to the ground just under his spear thrust to hack into the back of his thigh. My razor shears through the metal and finds flesh. I hard stop and pivot from flying back to standing on my feet. G’s pound me, but I’m behind Skarde. With all my strength, I drive my razor into the power unit that lies beneath the armor of his lower back and twist. Sparks spew. The armor dies with a shriek and Skarde seizes as if petrified by Medusa herself.
I kick him but he doesn’t go to his knees. Then Sevro appears from nowhere and tackles his legs out. Skarde falls. Sevro wrests the spear from his hand and runs off into the fray. I grab both of the ram horns on Skarde’s helmet. Powered by the strength of my armor, I haul the giant into the air to dangle him over the magma river. With Cassius coming to guard my back, I max out the volume on my external speakers, linking it with Sevro’s armor and Cassius’s. Even I am shocked by the magnitude of sound produced by our triumvirate.
A voice made of thunder rumbles over the battlefield.
“THIS IS REAPER. I HAVE YOUR JARL. I HAVE SKARDE. YIELD.”
No one listens, not even with Skarde dangling beneath me. The battle is a mess, spread out over a kilometer now. It does not end just because I want it to. Obsidians peer out at me from their testudos, or down from the sky. Ghosts skip in a dozen directions. Bodies lay rent and broken. Pieces too. A leg. A head. A torso. The killing does not stop. It cannot. No one can afford not to fire. I am reminded again why I hate war. I shout and shout but even the voice of a god sponsored by Sun Industries is powerless to stop the killing.
It’s a smaller voice that brings hope to end the violence—a smaller voice, and a ship that evens the odds. Lyria’s words crackle through static. I look to the sky. “There’s my girl!” Cassius shouts. I don’t know if he means Lyria or his ship.
The Archimedes races in with its guns blazing. Lyria’s flying is sloppy, but the Archimedes is more powerful than the assault shuttles. Whoever is on the guns is deadly accurate. One of the enemy shuttles dies in a ball of fire. It has a sobering effect on the Obsidians, and they finally start noticing that I have their war chief by his horns over the river. I call for Lyria to hold fire when I see Sigurd leading his father’s men in a withdrawal to the other side of the river under the protection of their remaining ships. The Archimedes lowers to protect the Daughters, who form up on Sevro. He flies toward me still holding Skarde’s spear. Cassius flies the other way to help the civilians. They actually nod at one another.
Sevro pokes Skarde’s armored belly with it as he comes to a midair stop.
“Move. You’re blocking the way,” I snarl. “He’s heavy.” I drop Skarde on our side of the river. Sevro lands on top of the man’s depowered armor to be eye to eye with me. “Took your time,” I say to him.
He grunts. “I was on mission. Archi got tangled with two Volk ships near Sungrave while picking us up. Daughters came to help, but their ship went down. Big mess. All thanks to Bellona.”
“They don’t have a ship?”
“I just said it’s down.”
“Then get their wounded aboard the Archi. Help Cassius with the civilians and children.”
Sevro looks at the Obsidians gathering around Sigurd on the opposite bank of the river. “We should kill them all.”
“We can’t. Literally, and they need to take a message back to the Volk from me. Civilians. Wounded. Go.”
With a mutter, he leaves me alone with the Obsidians. Grunting I bear Skarde to the other bank and drop his mass in front of his son and braves. Just over sixty of them remain alive. I wish I could see their eyes instead of their battered helmets. I bury my contempt. They’ll be recording me with their cams. What I say here will travel through the main army like wildfire.
I prod Skarde with my toe. “He’s alive and still has a little air yet in his helmet.” I sigh. “Brothers, I did not come here to spill your blood. But look at yourselves. What would Ragnar think? What have you become? Look around you. Is this right? Is this the home you were promised, by Ragnar, by Sefi? Where are the leaning godTrees and the summer seas? Where are the vineyards and marble cities that sparkle in the autumn dawn? Where are the children who sing your names and shower you in spring flowers? You have lost them in this…your winter of violence. You have lost yourselves.
“I did not come to judge you. I did not come to punish you. I came to remind you of the oaths you took! It is brothers who find us when we are lost. Brothers who guide us home to the hearth and halls of our mothers and fathers. Go now and tell the warbands what you have seen here. Tell them Tyr Morga has come to challenge Volsung Fá to single combat. Tell them Tyr Morga has come to lead you home as Ragnar would have wanted. But most of all, tell Fá to expect me.”
I head away from them, knowing I’ve just opened Pandora’s box, but enough is enough from this Obsidian fraud.
By the time I make it into the cargo bay of the Archi it is crammed full of Pink children along with Green architects. The Daughters are strewn along the starboard side with their casualties. The air thick with the screams of the wounded and the crying of children—and all this in victory. I head for the cockpit and hear Lyria’s anxiety before I get there. Three signatures approach on our scanners. “Boss, we gotta go, we gotta go,” she says. “Big ships en route. Big ships.”