“Cassius, summon the Raa and the Owls.” I see the heart-seeker gauntlet lying on the ground, snatch it up, and toss it to Cassius to carry. Sevro howls as he flies past overhead, already after Fá. Cassius and I lift off and fall in on his flanks.
74
DARROW
The Hunt
“GOT TWO OF THE GORGONS atop the acropolis. But you know, if Diomedes left us hanging out to dry, we’re well and truly slagged,” Sevro says. “You know that, right?”
I don’t answer. There is no point. My bloodlust is on, and what will be will be.
Wind whistles through a crack in my helmet as we eat into Fá’s lead. He was a speck in the sky before I set off. As he passes over a complex of blue-painted domes on the edge of the island, he is now large as a coin. Our boots are faster, but I’m not sure we’ll catch him before he reaches the Pandora. That’s fine. If Diomedes plays his part, we shouldn’t have to.
If.
The Pandora hangs low over the sea only a few clicks out from the islands. It is the only warship within the security cordon. If he lands and cocoons himself within that fortress, it will take an army to pry him out. He will glass the witnesses of our fight. I will lose and all the people in the Deep will die.
If.
Black thoughts race through my mind. Was I a fool to trust Diomedes? Athena? Were the submarines not as stealthy as the Kalibar promised? Were they spotted after all? Are my allies dead on the bottom of the sea?
I laugh at my spiraling brain.
“Boss, do we break off pursuit?” Sevro asks.
In reply, I accelerate past him to take point. A moment later a pupil of light winks along the shadowy topography of the Pandora’s green hull. Sevro, Cassius, and I break in separate directions as a particle beam meant for us cleaves through the gloom.
“Boss?” Sevro asks as we come back together.
Just over a kilometer separates Fá from his onrushing reinforcements. Already the air fills with toroids of superheated plasma. Rail slugs scream toward Sevro and me, leaving behind blue-tinged contrails. We weave through the incoming fire but the fusillade does not last long.
Diomedes has come as he said he would, and so has Athena.
From a distance, their arrival is a peaceful sight, one that could almost be authored by nature herself. A flight of pods fired from deep-sea submarines slips up from the water. Unnoticed, they blossom to disperse their payloads. Hundreds of tiny pollen-like specks float outward. Only when the specks form up together and streak toward Fá’s reinforcements do they hint at the menace they bring.
Manmade thunder peals as Diomedes, three-dozen crack Peerless Golds of Europa, and several hundred Black Owls in mech-suits and power armor hit Fá’s reinforcements from beneath.
The chaos is immediate. A dogfight swirls to block Fá’s path back to the Pandora. Fá still intends to push through it. Then Diomedes and four Golds peel off the dogfight and race directly toward Fá. When he sees them coming, Fá abandons his route back to his ship and swerves away toward the nearest island to seek refuge amongst the tribe feasting there. To buy himself time, he leaves behind the three Gorgons who accompanied him on his flight from the duel.
Diomedes and his four Golds streak for the Gorgons.
Sevro, Cassius, and I follow Fá.
We push our gravBoots for all they’re worth, closing to within twenty meters by the time Fá crosses over the seawall of the island. We pass low enough to see the expressions of confusion on the faces of two Ascomanni pissing off the edge of the wall as they stare at the nascent firefight in the distance. They nearly topple over as we rocket past.
Libraries and shrines blur beneath. Fá lowers altitude, weaving through blackstone buildings to try and shake us, heading for a plateau aglow with fires and striated with ranks of long tables. The feast here is in full swing, and the din tremendous. Bonfires glow and crackle. Slaves ferry huge platters of meat and flagons of drink to their violent masters. The Ascomanni gorge themselves under totems to their tribe and subtribe, many sitting at long tables, others sprawled out in the parklands beneath the great statue to Hera.
I fall upon Fá just as he reaches the feast. We crash down onto a table. Wood splinters. Wine spills. Meat cascades around us as we beat at one another. His elbow slams into my head and I lose my grip. He stumbles away, desperate to be free of me. I gain my feet. Tattooed faces stare at us. Every way I turn—coarse black hair, glittering gems, and snarling mouths. Fá stumbles from the wreckage and roars: “Assassins! Assassins! Defend your king!”
The Ascomanni gape. Two of the least drunk uncoil their long bodies, grab their spears, and come for me. But they are unsteady, unprepared, and I am the breath of stone. I flow through them instead of chewing into them. I turn a spear thrust up with Pyrphoros and disembowel the brave with Bad Lass as I pass. The second I dodge and disarm to leave for Sevro or Cassius. Three more try to arrest my progress. I weave through them without slowing down to kill. My friends follow behind, guarding my back.
Fá leaps to another part of the feast. I follow and land on a table hard enough to split the wood. Ascomanni fall back from me. I crash into Fá and send him stumbling through a bonfire. Flaming logs roll in every direction.
“Confess!” I roar. “You are a pet to a Gold! You are the hand of Atlas au Raa!”
Fá shoves men in my path to use as human shields, hoping to tangle my blades in their bodies. It almost works. With Pyrphoros buried in the chest of one, I take a huge blow from his warsaw to my left shoulder that knocks me sideways and into the table and a mess of bodies. Fá levers down with all his strength, trying to press his warsaw through my armor. The saw gnaws through Ascomanni in the way, through my armor, and into the flesh of my left triceps before I slide underneath and battle him back.
We smash through great spits of meat and over drunken braves, like lions fighting in the midst of startled oxen. Fá knows he can’t win, not even fueled by stims, so he pushes a giant Ascomanni into my path, roars a laugh of triumph, and takes off into the sky.
The Ascomanni is as tall as Fá and freakish with muscle and scars. An unbound mane of black hair falls to his low back. He is unarmored, like the rest, but he carries a terrible spear and shield with a massive snake skull surmounted on the front.
The Ascomanni chant the warrior’s name. “Ur! Ur!”
Ur’s eyes flick to the slingBlade shape of Pyrphoros. To the blue paint and blood ruins glazed on my armor. “Ashvar?” he asks in a thick accent.
I nod. He glances after Fá, snorts, and sits back down at the table where he brushes aside a disembodied limb and returns to his drinking. I return to the air and leave the second island in my wake.
Jarls and other spectators with gravBoots are following us now to watch. It is a spectacle, our hunt. They make a trail of laughter and toasts across the sky. The Ascomanni come too, just as interested in the great bloodsport. On troop barges and gravskiffs and air sleds, they toss out coarse jests.
I catch Fá just as he reaches the next island of the archipelago. The island of Artemis is larger than that of Hera and shaped like a crescent, with high cliff walls and an interior dominated by a statue to the goddess Artemis. The statue stands flanked by woodland effigies half a kilometer in height. Drawn by the fight around the Pandora, braves have left their tables to gather on the edge of the island’s cliffs. Fá lands amongst them and has only a few moments to exhort them to attack me before Sevro and I send him fleeing to the heart of the island. We catch him there over the feast around Artemis’s feet.