Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

He fires at the sound of my voice. Unlike the others, he is difficult to find. I think he’s stripped off his boots too now. His heart rate is steady. His feet quiet despite his mass. This is a real killer. To guard Ajax’s back, he’d have to be.

“Is there even a future past this moment, Seneca?”

He fires again and misses again. He’s back near the ship. I weave through the downed bodies and find a pulseFist. I set it back down. It doesn’t seem honorable.

“Only an animal does not plan past the moment.” I slip sideways as he fires at where I was. “So what does that make you?”

The sand is cold under my bare feet as I stalk closer.

It’s a trap. He’s hunched forward now, not bothering to speak. He waits for me to make a sound. Obliging, I toss a rock against the hull. He ignores it. But he does not ignore my feet as I push off the sand to jump toward him. He fires as if I were running. Blisters bubble on my feet as the pulseblast warbles just beneath them.

I land a hair too close and swing my razor down. He catches it in his hand. There’s a jolt as it splits his gauntlet and divides the radius and ulna bones down the elbow. It sticks there. I sense his razor coming for my belly. I toggle my blade into a whip, and twist to the side, holding on to the razor pommel with my left hand. His blade misses most of me, but bites hard into my hipbone. The pain is excruciating. His left shoulder crashes into my face. I stumble backward, retract the razor out of his arm, and parry his following slash upward. I push away from him as I fall. He pursues. I switch my razor back into a whip and lash it around his ankles as they pass each other mid-stride. Then I transition the razor back to rigid form, and from my knees deliver the coup de grâce of the Willow Way, the Weeping Noose.

The whip encircling his ankles stiffens and retracts into a straight metal line. It goes through armor, flesh, and bone to do so.

With his feet cut off at the ankles, Seneca falls with a crash.

“No!” he roars on the ground, slashing wildly. I gather myself into a crouch and stay out of range. “No! Fucking brat. Fucking child. They said you were a Pixie!”

“It would seem they judge the wrong virtues.”

I wait for his riven body to tire. When his protests grow weak, I approach and stand before him. I favor the deep wound in my hip. “Who is your favorite poet?” I ask.

“What?” Seneca barks.

“Your favorite poet, man.”

He sighs. “Kipling.”

I sort through what comes to mind, and decide upon a passage.

“Time hath no tide but must abide

The servant of Thy will;

Tide hath no time, for to Thy rhyme

The ranging stars stand still—

Regent of spheres that lock our fears

Our hopes invisible,

Oh ’twas certes at Thy decrees

We fashioned Heaven and Hell!”

“Fuck you, you fucking P—”

I decapitate Seneca. As his head rolls to the sand, I let go of the Mind’s Eye and the world throbs.

I am spent. Exhaustion falls like a sweaty anvil. There are wounds upon my body that I did not notice until now. Lines of fire race along two deep gashes in my thigh, though the most painful is the last one Seneca gave me because I passed on the pulseFist in favor of the razor. Apparently honor is expensive. Then from behind, a man applauds.

“Apollonius au Valii-Rath, I presume?”

“Indubitably. So the Mind’s Eye is real after all. Atalantia swore it was a myth. But to see it…ah, to see it.”

“Octavia refused to teach her,” I say. “Is that what you desire? My grandmother’s secrets?”