Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

He is joined by the others until there is a rasping chorus there upon the pale.

The Bellona razor’s leather hilt is warm from the sun. Tension travels down my arm as the blade penetrates his chest and then his heart. “Go to your people,” I whisper. He jerks and then is still.

More men and women beg for mercy down the line. I move to the next man. He’s an older Red, with a thick beard shot with white and a face like a bulldog’s. He begs for mercy, but when I stand in front of him, he and several others begin to laugh. I blink in confusion. Their faces swim in the heat. Why are they laughing?

“Burn with us, ya golden cunt,” he manages from a mouth crusted with blood. “Burn with Mars.”

Then I understand the trick.

I do not move. I look down, knowing what it must be. I push lavender out of the way and blow down into the dirt. A thin mat of pressure-sensitive material lies under the topsoil. If I move my foot, the mine hidden beneath will make me a shower of meat. Even if I dive away, only two mines of the hundreds this war employs have a blast radius I’d be able to clear.

“I was trying to help you,” I say. “I was trying to be decent.”

The Red just laughs through teeth shattered to the nerve.

Without a way to apply equal pressure to my weight on the pad, I dig a small tunnel through the dirt adjacent to the pad to reach the mine. Blindly reaching into the hole, I graze the side casing of the munition. It’s a Lotus-13, judging by the octagonal top rim. If I can slide my razor between the pressure pad and the mine, I should be able to sever the hardwire connection. With hands shaking from adrenaline, I toggle the razor’s edge to the thinnest setting possible, so the blade is narrow as a piece of paper, a hand’s width wide. I slide it sideways down into the hole and trip a countermeasure.

Bweeee. Bweeee.

Dirt and shredded lavender explode up into my face. I’m blasted upward. I lose my razor. The air rushes out of me as I land hard on my back. Something constricts around me, ensnaring. I push at it, but it cuts my fingers and the more I push, the more it constricts. A tacNet, I realize in relief, not an explosive.

But the relief is short-lived as I realize my predicament.

I lie there in the morning sun, the only shade cast by the poles, the lavender stalks, and the bees. The meters to my razor and water might as well be a thousand. Every time I try to roll or wiggle closer, the net constricts more until it breaks the skin of my scalp. Soon I am immobilized with blood trickling down my face. For hours I lie there as the sun traces its way across the sky, leeching my body of water as it forms blisters on my exposed skin. I’m the color of a tomato. The lavender sways. The bees buzz. The buzzards chew. I drift in and out of consciousness, woken only when the buzzards engage in a hearty squabble for a choice piece of thigh meat. The Red man is dead. They feed on him and watch me.

If I could laugh, I would.

Heir of Silenius, eaten by birds at the feet of Reds, because he tried to be merciful. Lesson learned.

It was my guilt for the Vindabona and the helpless people I left for the Obsidians that distracted me. I should have known about the mines. I see those victims I abandoned now on the hill, lying in tacNets, watching me with smiles, waiting for me to join them in death.

All those lives lost so I could save Seraphina, who ran to her own slaughter with a smile.

“Well, look at this, fresh catch,” one of the victims says to me.

“And a blood traitor by the looks of it,” says another. “He killed some of the bait.”

“Scar?”

Heavy desert boots stop in front of me. A child’s face bends down from the sky and peers into mine. Something is wrong. It is the color of a dust moth’s wings. Oh. It’s a mask. Purple works its way into the mask as its wearer crouches near the lavender. “He’s missing half his gorydamn face. Eyeball’s all mush.” A gloved hand twists my head. “No scar. We got ourselves a Pixie, lads.”

They’re Gorgons.

“Rising?”

“Who else? We don’t send unscarred boys to battle.”

“Let’s leave him to bubble. This trap’s done. Shit to show for it. Stragglers are all herded into Heliopolis for the big hammer.”

One of them whistles. “Look at the detailing on his big iron. Sciantus-made, bet my life.”

“Slag off. How would you know what a Sciantus blade looks like? You wouldn’t even be able to afford the hilt.”

“The Minotaur had one. Treated it like a thirsty lady. Always running his fat mouth about it. See the flower petals?”

“Where?”

“Over the wing.”