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“Worry is a spiral with death at its center, Cassius,” I reply.
I am not as confident as I pretend to be, but how can you lead if you cannot walk—and how can you walk if you fear every step?
My worries might be founded in uncomfortable truths, but they are—according to Aurae—born of an idle mind and an idle body.
Virginia has given me a mission: come back with strength enough for one last chance to win this war. I am now an arrow shot by her bow.
“Darrow of Lykos. You have a beard!” “Matteo,” I say in relief. “You’re not surprised to see me.” “No, but always delighted.”
“How are you?” “Desperate. But you know that.” “Revenants usually are. The dead never come back without a reason.”
I grieve for Alexandar. I know you took him on as a debt to Lorn and grew to love him, despite seeing so much of yourself in him. He was the best Gold of his generation, but he set to make himself in your image, a Red’s, and he did.
“I grieve for Sevro the most—” “Bad form,” Sevro mutters. “Mourning for what ain’t dead, yet.”
You know, I once overheard Magnus au Grimmus tell your old companion Roque that losing an army will either make a man a philosopher or a suicide. Glad you chose differently than Fabii.”
“Listen, Darrow. It’s not that I don’t believe in you anymore. I asked you to move mountains, and you did. I asked you to wage a war on heaven, and you have. Shit, dead gods are in your wake, my boys.
“I was born too late to explore the seas, and I am too wicked to explore heaven, so the stars will have to do.
“Thirty-six days. Seventy-eight by the time we’re back.” Tears glisten in his eyes. “You saw us coming. You could have sent a message.” His voice catches. “You two ain’t fathers. Those ain’t your children. You’re cowards playing gods. Rot out there. Rot and die, Golds.”
“There was a moment where we could win, but we let it slip through our fingers. That moment is gone.” “Have I ever given you business advice?” I ask with a smile. “Then do me a favor, don’t advise me on war.”
“This is the path that is available to me. Your father left it for you. But we’re brothers, so in a way it’s my inheritance too.”
Darrow is not the hugest man I’ve ever met, but he is the only man I’ve ever met who makes his own gravity.
It was easier to criticize him from afar. Up close, seeing his body is enough to make me realize the distance between our experiences. What type of enemies must a man fight to need to be built like a war machine and still get so many scars?
All the anger I’ve had for him over the years dissolves in the reality of his existence. I wouldn’t want to be in an Iron Rain. I wouldn’t want to fight a Peerless Scarred. And he’s fought them all.
“It’s because I’m a Red, ain’t it?” His eyes flash with anger, and then soften just as suddenly. His voice softens too. “Lyria, I know the spirit of Reds. I know it well enough to know a Red’s spirit is not in her armor or her size or her experience.”
“What about scylla and leviathans?” Cassius asks. “Whatever are you prattling on about sea beasts for?” Quick asks. “Well, knowing Darrow, we’ll crash on Europa and I’ll have to fend off those beasties with an oar,” Cassius says.
He extends a hand to Quicksilver. “Prime luck out there beyond the System, Sun. If you find a planet of guileless nymphs, do send word.”
He folds both of his hands over mine. “It is a noble thing to keep the beasts from the door. Whatever people say, they could not say it if you didn’t.”
But now, seeing them, their scars, their machinelike limbs, the brooding danger in their eyes, well that burnt that illusion away like a welding torch over hair. These are serious people. Dangerous, serious people. They’d have to be to stand a chance at the game they play.
I spin, wheeling my arms, suspended in the air. A dark shape runs full tilt into the galley. A demonic smile flashes on a crazed face that stretches as it screams at me. Ham in my hand, upside down, I yelp as Sevro rushes me and envelopes me in a sack.
“What do you think you are doing?” he asks. “I told you that I can help.” “Well, she pissed on Sevro and lived,” Cassius manages between fits of laughter.
When I come out the flush, Aurae is waiting for me. I cover my tits and nethers, and jump back into the flush. “It’s only flesh,” she calls and tosses a towel in to me. “Easy to say when yours looks like that,” I call back.
You have a callsign already?” “Red Banshee,” I say. “It’s rude to start a friendship with lies,” he replies. “What is it really? You can be honest with me.” I grimace. “Truffle Pig.” “Oh dear.” A smile creeps across his face. “You really shouldn’t have told me that.”
“The Reaper was not the more nightmarish of the pair?” “No. Unlike Darrow, Sevro has no qualms about murdering children,” I say. “I have not met the Goblin of Mars yet.” He sounds disappointed. “When and if you do, I advise you to kill him fast—and to make sure he’s dead.”
I close my eyes and exhale forcefully through my nose. Why is nothing easy? Why can’t I just go straight back to my love? My son?
“Are we really taking our marching orders from your ad hoc interpretations of some dusty-ass tome?” “Your father’s dusty-ass tome,” I say. “And how’d that go for him?” he asks, and looks at Cassius. “Oh. Right.”
“Honor, dipshit. The Rim and Cassius have something in common. They’re new to this war. They don’t know what we know. Honor, if it ever existed, was the first casualty.”
Atlas, the object of so much fear, speculation, and dread that he can be believed to be on every world at once, is slumped on a stool, thin, tired, and mutilated.
Cassius feints a left hook, and puts a significant amount of his powerful frame into a line-drive of a right jab. Powerful or not, the jab is affected by the gin he’s had. Sevro is dead sober and spent his whole life baiting bigger men into unwise confrontations.
Sevro Barca?” I ask. “Hades. He’s the stage on which the Goblin sometimes comes out for a guest appearance. He’s the man who made the Howlers. He’s the one who keeps the Reaper in check.
There is no better scout in my army than Sevro save a few of Valdir’s lads, but we are warmlanders, softworlders, and I feel even Sevro’s fear.
auxiliaries in gray and blue livery and then the citizenry in the simple
I imagined a stoic warrior beneath the helmet. Instead I see a man whose world is in tatters and his home filled with ghosts.
There’s something, or someone, behind this warlord. That is always the enemy you must fear the most. The unseen one who strikes from the shadows.”
Bellona wants to spend his life for Moonies. Let him. I’m here for my kids. Maybe think about your own for once.”
Skarde should be embarrassed. His lads are lazy today. They thought they had Io whipped. Were they still in my army, this lack of discipline would not stand. That thought fills me with contempt. These men deserted me. They left the Free Legions to die. So now they will.
A dent the size of an egg has made a home in the left pectoral of my armor. Furious at the dent in my new gear, I look for someone to kill.
I hop down just as Cassius stumbles out. He almost takes my head off with a blind swing. I deflect his slash and call out his name. He realizes his mistake, booms a laugh, and embraces me. Helmet to helmet.
“Now, now. I just wanted to see the Reaper in an open field,” he says. “The verdict is in. You’re a menace to savage and civilized alike.”
“Yes. Certainly concussed. But not a bad bill for a good deed.” “Not a bad bill,” I admit. “Not a bad bill at all.”
This is not what was supposed to happen today, so of course it happened.
He turns on me. “And they call me arrogant.” I shrug. “Have you ever had three hundred thousand Obsidian warriors chanting your name before falling in an Iron Rain?” He says nothing. “Then get behind me if you want to live.”
“Nak sada tjr na fan!” I shout before they are halfway. They stop and look at one another, confused to hear their own language from a Gold, especially spoken in the accent of the Valkyrie Spires.
“Before you bothered with moons, you liberated planets in my name. How far you’ve fallen. You know me, Skarde. You all know me. Or have you forgotten the man who put the razor in Ragnar’s hands?”
When the enemy is closing in and you’re on your back foot, that’s when you discover who your brothers and sisters really are. For ten years, wherever the fighting was the thickest, they needed only to look to the sky to find me on my way.
Cassius swears in shock as a four-legged shadow scrambles atop the Obsidian, savages him with huge, flashing claws, and then heads our way with a weird, loping gait. Cassius raises his razor. “Kuon hound,” he warns. I shove him to the side as the beast scampers past on all fours, knives glimmering in either hand and disappears again into the yellow murk. “What the fuck?” “Sevro,” I reply with a grin. Athena had assets on the moon after all. “Let him hunt.”
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.
