Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  His head snaps back. For an exultant moment, I think my snipers have put one through his brain. But then his head comes forward, scarlet along the side, his mouth a wild rictus as he lowers himself to his horse and it explodes forward, faster than all the rest. Two more rounds spark off his armor.

  I tremble in fear as my horizon becomes one of flaring nostrils, frothing muzzles, and trampling hooves. A dozen horses fill my field. Lysander weaves right, around my hedgehog and toward the frailer wings.

  In the age of starships, you forget what animals can do to men. Lysander reminds me as he plunges forty thousand kilograms of horsepower through the wings of my line. The sudden acceleration of horseflesh into human bodies creates shearing forces as the momentum of the charge meets the inertia of the internal organs. Men are literally pulverized from the inside out. Organs tear. Brains hemorrhage. Blood vessels rupture. Spines collapse backward.

  Even as the friction of the corpses slows the horses, they do not stop their killing. Hooves flatten skulls. Teeth of racehorses trained for the conflict of the Hippodrome snap off faces. Screams turn to gurgles as men are spun through the blender of hooves, manage to crawl free, only to have their backs broken by the next steed.

  The horses bear down on the center of my line.

  “Flat!”

  I fall backward before the onrushing wave, razor held in both hands, its pommel at my belly button, with the blade that can cut through ten centimeters of starShell armor sticking a meter and a half into the air. Fifty-three other armored men do the same a bare second before the horses trample us.

  Incandescent explosions of lights in my head.

  Unreal weight and sound. Hooves slamming into my armor, my helmet. Underbellies, tails, bottoms of bare feet, of boots as I’m kicked and trampled in an unending stampede. But even horses made of one ton of muscle and bone and blood cannot stomp through armor meant to withstand pulseFire or run through a field of razor blades undaunted. We shred them.

  Gore like I’ve never seen pours down on us. The screams of dying horses are worse by far than those of men. Yet the herd animals keep coming, running straight over the blades so thin that in the darkness they cannot see them as they sever bones in half and open bellies and muscled chests so cleanly that the horses’ momentum carries them like cannonballs past us to spill shrieking and dying into the back of their fellows who crushed our wings.

  Any Roman ground commander worth his salt would tell you that robbing the velocity from a cavalry charge is the first step to killing it.

  With the Via Triumphia turned into a charnel house of dying horses and dying men, I stumble to my feet. Blood obscures my eye slits. A horse on its side with its guts spilling out kicks me so hard in the helmet that my duroglass eyeholes finally crack and I go down. Try to stand. My neck is sprained. Maybe fractured. Something hits me from behind, and I fall. Through the fragmented vision of my cracked visor I see a horse coming at me at full gallop. I throw myself to the side just as a Gold rider leans sideways off her saddle, nearly parallel with the ground, and swings her razor down. The blade peels a chunk of metal from the back of my thigh, then skips sideways, and she’s past. I hack blindly at the back legs of the horse but don’t see if I connect.

  That was Kalindora. The Love Knight herself. Out of respect for her treatment of our prisoners, I kept her with her men. Now I pay for it.

  Someone hauls me up. A horse chest hits me from the side and I’m lifted off my feet, kicked under several others and spun around and around until I crawl free and find a wall to guard my back. On my feet, but unable to see, I press my emergency release and rip off my helmet.

  The sound is unreal. Indescribable. Like an animal caught in a blender. Except it’s thousands of us in here. Horses shattering men as they kick in their death throes. Riders crushed underneath or thrown clean, to be swallowed by my men. Horses whinnying in the plaza, terrified at the sight.

  For all we killed, more than two hundred sunbloods wheel about in the swirling mass of bodies, their riders slashing down, the horses stomping on the unlucky fallen, or breaking through the lines to encircle my other elements even as their infantry advances through the plaza to pound more meat into the straw.

  The world takes on a slow, soupy feel. Only a fraction of my force is Gold and Obsidian. Without armor, without technology, the vast gulf that separates the races becomes measured in the carnage an individual Gold can wreak against lesser creatures. Their skin is tougher. Their bones and thick skulls like armor. I see one of my Grays hit a Gold thrown from his horse full on in the back of the head with his rifle, only for the Gold to wheel around and with a single punch break the neck of a man who survived ten years of war. Two Reds fire full clips into a Gold in a prisoner jumpsuit. He closes in and kills them before stumbling on to kill four more before finally expiring.

  In my pocket of peace amidst the battle, I feel the coolness of Pax’s key on my chest. The weight of my wife’s gift in my hand. The memory of all the goodness my men have inside them. How they laugh over cards. How they smile when entering a liberated city for the first time. How they hustle when beside a Gold comrade to show they are his equal. How they weep when they see their families at the spaceports.

  And I watch as they are butchered by the score, and their conviction that all men are created equal is made into a mockery by the physical absurdity of the Golds atop their monsters. There is a glee in their killing. A horrid joy teaching this chattel, this jabbering mass of uppity slaves, who their masters are.

  Bend. Bow. Break.

  I see Lysander amidst the fray, blood-spattered atop that monstrous horse, youthful and killing with uncommon grace. His bodyguards mill around him, cutting down any who rush his flanks. I see it so clearly. All his life before him. All the worlds on their knees, rejoicing their returned supplication as they embrace their chains so long as pretty, manicured hands hold the lead. His rise will summon a hideous tide of renewed romantic vigor that will not stop until my people, my wife, my child, are swallowed whole. And then he will smile from the humble throne war built and say he is their good shepherd.

  I gave him a choice long ago, a chance to live in peace, but he has returned to war. To see the boy become man scours the empathy in me.

  Ten years too late, he must die.

  My snipers no longer fire. Thraxa waits for my signal on the roof. I shape my razor from its long form to the slingBlade. The dread monster rises in the belly of me. Laughter spews from between my teeth. 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.

  “For the Republic!” I scream as I enter the fray.

  I HAVE NEVER FOUGHT LOWCOLORS hand to hand.

  I annihilate them.

  Faces and arms and skulls scalped by the teeth of sunbloods swirl around me like so much grotesque confetti. Weapons spark off my greaves. Men fall over themselves to avoid the teeth of my steed only to be trampled by his hooves. It is all frenzied blur, which I approach with systematic detachment.

  I would fear losing track of the battle in the strict focus of the Mind’s Eye. So I float along the edges of its shores.

  Breathe, stab, turn. Breathe, stab, turn.

  Rhone and the Praetorians swirl around Kalindora and me. Our force is irresistible. Kalindora an animating spirit atop her mount. The ranks of the enemy are shattered, but their will is not. It was Kalindora who introduced me to the term Blood Red for the battle frenzy of the Red clansmen. I believe I see it now.

  They refuse to yield the boulevard. They heave their bodies against it, forming bulwarks of the dead and living. They slash at our horses’ bellies. Or fire down from rooftops, but when our attention bears down on them for a single moment, they become mincemeat.

  My rooftop elements will be pressing forward. My infantry advances
at a run through the plaza to support our charge. Soon the enemy will be routed, and we will sweep south to run down their support legions and force those at the spaceport and Mound to surrender.

  As I try to free my horse from a tangle of bodies, I spot a Red sniper taking aim from a window above. Rhone fires over my shoulder, nailing three rounds into the sniper’s center mass. More snipers provide cover for us from the rubble of the Water Gardens.

  “Where is he?” I shout to Rhone. My Praetorians cluster around me, hacking and shooting anyone who comes near. “He knew I’d expect him on Triumphia.” Without Darrow in captivity, my victory will be incomplete.

  Rhone’s flinty eyes search the milling mob. From the horses, we can see nothing but the churn of battle. Then 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. First a rippling in the distance that seems like the wind. Then a tunneling force. An outward swaying of riders. The starting of horses. 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.

  He kills with impossible aggression.

  I will not repeat past mistakes and rush to meet him.

  “Rhone! Bring him down!” I shout. The Praetorians follow my blade and shoulder their rifles as they stand in the stirrups. Tracer rounds scream into the mob as Darrow disappears behind a horse. Then a raw-throated cry roars up from Darrow’s men.

  “Red Rain! Red Rain!”

  I look up just as the stars are obscured by shadows. Reds rain from the sky. They fling themselves off the rooftops that line the Via Triumphia and fall three stories to land amongst us. Our fireteam becomes chaos. I slash upward at a shadow, dividing it in two. Not an arm’s length away, a Praetorian gurgles and jerks his arms as a Red man lands on the saddle behind him and saws through his throat. He throws the knife at me. I backhand it away and I stab my razor through the Praetorian into the Red.

  A man crashes into me, holding on to my side by the lip of my breastplate. His knife flashes at my face. I duck my head. The knife stabs several times into the crown of my skull but fails to break the bone. I bring my razor into his gut and open his right side. He spills off just as gore squirts into my face as a woman comes down with a block of masonry atop the head of a Praetorian.

  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. I’m flung from my saddle. As I stand, a blur comes at my head from the side. I twist away and a tremendous impact lifts me clean off my knees and throws me through a window into an apartment atrium.

  I slide across the floor until the marble stairway jars me to a halt.

  The wind is knocked from me. I gasp for air, and when I sit up, I am shocked to find that my spine is not broken. A dent the circumference of a grapefruit has been made in the side of my breastplate. By the time I stumble to my feet, the doorknob is turning. A hulking shadow steps into the atrium carrying a huge warhammer.

  I don’t even have to look at her face. “Telemanus.”

  I bring my razor up with both hands over my head in Aja’s favorite form for Obsidians. Bough Splitter. It is an easy transition into the Branch Which Cannot Snap, the maneuver that killed Ragnar Volarus.

  “You killed a pup,” she growls. “Let’s see you handle me.” She rushes forward, bellowing her family’s name.

  Without the weight of armor, I’d be faster than that hammer, and might be induced to accept her invitation. But she is stronger, more experienced, and better designed for close-quarters brutality. I could pick her apart, but one loose stone, one slip of the foot, and she’d maul me to death.

  I make it a running engagement and bolt up the stairs. “Little bitch,” she screams as she pursues.

  At the top of the stairwell, I kick through an apartment door and wait for her thundering steps to come up the stairs. When she reaches the landing, I plunge the razor through the wall. It meets the resistance of armor, and pushes through. She roars in surprise. The razor comes back bloody. Her warhammer chases it through the wall.

  But I’m already in flight. I run through the apartment, past a shrieking Silver as Thraxa trundles after me. I push a bookshelf down to block her. She shatters through it as I dive through a window back down to the melee on the street. I land on my feet.

  “TELEMANUS!”

  The window frame shatters as her broad shoulders knock it free of the plaster. And from the debris jumps a demigod and her hammer.

  Rhone leans backward from his saddle and fires a burst at Thraxa as she passes overhead. Three bullets impact in a triangle shape under her armpit, punching through the armor into her rib cage. She lands just as I dive between the legs of a horse. Her huge hammer crumples the rider and breaks the horse almost clean in half. She teeters over the screaming animal like a weary blacksmith. I thrust my razor over the dying horse at Thraxa’s heart.

  She catches the blade flat between her huge gauntlets and manages to divert it into her belly. She reels me in by pulling the blade deeper. Her mouth opens in a mad laugh and she lunges to bite off my nose.

  Then a horse hits us and we go sprawling over corpses. I manage to keep ahold of my razor. By the time I find Thraxa limping to her feet, two Reds drop from a fourth-story ledge to drag her toward a horse.

  Rhone jumps from his own to stand over me with Praetorians. They’re in a panic, hauling at me, screaming to get behind them as they shoot. Then I see why.

  Darrow bulldozes toward me.

  His army in tatters around him, he breaks through behind a wedge of three armored Obsidians. Rhone’s men shoot the Obsidians. But they stumble into the line and Darrow explodes out from behind them. His razor passes through a man’s teeth and jaw. He looks left, then disappears in a blur.

  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.

  His whip snakes out and snaps hold of the back fetlock of Kalindora’s horse. He’s ripped down the boulevard before the Grays can shoot him. The horse tramples through a wall of men and clears the other side. Then it goes down. Kalindora disappears. Through the mill of bodies, I see her gain her feet as Darrow charges her. Their blades spark in an incredible display of fatigued swordsmanship. And then she falls. He hacks down at her four times before turning back to me.

  A roar comes from behind me.

  Back where Triumphia meets the plaza. The infantry pour in and the spirit that anchored the Rising soldiers to this plot of land finally shatters. In a weird, instantaneous snap, their dogged last stand morphs into mindless hysteria. They flee through the back alleys and down the Triumphia, flowing past Darrow, who stands there watching me. Many drop their weapons or discard their armor to run faster. As happens in all retreats, men are shot through the back, cleaved down from behind, losing far more with their backs turned than when they stood their ground.

  It is a rout.

  A trio of horses speeds through the broken army. Thraxa slumps in one saddle. One of the Reds who dragged her to safety holds the reins of the third horse as the other sits backward and fires with his rifle. Two shots whiz past my head close enough to flay open the skin of my scalp. Darrow mounts one of the horses as they pass. He looks back at me as my infantry pours through the plaza down the boulevard, and kicks his horse away.

  I rush to Kalindora as my men push forward. A Gold says something braggadocious to me, and I shove past him to find her crawling toward a lamppost so as not to be trampled underfoot. She leaks blood from a long gash down her left side. Her remaining arm is hacked to several pieces. She tries to say something to me. I call
for medici. Several Praetorians rush my way to help stanch the bleeding.

  I look down the dark boulevard after Darrow. “Let him…run,” Kalindora says. “You’re no…equal.”

  I grip a Praetorian. They all have field medical training. “Keep her alive.”

  I grab Kalindora’s loyalist razor from the ground and sprint back to Blood of Empire and jump into his saddle to pursue. Rhone shouts after me, but I know if I let Darrow slip through my fingers, he will disappear into the city like smoke.

  The Praetorians try to keep up, but Blood outpaces their tired steeds. Buildings whip past. Retreating men scatter. Mobs with torches cheer. Then I catch sight of the trio galloping south on a quiet stretch of the Via Triumphia just past the Bank of Heliopolis.

  “Reaper!” He does not turn. “Slave!” Somehow through the clatter of hooves, he hears me and wheels his horse around. Thraxa reaches for him and misses. Her horse carries her past. Covered in gore, his slingBlade held at his right side, he looks a devil atop the blood-frothed steed. Darrow brings his slingBlade around to point at me. Drawn by my shout, shadowed faces fill the windows that line the street.

  With a groaning howl, Darrow accepts my challenge. He kicks his horse’s flanks. It springs forward. Blood of Empire needs no encouraging. He sees a horse that is less than him, and surges to meet the challenger.

  For a moment there is nothing in the world but my enemy and me and the bobbing of the starlit street and the cacophony of horse hooves on stone. It forms a tunnel of concentrated destiny.

  I bring my borrowed razor up like a lance in my left hand. In the mill of battle, I am not his equal. Nor am I in the dueling ring. But aristocrats have always held a monopoly on horsemanship.