Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

The great dam has broken, the pulsefields likely failing during the storm. The rush of water left a path of destruction across the city so thorough it would be a wonder if anyone survived. Carrion birds rule here now. There are no medical teams from either army, only bands of refugees across the flooded valley and plains beyond, trundling north in lines by the thousands. I sit down, finally feeling the exhaustion of the last week in my bones.

Darrow has broken the planet.

A sense of futility rises in me. What could anyone do to fix this?

Resolving to refill my water and connect with one of the refugee trains, I stumble down the foothills, passing through forests entirely scalped by the wind. Not a tree stands. I wade through fields of lavender, where bees still pollinate, and draw to a halt. At the foot of the Via Gloria a peculiar arrangement sprawls around the Arch of Octavia, which leads into the city. Even with my blurry vision, I know what i

t is.

I walk down the hill.

There beside the great archway, I find a scene of horror. Amongst a sea of lavender, the remains of more than four hundred humans hang upon metal poles blistering and naked but for the wake of buzzards that clothe them in feathers of yellow and scarlet.

The poles that puncture the humans are as thick as my wrists, sharp at the point and tapered. Each has been driven into the anal cavity of the victim to the point of perforating the mid-torso. In death, the legs droop, the back arches, the arms wing out and downward, and the head reclines backward, as if each victim perished in exultation. Sockets picked clean by the birds stare at the sky.

A great hunk of stone stands at the entry to this atrocity bearing the message:

Here lie Martians all

Thralls of the Slave King

Who thought with wicked delight

to take your planet’s treasure

and break their Master’s might

All ye who enter here:

witness their work,

and despair

The flooded city is their work. And the impalement ours.

Is this what the Society thinks will inspire the people to return to the fold?

Atlas was no monster in the court of my grandmother. He was odd. Always rather cold to me, and quick to leave the room when I entered. He despised children. Though he and Aja made Ajax together, their coupling entailed no relationship from what I understand. In fact, Aja could barely stand the sight of the man. But I cannot believe my father’s best friend would be this new monster.

Though he was formally a hostage, my grandmother trusted Atlas without equal. He spurned galas and festivals, and seemed only to stir himself from his library when my grandmother required his unique services. What they were, I never saw until now.

I have always held in respect those Golds who do not relish their station. Atlas never seemed to. Yet he has let his Gorgons loose in ways that demean any claim we have to dignity. So my judgment on him is harsh.

I stumble down the line to see the faces of the dead, thinking obscurely that someone should witness them here. All the families they represent. All the strands of life that are linked to theirs. Cruelty will travel down those lines, ensnaring more and more.

No one has come to take them down. No footprints have even come within a hundred meters. There is a whispering. It comes from a young Red man.

A sound comes from one of the Red bodies. A whispering.

He is alive. Barely more than a boy, a faint bit of hair covers his top lip. His cracked lips part, trying to say something more. I give him the remaining water from my pouches. Most of it spills down his chest. He tries to speak again. I edge closer to hear him. “The…Vale. Send me…”

It’s then I notice perhaps as many as a dozen still wheeze, their burned skin rising and falling with each insidious breath. I do not care if they are enemies. If impaling is an effective tactic. Or even if they deserve this judgment. It is not the jurisdiction of any man to deliver it.

I go closer to the boy. My mouth is so dry I barely manage the words. “Are you certain?” He cannot reply until I spill some of my water into his mouth.

“Send…me.”

There, so close to him I can see the flecks of copper, brown, and even gold in his Red irises, I feel a terrible sadness. I wish I knew that the eyes of his spirit looked upon his Vale. That his ancestors were waiting for him in their cool highland valley. But I know it is not so, because I know the Vale was created and cultivated by the Board of Quality Control in order to provide an important sociological prerequisite for obedience: a carrot at the end of a hard life. That very same belief that made them able to endure untold hardship in the mines has become a militant faith. He begins to whisper as I draw my razor. “My love, my love, remember the cries, when winter died…”