Clang. Clang. Clang.
Fá flinches at the sound, as if he had forgotten I was there. Slowly, he turns. The spirit is gone from the doom-struck man. “What do you want from me?” he asks. His voice warbles. “Why won’t you just leave me alone? What do you want?”
Our audience has not caught up, but the wind carries their demand.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
“I have helium. Weapons. Shipssss.” His voice warbles again. Sparks spurt from his metal throat. He digs at something there with his sharp fingers and discards it. “Hundreds of thousands of lowColors, Darrow!” His voice no longer carries the same baritone as Ragnar’s. It is softer, more intelligent, and more afraid. “A million innocents on the Ascomanni ships. In the Garter, more! I will free them. I will give you back your precious Volk killing machine. Take them. Good riddance. I will leave Europa.” He waits for me to reply. I don’t. “Tell me what you want!”
Again, the wind makes its demand.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
His eyes creep up. I turn to see the island’s braves gathering on the cliffs. The laughter drifts in the wind as the throng in the air arrives, banging their axes on their boots or their skiffs. Hundreds. Thousands. “Volga spotted. And Lyria. Three o’clock,” Cassius says. “Diomedes thirty seconds.” Volga curves around a giant slate of rock with the mad little Red riding on her back. As the two set down, I look back to Fá.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
“Then you will let me leave?” he asks.
I see him clearly now. Beneath the mountain of the man lies a venal, quaking spirit. A greedy little man. Or am I choosing to see him as small, to ease the dread in knowing there are servants of the enemy with the sort of conviction his mission would take? I doubt it is his fault that Atlas made Fá his tool. Fá went along with the worlds, as do most of us. Had he been born one generation later, who knows what side he’d be on.
Diomedes coasts in low to the water. He hesitates when he sees the audience I’ve gathered behind me, but settles down beside Cassius to watch.
“Answer me, Darrow! If I confess, you will let me leave?” Fá asks.
“I give you my word. Confess your crimes and I will not kill you.”
The Obsidians watch in silence, a silence made all the deeper when several hundred Ascomanni arrive. The wind whooshes against their strange armor. The sea sighs. Fá looks down at the blood around his feet. It has started to draw crabs from the tide pools of the headland.
“Fine. Fine. Atlas is my master,” he says. “Are you satisfied?”
Clang. Clang. Clang. From the Volk above.
“Shut up!” He shouts like a man pestered by wasps. “I…was born Vagnar Hefga of the Valkyrie Spires. As I claim. To the gens Grimmus stables. I was a slaveknight and rewarded. I enjoyed the life of a gladiator and all its attendant spoils. It came with a price and expiration date. I died. Then I began my second service. I served in cohors nihil under the greatest mind of his generation, Atlas au Raa. A man who knows duty, as do none of you. I was banished along with him to exterminate the Ascomanni vermin. We tried for years. After Luna fell, Atlas raised me amongst the Ascomanni to unite them to use against the Dominion and the Rising. To remind the traitors that beyond the Society lies only the abyss, only chaos.”
“And to give the Rim a savior from the Core,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “Atalantia. My reign was to last three years, then Atalantia would sail to bring order to these spheres. Without order, chaos rushes in. Kill me. Find out.” He grins at the Volk and the Ascomanni. “They will eat each other unless you claim the throne, Tyr Morga. Unless you prove me right—you came to get your axe back. Go on, Gold. They were designed to be used. An ouroboros. Unless you feed them enemies, they are a serpent eating their own tail.”
He chuckles and spits blood.
“Where is Atlas?” I ask.
He grunts. “You asked me to confess. Not give up my brother.”
“Atlas thinks of you as a loyal dog, at best. Where is he?”
“You do not know him. That is why you cannot fight him.”
“Where is he?”
“But he knows you. He knows all of you.”
“Where?” I shout.
He does not reply. His eyes change, like he knows now whatever vision he had of his future is no longer in reach. He says farewell to it with a heavy sigh and a small smile. He lets go of his warsaw. It clangs against the ground.
“Where is Atlas?” he asks and pats his chest over his heart. “Here. There.” He nods to me then up at the audience. “In all our hearts. He may be mortal, but his work is not. My Gorgon brothers you butchered were patriots, Darrow. Their sacrifice will live on in the works of our brother, our teacher, our Allfather. Before only him, I kneel.” He closes his eyes and goes to his knees. He no longer speaks to me. “Without darkness, there could not be light. Forgive me, brother, for seeking a little more for myself before the end.”
He unfastens his armor. His huge body is rent and dark with blood. The armor clangs to the ground a piece at a time. From the smile on his face, I know he’s sown poison in his truths.
“Did you kill the Raa in their family vestibule?” Diomedes asks. “The children, was it you?”
Cassius stays Diomedes with a hand on his chest. We had agreed beforehand: Fá is the Volk’s to kill.
Fá does not answer anyway.
Diomedes relents and Cassius throws me the heatseeker gauntlet he carried from the isle of Zeus. It is heavy with sharp fingers. I walk toward Fá and see Skarde floating above, surrounded by jarls. No doubt already spreading dissent against my pending reign. “You saw how he used my boy, my Sigurd,” he will say. “You saw how he let him die.”
“He wants the throne. I told you!” Fá calls. “Did I kill your son, Darrow? Skarde, should not you deliver the blow? Avenge Sigurd?”
The Volk hand that kills a king or queen takes the crown. That is often the Obsidians’ way.
If I take Fá’s life, I am king. If Skarde takes it, then he is. Both are a problem.
Skarde will not cross me. Not today. None will. If I kill Fá, the Obsidians will cheer. They will kneel. They will hail me as king. They will follow me to Mars and be my axe. But their actions speak for the thoughts they will not voice. Already some of them are floating to join the orbit of the strongest who are not me.
This is the problem. The Obsidians’ is a cult of silence that follows strength. That silence is called honor, but it is really fear. The seeds of resentment sown here will grow to yield more destruction. The Obsidians will rebel again or, when I die, start the cycle all over. I cannot decide their fate either by sitting on the throne myself or installing a puppet. Yet if I leave the throne empty, they will destroy each other in their rush to fill it.
Nothing will change. So I will try to get them to tread the thin line between chaos and tyranny: that fragile experiment we call demokracy. Not now, though. First, Fá must die. And then I must give my candidate a chance.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I say to Fá. “That’s up to her.” I look over at Volga and motion her to join me. The Volk jarls roar in protest, especially Skarde. I raise my blade for silence, and call out. “A servant of the Fear Knight cannot be King of the Volk, can he?” They quiet. They see what I’m doing. If Fá is not really their king, I am declaring his murder will not serve as a coronation for their new monarch.