Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“Boy’s all right. Girl’s straight psycho. It’s in the blood.”

Ozgard makes a small sound of disagreement. “The lesson is called the Three Seasons. Do you know this?” I shake my head. “Three seasons of war exist. Wind, Fire, and Ash. Pride, possession, annihilation. Freihild—”

“The one who cut off all those Syndicate balls?”

“Yes.” He gestures to the young instructor. “She gave secret order to attacker, sweep enemy from square, reach skull, or destroy enemy. Girl saw them advance for skull. Girl listened. She became ice, and the enemy wing in the end accepted it was her wing’s skull. Ownership was respected. A balance found. This pleases the Queen.”

I follow his eyes to a patch of grass spotted with snow. I’ve never seen Sefi the Quiet in person. She looks almost inanimate as she sits amongst her Valkyrie on the knoll. All legs and arms. No contained, kinetic violence like the Golds—who always seem a hair trigger away from atomic. Only a subdued, sleepy grandeur. Like one of the statues that surround the training square. Her shoulders are broad but bony under a fantastic high-collared white cloak with a blue fur collar. Her right hand is gloved. A crown of what looks like ice sits on her head. She watches intensely as a new batch takes the square, sparing a long look for Valdir, who tilts his chin upward toward his mate.

Pax is amongst the new batch. I trace the monsters he’s supposed to fight. It’s not just the size difference that worries me for the more sensitive of the two Gold spawn. It’s muscular development. Shy of puberty, Pax isn’t yet the man he’ll become. Though his bare calves do look more sculpted than’s right for a boy, the Obsidians are already giants.

The three opponents take their places in a triangle and receive their order from Freihild. Pax’s crew form together around their skull, not yet knowing their enemy’s intent. Pax seems uninterested. “That’s a trillion-credit skull you’re about to let those goons crack,” I say.

Ozgard examines me. “You care about boy. Warmth still in your stone heart. This is good.”

“It’s not a bloody marriage. He’s just my meal ticket. But he ain’t like the other one.”

“No. She is better fighter. He is more dangerous human. I warned Queen. He will refuse lesson this time. Rage festers inside. Watch.”

The Obsidians bellow a war challenge, which Ozgard says is a Season of Wind. Their intent is to sweep Pax’s crew from the square to show their valor. As Pax’s wingmen move to the center, he separates and stands on the very edge of the square. The three enemy don’t chase him. They use their numbers to drive his wingmen back and off the square. Then all three come for Pax in a V. As soon as they are in striking range, Pax steps out. The veteran warriors watching howl in condemnation. Pax’s enemies declare victory, and spurn his cowardice by turning their backs on him. He steps back into the square. Only Valdir smiles.

What follows is appalling.

Not the violence itself, but its tone of boredom and clinical cruelty. Crack. The sound of femur on skull rattles the training square. One of the Obsidians teeters sideways. The other two brutes wheel around to fight Pax. He silently deconstructs them. He’s slower than Electra, and almost looks asleep, but every movement is like part of a dance. As if he’s seen this all happen before, and must bore himself and mock the Obsidians by going through the motions. He doesn’t need to, but he collapses the kneecap of one of the older boys and then cracks his skull with a sweep of the stave. As he spins out of the movement, I see his eyes were closed. The other brings his stave down in a diagonal downward strike at Pax’s head. Pax falls flat on his back. The stave strikes the ground and shatters. Pax grabs the Obsidian’s ankle, pulls himself between the Obsidian’s legs, flips around him, ends up on the Obsidian’s back, and brings his hand down on the Obsidian’s neck. Somehow he grabbed a shard from the Obsidian’s broken stave and buried it two fingers deep in his neck.

“Do not move,” Pax says. “The bone is two millimeters from your carotid artery.” The Obsidian’s eyes widen; he goes very still. Pax slides from his back. The watching warriors are disgusted; not one has moved, not even the instructor. Pax turns to Sefi.

“You mock us?” Sefi asks in a quiet voice. “It was the Season of Wind, not Ash.”

“Mock? No, Your Majesty. I understand the purpose is to instruct me in the old ways of the Obsidian.” He points at Ozgard, somehow noticing his arrival. “Your shaman teaches the children of the Ice that war is the first language of all peoples, but not every war need be the last. As a child, I am to be impressed with your wisdom. As hostage, I am to be convinced by inclusion in your tribal rites that I am an ally. As ward, I am to impart this lesson upon my own people. To be friend of the Obsidians, who showed me their sacred rituals and treated me with respect. What a pity it is that there will be no Obsidians left.”

The braves stand at this insult. Not rising to the insult himself, Valdir watches the reactions of his fellows with careful consideration. So he’s a thinking monster. Rather handsome too, if you can get over the batwing ears.

“Gods forbid I insult your pride,” Pax crows. “A wonder you have any left. If you still think war is a dialogue, allow me to remind you the Golds of the Core do not believe you are human beings. You are cattle. They created the Seasons of War so the tribes would be locked in eternal strife. They did not want their herd culled. They wanted it honed to better wage their wars.

“From the crib the children of Peerless Scarred are now raised to know one truth. War is not for pride or for land. War is for extermination. Valdir the Unshorn knows this. He served beside Ragnar’s father, Pale Horse, as a slaveknight in the Grimmus Legions, then beside my father and Ragnar, who put the razor in his hand. Many of your bloodbraves have seen this in their service. Never has it been more evident than upon Mercury, where my father faces atomic annihilation.”

So the Red prick ended up back on Mercury. Must have been a Gold counterattack. Is he still a fugitive?

“But you. You scurrilous lot. You hide from that truth behind tradition. You abdicate oaths to feign wisdom. There is no wisdom in the company of deserters. There is only shame. You left your Morning Star to face your common enemy alone. But do not fret.” His grin is the nasty sort I did not know he had in him. “It will be short-lived when the engines of doom kill my father and arrive on Mars to chase even the oathbreakers to their graves. Make no mistake, Sefi, Queen of the Obsidians, this is no war of Wind or Fire.” He gestures to the dismantled Obsidian youth around him, with pity to the one holding the bone fragment in his neck. “This is a war of annihilation, and you are outmatched by the darker breed of my kind.

“I am the son of the Morning Star. The flesh and blood of the man who broke your chains. Yet you hold Electra and me as insurance and to bargain for ships and information. So I look upon you with my father’s eyes to ask: what do your old ways say of honor?”

He drops the femur and walks out, leaving the Obsidians in stony silence.

“Damn, son.” I scratch my leg, remembering what an idiot I was at his age. Electra rushes to catch up to Pax. Sefi watches them go, and signals their guards to follow. But the accusations Pax made remain in his wake. All is not well in the warbands of the Obsidian host. “Talk about a guilt trip.”

“Yes, he is…precocious,” Ozgard murmurs, clearly disagreeing with Pax. Oddly, Valdir does not. His eyes watch Pax with something like sorrow, and when he marches down to meet his Queen, it is as if the weight of ten worlds were on his shoulders. His anxiety evaporates only when he passes by the instructor Freihild. She takes pains not to meet his eyes. She is a pretty young thing. Lithe instead of muscular, without the hirsute appearance so common in her people. File that one away for later.

I am led down to Sefi. Despite just being dressed down by a prepubescent plutocrat, she is more impressive than her reputation. And it is a colossal reputation. Warlord, Gold killer, hero of the Rat War, sister of the demigod Ragnar Volarus, Queen of the Obsidians. She is not barbarically handsome like Valdir, or lively like Freihild. Instead she’s a cold fusion between worlds. A horizontal iron bar punctures her nose at the bridge, even as a cochlear implant blinks in her ear. Astral runes mark the shaved sides of her head. A datapad is embedded in her left forearm. Her eyes are large black marbles, but in the right light show fibers of optic implants. A second set of blue eyes are tattooed on her eyelids. Fourteen long, heavy-knuckled fingers fold together in her lap, stroking her valor tail.

And then I see the weapon she wears. The inert blade of the razor that punched through Trigg’s chest ten years ago is coiled around the long leather glove that reaches up to the elbow. The same blade that killed her brother, Ragnar. I blink like a dumb blacktooth addict. Thought Barca owned Aja’s blade.

Valdir kneels before his mate and bares his throat before announcing me and stepping to the side. Sefi raises an eyebrow at my bloody feet and knees. “He is guest, Valdir.”

“He dressed himself while falling out a window.”

“Climbing gracefully,” I correct. “Njar ga hae, skati,” I say to Sefi, baring my throat in respect and submission. Valdir is shocked I know any Nagal.