The half-second distraction is all I need. I grab my razor from the ground. It hardens into a slingBlade. And there, at the center of three Wardens, I hack off the barrel of the Gold’s rifle, as well as several of his fingers. I slash backward and sever the ligaments in the sword arm of the Obsidian. The Red I finish with four alternating thrusts delivered to kneecaps and wrists. They don’t get a shot off. In three seconds, three Wardens fall screaming to the ground. Injured but alive.
Then the air erupts from the firing line.
I use the Gold as a human shield, catching him as he stumbles back from the wound I gave him, and rush at the remaining men as my two veterans sow chaos. I fling my razor out at an Obsidian’s pulseRifle. The razor wraps around the muzzle as he pulls the trigger. I jerk it sideways and nonlethal charges spray down the line into his armored companions, slamming two to their knees. I retract the whip, severing the muzzle from his rifle, then cut off half his hand as he reaches for his razor. Another man is shot by my Gray ally. Wulfgar flings up his aegis, and the pearlescent energy shield blossoms from his right arm. He takes the fire of the Gray behind their line and launches toward her with his gravBoots. The edge of his aegis melts through her bare skull, sheaving it in two. She falls dead. Wulfgar bowls into the Gold veteran, their armor making a terrible clang. Their rifles tangle and their razors flash out.
I’m hit in the left shoulder with a glancing energy round as the Wardens try to keep their distance to use their nonlethal munitions.
The nerves from shoulder to elbow go ice cold. I roar in rage and kick one of their Reds so hard in the chest he’s lifted off his feet. Someone hits me from the side with the shoulder of their armor. My teeth clack together. A birdcage is fired a half second later. Instinct saves me. I see the blur and slice it in half midair before the round can expand. I whip my razor around the foot of an Obsidian as he flies upward on his gravBoots to escape my charge and get a better angle to shoot down at me. I let him carry me up off my feet, then I retract the razor, ripping off his foot. I fall back down amongst the men below as he sputters sideways, screaming.
As I land, I throw my razor at a Gray leveling a rifle at me from ten meters off. It goes end over end and spits him through the shoulder, piercing his armor and jutting out the other side. I grab a razor from the body of a downed Red and roll to my feet just as a razor emerges from my left bicep as if my body is giving birth to a meter-long tongue of grisly metal. The Obsidian woman on the other end tries to stake me to the ground, but I pull sideways and let the blade go through the meat. Then I turn on her and exchange a fury of blows, but don’t have time to finish her off before the remaining three Wardens charge from the left. I spin backward and toward them, so that I alter the angle to face one man on their flanks, his body blocking the others. I slap his blade to the side and stab his left shoulder, then his right elbow. Neither a killing blow. His razor drops.
I spin and slap my razor in Lorn’s Whirlwind movement, creating chaos for the last two Wardens, and moving so fast they seem stuck in mud. I forgo killing blows and hack off two hands, one right after another, razors still clenched in their grips. Then I fire the gravity gun point-blank at a Gray who just gained his feet. He shoots backward into a tree, cracking branches as he goes.
I turn on Wulfgar as he pulls his blade from the Gold’s sternum. She’s dead on the ground.
“Darrow…”
I fly at him in a fury. He is a warrior of the ice. Sold as a child, he fought in the pits as a gladiator and rose by the strength of his sword arm. He fights with wild, hacking power, but I am the last student of Arcos. I grind the taller man back, our blades a kinetic shower of sparks and blood-hungry metal. Reverberations gnaw through my hands. My breath is measured; my feet sound against the grass. I’m going to win. I see his balance go several sets before it happens. Two slashes at the legs, a jab at the knee, then the armpit, using the momentum of his blade’s deflections to move my blade to its next attack. I slash sideways at his bicep. He twists and moves back, shoulders extending too far out from his center of gravity. I pursue, leading with my blade rigid and aimed for his sword shoulder. Then there’s a wail from behind me. An energy round, the cool blue of a stun weapon, slams into the armor of his thigh. It’s absorbed harmlessly, but it pushes him sideways into the path of my thrust.
Resistance pushes its way down the blade to the handle. Blood follows.
Wulfgar steps back. His legs sluggish. His eyes confused and blank as he teeters there. The blade has entered through his mouth and out the back of his skull. Blood spills down into his beard. His teeth click against metal.
He falls to his knees, and there, dead, stares on at me down the length of my blade.
Instinctively, I pull the blade from his mouth. Then the realization falls upon me with all its weight.
“Darrow!” Sevro sprints from the house toward me, a multiPistol in hand. He stares in horror at the body of Wulfgar. “Darrow.” I kneel in front of the fallen knight. The rage that gripped me when my blood was high gives way to crushing sorrow.
No. No. No. Wulfgar…
This is not what I wanted.
Wulfgar’s head bubbles blood into the summer grass. His wounded men, those who can, rise to stare at him, at me. I step back from their eyes, seeing not anger in them, but utter confusion and betrayal. The only others dead besides Wulfgar are the Gold and Gray who fought for me. I stumble back as I realize the horror I’ve made.
“Darrow…” I hear Mustang’s voice behind me. She stands weaponless at the edge of the fray. She drifts slowly toward me. “What have you done…”
This death will reach beyond this small plot of earth and rattle the Republic to its foundations. Wulfgar carried the luster of Ragnar’s legend with him. He was a hero. More than that. He was a symbol, and not just to the Vox Populi. The people will hate me. Especially the Obsidians. I’ve taken one of their favorite sons, one of their great bridges to the Republic, and cut him down in the grass.
What did I think would happen?
Sevro looks back at me, his eyes red. “Darrow, more will be coming.” He grabs me when my own legs won’t move. “It’s time to go. Reap. Come on.” I look over at him and see the fear in his eyes.
Amidst the bodies, Mustang looks a ghost of herself. Ten years of building, and one night has broken it all. “I’m sorry,” I say. She stares at me, finding no words for her horror, and I let Sevro pull me away.
As we lift off from the landing pad, I stand looking out from the closing passenger ramp and see my wife standing amidst the ruin I’ve left behind, and beyond her, in the shadow of a conifer pine, my son watches me leave the killing field behind.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
—LORN AU ARCOS