If I were not made a h.e.l.ldiver, I would die in this riverbed. As it is, I skin off my starSh.e.l.l and the armor beneath. It is my dexterity that saves me. I cannot move my head because of the weight of the helmet. Cannot see where I cut. My skin and the pain it registers serve as my eyes. Inch by inch, I remove myself from the starSh.e.l.l. Inch by inch, I drag the deadly blade along my body. Shedding my blood and the sh.e.l.l into the water. Parting the exoskeleton. I'm like a locust slipping from its dead husk. Very delicately, I remove the helmet, cutting it off at the neck. I hold my breath, and just nick my throat.

A scratch. So close to the jugular.

My legs are the last part of me I free. I sit up, the broken bits of my suit scratching at my skin, and jerk my right leg out of the hewn metal. I'm alive and wounded in the cold, dark river. Helmet off. Holding my breath as spots bloom across my vision. Now I'm able to see the sunken field of men around me at the bottom of the riverbed. I swim over to the largest one and see Ragnar's closed eyes behind his starSh.e.l.l's faceplate. Tears trickle from them. His lungs are large, but there can't be much oxygen left in that suit. He can move better than I could, because of his great strength. But no armored man could swim in this water.

I did not think he could cry. Yet now he weeps, silently. Not great, dramatic tears. These are different, calm. And when he opens his eyes, I see something else in him. Some dormant part of his soul ignites. He was dead, had given in to his fate. Yet here I float in shredded black tactical cloth, b.l.o.o.d.y, looking positively deranged, but free of my sh.e.l.l. I'm his dark hope. I start cutting, even though my own lungs are screaming. I need him. I can't search for Sevro. There's no time. And I cannot surface just to be killed on sight.

I operate on him like a proper Carver, till he wrenches himself free of his exoskeleton. Others have seen what we're doing. But we cannot help them yet. They must hold on.

Ragnar and I kick our way through the rough current toward the surface. Lungs starving. Ragnar's pale, tattooed body moves through the water with a grace I can't match. I didn't realize Obsidians were such swimmers. Makes sense for one born near the ice floes.

We're near the surface when my mind loses to my body. Ten feet from the surface, I inhale water.

Darkness.

Feel mud between my fingers. Something moves through my chest. Water. I vomit it, hack it out into a rough hand clutched close to my mouth, quieting me. I keep puking through the fingers. Then feel an explosion of pleasure as I gasp finally for air. Beautiful air. Hand still covering my mouth. And for a moment, there is nothing. Just the pure o.r.g.a.s.m of life into my lungs. The full rush of oxygen on empty, aching organs. And suddenly the sound of distant warfare swells. And the groans of men. We're in a field of corpses. The wall towers high overhead. The river runs fast at our feet. It's been minutes since the EMP, but it seems the day has pa.s.sed and left us behind.

Ragnar dragged me into the mud between two dead Obsidians. Two Bellona Golds, six Obsidians, and six Grays walk along the dark riverbank, finishing those who lie helpless. We're lucky the rest have quit the slaughter to return to the fight at the wall. Ca.s.sius will have led them away. That means he didn't know it was me here, but he was well aware of the hole made by the Sons, at least. For me, he would have stayed. Lucky I didn't carry the banner Clown and Weed made for me. Double lucky I didn't let them wear their wolfcloaks.

This mud is a graveyard. My soldiers are half buried. Some try to rise in the heavy, dead armor, only to slip back into the mud or be kicked down by the Golds and mercilessly butchered. Most lie quiet. A field of armored beetles leaking red.

The Grays joke to one another as they go methodically about their task, taking their time on an Obsidian stuck on his back, using forcePikes to pierce the thick starSh.e.l.l and pin him to the ground like boys tormenting a stranded crab. They finish him eventually with armorboring bullets called diggers from their rifles.

Ragnar gestures to the mud. Half naked, he and I cake ourselves in the dark, heavy stuff. It cools the tracework lacerations on my body and covers the tattoos on his. I gesture to one of the Gold helmets and mime our survivors' oxygen running out. Ragnar nods. I pull a razor from the body of a dead Gold. I can't tell who. And hand it to Ragnar. It's only ever seen Gold hands. No Praetorian, no Obsidian, not even one of those with badges from the Sovereign herself, has touched this weapon since the Dark Revolt. To touch it means death by starvation. No possibility of reaching Valhalla. Only hunger and cold and the end. But our enemies will have pulseShields. No other weapon will do.

Ragnar drops it like it's made of fire. I shove it back into his trembling hands.

"They aren't G.o.ds."

Like shadows pulled from the Styx, we slide forward through the graveyard. Our enemies are not in their fighting bands. Easy targets. I scuttle forward on all fours like some horrible spider, hardly rising from the ground to kill two Obsidians before they even turn. Ragnar snaps another's neck and cleaves a second in half, the recoilPlate peeling away. Rising from my hands, I sprint at the tallest of the Obsidians, jump and bury my blade into his body. I land poorly on my wounded arm. I don't even feel the pain. Too much adrenaline. I see the squad of Grays turning, so I fall with the Obsidian's body and roll into the mud, lying in shadow and filth among the other corpses. Their recoilRifles and pulse weapons would rip me to ribbons without my shield and armor. Ragnar's disappeared too. I don't know where.

Time ticks by. How much oxygen could they have left? The Grays hunting us shout something about ghostCloaks. The remaining Obsidian groups with the two Golds. The Grays go through the bodies, finishing my remaining men to flush Ragnar and me out for the Golds and Obsidian. Lea died like this, down in the mud. I won't. Not again.

I rise, not with a scream, not with a howl. Silently. Let the Grays try to see me coming. I am fast. And I'm nearly on them when they open fire. I rip toward them, dodging, weaving, like a loosed balloon. No beauty to my movement. Just frantic terror. I cannot see the bullets. Only feel their closeness. Sense the heat of them ripping past me. Feel the punch as I'm hit in the bicep. Shock through my body. The skin tears as the bullet goes through flesh, tendon, muscle, then out the other side, knicking bone. I grunt. And then I'm upon them, and they make no noise at all.

They missed their window.

Twelve enemies fall to Lorn's kravat lessons. Twelve men and women.

The Golds and Obsidian come upon me now. The Golds use their gravBoots. Ragnar rises from the mud and hurls his razor through the air like a spear. The huge Obsidian falls into the mud as Ragnar rushes the two Golds, picking another razor from the ground.

I marvel at his power. He grabs one of the Golds by the foot as they pa.s.s in the air. The pulseShield electrocutes him, sending pain lancing through his body. But he just roars, holding on, and with a scream coming not from his throat, but his soul, he slams the Gold down to the ground like he's chopping wood. He somehow manages to rip the boot off. The lean Gold rolls away, shouting, "Stained!" to his friend, who comes back to his aid so they face off with Ragnar together.

I run to Ragnar's aid.

"Reaper!" One of the Golds lets his helmet retract into his armor, revealing the haughty face of a Peerless man. Confident in his rank. In his heritage. In his place. His face is all joy. Then it contorts as he sees Ragnar's razor.

"You give the blade of your ancestors to a beast?" He glares hate at Ragnar. Then down at the razor, furious, confused. "Have you no honor?"

I choose not to answer.

"Know who you face, Andromedus," the older Gold rages. "I am Gauis au Carthus of gens Carthii. We built the Columns of Venus. We first sailed the gaps between the Inner and Outer rims and mined the Helsa Cl.u.s.ter."

"This isn't The Iliad. Ragnar, kill this fool. We need his gravBoots."

The Gold spits. "You send a dog to do your fighting?"

"I am a man!" Ragnar roars louder than the screaming engines of a pa.s.sing ship. Spittle flying, face ragged with rage. Veins rise in his neck. He howls, rushing forward before I can even raise my blade. He picks up the corpse of the fallen Obsidian and uses it to deflect their razors. He punches Gaius. No weapon. Just his fist. He hits him so hard in the pulseShield that the man falls backward. Then he kills the other, hacking through his defenses with mad fury till he cuts him in half. He kicks the top of the corpse aside and batters down Gaius, who sinks into the dark mud as Ragnar thumps forward and, muscles twitching from having touched the pulseShield, holds the razor to Golden man's throat.

"Yield to me and live," Ragnar rumbles.

Gaius spits, rising to his knees.

"Yield to me as a man yields to another man."

"Never." Gaius's lips curl sourly. He speaks his last words clear and loud, with spite and courage. All that is good and all that is wicked in these extraordinary people. "I am the Peerless Legate Gaius au Carthus. I am the sum of humanity. So yield I do not. For a man cannot yield to a dog."

"Then become dirt." Rangar pushes the blade home.

We ferry our men from the bottom of the river. Fast as we can using stolen gravBoots, but not fast enough. Sevro is not dead, but he's close. I find him buried headfirst in the riverbank. He's cursing and spitting when I peel him out with the help of Clown and Pebble.

"The dead?" he asks quietly. "My Howlers?"

"Too many," Clown says thinly.

"Did Mustang get through?"

They all look at me.

"I think so," I say. "But I can't hail her on any coms. We have to hurry either way. If she is alive and she blows the generators so our reinforcements can land, then the shield falls and the Sovereign has a wide window to escape. Right now, she's bottled up."

Sevro nods. Little Pebble gives him a hand up. Small Thistle, hardly coming to Ragnar's solar plexus, sees him with a razor in his hand as he frees another Obsidian from a dead starSh.e.l.l. "Drop that," she snaps.

Ragnar drops it and looks to me in a strange panic. I motion him to wait.

After we go through the suits of those who fell on the riverbank, we know the count, and it is so devastating that Sevro walks away. Weed is dead. Rotback is dead. Harpy died before we hit the ground. And many of the new recruits are dead. Only Thistle, Clown, Screwface, and Pebble are left. Eleven of the original fifty Obsidians remain.

Pebble and Clown touch Weed's face, their matching mohawks flat against their heads as the rain soaks us all. Pebble claws at his chest, her small hands. .h.i.tting his heart as though that will bring him back. Thistle goes to pull her away as Clown uses mud to straighten Weed's matching mohawk in death. Sevro cannot watch. I go stand beside him.

"I was wrong about war," he says.

"I can't do this without you." After a desperate moment, "Are you with me? Sevro?"

He pulls back and wipes snot from his nose, muddying his face. Tears make lines in the mud as he looks up at me, voice cracking like a child's. "Always, Darrow. Always."

41.

ACHILLES.

There's no time to mourn. My force decimated, we must divide still further. My army outside the city hurls itself at impregnable walls, expecting help from the inside. They've received none. My Legates will be hailing my signal, wondering if I have died. Such a rumor could lose the battle.

I send Ragnar with the remnants of the Obsidians to open one of the wall's gates for my Legates who wait for us with thousands of Grays and Obsidians in reserve.

"I give you no Golds," I tell Ragnar. "Do you understand what that means?"

"I do."

"This can be a beginning," I say quietly. I bend, picking a discarded razor from the sucking mud. "It is a man's duty to choose his own destiny. Choose yours." I extend the razor to him.

Ragnar looks back to the Obsidians. Their armor is battered from extricating them from the suits. And they're caked in mud. Smaller than he. Some lithe and quiet. Others huge and shifting foot to foot with eagerness. All with those black eyes and white hair. They arm themselves with weapons taken from the Grays and Obsidian I killed. Hardly enough to go around, and they'll be little use if they run into Golds.

Ragnar chooses. He extends a hand. Howlers prepare themselves behind me, Thistle still eyeing him evilly. "I choose to follow you," he says. "And I choose to lead them."

I place the razor in his hand.

"Darrow!" Thistle gasps. "What are you doing?"

"Shut up," Sevro snaps.

"He can't do that!" Thistle stomps forward and tries to rip the razor out of Ragnar's hand. He doesn't let go. "Give it up. Slave. Give me the blade." She pulls her own razor out. "Give me the blade or I'll cut away the hand that holds it."

"Then I will cut you down, Thistle," Sevro sneers.

"Sevro?" Thistle turns back to him, eyes wide. She looks at me, at the other Howlers who stand quiet, unsure of what just happened. "Have you gone mad? It's not his right. It's ours. He doesn't ..."

"Deserve it?" Sevro asks. "Who are you to decide that?"

"I'm a Gold!" she shrieks. "Clown, Pebble ..."

Pebble remains silent. Clown tilts his head. "Darrow, what is this?"

"It's my army," I say. "You remember the Inst.i.tute. You remember how I bleed for those who follow me. How I do not take the allegiance of slaves. Why now are you surprised by this? Because it is real?"

"It's a slippery slope, is all." Clown looks at the war around us. "Even here."

"You're right. It is." I bend and find another razor cast in the mud. I toss this one to another of the Obsidians, a nasty-looking woman half my size. She holds it like it's a snake, glancing up at me in fear. They are raised believing we are G.o.ds. To be given Thor's hammer ... how would I hold it? Sevro walks through the corpses and finds several more. He tosses these to the Obsidians.

"Don't cut yourselves," he says.

"I'm counting on you. Go," I tell them. They disappear, sprinting into the swelling darkness toward the back side of the colossal wall. I turn to the Howlers. "Is there a problem?" They all shake their heads quickly, except Thistle.

"Thistle?" Sevro asks.

Clown nudges her. And grudgingly she shakes her head. "No problem."

There is. She will not follow me after this. Already I feel my friends turning from me. And they know not even a fraction of the truth. That is a problem for another day.

We must move fast. But we only have one pair of functional gravBoots among us. I give those to Sevro. We try to see if he can lift us like I lifted the Howlers on Olympus, but as we load onto the boots, they sputter and spark. Only able to carry his weight. Damaged somehow in the fighting and the rescue. b.l.o.o.d.yd.a.m.n.

So it will be on foot. And we cannot be slowed.

I point to the recoilPlate of those lucky enough to have it after the starSh.e.l.l amputations. "Armor off."

"What?" Thistle sputters.

"Armor. Off. Except scarabSkin."

"Unarmored against Praetorians?" Thistle howls. "Do you want us all to die?"

"We need to move fast. If the shield goes down before we get to the Citadel, the Sovereign will slip away. If we do not capture her, she will have a chance to regroup. She will join her Ash Lord. She will summon all of the Society, and they will come here with ten times our number to crush us. We'll win the battle, lose the war."

"But if we take her ...," Sevro growls, coming to my side.

"We're talking about the Sovereign," Clown says. "She'll have Praetorian Olympic Knights ..."

"And?" Sevro asks. "We have us."

"Six of us." Clown shrugs sheepishly when we stare at him. "I just thought someone should point it out."

"We have fifteen kilometers to cover on foot," I say. They nod. "My pace." Then they exchange worried looks and start taking off their armor. "If you fall behind, find a place to hide." One-third Earth grav. Bodies in prime shape. This will still be hard. Especially with my arm savaged by my own razor.

Sevro saddles up to me as the Howlers strip away their armor. I can hear their terror in the clinking of weapons and armor moved by shaking hands, see it in the frenzied way they then rub mud on their faces to blacken their aspects.

"They've been with you from the beginning, Darrow." Sevro looks around the stormy park, at the distant Citadel and blaze of pa.s.sing ships. "We're already half the number that took you from Luna. You might have replaced Pax with Ragnar, but you can't replace them. Or me."

"I thought you were with me."

"I'm your conscience. I follow your a.s.s everywhere. So don't be a s.h.i.thead."

"Registers. On me!" I shout.

Armor shed, we set off silently. Only our razors and scarabSkin with us. Wearing rubber-soled undershoes instead of gravBoots. We go along the river, leaving the wall behind. Sprinting through acres of gra.s.sy parks and woods that separate the wall from the city as mechanized war rages in the distance. Ships roar past, making the tree branches shudder and leaves fall. Ground trams flicker far to our right, shuttling soldiers to the front. Explosions plume in the distance. Clouds consume the sky beyond the great shield that overlaps the city. Explosions flash inside the clouds.

Mustang will be nearing the shield generators now, if she's alive.

It is a ragged pace, covering fifteen kilometers at a sprint. My side stabs with pain. Muscles hunger for oxygen. And my right arm aches from the b.l.o.o.d.y bullet wound in my bicep and the lacerations that bleed along forearm and wrist. I took half a pack of stims, so I can use the arm. The pain doesn't blind. It focuses. Keeps me from thinking of the dead.