Morning Star

“An enemy divided…” Mustang says slowly. “I like it.”

“And we owe them a debt,” Ragnar says. “For Lorn, Quinn, Trigg. They came here to hunt us. Now we hunt them.”

—

The trail is unmistakable. Corpses litter the snow. Dozens of Eaters. Bodies still smoking from pulsefire near a narrow mountain pass where the Obsidians sprang an ambush on the Golds. They did not understand the firepower the Golds could bring to bear. Huge craters pock the craggy slopes. Deeper imprints in the snow mark the passing of aurochs. Huge steerlike animals with shaggy coats that the Obsidian ride.

The pass widens into a thin alpine forest that skins an expanse of rolling hills. Gradually the craters decrease and we begin seeing discarded pulseFists and rifles and several Gray bodies with arrows or axes embedded in them. The Obsidian dead are closer to the Gold trail now and bear razor wounds. There’s dozens with missing limbs, clean decapitations. Cassius’s band is running out of ammunition and now Olympic Knights are doing the work up close. Yet the wind still crackles with gunfire kilometers ahead.

We pass moaning Obsidian Eaters who lie dying from bullet wounds, but it’s only over a wounded Gray that Ragnar stops. The man’s still alive, but barely. An iron axe is buried in his stomach. He wheezes up at an unfamiliar sky. Ragnar crouches over him. Recognition goes through the Gray’s eyes as he sees the Stained’s uncovered face.

“Close your eyes,” Ragnar says, pressing the man’s empty rifle back in his hands. “Think of home.” The man closes his eyes. And with a twist, Ragnar breaks his neck and sets his head gently back on the snow. A shrill horn echoes across the mountain range. “They call off the hunt,” Ragnar says. “Immortality is not worth the price today.”

We pick up our pace. Kilometers to our right, Mounted Eaters on aurochs skirt the edges of the woods, heading for their high-mountain camps. They do not see us as we move through the pine taiga. Holiday watches the hunting party disappear behind a hill through the scope of her rifle. “They carried two Golds,” she says. “Didn’t recognize them. They weren’t dead yet.”

We all feel the chill.

It’s an hour later that we spy our quarry beneath us in an uneven snowfield striped with crevasses. Two arms of forest hug the snowfield. Aja and Cassius chose an exposed route instead of continuing through the treacherous forest where they lost so many Grays. There’s four left in the company. Three Golds and a Gray. They wear black scarabSkin, cloaked with pelts and extra layers they stripped from the dead cannibals. They move at a breakneck pace, the rest of their party massacred in the depths of the woods. We can’t tell which is Aja or Cassius because of the masks and the similar shapes they make under the cloaks.

Initially, I wanted to lie in wait and ambush them to take the tactical initiative, but I remember how the optics were missing from their boxes and assume Aja and Cassius are both wearing them. With thermal vision, they’ll see us hiding under snow. Might even see us if we hide inside the bellies of dead aurochs or seals. So instead, I have Ragnar lead me on the path he found to cut them off at a pass they must travel through and block their path to draw their eyes.

I’m panting beside Ragnar, coughing the cold out of aching lungs, when the party of four arrives on our chosen ground. They jog along the edge of a crevasse in improvised snowshoes, hunched against the weight of food and survival gear they drag behind them on little makeshift sleds. Textbook Legion survival skills, courtesy of the military schools of the Martian Fields. All four wear black optics visors with smoky glass lenses. It’s eerie as they see us. No expressions on the optics or masked faces. So it feels like they expected us to be here waiting at the edge of the snowfield, blocking the pass out.

My eyes dart back and forth between them. Cassius is easy enough to distinguish by his height. But which of the four is Aja? I’m torn between two thick Golds, each shorter than Cassius. Then I see my old razormaster’s weapon dangling from her belt.

“Aja!” I call, removing the sealSkin balaclava.

Cassius pulls off his mask. His hair is sweaty, face flushed. He alone carries a pulseFist, but I know its charge must be running low, based on the dispersion patterns of the dead cannibals behind them. His razor unfurls, as do the rest. They look like long red tongues, blood frozen on the blades.

“Darrow…” Cassius mutters, stunned by the sight of us. “I saw you sink…”

“I swim just as well as you. Remember?” I look past him. “Aja, you going to let Cassius do all the talking?”

Finally, she steps from the other to stand by the tall knight, removing from around her waist the rope that attaches her to her makeshift sled. She doffs her scarabSkin mask, revealing her dark face and bald head. Steam swirls. She scans the crevasses that thread their way through the snow, and the rocks and trees, the pen in the snowfield, wondering where my ambush will come from. She remembers Europa well enough, but she can’t know who my crew was or how many survived.

“An abomination and a rabid dog,” she purrs, eyes lingering on Ragnar before coming back to me. The scarabSkin she wears is unmarked. Can she really not have taken a single wound from the Obsidian? “I see your Carver has pieced you back together, ruster.”

“Well enough to kill your sister,” I say in reply, unable to keep the poison out of my voice. “Pity it wasn’t you.” She makes no reply. How many times have I seen her kill Quinn in memory? How many times have I seen her rob Lorn of his razor as he lay dead from the Jackal and Lilath’s blades? I gesture to the weapon. “That doesn’t belong to you.”

“You were born to serve, not speak, abomination. Do not address me.” She glances up to the sky where Phobos glitters on the eastern horizon. Red and white lights flicker around it. It’s a space battle, which means Sevro has captured ships. But how many? Aja frowns and exchanges a worried look with Cassius.

“I have long awaited this moment, Aja.”

“Ah, my father’s favorite pet.” Aja examines Ragnar. “Has the Stained convinced you he’s tamed? I wonder if he told you how he liked to be rewarded after a fight in the Circada. After the applause faded and he cleaned the blood from his hands, Father would send him young Pinks to satisfy his animal lusts. How greedy he was with them. How frightened they were of him.” Her voice is flat and bored of this ice, of this conversation, of us. All she wants is what we have to give her, and that is a challenge. After all the Obsidian bodies behind her, she still is not tired of blood. “Have you ever seen an Obsidian rut?” she continues. “You’d think twice about taking off their collars, ruster. They have appetites you can’t imagine.”