The Nine

  THE NINE

  D. J. MOLLES

  And they sent unto the nine sons of Primus three Givers, and the Givers had no names, and what they gave unto the nine sons was three gifts: Strength, wisdom, and the power of death.

  Translated from the Ortus Deorum

  3rd Song, 4th Stanza

  CHAPTER 0

  QUESTION

  What makes a smart man do something dumb?

  Perry was given an opportunity to consider just that question, right about the time that something came out of the blackness of night and stung him in the back. The strike pitched him forward onto his hands and knees. His longstaff clattered out of his grip into the bone-white dust of the Glass Flats.

  He didn’t get around to considering the question just yet. He was in full, oh-shit-something-just-attacked-me mode. So his mind forwent philosophical considerations, and shot into the flowing red of The Calm, accessing the clasp in his pocket.

  His energy shield erupted around him, encircling him in a shimmering, protective dome…

  And then flickered out.

  What’s happening? His mind panicked.

  He whirled towards the threat, hands and knees scrabbling through the pale dust, latching onto his longstaff. He tried to summon the shield again, but couldn’t finding it. He couldn’t find the flow, or the red, or the place where his mind fit so neatly…

  A shape loomed in the darkness.

  Something not quite human.

  Perry gaped. He tried to spin, to sprint back through the night to the campfire a mile in the distance, where his three friends slept. But all he managed to do was throw his body into a messy pirouette before collapsing onto the hard ground. And that was when all the strength bled out of him in a rush. His body refused to respond to any command, and he had the very clear thought, Shit, I should have listened to Stuber…

  Slumped to the ground, his muscles turning to slag, Perry breathed in a mouthful of sand, his eyes fixed on the twinkling of the firelight, so far away.

  That was the moment when he truly considered the question.

  What makes a smart man do something dumb?

  Well, usually a smart man has a compelling reason for doing a dumb thing.

  Here was Perry’s:

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE FAITH OF A FATHER

  Change the tides of history, Perry’s father had told him. And yet every step he took across that arid expanse called the Glass Flats drew him closer to something that he feared would stop him in his tracks.

  It had started as a dark line in the distance. A shadow that hovered over the eastern horizon, which Perry thought might be a line of dark clouds. He’d spotted it that morning, when the rising sun still glared in his eyes.

  How many days had they been on the Glass Flats now? Seven? It was difficult to tell, because it was the same thing every day: Up at dawn, one foot in front of the other, until the sun set. Time was judged not by the passing of the sun, but by dwindling supplies, parched mouths, and a bone-weary ache that compounded with each indeterminate mile.

  Now, as the sun began to set once again, that thing in the distance was no longer a dark line on the horizon. With the westering sun splashing across its surface, it now shown in glowing ochre. A sheer face of cliffs that towered high above, mocking his exhaustion, and challenging Perry’s belief that he was capable of completing the mission that Cato McGown had given him.

  Perry stopped. His stomach had been sinking all day. The higher those cliffs in the distance had risen, the lower his stomach had drooped, until now, it finally landed at the very bottom of him, and he didn’t think he could take another step, like his guts had tangled up his feet.

  “Well,” a familiar voice gruffed from behind him, wind-parched and rough. “This sucks.”

  Perry cast a glance over his shoulder, trying to summon his guts back up to where they belonged. They seemed far heavier than the strength he had to lift them.

  Stuber stood at his left side. One of their empty water skins was perched on his head, like a sunshade, but the light reflecting off the white dust had still burned him from underneath. The first few days of sunburn was still peeling off of him, and the skin beneath was both tanned, and freshly red.

  On the other side of Stuber, Teran and Sagum stopped, little dust motes rising from the last scuffs of their boots. Teran’s tawny hair had bleached. Her skin didn’t take to the sun as well as Stuber’s and she looked flat-out burned. She didn’t seem to want to look at the cliffs, and instead seemed taken with a bit of glass that shown at her feet from where she’d swept the thin skein of dust away.

  Beneath all that white sand, the earth had been scorched by some weapon beyond comprehension. Turned to glass. Sometimes you could see things, trapped inside, like bugs trapped in amber. But not this time.

  Sagum’s posture was slouched, his hands on his hips, squinting at the cliffs as he dragged his gaze from one end to the other. “There’s no way around them.”

  Perry had already made note of that. The cliffs extended to the north and south, as far as the eye could see.

  With his guts unwilling to be drawn back into place, Perry decided to lower his body to their level, and wilted onto the sun-warmed ground, folding his dusty boots under him, cross-legged. He smelled his own unwashed body and clothes, wafting up into nostrils crusted with a layer of dirt and salt from his own sweat.

  It didn’t take long for the others to follow suit. No point in standing, when they weren’t moving forward.

  A half-breed runt. A deserter from the legions. A woman who had been raised as a thief and con-artist. And a tinkerer. They sat shoulder to shoulder, staring at the obstacle in front of them. A light breeze stirred the hot air and sent a ripple of dust scouring across them, like a miniature sand storm.

  Perry laid his longstaff across his lap and leaned his elbows on it. He rubbed the crust out of his nose and tried to summon some can-do spirit. “Maybe we can scale them.”

  The reaction to that went down the line: Stuber blew a raspberry; Teran chuffed; Sagum groaned.

  Perry had expected as much. He felt the same as they did. The only difference was that he was compelled forward by a mission given to him by the man that he still considered his father, though Perry knew that Cato McGown hadn’t sired him. But Cato had loved him, and that was what mattered. He’d loved Perry, and he’d put his faith in him.

  Change the tides of history. Uncover the truth.

  Now, Perry needed to prove that he deserved that faith.

  He nodded at the cliffs. “We’ve come this far. We sure as shit can’t turn back now.” He spat dryly—just a tiny glob of froth that probably had more dust in it than spit. “Not gonna let a little thing like some mile-high cliffs stop me.” He gestured to the wall of rock. “The East Ruins—the entire reason why we’re here—could be right on the other side.”

  “Yup,” Stuber announced, and swung his burden of firewood off of his back, parking it in front of him.

  Perry eyed the bundle of sticks that they’d gathered from the few charred and withered trees they found along the way, like desiccated, bony hands sprouting from the glass. How they’d managed not to be turned to cinders by whatever weapon had scorched this section of the earth to glass and dust, he would never know. But he appreciated that they had fuel to make a fire.

  Making a fire wasn’t what he’d had in mind, though.

  “What are you doing?” Perry asked, trying to summon the conviction to get to his feet again.

  Stuber began unlashing the bundle of sticks. “I’m making a campfire.”

  “We should press on while it’s still light.”

  Teran and Sagum expended their last bits of energy by sidling up around the spot that Stuber had selected for their fire. It was still hot, but the se
cond the sun went down it would get cold, and they would need the fire to keep from shivering all night.

  Also, the last few nights there had been…things. Out in the darkness. Perry hadn’t gotten a good look at them—the fire seemed to keep them at bay.

  “Perry,” Teran sighed. “Those cliffs are still two or three miles away. The sun will be down in thirty minutes. You’re not going to find a way through in thirty minutes.”

  “Besides,” Stuber put in, erecting a pile of twigs. “This is an excellent campsite. Note its exceptional flatness.” He held up a finger. “I know you’re thinking, ‘But, Stuber, it’s all flat!’ But my keen senses have told me that this particular patch of nothingness is flatter than the rest of the flatness. A superb place to camp. And I’m not just saying that because this is where I parked my ass and I don’t feel like moving.”

  Perry quirked an eyebrow and gave a half-assed attempt at a challenge: “Come on, Stuber. You telling me I’ve got more get-up-and-go than you do right now?”

  “Not gonna work this time, my precious little Halfbreed. I’m done. Teran’s done. Smegma was done ten miles ago. And you’re done too. You’re just too stubborn to realize it.”

  “I’m not even offended,” Sagum said, stretching his legs out and reclining on an elbow. “I was done ten miles ago. Right around the time I realized those were cliffs.”

  Perry nodded. Propped his staff on the ground and started to pull himself up. “Alright. Y’all make camp. I’ll push out and scout the cliffs until it gets dark—”

  “The fuck you will,” Stuber growled.

  Perry paused, half-risen, and frowned at Stuber. “What’s got you all bothered?”

  Stuber paused in his fire-building to give Perry a glower. “You heard those things the last couple nights. I don’t know what the hell they were, but we’re not alone out here. Now is not the time for you to pretend to be a hero and strike out on your own, especially this close to dark.”

  “I’ve got my shield and my longstaff.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got a shield. But you barely know how to use that longstaff.”

  Perry’s jaw clenched. It was a sore subject. “Just because I can’t start a godsdamned fire with it, doesn’t mean I can’t use it. I can still fire energy bolts out of it. You’ve seen me do it.”

  Stuber’s expression became bland. “I’ve seen you wing off a bunch of shots, like a kid playing with fireworks. You lack control. If you can’t control your weapon, it’s not a weapon, it’s just a hazard—to you and everyone around you.”

  Perry looked away. “Stuber. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Teran leaned back on her palms. “Perry, just because you can access god-tech doesn’t make you an expert in it.”

  “And Stuber is?”

  “He’s an expert in weapons.”

  Stuber held up a hand. “Easy, feisty-pants. I don’t need you to come to my defense.” He turned to Perry again. “Remember the deal you made? That I would come along, but you were going to let me teach you how to fight?”

  “You can’t teach me how to fight with something you can’t even use.”

  Rather than get mad, Stuber laughed. “I don’t need to be able to use something to know that someone else isn’t using it correctly either.” He pointed a thick finger at Perry. “Intense and direct application of violence for the purpose of killing. That means control. Whether you’re beating a man to death with your hands, filling him full of lead, or disintegrating him with energy bolts, if you can’t control the killing tool you’ve chosen to use, then you can’t have intense and direct application of violence.” Stuber leaned back and gestured to the pile of sticks. “Now. Light my fucking fire, Shortstack.”

  Despite all of Perry’s blustering, he knew that Stuber was right. Which was a terrible, recurring theme between them that Perry hated, but had come to accept.

  Still, he leaned his head back and groaned. “Gods in the skies, Stuber. Not again.”

  Stuber was as stubborn as Perry. Which was why they got along so well. And also why they constantly argued. “I’ll tell you what, mighty Halfbreed, savior of humanity…if you can light this fire with your longstaff, without blowing it up, then you can take your happy ass out into the dark and scout out those cliffs. If you can demonstrate control of your weapon platform, then I’m comfortable with you going out and doing hero-shit.”

  Perry lowered his head and raised his eyebrows. “I could just go anyways and—”

  “Just light the fucking fire,” Teran interrupted.

  “Fine. Fine.” Perry rose to both feet now and shuffled closer to the pile of sticks. “But you guys know how this goes.”

  “You know,” Sagum leaned onto his side and delved a hand into the pouch of technological odds and ends that he kept on his belt. “Rather than have Perry blow us all up, we could use this handy-dandy item I’ve made.” He drew out a round object, smiling at it. He’d been tinkering away at this thing for the last few nights. “It’s a real fire starter. I made it from the parts I scavenged from that mech in Fiendevelt.”

  Stuber shook his head. “If Perry fails, then we can use your doodad. For now, let’s see if the Halfbreed can figure this out.”

  “Right.” Sagum looked disappointed. He stuffed his invention back into his tinkerer’s pouch. “Guess we should take cover.”

  Sagum and Teran chose to take cover behind Stuber, who himself scooted backwards, his eyes alight with a fresh combination of amusement and interest. Teran and Sagum peered over his armored spaulders. Stuber hefted his chest plate up and ducked, so that his bearded smile disappeared into it, and only his eyes peered over, twinkling with merriment. He looked like a bemused turtle.

  “Okay, Shortstack.” Stuber’s voice was muffled by the chest plate. “Nice and easy. Don’t blow us all up. Again.”

  “Alright,” Perry mumbled. “Let me focus.”

  Perry hefted the longstaff in his hand. He still marveled at how light it felt, despite its size. Six feet of what appeared to be solid metal, with a boxy bottom, and a long, curved blade at the top, a bayonet of sorts, which overshadowed a fluted muzzle.

  Perry stepped up to the pile of sticks and lowered the muzzle, hovering it inches above the wood. He focused, feeling the flow inside of him. It was a river of red that existed inside of him, and all he had to do was dip his mind down into it.

  For all of his life up until recently, he’d believed that this was just some mental oddity that had no rhyme or reason to it. But over the course of the past few weeks he’d come to discover that its origins were genetic. He’d received this ability from his father.

  His biological father. Paladin Selos.

  Now, dipping his mind down into that flow, he perceived the world around him, but his brain felt like it was suddenly moving along, caught up in the tide of something powerful. Like a river, it had more potential than appeared on the surface.

  “There you go,” he heard Stuber encourage. “Same as you’ve been doing.”

  In Perry’s mind, he was not alone in the river. There was the clasp, which was a separate device that he kept in his pocket—that was what generated his energy shield. He felt it there with him, and it was familiar, and he knew how to control that. He could do it almost instinctively now. But there was this big lumbering beast in the flow of the red with him, and he knew that it was the longstaff.

  The longstaff in his hands lit up. On the boxy back end, a few small diodes began to glow, and the blade below the muzzle crackled and lit up in a ghostly green.

  He felt where his mind was supposed to go. But there was also a sort of counterpressure as he mentally moved towards it, and it made it difficult to simply ease into the device…

  He pushed a little harder.

  The muzzle of the longstaff flared.

  Shit! Too much!

  He tried to pull back, but it was too late.

  The air cracked with a strange Ka-whap sound, sending a handful of the sticks flying, and caus
ing Stuber to jerk a hand up in front of his eyes as he was peppered with wood particles.

  “Godsdammit!” Perry spat, pulling his mind back from the longstaff so suddenly that the entire thing went dark and inert again.

  Stuber leaned forward and, with deft fingers that belied their size, pushed several of the smoldering twigs back together, scrunching them into a pile again, and then leaning down close and blowing a gentle breath across them.

  The charred ends glowed red. Smoked. Then flamed.

  Stuber sat back, stacking more sticks on the flames. “Well. I wouldn’t call that ‘control,’ but we do have a fire.”

  “That’s because it’s not meant to light fires.”

  “Oh, you read the instruction manual?” Stuber said, reaching for more wood.

  “It’s a weapon! Not a fire starter.”

  “If it starts a fire, it’s a fire starter.”

  “You know,” Sagum put in, shuffling back to his original position. “I created a fire starter fire starter. For starting fires. Just saying.”

  Perry looked at the longstaff in his hands. “I just think it’s stupid to try to pussy-foot around with the thing.”

  “You’re just saying that because you struggle with finesse.”

  “It’s a six-foot long axe with a blaster on the end of it. I don’t think finesse is the point.”

  “Time and practice,” Stuber intoned, for perhaps the thousandth time. He took a break from building the fire and gestured out at the cliffs, which now glowed a dull red in the waning sunlight. “If you would like to whip out a few thunderbolts and destroy those cliffs, just to get it out of your system, then go right ahead.”

  Perry sighed. Trying to shoot energy bolts at the cliffs was stupid. Stuber had known it was stupid. He’d just offered it to Perry to see how stupid Perry would be in the midst of his frustration.

  No, Perry was not stupid. Firing the damn thing wouldn’t do him any good, and might attract unwanted attention. He laid it down on the ground and once again looked at that cruel blade, that muzzle that teemed with potential killing power.