“Well, that sounds insidious. Lucky for me, we’re in Republic territory. If you would just call the Sov—”
He shoots me point-blank in the chest with a tacNet. It knocks the wind out of me and contracts. He drags the line to Godeater’s saddle and barks at the griffin. Riderless, it springs off the stone wing and into the winter air. Valdir flies beside it on gravBoots, keening a savage song. I’m dragged beneath as we climb back to Eagle Rest, pissed beyond all belief.
Last place I wanna die is Mars.
VALDIR’S GOONS DUMP ME unceremoniously onto the gravel. The tacNet retracts, leaving patterns of duress on my skin. Griffins set down and Valkyrie women slip from the saddles. Male braves with red runes on their armor land beside them in steaming gravBoots. One of them kicks my ass until I stand to my bare feet. They ache from my failed escape and the cold. Did I fracture them when I landed? “Anyone got slippers?” I ask. None pay me any mind. “Fine. Socks will do. You got socks?”
“They do not like Grays, Grarnir. Especially the men. The braves were slaveknights in your legions, or gladiators, or worse.” I turn toward the voice. Wrapped in his raven cloak, the shaman sits in the lap of a giant headless statue eating walnuts.
“Oh, you again.”
He slides down from the statue and wobbles toward me. Valdir barks something in Nagal at him to the effect of “Try not to lose your idiot again, idiot.” The shaman flaps his crow cloak at the warlord and covers his earholes.
“You got any more slippers?” I ask him, tightening the fur coat around me for the chill. “Lost the last pair.”
“Only a fool gives a gift when the first is valued so little,” he says. “I told you your destiny was not out the window. Now you suffer.”
“Yeah, well. I’m Hyperionin. We’re natural skeptics.”
He tilts his big head and laughs. “Maybe next time you are given something, you will value it.” He flicks walnut shells at my right leg.
“You gave me this?”
“Idea, not money.” He touches his chest. “Ozgard.” He points at me. “Grarnir. It means—”
“Hold up. You’re Ozgard?”
He grins. “Ozgard the Mad. Ozgard the Bad. Ozgard the Berryclad.” He bows.
“You’re not as blue as I expected.”
“Berries only for when gods dance,” he says, glancing at Valdir.
“When do they dance?” I ask.
He smiles. “When blood spills. Worry not. Today for talking only.”
Near Godeater, Valdir has taken off his ridiculous helmet. The champion’s face is unusually delicate for an Obsidian. His nose is twice broken, his cheeks gaunt and freckled. But all the savagery can’t hide the avian structure of his bones, the motes of silver in his black irises, his full, notched lips, and the haughty grandeur of the only human besides Darrow to have survived a duel with the Minotaur.
Gotta admit. He’s damn slick.
Valdir barks at Ozgard, this time motioning with his fingers, and we set off toward a large triumphal arch. The women lead and pay me no mind, but the trailing men catcall me and shove me with their axe hafts when I slow. The path ascends up the spine of the mountain. My raw right foot is yet without calluses and is agony on the stone. “What’s this all about?” I ask Ozgard, panting a little for the elevation.
“You will see.” He begins ticking off fingers as we walk. When he’s reached his twelfth, I curse.
“By Juno’s dilapidated tits…”
The path opens up to a damn impressive sight. Above Eagle Rest, the stone training squares of the Bellona ludus rib the mountainside, the highest disappearing into the clouds. Where once generations of genetically modified fascist knights trained in the arts of subjugation and extermination, now thousands of Obsidian youths practice calisthenics, climbing courses, and weapons training.
We make for a lower training square where a huge crowd of warriors and older students have gathered amongst broken statues. A lone crest of dirty-blond hair moves amongst the white manes. Two trios duel as teams on the training square. Electra, fighting in sync with her trio, is dismantling an Obsidian who must have her by fifty kilos. The lad looks as young as you can look while still having a full beard. It’s coated in blood from a nose smashed flat. They wield traditional aurochs’ femur practice staves. The opposing group seems to be trying to reach a large skull in the center of the training square while Electra’s lot defend.
Valdir holds us up out of respect for the bout. The Obsidians murmur amongst themselves, unable to pass up a wager on bloodsport.
I’ve seen kids fight before. It’s a bit like drunks fighting underwater. Electra’s like that except switch out the water
and put in an elastic rubber room, a human-sized needle, and flick it. Yet for all her mania, she fights as part of her group, switching opponents, using her own allies to guard her blind spots as she strikes. The instructor calls the fight when the last manboy of the opposing trio stumbles back from a stave to the temple that makes him all soupy. Electra doesn’t pursue.
Electra and her wingwomen help the fallen up. All six bare their throats to the instructor, a lithe young Obsidian woman with a topknot and black skuggi runes on her face, and to another in the crowd before jogging to sit with other students around the square. The little demon, Electra, looks right at home. “Children of the tribe are hard,” Ozgard murmurs to me. “Sent back to ice to learn our ways. Hunt many days. Fight with axe from six summers to death. Yet Valdir could not put boy and girl with children of tribe. Their spirits are those of wolves.”