Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“Good. You know something at least. Pick up a rock.” I obey. It weighs half as much as my body. “Close your eyes. And run back down the steps.”

“Octavia…” Aja whispers.

“You have already spoilt your churlish spawn, Aja. Let us not ruin the batch. Is something the matter, Lysander? You said there are four hundred thirty-one steps. How many times have you run them? A thousand? Ten? This should be no difficulty. Begin.”

I surge downward, knowing this I can do. I can impress her. My steps are confident, even in the ice, even with the weight. I see the steps burned into the backs of my eyelids. I make it three hundred twenty-one steps before something on the steps starts. There’s a flutter of movement that slaps into my face. I lose my balance. The weight of the stone is unforgiving. It pulls me forward.

When I open my eyes, I am at the bottom of the steps. The bone of my right arm is out of the skin. It looks curiously pale. I begin to shudder. Aja is at my side, holding me. My grandmother descends the steps.

“Aja.”

“His bones haven’t fully—”

“Aja.”

Aja lets me go and I lie in the snow staring up at my grandmother.

“Stand up.” I struggle to my feet and look her in the eye. “Why did you fall?” I cannot speak for the pain. “Recede into your Mind’s Eye. Exist with the pain, then let it draw your inner pupil to tighter focus.”

I do as she demands. The pain does not lessen, but it no longer clouds. Its current pulls my mind narrower and constricts my concentration to retrace the memory. Sure enough, I find the outlying variable. A slight crunch as I descended the three hundred sixteenth step. Just before the crows.

“You put feed on the steps for the crows,” I whisper.

“Good. But are you not in control of your own body? Why did you let me dictate where you fell? If you were awake you would have sensed the crows were not in the trees any longer. You would have felt the seed underfoot, and adjusted to the fresh variable.” She bends down. “You have a brain like mine. That is why you are my heir. That is why I have made you my son. But you must never let your mind sleep. Your Mind’s Eye must rove without rest. Even as you speak, eat, move, it is not enough for it to collect data, it must digest it as a subfunction, or you will miss something and become a slave to another.”

She kneels to look me eye to eye. “You are known. Another will always seek to bridle you. With fists. With kisses. With tricks.” She brushes snow from my shoulders, and pain comes into her eyes. “The tragedy of the gifted is the belief they are entitled to greatness, Lysander. As a human, you are entitled only to death.” She stands. “Now, are you awake or asleep?”

“Awake.”

“Prove it. Again.”

I walk suspended between the past and the hard reality of the desert. There is pain. More than I thought possible. The left half of my face is a ruin of melted meat. It is swollen with fluid that expands the skin to bursting. Pus leaks through the bandage Kalindora helped me attach. My left eye is blind and obliterated. Bits of melted metal have hardened over much of the wound. Unable to see my reflection, I can only imagine the horror.

All I can do is walk.

Foot after foot over the hardpan. There is no more water left to share amongst our ragged band. While I could survive nine days without it in a temperate climate, the desert and my wound conspire to drain every drop.

I will not last long.

I cannot help but feel we are being followed. That something watches from the desert.

It is hard to tell. More bands like ours wander the playa, only to disappear behind veils of dust. It would not be good to congregate with wayward infantry anyway. Supplies dwindle. Weary bands trudge toward their imagined salvation. But we are all just burnt shadows of war.

The killing field was days ago, yet it stalks me like a ghost through the days. Perhaps that is what I feel. The sensation of destiny broken. The dread of the killing field. Two starShells pinning me down. Mutilated men and metal carpeting the ground. The battle had moved on shortly after I woke. Its sound echoed like distant thunder, and all I could do was lie there as night came, listening to the delirium of the dying.

When the sun dipped behind the mountains, the nocturnal predators came to feast on the dead. Their eyes glowed like coins as they fed. I could hear men wailing as they were dragged into the night. Then came the human scavengers down from the bleak mountains to sift through the bodies and harvest electronics and weapons. Heads covered in dust-colored cloth and silver goggles. A boy with a welding torch came for my sigils. There was a firefight, I remember. Then familiar faces.

I think it was Rhone and Kalindora who freed the first of us. The pain consumed me and makes it hard to remember. But I know I was guided by Kalindora away from the slaughter to where survivors exchanged water from their suit caches and bandaged wounds. Rhone said he would come back for us once they freed more Praetorians from their suits.

He never did.

We hid in the foothills, leeched of bravery as Rising soldiers landed in force. We were too weak to contest them. So we watched as they gathered up Rhone and our comrades and herded them onto shuttles at gunpoint. They headed south, to Heliopolis, I imagine.

So Ajax lost.

I can feel no satisfaction in that. How many men died for Atalantia’s avarice? For Ajax’s glory? For Darrow’s victory?

For days we have walked, striking north in hopes of finding Society patrols. We were thirty at the start. Then seventy as elements of Ajax’s shattered legions caught up with us before their boots or bikes died. On the second day, Cicero and four of his Golds found us camped in a ravine. They joined us without comment, all but guns and water satchels discarded. Though later we learned that Ajax fled the battle when the tide turned, and few of his men escaped.