Dark Age (Red Rising Saga #5)

by Pierce Brown

Her expression becomes tragic. “Valdir is my heart. I do not want it to be so, but he is. When I wake, when I sleep, he is a warm shadow that goes with me always.”

Then an inhuman shriek comes from the man. I glance back to see his great shoulders convulsing as he saws off his hair, the great valor tail that no Gold could shear, and with it ties together the bones of his lover.

“You’ve thought it all out. But you got one problem.” I tap my temple. “I know how the rest of this plays, and it’s all downhill. Dreamers die bad.”

“This place would eat Volga like it’s eating you. That girl might have your blood, but I’m her people.

She slams her again. “You stole the Crown of Cortada! You stuck a needle in my chest!” “And mine,” I add. “And Lyria too!” Volga slams her the hardest for that one. “I’ll pop you like a zit. Justice for both of us.”

“Soft head, hard bullet. Bad combination, bitch.”

Home? I shiver as frigid wind sweeps down from the north and cuts through my thin jacket easy as a knife. It is my planet. Yet I’ve never even seen snow before. And not a single person I love breathes its air—they are scattered across the system or buried beneath its dirt. It is a lonely feeling. Mars does not feel like home.

“If they’re alive, we’re going to find them,” Pax says after a long silence. “Them?” “Our people, and yours, Tinman. Like it or not, you’re with us now. And we’re done watching everyone else slag everything up. It’s our turn.” Electra gives me the fakest smile I’ve ever seen and sneaks me the crux when Pax isn’t looking.

“All hope is not lost,” he whispers to me. I fail to see how he can believe that. He kisses my forehead. “I sent a man to Mercury to bring Darrow home if Heliopolis falls.” “Who?” I ask. “The same man who told us the Rim was coming.”

I track what he says, because I’m married to a woman who’d be insulted if I couldn’t.

My wife once told me a man’s soul can be seen in the room he keeps the cleanest. I asked her what room is my soul. She tapped my razor.

Sevro knew what I did not. What it is like to be raised by a warlord, by a distracted man. And he knew that our world is one where everything collides. He didn’t close his mind to his family before battle, because he knew they did not make him weaker, they made him stronger than he was by himself.

Clenching Daedra in my hand, I ready to swing at the nerve packet located behind his left ear. “If you strike me, I suggest you have a plan.”

All this for the thin man attached to the back of Drusilla’s bike. Neither alliance fighting for love or hate, only the utility that one life will provide them. And when I think of that distant look in Atlas’s eyes as I choked him out, that look that reminded me of Cassius when he went to face the Raa, I understand what they both knew—how foolish all this rage is.

“Did those hands cut my Howler’s ears off?” “They did.” I pull my razor off my arm and let it hang loose. “Do you think you deserve to keep them?” My slingBlade forms slowly at my side.

“For order, I impaled soldiers. For liberty, you drowned cities. The victor writes history with the blood of the vanquished.

My wife will crack him.” Thraxa looks concerned. “Darrow, Virginia is—” “And so was Alexandar until today.”

Colloway exits as I reach the door. I frown, wondering if I have the wrong room. He holds little love for Alex but now he just shrugs at my expression and claps my shoulder. “Chin up. Your boy’s a Stoneside, ain’t he?”

But for all this new civilization’s love affair with technology, they’ve been seduced by their own cleverness and fail to understand the simple truth: lying is not a science, it is an art. And art will always be a human language.

The door slams open and over two meters of terror walks in as if it intends to stomp the room in half. The techs behind the machine scramble to salute as Darrow pushes the machine to the side.

Don’t you know how this quest for revenge will end? What if he recognized you!” “Wrecking balls seldom stop for conversations,” I say. “Yes. You can practically see that Red girl hanging in his eyes, can’t you?

“And did you find what you were looking for? Did you find peace?” “It’s not out there. At least not for me. Some men can stare at their feet and pretend the world isn’t falling apart. I cannot.”

“I was not asking you,” Volga says in exhaustion. “Of course, why ask the Peerless Scarred who has led two Iron Rains when there’s a perfectly ignorant mine lass to consult for strategic advice?”

Volga looks offended. “I will call Ephraim. He will come for me.”

“Ephraim would come for me,” Volga repeats.

“Little monster’s coming. Looks like she’s a mover.” “That settles it,” I say, knowing we can’t risk going into the old installation. But we need shelter. Me probably even more than Victra’s newborn will. Thing will probably come out with fangs and a silk cloak.

Brea, be a good lass and get the linens from your room.” Volga follows the girl into the other room as if she were going to get rocket launchers.

“Please. Only Pixies use morphone and the only person I had in my room when I gave birth to my three girls is the man that put them inside me.”

In the room, I feel my father and mother, my sister and my brothers. The joy we had is no lesser for having ended in horror. It is not gone, as I thought it was. It is here. In these moments that are larger than the world itself. They were alive. They lived. They were loved.

You are also of the gens Barca, guardians of the human race. You will be hated and you will hate. You will love and be loved. You will fall and you will rise. Never will you know peace, but you will know joy. You may even sail the dark seas in ships and lie beside nymphs in alien woods. You are your father’s son. Forever my boy. Forever our Ulysses.”

He’s pimply, not even in his twenties. He thinks he’s something because he’s got a gun and big hands and big shoulders. But the dumb fuck’s never seen a Telemanus in wargear or the Sovereign sitting there with a cup of tea and the weight of ten billion on her. He’s never seen Victra standing there like a god giving life to a baby that’d change the world if he ever got the chance to grow. If the dumb bastard did have a notion of his true size, he’d crumple up and die for understanding how petrifyingly small he actually is.

I know how small I am. But I also know how small they are.

She’ll live, but she won’t be talking for a while. Stupidity is not a victimless crime. I won’t let these girls pay for her big mouth.

Most of my lot stand rigid or shake with fear, not because they’re smarter than the other girls, but because we have a plan. And once they’ve grasped the wheel, tiny as it may be, they feel they have control. They have a chance. I know because it wasn’t Victra who saved me from the Ascomanni or from getting sucked out her ship. Volga and I did that. It made me feel alive in a way I never had.

Wounded, tired, spent from labor, she isn’t what she should be. But by killing her baby, these men get the Victra they made.

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.

“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.

“I’ll tell you,” she says, heading to the kitchen. “But first we will need coffee.” “Make mine with whiskey.” She brings me coffee made of coffee. Passive-aggressive little shit.

But looking up at Trigg, and remembering the sense of purpose that gripped Olympia only two weeks ago, I know I am in the wrong city. Maybe the world needs another stubborn bastard.

“Me? A Gorgon? Don’t make me laugh. This dog don’t collar.”

“Enemy cavalry spotted!” I look to the air instinctively. It is empty. And then I hear the thunder on the ground. My insides twist. He’s emptied the stables. The last time I heard hoofbeats and felt anxiety was nearly sixteen years ago.

My thirteen Golds and forty Obsidians cluster around me in their dead armor to make a hedgehog of bristling razors. I wish Alexandar were with me. I wish Sevro had my back. I wish Ragnar were here, and Orion in the sky.

I gave him a choice long ago, a chance to live in peace, but he has returned to war.

I shape my razor from its long form to the slingBlade. The dread monster rises in the belly of me.

I would die for the truth that all men are created equal. But in the kingdom of death, amidst ramparts of bodies and wind all of screams, there is a king, and his name is not Lune. It is Reaper.

I spot the signs of his advance from the far side of the Triumphia. It is like the coming of a tiger through tall grass.

Men disappear from saddles. Sunbloods collapse sideways with horrible wounds. And then, like the tiger’s tail, the curved slingBlade rises above the stalks as he threshes all in his path.

Kalindora cuts her clean in half and then looks over my head with wide eyes. “Tele—” An immense force lands on me. Whatever it is, it is heavy enough to make Blood of Empire reel sideways.

“You killed a pup,” she growls. “Let’s see you handle me.”

He threw his body back just as Kalindora galloped past on her horse. Still, he’s clipped hard enough to spin like a top. But as he falls, his Red acrobatics shine. No one falls like the Reaper.