Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

Rhone sulks beside me, ignoring the sweet wine throngs of Heliopolitans bring the soldiers. A party one-half celebration, one-half slaughter rages through the city as it seeks catharsis on the invaders after the long weeks of siege. I imagine the wine will flow alongside the blood for many days yet.

“Something wrong, Legate?” I ask.

“You should be the one to take the Slave King.”

The soldiers flood into the Mound.

“We have had our glory today, Praetorian. Let us not drown ourselves in gluttony. The legions know who opened the gates,” I say loud enough for the other Praetorians to hear. They tip their cups of wine and pass burners through the ranks. One thousand Gray shock troopers came to me in the desert. Barely three hundred remain. Not one is unwounded.

There is a sudden flurry of firing in the Mound. I had no doubt Darrow would make a last stand. But with the introduction of advanced weapons to the battle, it is a certain affair. One knight kitted by our age is worth a thousand on horse. Perhaps more.

I run my hands along the hilt of his broken blade and feel confused by what it elicits. He threw me down in the desert. I broke him here. But neither was a true test against the other. The fate of each battle was decided before we met. Mine by the broken chaos of the Rain. His by a series of calamities which put him in a corner. I did not beat the Reaper. I simply hit him when he was down. I hold no illusions of martial supremacy, my victory was against a broken host and a bedraggled man. The legends of our age die one by one, like autumn leaves; and when they are gone, will we be lesser for their absence?

It seems cheap.

With his death imminent, the worlds feel emptier. Almost as cavernous as they did when Cassius fell. One by one, the titans of my youth disappear, and freed from their shadow, I do not feel liberated. I feel bereft.

Nothing is permanent. No one escapes.

“The bill comes at the end,” I whisper.

Rhone asks what I said, but I grow distracted when gunfire crackles on the Mound. Something has happened. I frown and stand up. The milling ranks in the courtyard point upward as ripWings dive from the sky.

Bwaaaowwww.

We take cover. The light is tremendous as a particle beam sheaves through the legs of the god Helios, who towers over the Mound. With a groan, he teeters over and crashes down into the sea. By Jove…How does Darrow have electronics? Anything within the city was fried. Unless we weren’t the only ones to have reinforcements.

Sure enough, Gold knights tear from the Mound in pursuit of a lean, battered ship that emerges from the debris. It rockets low over the ranks of soldiers filling the courtyard.

I know that ship.

A knight fills the open garage bay. It is not Darrow. His armor is brilliant white. His helmet like that of a rising sun. It retracts to reveal his face, and for a moment our eyes meet.

Cassius…

The door closes. The Archimedes ripples translucent from a cloaking device far more advanced than any technology she possessed when I called her home. She ruptures the air with a sonic boom and races toward the sky, pursued by the Ash Legions.

Diomedes lied. Cassius is alive. And Darrow has slipped the noose.

My true heart is laid bare, awash with exultation, clouded with confusion, pure with purpose. The war goes on.

ULYSSES IS BURIED ON MARS in a rose garden between Victra’s ancestral home and the sea. Across the water, the Julii city of Hippolyte splashes out into the emerald archipelagos. Victra stands just across the grave from me, but looks as distant as her city. She wears only green. I like it far better than mourning black. It reminds me of the emerald hills they say wait for us in the Vale.

I wish I could take away her pain, but all I can do is stand here and watch her suffer behind that stony face. I know the teeth of this pain wound not with their sharp bite, but with their slow grinding. Her fearsome daughter bends over the grave, whispers something to her brother, and then stands protectively at her mother’s side. She knows best. There are no words to soothe the wounded heart of a Julii.

Only five attend the funeral. The two Julii, the Reaper’s son, Volga, and me. Our retinue feels pitifully small next to the void his loss has carved. And still I cannot help but feel I do not belong.

After Ephraim came, Victra and I went to the fishing village to retrieve her son’s body from Maeve’s house. Victra washed him herself in Attica, but refused to bury him there. “He’ll sleep at home,” was all she said to me before boarding her ship.

“And now you sleep,” Victra whispers to the grave, and then turns away to walk to the coast. Pax moves to follow. Electra grabs him and he stops to watch Victra’s shoulders shake as she wades into the water and swims out to sea toward the setting sun.

When she is almost out of sight, Electra jerks her head for us to follow her down to the coast. We help her make a fire from a pile of driftwood. Everything inside feels very still as Volga and I sit beside the children in the sand. As soon as the sun is gone, Electra speaks.

“I am equal parts of my father and mother. But we Julii have a tradition. If family blood spills by your debt, you swim to the sun. You may look back when it is gone. If no light appears onshore to welcome you home, you swim on.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Some never turn to look back.”

Though Volga weeps soundlessly beside me for Ulysses, in a way she buries two today. She still has not forgiven Pax for asking Ephraim to go back to Sefi. She waited at the landing pads for twelve hours before somehow duping the Julii guards and stealing a ship. I tried to follow, but Victra herself intervened.

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