21. Max
Max
Tens of thousands of soldiers filled the great square, standing in silent ranks, torchlight moving over their faces.
The banners of the Zodiac Covenant hung at half-staff. At the center of the square rose the pyre, cedar and pitch-pine built to the height of a man’s chest, and on it, wrapped in white, lay our dead.
Jace. Bryn. And beside them, brought at last to their rest, the soldiers who had died before the summit, defending the fortress from the mutants.
The air smelled of resin, torch smoke, and cold coming down off the mountains. Nobody spoke above a murmur.
The rite was the one the Covenant had used for eighty years.
The honor guard bore each body through the ranks on a shield, feet first, so the dead marched out as they’d marched in.
As each passed, the soldiers touched their sword hilts, and the name was spoken once by the officer who had commanded that soldier.
Oil was poured at the four corners of the pyre.
Then the speeches, before the fire, because the Covenant believed the dead were owed their stories.
Enna spoke first, in full Spartan panoply, her spear grounded, her voice carrying to the farthest wall.
“It was just another beautiful day when the bomb dropped,” she said.
“Jace and I had come back from the African reserve. We’d spent our leave hunting a ring of lion trophy hunters, because that was what we did with our leave.
We hunted the hunters. People ask why lions.
Jace always gave the same answer. Lions don’t have anybody else.
” She paused, jaw working. “Jace didn’t die young.
But he was young, as immortals go. He had centuries left in him, and he spent every day of the ones he got defending the helpless.
I served beside him longer than most of you have been alive.
I never once saw him take a step backward… ”
Other Spartans came forward, each with a piece of him.
“He lost at cards every payday.”
A ripple went through the Spartan ranks, half laugh, half grief.
Then it was my turn.
“Jace called me cousin,” I said. “He claimed I had to be a descendant of the Ice Giants, and since he was a few inches shorter than me, I told him he must be from the neighboring clan, the Dwarves.” Laughter moved through the crowd.
“Now I’ll never get to find out. I wanted more time to know him, and the enemy took it. ”
I paused, and the tears came, and I let them run. These were my people.
“Bryn was my first friend on base,” I said.
“I loved that she laughed at everything, including me. She made a barracks feel like the family I’d lost. She wanted one thing.
She wanted to be a Spartan. The broken nose and the spear and the creed.
She trained for it before dawn, when she thought no one saw.
” My voice cracked. “She died on her first mission, holding a shield I made for her, protecting the people behind it.”
Silence, and the torches snapping.
Then Missy was there beside me, Ross clutched to her chest.
“May I say something, please, Max?”
Drakken answered in my stead, from the head of the pyre, looking down at a small girl who had crossed the whole open square without one soldier moving to stop her.
“Yes, you may.”
Missy lifted her chin and planted her feet, the way I planted mine.
“Jace, and Bryn, and many others whose names I haven’t learned yet, died to save me.” Her voice was small, but it did not shake. “I’ll always remember them, even after I grow up! I’ll never ever forget them.” She made the sign, solemn as an oath before a court, one finger crossing her chest twice.
The whole square laughed and sobbed in the same breath.
“We mourn their deaths,” Drakken shouted, “and we celebrate their lives.”
The soldiers chanted, rank upon rank, the words rolling around the square like a drum.
“We hold the line!”
“We carry the names!”
“We keep the watch!”
The Spartans raised their swords as one and howled, wolves and grief in it, and out of the howl the song began. One voice, then a hundred, then all of them, slow and rough and sure.
Go on ahead, our brave, our own, the watch is done, the road runs long;
beyond the Veil the fires are lit, and every hall is full of song.
Pour the mead and save our seats, and greet the friends who went before;
tell them we held, tell them we hold, and we will hold forevermore.
When our last watch is done, we’ll come, and drink with you beyond the morn.
The last line died away into the mountains, and I stood there with my face wet, thinking of Bryn pouring mead at a long table, saving me a seat, telling Rogue all my secrets.
“Max Morning. Attention!” Drakken snapped.
What the fuck? What did I do this time?
I snapped to attention, my heart slamming up through the grief.
Shit. The dragon general was going to make an example of me. Now? For what? He’d come at me with a raised broadsword once because I’d gotten lost in a smut novel and hadn’t heard him enter the room.
“Step forward.” Softer this time.
I moved forward, and couldn’t help turning my head, because the Spartan ranks were moving too. They closed around me, shields turning inward, and Enna stepped in front of me with a blade laid flat across her palms.
Drakken’s voice rose over the circle. “You crossed into the enemy’s kingdom for one child who could not protect herself. You brought back our people, living and dead, and left none behind. That is the whole of the creed.” He paused. “Say it.”
Me? He wanted me to swear it?
“We protect those who can’t protect themselves.” My voice came out steadier than I was.
“Then take the blade, and take the name.” Drakken let it land. “Spartan Max, of the Zodiac Covenant.”
Enna held the sword out flat. My hands didn’t come up, and she waited until they did. The blade was short, blackened, no ornament except at the base of the steel: the spear-and-shield on one side, the Covenant insignia inlaid in silver on the other.
The weight of it settled into my hands, and my throat closed. Bryn would have loved it.
“And one more name.” Drakken’s voice carried out over the ranks. “Granted this night, before the ranks and the fire. Spartan Bryn, of the Zodiac Covenant.”
A second blade was set in my hands, twin to my own.
I carried it to the pyre and laid it on Bryn’s sheet-wrapped body, over her heart, where her dream had lived. Jace’s own blade already rested on his chest, going with him into the fire as it had gone everywhere else.
You made it, Bryn.
Caspian and Nikolai stepped forward with torches and set them to the oil-soaked corners, and the pyre took the flame with a sound like a long-held breath released.
Missy hugged my leg, her face pressed against my hip, Ross a small warm weight between us.
I rested my hand on her hair and didn’t move it.
The fire climbed into the dark, and the sparks went up in slow rivers toward the stars, carrying the names with them, and around us thousands of soldiers stood and watched them go.
We stayed until the fire gave our friends to the sky.