Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“What are they singing?” I ask, still a bit woozy from the G’s that the kids seem barely to have noticed. Pax amplifies the ship’s external ears.

“The Song of Persephone,” he says, and takes us down.

As we watch from the ramp, there is no hysteria in the victory. No rampant revenge or the beheading of kneeled enemies. Only a sweeping sense of fraternity and weary justice that even an outsider could sense. After the brutality of the Obsidians, it is beautiful.

I spot flags and armbands with the Gamma crest. And then other crests, other tribes: Lambda, Beta, Alpha, Omicron, Silver trade icons, Gray mercenary bands, and more. Already hundreds of Red Hand soldiers have been gathered on an empty airpad.

These are the demons of Mars. The butchers of Lyria’s family.

More than half of them couldn’t have been more than ten years old when the Rising began. Stripped of their weapons and coats, they loo

k sickly, and they shiver in fear as they are surrounded by the people they tortured for so many years. Do they even know why they did it? In defeat, they’ve abandoned any creed. They huddle not together in a band, but each isolated and alone in their misery.

I’d pity them if I didn’t loathe them so much.

A crowd of Gammas and their new allies rush toward the Snowball to celebrate the pilot and his prophetic maneuver against the torchShip. From a distance, they think it was me and not the small human by my side. As they see our faces, they slow and then stop, gathering in a sort of wary perimeter. Their faces are young and old, all sunburnt. They hold antique rifles, household pistols, even slingBlades. A ripple of recognition goes through them when they spot Pax and Electra. Then understanding as they see the pilot halo Pax wears. It isn’t disbelief on their faces when he takes it off. It is fulfillment. As if they believed in something once, grew to laugh at the naïveté of their own conviction, only to see that they were right all along.

I sense the weight of the moment, and it chills me.

This is how a legend begins. The First Boy. The Son of the Rising, fulfilling his parents’ promise. He looks afraid to step into his new world, as if he feared this moment but knew it would come. I wait for him to look at me to give him a nod of encouragement. This time, he needs none. With Electra at his side, he steps past me and into the crowd, which parts and raises their clenched fists in salute as they chant his father’s name.

I follow at a distance.

* * *

—

The heavy mine doors dilate open with a groan. The first up the maintenance stairs is a young girl jabbering a woman’s name. A man shoves his way through the crowd and scoops the young girl up. They’re hit from the side by a woman who wraps them in a wild embrace till they are huddled together crying in a mess of limbs and red hair. This scene repeats itself until I stand stock-still, dreading my own reunion with Volga.

I wait with Pax and Electra in the shadow of this communion. Each of us heavy with dread, fearing we won’t get to share the joy of the others. Each grime-spattered face, each weary set of shoulders that comes up the mine stairs, brings fresh hope and then disappointment. Where is Volga?

A scrawny Red wearing a tattered, ridiculous dress and carrying a big rifle comes up the stairs. She’s functioning as a crutch for a huge Gold woman who looks fresh out of a ten-year stay in hell, stomach still swollen from pregnancy, but no child in her arms. Victra au Julii. In the flesh. I take an involuntary step back as Pax and Electra rush to the woman. She scoops them up at the same time, and holds them a meter off the ground in absolute silence. The Red watches with a faint smile.

“Rabbit,” I call. The Red turns. She’s barely recognizable in all the dirt and blood and in that stupid dress. When she sees me, she breaks into a high laugh. She drops her rifle and sits on the ground, laughing so hard I can’t tell when she begins to weep.

“You brought the army.” She laughs. “You.”

“Where’s Volga?”

“You were right,” she says, looking over my shoulder. “He did come.”

“Ephraim.” I don’t turn, afraid my eyes will make my ears liars. Afraid now in the moment. Terrified that while I remember the good in our past, she will remember how we parted. What I made her do. What I said. “Ephraim.” I turn and see her. She has lost at least twenty kilos. Her face is drawn and tired. Her pants tattered and bloody. Her arm in a makeshift sling. But she is alive.

“Hello, Snowball.”

“Are you wounded?” Volga asks. “You are shaking.”

I tilt my head. “No. I— Yes, but no.”

She squints. “You came for me.”

“Are you stupid? Of course I—”

Before I can finish the sentence, her arms are around me. For once I don’t hold back. I sink into the embrace. She is my home. She has been since I found her on Echo City. What a pity I only just realized it.

“Victra, don’t!” Pax shouts.

Volga and I part to see Victra au Julii storming toward me with a heavy pulseRifle held like a pistol. Volga pushes me to the side. “Victra. Enough.” I can’t believe my eyes when the oligarch stops dead in her tracks and Volga sets a hand on her shoulder. “Enough.”