“The Blood Eagle,” the same one growls.
“That too.”
“Long battles in armor where you have to shit but can’t because of the crust that—”
Valdir turns on the man. “Aimless babble.”
The growling one growls. “Eggplant.”
Valdir looks over at me. “He was hit very hard.”
The growling one has a pug face and is quite stout. He jumps and grabs an orange. He doesn’t even peel it before taking a bite with chrome teeth. “Oranges.” He throws it over his shoulder.
“That’s a tangerine, you idiot,” Holiday says.
“Do they not mourn their brothers?” I ask Valdir.
“Do not yours?” He nods at Glaucus who shares a joke with another Lion. My Lions are exhausted and somber about their dead, but they share smiles and private words as they help each other walk. “Sefi once told me fruit is never sweeter than after you’ve eaten shit.” He peels a tangerine and eats it before spitting it out. “Not ripe yet.” He considers his braves. “They will mourn later. For now it is enough they know their brothers would smile to see them living. So they smile for their brothers, for they had a good death. Later they will miss them. Later they will mourn.”
I feel strangely comforted by his words.
An armored man with a wolfcloak lands in front of me as we exit the tangerine grove. It’s Screwface. Fresh Lionguards set down behind him. Medici unload from a skiff. I laugh seeing Screw. I put him in the Hollows fallback command center to keep him from the front. It takes time to get used to bionic limbs. He limps toward me with a huge smile that inverts when he sees the state of us all. “My Sovereign, we thought you were trapped. When the Nucleus didn’t arrive…”
“Rath and Votum had us. Why did they—”
“Victra. She dropped Pegasus behind their lines.”
I stare at him. “How…she couldn’t have known where I was.”
“She was already on the way. She knew she needed to stop their momentum. To save the moon,” he says. “I relayed your message to her personally. Told her you needed help.”
“If they doubled back, the counterattack won’t reach her in time,” I say.
“No. She’s on her own and advise we recall the counterattack as soon as possible. She told me to tell you something.” He smiles. “Do not worry for her. Pity them.”
It is impossible not to grin at Victra’s bravado. “The fleet?” I ask.
“It’s not good, but Niobe and Char are putting up one hell of a fight. I’ll take you to the command center.” He looks warily at Valdir.
“Hello, Sky Bastard. Long time. Valdir the Shorn these days, eh?”
“Who are you?”
“Screwface.” He points at his face. “Deep op.”
“Ah.”
Screw looks questioningly at me. I look at Valdir. “There’s no way off the moon. You can either fight or—” Valdir stares hard at me.
“I’ll take him and the rest, please,” Screw says like he’s at an auction. “Howler Den is empty these days.”
“I will not be ashamed to fight under that standard,” Valdir says to me.
Screw sniffs him. “Probably go to the medici first. If anything kills you, it’ll be an infection.”
I look back at my Lions before I go. They are swarmed with medici.
“Thank you. We stayed too long to manage the retreat, but every life we lost in our escape saved ten thousand,” I say to them and touch my chest. “Hic sunt leones indeed.”
My fresh Lions salute the ragged survivors. I find it oddly stirring when Holiday, Glaucus, and the survivors salute back. Then the fresh Lions fall in behind me and I head for the command center with Screw.
30
LYSANDER
Edge of Glory
“I TOLD THEM YOU’D BE here before I finished,” Diomedes says as I approach.
Diomedes sits on a fallen advertisement in the broken cityscape of Sector Six eating an apple. His Dustwalkers lounge around him drinking honey and combing their long hair like Spartans. “We agreed on a time, did we not?”
“We did. Our compliments.” He nods to the Praetorians behind me. Markus, Drusilla, and Demetrius do not nod back. Exhausted from our push through Sector Seven and then the brutal assault on the bulwarks of Sector Six they’re in no mood for pleasantries, especially not with a Raa. Diomedes tosses me the apple. Almost half of it is eaten. “The territory we’ve taken. But can we hold it down?” he asks. “They’re worried about the worm in Sector One.”
I look up to see Dustwalkers lounging all the way up to the dome of the bazaar. There must be several hundred. His Grays are regrouping nearby for our joint push west. I don’t see any Obsidians.
“Victra is being dealt with by Ajax,” I say and take the next bite of the apple. “Horatia is continuing her push. Votum men are still flowing in. Bellona will come behind them. The fleet battle could be going better, but our job was the moon. We are on the edge of glory. If we can take two more sectors in the next hour, the cascade will be irreversible and we’ll have the Hollows surrounded.”
He nods. “If.” He watches me without emotion for a few long moments.
Rhone pings my com. “Dominus, we have a report from Ajax.”
I smile at Diomedes and take another bite of the apple. “Go.”
Rhone pauses. “You’ll want to hear this in person.”
The apple sticks in my throat, and I cough. “Excuse me.”
Diomedes stands and ties up his hair. “I will come with. We bit the apple too.”
* * *
—
The forward command tank’s interior fades away as I watch the fight unfold in the gloomy theater of industrial plants where Victra met Cicero’s vanguard. At a distance, nothing of note can be deciphered. The plants are vast, the knights and riflemen small. If anyone started the day with shining armor, it is either black or gray now. The fighting swirls through tank yards, smelters, Drachenjäger plants, up to the air, and even within the netherworld of pipes and shafts that comprise the top of the level. A thousand tiny battles, each with their own little story.
I only care about one.
“It was a trap,” Rhone says. “Cicero chose to stand and fight instead of being picked apart trying to escape. He was holding his own. Doing a fine job considering the quality he was facing. He thought Victra was with her main force. Her armor was, at least. Ajax was coordinating with Cicero for a strike on Victra. He came down a hauler shaft about a kilometer from the battle. The enemy must’ve had scouts out. Or drones. Either way, they knew he was coming and how, long enough for Victra and another knight to be waiting for him when he exited the shaft. They had Obsidians with them. From what we understand, Ajax’s party gave a good acquitting of themselves. But they were outnumbered. Three to one.”
My mouth is dry. “And Ajax. How did he die?” Rhone hesitates and spares Diomedes a look. “I sent him. I should see. Show me.”
Rhone shifts to a grainy visual. “This footage we have isn’t much. It came from one of Cicero’s drones. He was wondering where Ajax was.”
An assembly area for Drachenjäger rolls past. Bodies come into view. They’re hardly recognizable as men. Others hunch over them. I tell Rhone to zoom in. The image degrades a little. The bodies are the new Golds Ajax took with him. The Obsidians are scalping them. The drone carries on. Obsidian corpses litter the ground now. Three figures stagger. At first it seems like they are drunk. I zoom in further. Ajax is hunched between Victra and another assailant. I force myself to watch. There’s something dispassionate about the way they whittle Ajax down. Like watching animals kill each other in nature when the predator has their teeth in and both animals are just laying on the ground. There may be bouts of struggle yet to come, but they both know it’s only a matter of time, and they have time. When it ends, it is sudden. Ajax manages to defend himself from the male assailant, but not Victra. He goes down, and she hacks him apart. Then she cuts off his head, stands on his body, beats her chest, and roars.