Red Rising (28 page)

“Yes. That is the point,” I say.

“They will also take our standard—”

“That’s a r-risk we have to take.”

“—so I stole the standard from the keep and buried it in the woods.”

I should have thought of that.

“You just stole it. Just like that.” Cassius starts laughing. “Crazy little sod. You’re prime mad. One hundredth pick. Prime mad.”

Sevro looks annoyed. Pleased. But annoyed. “Even then, we cannot guarantee they leave our territory.”

“Your sug-g-g-gestion?” I ask, still shivering but impatient. He could have helped us before.

“Get leverage to get them out after they do their job of taking Titus down,
obviously
.”

“Yes. Y-yes. I get it.” I shake off the last of my shivers. “But how?”

Sevro shrugs. “We’ll take Minerva’s standard.”

“W-wait,” Cassius says. “You know how to do that?”

Sevro snorts. “What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time, you silky turd? Wanking off in the bushes?”

Cassius and I look at each other.

“Kind of,” I say.

“Yeah, actually,” Cassius agrees.

We ride the Minervan horses east of the highlands. I’m not a sound equestrian. Of course Cassius is, so I learn to clutch his bruised ribs very well. Our faces are painted with mud. It will look like shadow in the night, so they will see our horses, our pikes, our sigils, and will think us their own.

The Minervan castle lies in rolling country quilted with wildflowers and olive trees. The moons glimmer bright over the pitching landscape. Owls hoot in the gnarled branches above. As we reach their sprawling sandstone fortress, a voice challenges us from the rampart above the gate. Sevro is not very presentable in his wolfcloak, so he guards the escape.

“We found Mars,” I call up. “Oy! Open the damn gate.”

“Password,” the sentry demands lazily from the battlements.

“Bosombutthead!” I shout up. Sevro heard it last time he was here.

“Prime. Where’s Virginia and the raiders?” the sentry calls down.

Mustang?

“Took their standard, man! The pissers didn’t even have horses. We might still manage to take the castle!”

The sentry bites.

“Prime news! Virginia is a devil. June’s made supper. Fetch some in the kitchen and then join me, if you like. I’m bored and need to be entertained.”

The gate creaks open very, very slowly. I laugh when it finally parts enough for us to ride in abreast. Cassius and I aren’t even met by guards. Their castle is different—drier, cleaner, and less oppressive.
They have gardens and olive trees that wend between the sandstone columns of the bottom level.

We hide in the shadows as two girls pass with cups of milk. They have no torches or fires an enemy can spot from the distance, only small candles. It makes it easy to slink about. Apparently the girls are pretty, because Cassius makes a face and pretends to follow them up the stairs.

After flashing me a smile, he sneaks toward the sounds of the kitchen as I look for their command room. I find it on the third level. Windows overlook the dark plain. In front of the windows lies Minerva’s atlas. A burning flag floats above my House’s castle. I don’t know what it means, but it can’t be good. Another fortress, House Diana’s, lies south of Minerva’s in the Greatwoods. Those are all that have been discovered.

They have their own score sheets to keep track of accomplishments. Someone named Pax seems a bloody nightmare. He’s taken eight slaves personally, and caused medBots to come down to fetch nine students, so I assume he’s the one that stood as tall as an Obsidian.

I don’t find their standard anywhere in the command room. Like us, they weren’t stupid enough to leave it just lying about. No problem, we’ll find it our own way. On cue, I smell Cassius’s smokefires seeping through the windows. What a pretty war room they have. Much prettier than Mars’s.

I break everything.

And when I have ruined their map and am finished defacing a statue of Minerva, I use the axe I found to chop the name of Mars into their long, beautiful war table. I’m tempted to etch another House’s name into the debris to confuse them, but I want them to know who did this. This House is too put together, too ordered and level headed. They have a leader, raiders, sentries (naïve ones), cooks, olive trees, warm milk, stunpikes, horses, honey, strategy. Minervans. Proud piggers. Let them feel a bit more like House Mars. Let them feel rage. Chaos.

Shouts come. Cassius’s fire spreads. A girl runs into the warroom. I nearly make her faint as I lift my axe. There’s no point in hurting
her. We can’t take prisoners, not easily. So I pull out both the slingBlade and the stunpike. Mud on my face. My golden hair wild. I look a terror.

“Are you June?” I growl.

“N-no … why?”

“Can
you
cook?”

She laughs despite her fear. Three boys turn the corner. Two are thicker but shorter than me. I scream like a rage god. Oh, how they run.

“Enemies!” they scream. “Enemies!”

“They’re in the towers!” I roar to confuse them again and again as I descend the stairs. “The top levels! Everywhere! Too many! Dozens! Dozens! Mars is here!
Mars
has come!” Smoke spreads. So do their cries.

“Mars!” they shout. “Mars has come!”

A young man flashes past me. I grab his collar and throw him out a window into the courtyard below, scattering the Minervans massed there. I go to the kitchen. Cassius’s fire is not bad. Mostly grease and brush. A howling girl beats at it.

“June!” I call out. She turns into my stunpike and shudders as the electricity dumbs down her muscles. That’s how I steal their cook.

Cassius finds me running with June over my shoulder through their gardens.

“What the hell?”

“She’s a cook!” I explain.

He laughs so hard he can barely breathe.

Minervans fall into chaos, running from their barracks. They think the enemy is in their towers. They think their citadel is burning down. They think Mars has come in full force. Cassius pulls me along into their stables. Seven horses have been left behind. We steal six after tossing a candle into their hay stores and ride out the main gate as smoke and panic consumes the fortress. I don’t have the standard. Just as we planned. Sevro said there was a hidden back gate to the fortress. We wagered that someone very desperate to flee a fallen fortress would use it to escape, someone trying to protect the standard. We were right.

Sevro joins us two minutes later. He howls out from under his wolfcloak as he comes. Far behind, the enemy chases him on foot with stunpikes. Now they’re the ones without horses. And they’ve no chance to get back the owl standard that glitters in his muddy hands. The cook unconscious across my saddle, we ride under the starry night back to our battle-torn highlands, the three of us laughing, cheering, howling.

We find Roque at Phobos Tower with Lea, Screwface, Clown, Thistle, Weed, and Pebble. We have eight horses—two stolen at the lake, six stolen in the castle. We add them to our plan. Cassius, Sevro, and I cross the bridge that spans the river Metas. An enemy scout bolts north to warn Mustang. Our other stolen horses, led by Antonia, follow once the scout is away, looping north. Roque, horseless, loops south.

My horse alone is not covered with mud. She is a bright mare. And I am a bright sight. I carry Minerva’s golden standard in my left hand. We could have hidden it. Could have kept it safe. But they need to know we have it, and even though Sevro stole it, he doesn’t want to carry it. He likes his curved knives too much. I think he whispers to them. And Cassius we need for other things besides carrying the standard. Plus, if he carried it, then he would look the leader. And that will not do.

Dead silence as we ride through our lowlands. Fog seeps around the trees. I cut through it. Cassius and Sevro ride to either side. I cannot see or hear them now, but wolves howl somewhere. Sevro howls back. I struggle to keep my seat as the mare spooks. I fall off twice. Cassius’s laughs come from the darkness. It’s hard to remember I’m
doing all this for Eo, all this to start a rebellion. It feels like a game this night; in a way it is, because I’m finally beginning to have fun.

Our castle is taken. Firelight along its ramparts tells me this. The castle stands high above the glen on its hill, its torches making strange halos in the fog-quilted darkness. My horse’s hooves thump softly on wet grass as to my right the Metas gurgles like a sick child in the night. Cassius rides there but I cannot see him.

“Reaper!” Mustang shouts through the mist. Her voice is not playful. She’s forty meters off, near the base of the sloped road that leads to the castle. She leans forward, arms crossed over the pommel of her saddle. Six riders flank her. The rest must be garrisoning the castle. Otherwise I’d hear about it. I look at the boys behind her. Pax is so large that his pike looks like a scepter in his huge mitts.

“Lo, Mustang.”

“So, you didn’t drown. That would have been easier.” Her quick face is dark. “You are a vile breed, you know that?” She’s been inside the keep and she doesn’t have words for her anger. “Rape? Mutilation? Murder?” She spits.

“I did nothing,” I say. “And neither did the Proctors.”

“Yes. You did
nothing
. Yet now you have our standard and what? Handsome somewhere out there in the mist? Go ahead, pretend like you’re not their leader. Like you’re not responsible.”

“Titus is responsible.”

“The big bastard? Yes, Pax laid him low.” She gestures to the monster of a boy beside her. Pax’s hair is shorn short, his eyes small, chin like a heel with a dent in it. Beneath him, his horse looks like a dog. His bare arms are flesh stretched over boulders.

“I didn’t come to talk, Mustang.”

“Come to cut my ear off?” she sneers.

“No. Goblin did.”

Then one of her men slips screaming from his saddle.

“What the …,” a rider murmurs.

Behind them, knives already dripping, Sevro howls like a maniac. A half dozen other howls join his as Antonia and half her Phobos garrison ride from the north hills on the stolen mudblack steeds. They howl like mentals in the mist. Mustang’s soldiers wheel about.
Sevro takes another one down. He doesn’t use stunpikes. MedBots scream through the sky, which is suddenly filled with Proctors. All of them have come to watch. Mercury trails behind the rest, carrying an armful of spirits, which he tosses to his fellows. Each of us peers up to watch their strange appearance; the horses continue to run. Time pauses.

“To the fray!” dark Apollo mocks from on high. His golden robes show he’s just risen from bed. “To the fray.”

Then chaos hits as Mustang shouts orders, strategy. Four more horsemen ride down the sloped road from the gate to support her troop. My turn. I slam Minerva’s standard upright into the earth and scream bloody murder. I kick my heels into my mare. She lurches forward, almost losing me. My body shudders as she pounds the moist earth with her hooves. My strong left hand grips the reins and I draw my slingBlade. I feel a Helldiver again when I howl.

The enemy scatters as they see me raging toward them. It is the rage that confuses them. It is the insanity of Sevro, the manic brutality of Mars. The horsemen scatter, except one. Pax jumps from his horse and sprints at me.

“
Pax au Telemanus
” he screams, a titan possessed, foaming at the mouth. I dig my heels into my horse and howl. Then Pax tackles my horse. His shoulder hits my horse’s sternum. The beast screams. My world flips. I fly out of my saddle, over my horse’s head, and crash to the ground.

Dazed, I stumble to my knee in the hoof-churned field.

Madness consumes the field. Antonia’s force crashes into Mustang’s flank. They have primitive weapons, but their horses are shock enough. Several Minervans fly from the saddle. Others kick their mounts toward their abandoned standard, but Cassius appears out of the fog at a gallop and swipes the standard away to the south. Two enemies give chase, dividing their force. The other six soldiers from Antonia’s tower garrisons are waiting to ambush them in the woods, where the horses cannot gallop.

Reflexes make me duck as a pike sweeps toward my skull. I’m up with my slingBlade. I slash it at a wrist. Too slow. I move as if in a
dance, remembering the thumping pattern my uncle taught me in the abandoned mines. The Reaping Dance carries my motions into one another like flowing water. I swoop the slingBlade into a kneecap. The Aureate bone does not break, but the force knocks the rider from the saddle. I spin sideways and strike again, and again, and sweep the hoof of a horse away, breaking a fetlock. The animal falls.

A different stunpike stabs at me. I avoid the point and rip it free with my Red hands and jam the electrocuting tip into another assailant. The boy falls. A mountain pushes it aside and runs at me. Pax. In case I am an idiot, he roars his name at me. His parents bred him to lead Obsidian landing parties into hull breaches.

“Pax au Telemanus!”
He beats his huge pike against his chest and hits puffy-haired Clown so hard, my friend flies back four meters.
“Pax au Telemanus.”