“I just said it’s down.”
“Then get their wounded aboard theArchi. Help Cassius with the civilians and children.”
Sevro looks at the Obsidians gathering around Sigurd on the opposite bank of the river.“We should kill them all.”
“We can’t. Literally, and they need to take a message back to the Volk from me. Civilians. Wounded. Go.”
With a mutter, he leaves me alone with the Obsidians. Grunting I bear Skarde to the other bank and drop his mass in front of his son and braves. Just over sixty of them remain alive. I wish I could see their eyes instead of their battered helmets. I bury my contempt. They’ll be recording me with their cams. What I say here will travel through the main army like wildfire.
I prod Skarde with my toe. “He’s alive and still has a little air yet in his helmet.” I sigh. “Brothers, I did not come here to spill your blood. But look at yourselves. What would Ragnar think? What have you become? Look around you. Is this right? Is this the home you were promised, by Ragnar, by Sefi? Where are the leaning godTrees and the summerseas? Where are the vineyards and marble cities that sparkle in the autumn dawn? Where are the children who sing your names and shower you in spring flowers? You have lost them in this…your winter of violence. You have lost yourselves.
“I did not come to judge you. I did not come to punish you. I came to remind you of the oaths you took! It is brothers who find us when we are lost. Brothers who guide us home to the hearth and halls of our mothers and fathers. Go now and tell the warbands what you have seen here. Tell them Tyr Morga has come to challenge Volsung Fá to single combat. Tell them Tyr Morga has come to lead you home as Ragnar would have wanted. But most of all, tell Fá to expect me.”
I head away from them, knowing I’ve just opened Pandora’s box, but enough is enough from this Obsidian fraud.
By the time I make it into the cargo bay of theArchiit is crammed full of Pink children along with Green architects. The Daughters are strewn along the starboard side with their casualties. The air thick with the screams of the wounded and the crying of children—and all this in victory. I head for the cockpit and hear Lyria’s anxiety before I get there. Three signatures approach on our scanners. “Boss, we gotta go, we gotta go,” she says. “Big ships en route. Big ships.”
“Cassius is coming with the last of the civilians. Sevro’s right behind. Watch via the cameras. Soon as he’s back, lift off and head for the volcanoes. Cass will take the stick.” I squeeze her shoulder. She’s soaked in sweat. “Good work, Lagalos.” She grins back at me, nervous. “Was that Aurae on guns?”
“Negative. The gloomy bastard. The Raa.”
A little stunned, I head back to the chute to the top gun turret. Diomedes’s face peers down.
“The children?” he asks.
“Safe.”
“Shall I return to the brig?”
I glance into the main hall. Three Daughters are carrying a charred lump of a man into the medBay. I duck my head back into the chute. “I still have your parole?” Diomedes nods. “We have guests. Stay on guns.”
By the time I make it back to the cargo bay Cassius has boarded with the last of the children. Three Pink boys cling to him. They might have held their breath against Io’s air, but the cold found them. Their fingerswill be frostbitten from where they gripped his freezing armor. He is tender handing them over to Aurae. I shout for him to get to the cockpit. The ship shudders and Lyria lifts off. “Where we going?” Cassius asks as he passes me.
“I’ll find out. In the meantime, lose them in the volcanoes, and punch to orbit in one of those ash columns soon as you can.”
“These are the Daughters we came for? They’re mangled.”
“Cassius. Cockpit. Now.”
He goes. Soon as he’s gone there’s a shout as Sevro lands along with an Obsidian with kudu horns. The Daughters scramble up and level their rifles. “Dammit, Sevro. We don’t need a hostage,” I say. The ship shudders as Lyria lifts off.
Sigurd lifts his hands to show he has no weapon. Sevro steps in front of the rifles. “He came over the river and flagged me down to surrender. Figured we could use the information now that Fá knows we’re here.”
“Fá is a plague. To my people. To all peoples. I want to help you kill him,” Sigurd says. “Many of the braves believe as I do. They will rejoice to see you are alive, Tyr Morga.”
“Good thinking,” I say to Sevro. “Any of you got cuffs?”
A woman wide as an anvil throws me reinforced wire cuffs. I fit them on Sigurd. The woman stares up at the Obsidian, and I realize she must be the leader of the Daughters. Her flexible scorosuit is yellow and tan, like the wastes of Io, and bears the stitches of a significant size-down. The lower half of her face is covered with a scaled kryll, the rest wrapped with a yellow headscarf. Her eyes are hidden behind shaded goggles flecked with thawing Obsidian blood. She doffs the goggles, revealing the unmistakable scarlet eyes of a Jovian ultraheavy—Reds bred to work in punishing radiation and gravity 2.4 times that of Earth. The rarest of our breed. Big bodies. Big hearts. Short lives.
“Athena?” I ask.
“Cheon. Chiliarch of the Black Owls. Athena sent us to bring you to her,” she says.
“They weren’t expecting us. Obviously,” Sevro says. “They’ve been running ops trying to evac civilians on Io.”
“So, Cassius was on the right track,” I say to a scowl from Sevro. “Well met, Cheon. Good to see Red eyes in the fight.” I extend a gauntlet. She looks at it but does not take it.
Her voice is deep and masculine. “You let their jarl go. We had to leave our dead. I lost half my column. More in ten minutes than four weeks of fighting. And you want to shake hands?”
