Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

I force myself to stand. Am I standing? I’m numb, but my feet are on the ground. Duncan’s on his knees taking swill from a big gourd as men chant. I stumble to him. He coughs liquor as I pull at him and he puts his hands on my ass. “Dance with me,” I think I say. Soon we’re dancing, so I must have said it. Colors and hair and tassels flicker past. Amongst the laughing faces, I see a girl, is it Freckles? She stares at the ground as her husband twirls her and laughs.

Duncan’s hot against me. I feel his rank breath on my neck. The sweat from his forehead against mine. He grinds against me, and I feel his manhood hard against my thigh. “It ain’t that big a wedding,” I say.

“What you mean?” he asks. “My darlin’ disappointed?”

“I thought the Red Hand was an army.”

“It is an army!” he cries. “Legions deep. We’re all over Cimmeria, doncha know? No war talk for my wife’s lips. Dance with me.” I let him twirl me and I hold back a surge of vomit that squirrels up my throat. He pins me against him as the music slows.

“It’s not an army,” I say all spoiled-like. “Just a gaggle.”

“A gaggle!” he crows. “We’s been hard hit, sure, but there’s more brothers deep here and two more mines.”

“Doing what? Drinking?”

“Naw, some’s mining. Some’s training. Some’s guarding the prisoners. You know the Gold hiding in your village?”

“I thought there was an Obsidian too.”

“Huge one! Wouldn’t believe your eyes. Big as the Reaper himself.” She’s not. “Got her with the others.” I prod him a little. “Caught some coldies in the plains. Harmony put them to work in the deeptunnels clearing pitvipers and hauling ore.”

“Tamed Obsidians. I heard it all now. I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.”

“Prove it then.” He’s drunk enough to consider it. I grind my hips against his manhood. “I’ll let you show me something else if you show me the coldies. Never seen one before.” I play with the whiskers of his beard. “I thought you’d show me a whole new life…”

That does it.

Duncan steers me through the throng and grabs a growler of swill for the trip. I paw at him, a new notion coming to me. “Shouldn’t we bring the lads some?”

“What lads?”

“The lads guarding the coldies.”

He grins. “That’s a fine consideration.” Grabbing a couple growlers of swill, we stumble away from the party.

I’m glad I asked for the tour, despite the toll. The trip is not short, nor is it innocent. Duncan paws me drunkenly and pins me twice against a tunnel wall as we go down. Each time, I roll the back of my knuckles against his manhood and say, “Soon, my love.” I make sure to remember each of the turns. Twenty steps down the third tunnel, first right. A hundred steps, down the ladder.

Gods, the drug they put in the wine is strong.

I feel like I’m wading through melting butter by the time we hit the gravLift down to the mines. Duncan pukes in the corner and wipes his lips, laughing as he washes his mouth out with swill from the growler. As he retches again, I quickly strip the haemanthus he pinned to my dress and grind it into the mouths of the open growlers we carry for the boys. By the time he’s wiping his mouth, I’ve put the corks back in. I don’t think he saw.

The gravLift spits us out into a dark cavern lit by glowlamps. The grinding racket of drills mauls my ears as we stumble together toward the mining teams.

When I visited my father’s drillteam, I remember feeling wonder as I saw how important he was. A provider. A real man that I got to bring lunch to. It seemed so exciting back then. But this pit is infernal. Wet heat suffocates everything. The noise is unbearable. Men mill about the top of a tunnel where down deep a clawDrill burrows into Mars. Red, evil light glows up from the pit. HaulBacks dump hissing haultubes of helium-3 on the lip of the mine and rappel back down. Chain gangs of slaves heft the loads in metal backpacks and take them down another tunnel. There must be hundreds of them. Red Hand men rove along the chain gang lines with scorchers and pikes that glisten with electricity at the tips.

“Darran!” my husband calls to a sweating Red man with a gut the size of Cimmeria. The man shoves a boy with a hairless face out of the way and comes to give Duncan a hug.

“A man now, I hear!” Darran rumbles. “Is this the wee lass who’s done the deed?”

“I scored well!” Duncan mumbles. “All the other blossoms are stumbling drunk, and me sweetheart here wanted to bring you poor nightshifters some evening swill!” He leans in. “And get a look at the coldies.”

“That’s a lass!” Darran says. “You did well.” He thumps him on the shoulder and we hand over our growlers. I hope they can’t taste the haemanthus. With the heat down here, I doubt they’ll gainsay anything cold. Darran asks me a question. I mumble a sweet reply and curtsy. I tip over and the men help me up, laughing.

Dusting my skirts, I pout and scan the line of slaves. There’s Oranges, Reds, Browns, a half-dead Blue, Grays, but no Obsidians. “Duncan promised me coldies.”

“Can’t let Duncan fall flat already,” Darran says. He bellows at his men to bring up one of the ice bitch teams. Several minutes pass. Then I hear a clattering. A team of twelve Obsidians locked together with heavy iron chains shuffles forward, driven by several men with stunpikes.