Page 43 of Under the Iron Sky

Theron bared his teeth. “Then what good are you?!”

“Good enough to let you know that we’ve learned of that little armory you’re building along the Anabarian coast, and we’re scheduled to raid it in twelve hours.”

Twelve hours—that was … fuck. Theron’s head snapped to the south as if he might see the peaks of those coastline islands that made up the once popular holiday destination. Strategies began whirling in his mind.

First, he’d have to radio to base itself and warn them to start packing, then get a message to Command so they could figure out where best to send all the evacuees and weapons there. It was a five-hour flight from here, four if he really put his foot down—hopefully they’d have a plan in place by the time he arrived.

Twelve hours wasn’t a lot of time to get everyone out, but they’d have to manage.

One thought was louder than all the others. “Did you get this information out of Soraya?” A horrible thought, but he had to know. Wouldn’t be able to focus on this mission or the people who might be lost otherwise.

Ma’varea leaned against the armillary and folded his arms. “No. She’s been given to someone who is skilled in memory walking but this leak isn’t hers. She’s strong, your girl. She hasn’t given anything away yet, but cracks will appear.”

13

Ikarus felt nothing.

He was aware of the slow, steady thump of his heart, of the heavy plates of armor across his chest and back and weight of the helmet on his face, but he didn’t really feel them. Didn’t feel much of anything. Not as he ripped away the doors to this Vordellian stronghold with a blink, the goldinium so rusty after so many years in the dark they practically fell off their hinges, or as the first wave of soldiers rushed at him with their rotting armor and broken weapons, leaping from the shadows as though that might’ve given them an advantage.

But they didn’t know the darkness as he did. How could they when they hadn’t been born in it, choked on it since birth, been torn apart by it again and again, generation after generation, until it’d become so much a part of them that they weren’t just crafted by it; they were the darkness.

It took no effort to clear the entrance. He pushed the bodies aside with barely a thought, a hoard of black armor and helmets behind him. One team broke off to the east, another the west, the south. Ikarus pressed on alone through the main hall and up a staircase to the North Tower. Each room he searched was worse than the last, full of broken windows, empty cupboards, and walls so neglected and peeling he wouldn’t have dared touch them had it not been for the armor protecting him from head to toe. Mighty Vordellian empire, indeed.

Soldiers rushed at him in droves, some with rifles, some with handguns or swords and gleaming shields that appeared out of those bracers on their forearms, some with bows that shot arrows of skin-melting Light. He didn’t know why they bothered.

Their empire wasn’t what it used to be, and cut off from their only source of power, they were wilting like flowers potted in the shade.

With a wave of his hand, he threw one against the wall, the sound of his spine cracking tearing through the room as he raised that same hand toward another and made a fist, his magic grasping the plates protecting the soldier’s chest, and suddenly bent them inward to crush the soldier’s sternum and ribs as easily as squeezing a piece of rotten fruit. Ikarus counted them as he pushed through room after room, their faces lost behind the blood and sleek armor that was so unlike the spiked plates of his own, as though they’d never had to endure as the Dar’rak had, as though everything in their little kingdom had been so fucking perfect and smooth and easy before that they’d never had a need to bite back, even in battle.

Eight. Nine. Ten.

Fifteen. Sixteen.

Twenty. Twenty-one.

None of them were a threat. None had him even thinking about pulling the sword from his side, the red ruby at the hilt shining at his hip like a piece of solidified blood.

There was one, though … That girl locked in his dungeon—she was a worthy opponent. She had spirit, that one. A sword for a spine that she had no qualms ripping out of her own back just to use to slice her enemies’ throats wide open. She’d probably smile at him while she did it, too.

Even now, locked away and cut off from everything and everyone she knew and loved, whether it be trying to carve his eyes out with hairpins or whipping him with her tongue, she was still fighting.

She hadn’t been given the name God Killer because she was a kitten. He’d been under no illusion that breaking her was going to be an easy task, but the fortress in her mind had been a surprise.

And that was without the physical resistance. She was strong, to say the least. His cheek still stung from where she’d slapped him earlier that day. She’d tried to strike him again the moment he’d receded out of her mind. He’d caught her wrist before she could make contact, but one look into those blazing green eyes had told him she was far from done with him.

She was infuriating, and yet a small part of him couldn’t wait to return home, just to see what she had in store for him next.

That would have to wait.

It’d been a stroke of luck when a team had captured a small group of Vordellians traveling east by boat across the southern sphere of the planet, hauling a large shipment of food to—where? This very coastline, as it turned out. To the band of islands thought long deserted, that the humans had set up as a stronghold to store their weapons.

Taking this place would cause immeasurable damage to the Vordellian army; all those weapons and Light reserves, snatched away in blood and shadows.

So where was it all?

Ikarus cleared a room with dozens of thick-trunked logs leaning against a back wall, all full of scorch marks and cracks from either Light or blade. A training ring for target practice, so where were all the weapons? He swept through a canteen next. Then an armory. Barracks without any mattresses. Room after room, empty.

He pushed up a staircase until he came to a large circular empty room. All the windows and high-dome glass ceiling above had been covered with bits of cloth and metal. He almost moved on, then paused. Soil. He could smell it hanging in the troughs chained in stacks upon stacks high above, more of it beneath his feet despite the sheets of tattered iron on the floor.