I vault the trench wall and hit the mud running.
Pulling my hat on tight, I grip my rifle in both hands and launch myself forward. Another flare snaps into the cloud-filled sky, hissing to itself over the clomp of my boots and the squelch of mud. Bullets flicker through the night, chased by the distinctive report of German rifles. Both sides are firing, pinpointing the two of us as we lope across the sparsely lit devastation, breathless, both of us silent.
The storm trooper wears a Stahlhelm, a German helmet, gunmetal gray and shaped like a low-slung turtle shell. Where horns would be on a bull, it has bolts to secure a full steel face guard. This type of plate is only worn by snipers; it is too heavy for a man to wear beyond a fixed position.
So, this is not a man.
Without slowing, I toss my rifle to the ground and draw both trench knives. The blades flash under greenish clouds as my arms pump mechanically. The storm trooper also accelerates, its face blank behind a sheet of steel with two slits for eyes. A stray bullet strikes him in the shoulder, tearing fabric in a puff.
He does not lose stride.
We meet at the base of a blasted tree, stripes of its bark ripped away in pale rivulets, its white heart exposed. The storm trooper draws a long saber, dull yellow, familiar. In rapid motions we are upon each other, no grunting or cursing, only the sound of our blades ringing, biting, and tearing through fabric as we feint and dodge.
The gunshots have stopped from both sides.
In a flurry of movement the storm trooper catches my fist. His blade pierces my torso, splitting my coat and cracking my lower ribs. I try to pull away, but the masked man is too strong. With my free hand, I grab him by the face and pry the steel plate and helmet off his head.
An artillery shell whistles for attention.
Dirt sprays and thunder rolls as the ground opens up and swallows us. Blade lodged in my stomach, I am thrown against the tree, slipping in the mud under the weight of the storm trooper. Shrapnel falls in a hot rain as a mass of long black hair spills over my face. A red hilt streaks in my vision and I recognize the divine blade—Xuan Yuan. This is not a man…and it is not truly a woman.
“Leizu,” I say, in shock.
She rams a knee into my chest and pulls the blade free. In her other hand, I can make out a device that looks like a tuning fork. She jams the hard fingers of the device against my sternum and speaks into my face, her breath invisible. “You say my name as if it means something, Pyotr. But you do not remember me. Not yet.
“Witness,” she says.
The tuning fork sprays tree roots of electricity over my chest. The twisted branches above me look like claws scrabbling against throbbing green clouds. My back arches, body convulsing. A buzzing sensation traces over my teeth as the device injects writhing filaments of power through my anima.
Another mortar is whistling into existence, I think.
Like the afterimage of lightning, the world flips to negative and back again. Ribbons of light spiral in my vision as a firecracker string of memories ignites. A thousand years of disjointed recollection—broken shards of a forgotten whole—flood into my blinded eyes.
I scream the pain of it into the freezing night.
47
CHINA, PRESENT
Like a spinning globe, a great green expanse of earth rolls beneath the private jet. Peter and I are soaring low over jagged mountains with tight, meandering spines. Slug-trail folds of the Yangtze River trickle like venom between sharp teeth of rock. In the jet cabin, a yellowed map is spread out, pockmarked with Chinese characters and a landscape that only vaguely resembles the tableau sliding past.
Elena reluctantly lived up to her promise, marking the map with the exact modern coordinates where her body was recovered more than three centuries ago.
“Huangdi is in these mountains?” I ask, watching the river swell into a lake at the point where it is choked by the wide buttress of the Three Gorges Dam. “You think his vessel is still down there?”
“Leizu tried to flood this land—proof we are on the right track. But Huangdi was clever. He built his tomb to last forever.”
“Then he’s here?”
“I will know it when I see it,” says Peter.
It’s as much as I’ve been able to get out of him, and it will have to be enough. Impatient, I check the batteries in my headlamp again. Our preparations for the trip are long complete. The pilot met us at an airstrip outside London ten hours ago. Two fat black duffel bags were waiting on the leather seats, slumped like sleeping passengers.
Inside the bag, I found boots, pants, a shirt, and a backpack—all black, made of futuristic materials and layered in places with a type of thin ceramic armor. Wearing his own quasi-military gear, Peter looks like a mercenary, perfectly confident and at ease with a custom knife sheath across his chest for his antique dagger.
As for me, I’m not so sure. I’m just as uncomfortable in this commando uniform as I was wearing diamonds and pearls. The only thing that feels right is the relic hanging around my neck in its usual place.
I find myself wondering if Peter remembers that I tried to abandon him when Talus was coming for us. I’d pressed the relic into his unresponsive hand and was ready to run. All the years I spent in school, living on student loans, moving every few years from one postdoc to another, I sacrificed friendships and relationships for the chance to be an expert, to learn more about one thing than anybody else in the world. And I nearly left him there to die, trying to get my old life back.
How much am I willing to give up to see this new world?
“Buckle up,” says Peter. He’s watching me closely, and I try to keep my face blank. “It is time.”
We land on a deserted strip of tarmac nestled in the mountains.
Stepping out into an empty hangar, I don’t see any other planes or people. Nobody checks our identification or the packs we wear. Peter gives a small nod at a ramshackle building where an indistinct face swims behind dark glass, and then we’re walking down a long gravel path that leads to a roughly paved road.
A black SUV waits for us—the ubiquitous, anonymous variety that lurks around airports all over the world. The only difference is this one has large, knobby tires and a winch welded to the frame under the front grill. Our driver, just as anonymous as his vehicle, greets us with a quick bow and climbs in. He doesn’t move to take our backpacks and doesn’t make eye contact. A light mist lies over the jungle, beads of dew cascading over the SUV hood like spider eyes. I suppress a shiver and climb in.