Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

I stand alone in the tower watching the friction trails glow over the city, and wonder if this was not inevitable. If all our hope was nothing more than a feeble religion that could not stand the test of time. I sigh onto the railing and work my good hand through my hair. A tinkle comes from inside my armor. I pull my son’s key from within and look down at it and feel an ache. How can something so small mean so much? Even now, when I know I will never see my boy again, I feel as if he were here with me. As if my wife were by my side in these last moments. The world was too cruel to them. I was too cruel, in my own way. But there was beauty. For a moment, there was real beauty.

I look down at the lost city and feel small comfort.

I kept looking for hope in the world. Expecting the world to supply deliverance if I plucked the right chords. Demanding that it supply validation to my labor if I just gave enough effort. But that is not the nature of the world. Its nature is to consume. In time, it will consume us all, and the spheres will spin until they too are consumed when our sun dies.

Maybe that is the point of it. Knowing that though one day darkness will cover all, at least your eyes were open to see moments of light.

I pry open my thigh pack and pull out a canister. I pour Dago’s Lykos soil into my hands. I would have liked to see home once more before the end.

There is a gust of air behind me.

“Oh gods. Brooding again? Some things never change,” a voice says.

I turn to see a vision from the past. “Cassius?”

“Hello, goodman. Kavax said you might need a hand.”

THE STREETS RUN RED with blood and echo with screams.

Darrow’s army is in full rout. Mechanized soldiers from Atalantia’s orbital forces leave vapor contrails in the air. Along the Bay of Sirens there is a great slaughter as men flee the city on foot or swim out into the bay only to be microwaved by dropships buzzing over the water. TorchShips descend on the dark spaceport. And in the courtyard before the Mound of Votum, thousands upon thousands of freed prisoners of war and mechanized legionnaires fresh to the fray congregate.

I watch after Kalindora as she is lifted away by Ash Legion medici. The wounds Darrow left her with are gruesome, but not beyond the ability of the trauma wards to mend. She will survive. But I feel a sense of guilt for how I left her there to chase Darrow. I could no more have stopped the bleeding than the Praetorians I left her with, but leave her I did, and there is little nobility in that. There is little nobility to any of this.

There is a thump behind me. Rhone’s hand drifts to his rifle. I turn to see Ajax landing with a cadre of Ash Guard.

The irony of his leopard helmet slithering back into its collar when his own Iron Leopards flow past, bloody and triumphant, my name on their lips, is lost to no one. Least of all the insecure boy inside the dreaded man.

He abandoned his men before the storm wall of Heliopolis.

Only to find me here, alive.

Devilish in fifty kilograms of advanced armor and weapons, he looks up as I sit tattered and filthy upon Blood of Empire as the courtyard swarms with ragged legionnaires and hi-tech soldiers. He takes in my melted face, the steed, the chanting of his own Leopards. Whatever he planned to say is concealed within the tight formality: “Salve, Lysander.”

But it is hate in his eyes. As if I did all this to mock and spite him and steal his place in Atalantia’s bed. For a flicker of a moment, he considers whether gunning me down before the army may be worth the cost in the long run, but the arrival of the Votum Peerless stays his hand.

I salute his rank. “Praetor Grimmus, the enemy is split into four groups. The most numerous gather within the Morning Star, where Atlas au Raa is being held. I recommend sending a party immediately before they execute him, if they have not already. The next most numerous have taken to the mountains, where they have constructed tunnels. Others hide within the city and sewers. But Darrow is in the Mound. He is grievously wounded.”

“By whose hand?” Ajax asks.

/> “Mine.” I pull Darrow’s hilt from my saddle and toss it to him. He blinks, unable to comprehend. The officers around him mirror his disquiet.

“How?” Ajax asks.

I lean forward. “Which part?”

“Who are you, boy?” a Falthe Praetor demands.

“He is the blood of Silenius,” Cicero says from behind him. The Votum heir is alive and covered with grime from his exploits in the prison break. He stalks up surrounded by a dozen soldiers in tattered prison regalia. His sister is at his side with a flock of glittering knights. As Atalantia’s legions take their city, they see another play at hand.

“The heir returned from the maw of chaos,” Cicero says. His knights stiffen to attention and salute me. “Hail Lune!”

The hate in Ajax’s eyes darkens and he shouts for his Peerless to assemble. They form a glittering knot and make for the Mound.

“They’re trying to seize your glory, Lune,” Cicero says. “Shall we join them?”

I look at the dangerous knights around Ajax, likely friends of those I killed in the desert. In the chaos, it would be only too easy for one to slash my spine as they flew past. “I think not.”

Four hundred Peerless Scarred of the Votum and Ash Legions move on the Mound. I sit with my Praetorians in the middle of the square as the doors evaporate.