Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

I salute him and the knights behind. “Hail Arcos.”

He bows slightly in Screwface’s direction. “An honor, sir. Big fan.”

I watch from the hill with Screw as Alexandar and his Martian kin depart. Beset by rain and storm, the famous knights of Elysium trot down the hill in purple and silver armor to plunge toward the drowning city. They look like the last lords and ladies of a doomed age. Two hundred and three against an army and the sea.

I turn with a heavy heart and head back to my men to lead them south toward the battle in the desert that will decide the fate of us all.

I WAKE IN DARKNESS TO the sound of my starShell’s low-oxygen warning. Seraphina is dead. Her prowess in battle far outstripped mine, yet I am alive, and she is not.

It feels so unfair. That should not have been the end of her story.

Just like Cassius’s end.

From a distance, death seems the end of a story. But when you are near, when you can smell the burning skin, see the entrails, you see death for what it is. A traumatic cauterization of a life thread. No purpose. No conclusion. Just snip.

I knew war was dreadful, but I did not expect to fear it.

How can anyone not, when death is just a blind giant with scissors?

This will not end well. Dido will sense a devious hand at work, because she did not see her daughter become a smear of organs. But Romulus knew. He dreaded this. He gave his life to stop this, and he failed.

I do not look forward to telling Diomedes. If I even get the chance.

The last thing I remember is existence breaking in two. At least that is the sound the sky made when the Storm God fell to the desert floor.

It was not Kalindora or Rhone or Cicero whose payload destroyed the engine. Bitterly contested by the garrison, my Praetorians made three charges against the teeth of the enemy railguns. Only on the last did I manage to dispose my final missile into the gravity engines. It was not a conscious choice to forge ahead alone. An enemy munition simply destroyed my radio transmitter, so I did not know my wingmen were dead. Hours later I still do not know their names.

I feel that is immoral.

I run a diagnostic. My railgun ammunition is depleted. Little charge remains in the energy core that feeds the pulseFist, engines, and life support. The starShell is already sapping power from my pulseArmor to continue to function. I will have to disconnect soon.

It takes the better part of five minutes to free myself from the sand. When I do, I lower my canopy and gasp for air. The morning smells of petrichor and ozone. It is already seventy degrees Celsius.

The sun hides behind irradiated clouds. Lightning dances in the black north. Though I am in a pocket of peace, the sandstorm still roils in the deep desert. In all directions, veils of dust shimmy across the landscape like tattered skirts. Mounds of sand shiver around me as Praetorians and Scorpions climb their way out of the sand.

It is 0630.

Ajax should be here by now.

Did the storm take him?

What fate has befallen the invasion to the north? Is all lost to the sea?

As I move to help the Praetorians, my starShell rattles in protest and freezes as hydraulic fluid pours from the pelvis. I release the inner latch and climb out. I barely recognize the war rig I rode down to the planet. Only my pulseArmor is undented. I check to make sure my Bellona razor is still in its leg holster. Then I ping Seraphina’s tracking node. There are no results.

The Ladon has taken the daughter of Romulus.

A bloodfly as thick as my thumb pesters my face. I barely move as it bites and drinks from my neck. I push it against my skin until it pops.

More buzz nearby. Hundreds.

I follow their current until they make a cloud over something on the ground. A dying horse. It is a wild sunblood mare, the most cherished of Mercury’s carved wonders. Its legs are beyond mangled, and its skin is gone. Only its orange mane remains untouched by the feasting flies. Rhone kneels beside it, his starShell discarded in a dune.

Freed of his own starShell, Cicero saunters over, rubbing his jaw with his pulseArmor gauntlet. “Oh, pity. A sunblood.”

Before all else, Praetorians are equestrians. Before they learn to shoot, they shovel stable stalls. Each is given a young horse to train while at the ludus. At the end of their training, they are given a gun and told to kill the horse. The mindless killers that do are bound for the blackops legions. Only those that prove themselves loyal to their comrades, be they beast or man, are trusted to guard the Blood.

Rhone has likely not seen a horse in many years.