Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

f armor to me. It is old gear. Circuits long dead. Bone white with a crude crescent welded onto the front and back.

Glirastes is incorrigible.

“So you’re Cicero’s Blood of Empire,” I say to the horse set out before the rest. For once, Cicero was not hyperbolic. It is as if every horse I have seen before this day, even Atalantia’s prized creatures, were nothing more than early drafts of this ultimate creation. He towers over me, clearing twenty-five hands at the withers with still more muscled shoulder to measure. His hooves are the size of dinner plates, his mane as brilliant an orange as his irises. His white coat dappled steel gray. Haughty eyes watch me. He bucks his head as I approach, lifting the two Obsidian stablehands off their feet.

When they wrangle him back down, I cut my hand and wave the blood over his nose so he can smell it. He tilts his head, his eyes searching mine. I bring my nose to his, as is the dangerous custom with sunbloods. He could snap off my face with ease, but I keep my voice soothing and he lets me stroke his muzzle. With a snort, he bends his front legs in obeisance.

The Obsidians cheer. They had wondered if the horse would find me worthy. “Blood knows blood, my liege,” their old stablemaster rumbles. “He will bear you over a sea of slaves.”

* * *

—

The ramp used by charioteers to enter the Hippodrome slams down in a cloud of dust. Blood of Empire has been here before even if I have not. His hooves paw the sand, impatient for the glory to which he has become entitled. It has been years since I’ve ridden a horse, and in all of human history, how many have graced the back of such a terrible prize as this? I fear disgracing this king of horses more than I do the coming violence. With an intake of breath, I grip the Horn of Helios and dig my heels into his sides.

It is like riding lightning.

The ramp blurs past underneath. Suddenly we are upon the surface of the Hippodrome. No sea of faces awaits us. No adulation. Only a black sky, the empty stadium, and a ragged band of men jogging across the sand in tattered uniforms, Rhone and Kalindora at their lead. The loyalists who led the attack on the Republic prison led them here for me.

The Praetorians and Kalindora are shocked to find me alive.

I spare no time for pleasantries as I circle them atop Blood of Empire. “Upon Luna, upon Earth, upon Mars, they say that the Praetorian Guard is dead!” I shout. “That they have faded into the maw of history like morning fog over the sea! That nothing remains but the memory of the giants that once walked the worlds! Rhone ti Flavinius!” I cry. “Before all things, what are the Praetorian Guard?”

“Equestrians!” he bellows.

“And what is your duty?”

“To protect the blood of Lune!”

“Will you ride with me today, Rhone ti Flavinius?”

“With honor, my liege!”

“Are you a memory?” I ask the Praetorians as Blood continues to canter around them.

“No!”

“Are you giants!”

“Yes!”

“Will you ride with me today? For the glory of your forebearers. For the resurrection of the Society. For the honor of the guard! Will you ride with me?”

“Yes!” they roar. Only Kalindora remains silent.

I take the Horn of Helios from the saddle and blow a sonorous note. And from the belly of the Hippodrome, the herd of Votum, pride of Heliopolis, stampedes upward under a black sky. The stablehands bear up crates of weapons provided by the loyalists, and when my Praetorians are mounted, Kalindora walks up beside me with a look of disapproval. The left sleeve of her prisoner jumpsuit hangs slack, the arm Darrow cut off rotting in the desert. But her sword arm looks restless.

“What a hunger for blood you have acquired in the desert,” she says. “Did you survive that sandstorm just to die in these streets? If we wait for Atalantia—”

“We will be at her mercy. Is that why you brought me the Praetorians?” She does not reply. “He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout its ranks. The Society needs victory. Not a slaughter. Too long have the rabble had a monopoly on glory. Today we reclaim it. I would have the Love Knight at my side as we do.” I extend the loyalist razor to her. With a growing smile, she reaches forward.

THUMP. THUMP. DISTANT SCREAMS AND RAGE. The shrieking of metal on metal. In the darkness, flashes of flailing limbs, gnashing teeth, screaming mouths. I watch the violence painted in fragmented impressionist brushstrokes.

My armor is dead. My helmet’s internal screen black, vision now constricted to the narrow duroglass emergency slits in the helmet’s eyes. Beyond my helmet is frenzy. They beat on my armor with fists, hammers, blocks of masonry, fence poles, and all manner of improvised urban weaponry.

They fell on me after I crashed through a storefront and struggled up from the debris, my legs snared by electrical wire. First it was two, then two became a mob. Now I cannot move for the mound of humanity atop me. They besiege the Sciantus-made armor with anything they can find. A Brown street cleaner sits on my chest hammering a long piece of rebar into the joints with a chunk of masonry, desperate for my blood. A Silver kicks at my groin till his foot breaks and he hobbles away. A Gray sits on my arm, trying to pry open my balled gauntlets so he can break my fingers one by one. Two old Red women pin my head between them and start hammering at the eyeholes with improvised chisels as they fumble for the emergency switch. They find it, but I’ve already locked it.

Fortunately, the armor is a tough nut to crack.