“What?” I snap.
“Sefi…” Ragnar points. I follow his finger to the sky above. I see nothing. Just the faint clouds shifting in the wind that comes in from the sea. I hear only the sound of Cassius’s hacking and the creak of Mustang’s bow and Holiday limping toward us over the snow. Then I see why Aja fled as three thousand kilograms of winged predator pierces the clouds. Body that of a lion. Wings, front legs, and head that of an eagle. Feathers white. Beak hooked and black. Head the size of a grown Red. The griffin is huge, underside of its wings painted with the screaming faces of sky-blue demons. They stretch ten meters wide as the beast lands in the snow in front of me. The earth shakes. Its eyes are pale blue, glyphs and wards painted along its black beak in white. Upon its back sits a lean, terrible human, who blows mournfully on a white horn.
More horns echo from the clouds above and twelve more griffins slam down into the mountain pass, some clinging to the sharp rock walls above us, others pawing at the snow. The first griffin-rider, the one who blew the horn, is cloaked head to toe in filthy white fur and wears a bone helmet crested with a single spine of blue feathers, which trail down the back of the neck. Not a rider is under two meters tall.
“Sunborn,” one of them calls in their sluggish dialect as she rushes to the side of their silent leader. The speaker strips her helmet to reveal a brutish face thick with scars and piercings before falling to her knee and touching her forehead with a gloved palm in a sign of respect. A blue handprint covers her face. “We saw the flame in the sky….” Her voice falters when she sees my slingBlade.
The other riders strip their helms, dismounting in a rush as they see our hair and eyes. Not a rider among them is a man. The women’s faces are painted with huge sky-blue handprints, a little eye drawn in the center of each. White hair flows in long braids down their backs. Black eyes peer from hooded lids. Iron and bone piercings bridge noses and hook lips and notch ears. Only the lead rider has yet to remove her helmet or kneel. She steps toward us, in a trance.
“Sister,” Ragnar manages. “My sister.”
“Sefi?” Mustang repeats, eying the black human tongues on the prize-hook on the Obsidian’s left hip. She wears no gloves. The backs of her hands are tattooed with glyphs.
“Do you know me?” Ragnar rasps. A tentative smile on quivering lips as the rider approaches. “You must.” The rider catalogues his scars from behind her mask. Eyes dark and wide. “I know you,” Ragnar continues. “I would know you if the world were dark and we were withered and old.” He shudders in pain. “If the ice was melted and the wind quiet.” She drifts forward, step by step. “I taught you the forty-nine names of the ice…the thirty-four breaths of the wind.” He smiles. “Though you could only ever remember thirty-two.”
She gives him nothing, but the other riders are already whispering his name, and looking at us as if by accompanying him and possessing a curved blade they’ve pieced together who I am. Ragnar continues, voice carrying the last of his strength.
“I carried you on my shoulders to watch five Breakings. And let you braid my hair with your ribbons. And played with the dolls you made from seal leather and threw balls of ice at old Proudfoot. I am your brother. And when the men of the Weeping Sun took me and a harvest of our kin to the Chained Lands, do you remember what I told you?”
Despite his wound, the man reeks of power. This is his land. This is his home. And he is as vast here as I was upon my clawDrill. The gravity of him draws Sefi closer. She collapses to her knees and strips away her bone helmet.
Sefi the Quiet, famed daughter of Alia Snowsparrow, is raw and majestic. Face severe. Angled like a crow’s. Her eyes too small, too close together. Her lips thin, purple in the cold, and permanently pursed in thought. White hair shaved down the left side, braided and falling to the waist on the right. A wing tattoo encircled by astral runes is livid blue on the left side of her pale skull. But what makes her unique among the Obsidians, and the object of their admiration, is that her skin is without pocks or scars. The only ornament she wears is a single iron bar through her nose. And when she blinks down at Ragnar’s wound, the blue eyes tattooed on the back of her eyelids pierce through me.
She extends a hand to her brother, not to touch him, but to feel the breath steam before his mouth and nose. It is not enough for Ragnar. He seizes her hand and presses it fiercely to his chest so she can feel his fading heartbeat. Tears of joy gather in his eyes. And when they spill from Sefi’s down her cheeks to carve paths through her blue warpaint, his voice cracks. “I told you I would return.”
Her eyes leave him to follow Aja’s tracks into the crevasse. She clicks her tongue and four Valkyrie stake ropes into the snow and rappel down into the darkness to seek out Aja. The rest guard their warleader and watch the hills, elegant recurve bows at the ready. “We have to fly him to the Spires,” I say in their language. “To your shaman.”
Sefi does not look at me. “It is too late.” Snow gathers on Ragnar’s white beard. “Let me die here. On the ice. Under the wild sky.”
“No,” I mumble. “We can save you.”
The world feels very distant and unimportant. His blood continues to leave him, but there is no more sadness in my friend. Sefi has chased it away.
“It is no great thing to die,” he says to me, though I know he doesn’t mean it as deeply as he wants to. “Not when one has lived.” He smiles, trying to comfort me even now. But he wears the unjustness of his life and death upon his face. “I owe that to you. But…there is much undone. Sefi.” He swallows, his tongue heavy and dry. “Did my men find you?” Sefi nods, staying hunched over her brother, her white hair flying about her in the wind. He looks to me. “Darrow, I know you think words will suffice,” Ragnar says in Aureate lingo so Sefi cannot understand. “They will not. Not with my mother.” This was what he did not tell me. Why he was so quiet on the shuttle, why he carried dread upon his shoulders. He was coming home to kill his mother. And now he’s giving me permission to do just that. I glance over to Mustang. She heard too, and wears her heartbreak on her face. As much for my shattered, fool’s dream of a better world as for my dying friend. He shudders in pain and Sefi pulls a knife from her boot, unwilling to watch him suffer any longer. Ragnar shakes his head at her and nods to me. He wants me to do it. I shake my head as if I can wake up from this nightmare. Sefi stares at me fiercely, daring me to contradict her brother’s last wishes.
“I will die with my friends,” Ragnar says.
I numbly let my razor slither into my hand and hold it over his chest. There’s peace at last in Ragnar’s wet eyes. It’s all I can do to be strong for him.
“I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time. We will wait.”
I nod like I still believe in the Vale. Like I still think it waits for me and for him. “Your people will be free,” I say. “On my life, I promise this. And I will see you soon.” He smiles as he stares up at the sky. Sefi frantically puts her axe in Ragnar’s palm so that he can die as a warrior, a weapon in hand, and secure his place in the halls of Valhalla.
“No, Sefi,” he says, dropping the axe and taking snow in his left hand, her hand with his right. “Live for more.” He nods to me.
The wind whips.