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He removes his helmet. A long tail of hair tumbles from his shaved skull, falling all the way to his heels. The male warjarls thrust up their chins and bare their throats in submission, proclaiming him Ragnar’s father. The others stare at the length of his valor tail. Even Unshorn is a boy to this man.
Volsung looks to Sefi, black eyes glittering from eyeholes of the tattooed skull of a Stained.
“Have I so changed beyond the sun, child? Or are you now just a liar like your mother?” He tosses his helmet to the floor. It ma
kes a seismic thump. “Look upon this face, and say you know it not.”
Sefi is shocked dumb.
The father of Ragnar would be over eighty. Yet this man covered with the blood spatter of her Valkyrie looks barely fifty, and moves smooth as any gladiator of the Hyperion Premiere Circuit. In the light, he is more than the pale nightmare I saw in the darkness of the ice. His throat must have been ripped out years ago. The front third is metal, the trachea ribbed gray. His arms are bare and obscenely muscular. The left forearm is metal with a metal hand and dagger-sharp fingernails that look like they extend on sliders. A horrible scar claims half his nose. Blue worm veins of age rejuvenation therapy web the sides of his skull—the first I’ve ever seen on an Obsidian. Even Julii would flinch at the cost.
“My father is dead,” Sefi repeats like a mantra.
Volsung reaches under his vest to produce a broken amulet of a griffin.
“You will remember this, if not the man who taught you to hunt.” He throws it at her. “Your mother broke it in half the day I was taken back to the stars. To be whole again when I returned. Fifty years it took. Fifty years to hear there was no sky burial for the mother of my pride, Alia. No high mountain tomb for her bones amongst ancient kin. Only a lonely cairn of shattered stone, with half of me lost beneath it.”
“You desecrated our Sky Temple. You slew Freihild. You spit on the Allmother? You attacked the Republic?” Sefi says, her rage playing tug-of-war with her confusion. “Why?”
“To free you from your chains,” he says. “Alia was desecrated. Why? Because in your hearts you hold the truth. What good is a mother who sells her children? What good is a mother who harvests her young? What good is a mother who is a liar? No better than the frothing rot of a dead seal.”
His voice is clever and evocative, and he mutates its tone like an amused mummer. He’s no barbarian browbeating them with strength. He’s trained in elocution. Far better trained than I managed to make the skuggi. I recognize the triple-beat pivot of the Palatine’s politico school. This is the Fear Knight’s asset, his super weapon.
“Under the Allmother, we were slaves, brothers…” He smiles. “…sisters. Under the rule of women, our men were sent to the stars to die, while queens sat on thrones and knew the joy of the hunt on the ice.” He wheels around, speaking to the honor guard as much as the female-dominated jarls. “We died in Sunborn wars, in their fencing practices, ridden down by horseback or gravBoot for sport. In their gambling pits we were forced to kill our brothers, but never our sisters.” He thrusts his huge hands into the air. “These hands have slain seas.” He looks down. “Seas of brothers. Seas of kin.”
Sefi has lost control. Volsung conducts like a master.
He slowly opens his vest to reveal a body of muscles and scars and metal plates. A thick pattern of identical scars on his back and chest stand out from the rest. Their shape is unmistakably the slave brand of House Grimmus. “This flesh has known slavery.” He points a finger at Sefi. “What do you know, girl?” He smiles. “Only how to be quiet, it seems.”
It isn’t only the male jarls who laugh. While the Valkyrie stare in horror, the more numerous honor guard is intrigued. And why not? What he says is true. Most of the men were in the Gold legions. Most of them were slaves. Sefi was not. What would she know of their horror?
Even I note how small she looks. How timid her fierce veteran Valkyrie are to this lone terror. Yet she draws confidence from the movement of the women jarls. Alienated by this man, they drift to make a thick wall of protection for the Queen, each representing thousands of braves in the camps around Cimmeria. Yet Sefi is blind. She does not see how the words seep into the ears of the three thousand honor guard. How the men in the room looked at the skinned skuggi—all of which were conveniently male and castrated—or how Valdir, champion of the male braves, is now branded traitor.
It was never about old ways and new. It was always about gender.
How could she be so fucking blind? How could I not see it festering?
Volsung bares his mangled teeth.
“While you were silent, girl, I was a slave. While you struck down your unarmed mother, I conquered the tribes of the Far Ink.” He waves a hand back to the skulls on the chain. “These were their kings. While you let the heatlanders infect you with weakness, I slew with my warsaw those who would not bow. I made cups of their skulls, slaves of their children, and whores of their wives.”
He brandishes his spear. The way it glimmers…it must be made of a metal I’ve never seen.
“All I have, I have taken from the deathgrip of my foes. All you have, you have stolen. From the head of a murdered mother, from the pockets of your noble ally, Tyr Morga”—he taps his forehead in respect—“from the legacy of your god brother, from the strength of your mate.
“You cannot even kill a drake without your servants. Without others, you are nothing. Just a cow who bleats she is Queen.” He addresses the Obsidians. “Obsidian follows strength. I see strength here. With weakness held up by her crown. I issued your queen a challenge. But she hid from me behind you. Brothers, sisters! Look upon her! Your queen is an ass, for she leads from the back!” The image of Sefi behind the wall of Obsidian jarls now becomes an indictment, a mockery. Fá laughs and speaks directly to the honor guard behind him. “She would have you give up war. She would have you forsake the Wind for roofs. Your stone and bone heritage for the soft silk of heatlanders. She would let their cities suck you dry. She would have you live in their world. I would have them live in ours.
“From the diamond mines of Quaor, to the Boneyard of Charon, to the Black Thrones of Ultima Thule, the Dark Wind of the Allfather gathers to fall on the heatlands to claim all for Volkland. Gold had its time in the day. Red faltered but now we rise.” He turns to Sefi. “But only one can rule. Moooooo.” He walks back and forth mooing at her like a cow in mockery.
“Bardahgi! Bardahgi! Bardahgi!” the male warjarls begin to chant. Fight. Fight. Fight. Many of the honor guard join them. Ozgard weeps on the floor. I sag in exhaustion. Sefi should shoot him. I would shoot him if I had a gun. But she is a woman trapped by the ways of her own people. If she shoots Ragnar’s father, the Alltribe will shatter apart. If she turns down a challenger with a claim, she is not strength, and they will turn on her. If only Valdir were here, she must be thinking. Valdir would wrangle the fools in line.
The Queen of the Obsidians looks at Xenophon in betrayal. Then to me and Ozgard and taps her forehead in respect and apology. She peels Aja’s razor from her arm, draws her war axe, and steps down from her throne.
* * *
—
The Obsidians watch father and daughter strip themselves of armor and circle one another barefoot in the center of the hall. Volsung is bare-chested, though his muscles themselves look like armor. He wields his warsaw with both hands. Sefi wears a sleeveless vest of Valkyrie blue. In her left hand spins the razor of Aja, and in her right a great axe.
