I can’t, not at will. Not truly. I won’t be tempted by hubris. Even wounded he’s dangerous and waiting for his chance. But he and I both know eventually I will kill him.
So I back off, and slam my weapons together again to give him time to think.
Clang. Clang. Clang. This time more blades join mine in slamming together. Volk blades.
Sinister. The sound of judgment. “Confess!”
Fá can no longer see out of his helmet. He has no choice but to remove it. It reveals a face flushed and soaked in sweat and even tears. He pants steam into the cool air and leans on his warsaw. The look of fear in his eyes is total. It’s a fear you can only know if there’s ever been a man who wants to kill you more than he wants anything else in all the worlds, a man relentless and without pity, a man you are too tired to stop.
“Atlas au Raa is your master. Confess!” I whip him in the face and leave a bloody gash. “Tell them how he stole the Dustmaker. How he gave you the keys to Ilium. How he helped you master the Ascomanni. Turned you from their hunter into their king. Confess.”
Someone is shouting translations in the Ascomanni tongue. The Ascomanni know the name of Atlas au Raa all too well. They stare in absolute silence at Fá.
Skarde and others beat their axes together. Clang. Clang. Clang.
I wait for Fá to speak.
The circle waits with me. The wind howls around the acropolis. It carries laughter from the other islands. The smell of roasted meat, the iron tang of the slaughtered leviathan, the rich scent of burning wood, and the sighing of the sea. “Shoot him,” Fá whispers. He looks over at his Ascomanni bodyguards. Those with their helmets down look horrified at Fá’s distress. “Shoot him now.”
Before they can obey, an Ascomanni shaman with emeralds embedded in his forehead shouts something I can’t understand. More shamans enter the fighting circle and put their bodies between me and the bodyguards as shields. None of the Ascomanni bodyguards move. The horror on their faces becomes shame. Shame at what Fá has asked them to do, and confusion. He has not yet answered my accusations. His shamans yell at him in their alien tongue.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Enraged, Fá turns to the richly dressed Gorgons. There are only four left. Two lie dead in the circle, where have the others gone? “Brothers. Kill the Gold.”
Only one of the four is stupid enough to try. He raises a pulseFist but Skarde throws an axe end over end to cleave his head in two. The others sense the conservative jarls waiting to kill them should they dare intervene.
“You are blessed by the Allfather. Kill him yourself, Great Fá,” Skarde calls.
Fá just waits, heaving for air, smiling at me. A scream comes from atop the acropolis. I hear metal on metal and the sound of men dying. A howl goes up. Sevro. He slipped away during the fight to search for snipers and the like. Cassius hasn’t. He monitors the circle for threats.
Fá’s smile dies in the wake of Sevro’s howl. “Fergaras…no…” He tears his eyes from the top of the acropolis to glare out at the Volk jarls. “Oathbreakers! Sheep! Before me you were slaves to him!” He raves at the Ascomanni to attack me. “Before me you were worms! Half a millennia squelching under the Raa boot. I have given you their riches! Their worldly delights! If not for me, you’d be as I found you. Maggots digging tunnels in dead stone.”
“Stone breathes too,” I tell him.
He looks at me as if I’m mad.
“Confess!” Skarde calls. More pick up the call.
Lyria watches from behind Volga, but the big woman only has eyes for Fá. She glares at him until his panicked gaze lands upon her. When their eyes meet, Volga turns her back, ushering Lyria away. In my own periphery, I see Cassius move off to shadow them.
Watching Volga turn her back on him sends Fá into a rage. He screams something primal to the sky, and then shudders with an almost tragic fury.
I realize only too late: his armor must have just injected him with stims. When he decides to move, he moves fast as a snake. He hefts his warsaw, but rushes away from me after Volga. A shot from Sevro atop the acropolis slams into his back. He stumbles but only picks up speed. Lyria steps in front of Volga. The jarls around them shrink away from the onrushing giant and his whirling blade. Then Cassius hits Fá’s flank. Fá saw him coming at the last moment, and bats his razor to the side. They tumble down. The warsaw flies from Fá’s grip and falls amongst several of Skarde’s jarls. It chews them apart. Lyria rushes for the warsaw as it rattles amongst the ruins of bodies and tries to lift it to strike at the downed warlord.
It’s too heavy.
One of the jarls kicks her off and then loses his head to Sevro’s sniper fire. The three remaining Gorgons pull razors and shimmer as their pulseShields activate. As a trio, they rush to help Fá from the ground and fend off his attackers. More Fá loyalists leap at Skarde. He’s defended by the conservative jarls and ushered away.
It’s bedlam—my old friend.
Lyria is about to be trampled between the two groups, when Volga swoops in, picks her up and leaps into the air, gravBoots whining. I didn’t even see her put them on. I feel Cassius breathing a sigh of relief as Lyria is carried away from the field of battle.
The Truffle Pig did well. I chide myself for having doubted her.
With his warsaw finally reclaimed, Fá gains his feet amidst the carnage his three Gorgons have made about him. And what carnage! The trio are glorious butchers—dauntless and blood-spattered—who’ve dissuaded even the bravest jarls from making an attempt on Fá’s life. Roaring, they dare any and all to come forward and die on their stained blades. My eyes lock on those of the old warlord, and he knows no matter how blessed by the gods of battle his bodyguards may be, they will not stand against me should I charge. Not today.
I don’t charge. Instead, I smile and bash my blades together.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
“Confess,” I taunt.
Instead, Fá flees.
Fá’s gravBoots whine and he bursts into the sky, heading south toward the Pandora. The three surviving Gorgons follow behind. The rest of Fá’s loyalists did not wear their gravBoots to the feast. Abandoned by their king, they are set upon by Skarde and the other jarls. Some fight back nobly. Some beg for mercy only to be hacked apart. Others escape into the garden to be pursued and killed amongst the trees.
I cannot stop this bloodshed, so I do not try.
The Ascomanni watch Fá shrink in the sky. They have not yet recovered from their stupor. Many have fallen to their knees. They believed their Fá a messiah. Invincible. Yet he fled before my blade, my accusations. He fled because he was afraid to die. Their religion crumbles before their eyes.
I stalk toward them, lift Pyrphoros, beat my chest, and howl at them in challenge. “You have seen your king bleed. You have seen him run. Come, witness him confess.”
As a shaman translates, I feel a hand on my low back and know it’s Cassius. “You used your boots.”
“Sorry.”
“No. That was…What was that?”
Skarde stumbles to his feet, cradling a bloody left arm. He points after Fá and shouts to me. “Tyr Morga! If he makes it to the Pandora he will nuke this entire island!”