DARROW
By the Laws of the Ice
The throng gathering inthe wake of my hunt grows island by island. Thousands trail us now. On and on I chase Fá over the archipelagos until we reach the island of Hades, a rocky home to the feast for the braves farthest from Fá’s favor. I chase him through groves of wild fig trees bent inland by the wind. To my left and right, Sevro and Cassius shatter gnarled boughs laden heavily with swollen fruit. Pulp and splinters smear our armor until the grove gives way to slate rock formations covered with orange moss. Fá winds through them and emerges on a headland where hot bubbling wellsprings belch steam. He sets down there at the terminus of a spring. There is nowhere left to run. The sea is all that lies ahead.
He looks out at it as Sevro and Cassius find perches on the rock behind me. Fá’s tattered armor rises and falls with his breath. Blood weeps from the many punctures and gashes. It stains the blue paint his shaman applied to his armor and trickles into a puddle around his boots. His warsaw is now a millstone too heavy to even lift.
“I’ve called Diomedes. He’s leaving Athena the battle. He’s on his way,”Cassius says.
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 youwant?”
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 servedin cohors nihilunder 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 Ascomannivermin. 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.”
