Our job is done. We can leave Mustang. She’s smart enough to figure out the rest. But leaving might be a problem without a horse, and I don’t think Mustang really needs hers.
I feign boredom. Cassius keeps an eye on the hills around. Then I start suddenly as if I’ve noticed something. I whisper “Snake” into his ear while looking at the horse’s front hooves. He looks too, and at this point, the girl’s movement is involuntary. Even as she realizes it’s a trick, she leans forward to peer at the hooves. I lunge to close the ten-meter gap. I’m fast. So is she, but she’s just a hair off balance and has to lean back in order to jerk her horse away. It scrambles back in the mud. I dive for her and my strong right hand grips her long braids just as the horse darts away. I try to jerk her out of the saddle, but she’s all hellfire.
I’m left with a handful of coiled gold. The mustang is off and the girl laughs and curses about her hair. Then Cassius’s pitchfork wobbles through the air and trips the horse. Girl and beast go down in the muddy grass.
“Dammit, Cassius!” I shout.
“Sorry!”
“You might have killed her!”
“I know! I know! Sorry!”
I run to see if she’s broken her neck. That would ruin everything. She’s not moving. I lean in to feel her pulse and sense a blade graze my groin. My hand is already there to twist her wrist away. I take the knife and pin her down.
“I knew you wanted to roll me in the mud.” Her lips smirk. Then they purse as if she wants a kiss. I recoil. Instead, she whistles and the plan becomes a bit more complicated.
I hear hooves.
Everyone has bloodydamn horses but us.
The girl winks and I force the cloth from her sigil. House Minerva. Greeks would have called it Athena. Of course. Seventeen horses tear down the glen from the crest of the hill. Their riders have stunpikes. Where the hell did they get stunpikes?
“Time to run, Reaper,” Mustang taunts. “My army comes.”
There’s no running. Cassius dives into the loch. I jump off Mustang, run after him through the mud, and throw myself over the bank to join him in the water. I cannot swim, but I learn quickly.
The horsemen of House Minerva taunt Cassius and me as we tread water in the center of the small loch. It’s summer but the water is cold and deep. Dusk is coming. My limbs are numb. The Minervans still circle the lake, waiting for us to tire. We won’t. I had three of the durobags in my pockets. I blow them full of air and give two to Cassius, keeping one for myself. They help us float, and since none of the Minervans seem intent on swimming to meet us, we’re safe for the time being.
“Roque should have lit it by now,” I tell Cassius some hours into our swim. He’s in bad shape from his wounds and the cold.
“Roque will light it. Faith … goodman … faith.”
“We’re also supposed to be almost home.”
“Well, it’s still going better than my plan did.”
“You look bored, Mustang!” I shout out with chattering teeth. “Come in for a swim.”
“And get hypothermia? I’m not stupid. I’m in Minerva, not Mars, remember!” She laughs from the shore. “I’d rather warm myself by your castle’s hearth. See?” She points behind us and speaks quickly to three tall boys, one of whom looks as big as an Obsidian—shoulders like a huge thunderhead.
A thick column of smoke rises in the distance.
Finally.
“How the slag did those pricks pass the test?” I ask loudly. “They’ve given our castle away.”
“If we get back, I’m going to drown them in their own piss,” Cassius replies even louder. “Except for Antonia. She’s too pretty for that.”
Our teeth chatter.
The eighteen raiders think House Mars is stupid, horseless, and unprepared.
“Reaper, Handsome, I must leave you now!” Mustang calls to us. “Try not to drown before I return with your standard. You can be my pretty bodyguards. And you can have matching hats! But we’ll have to teach you to think better!”
She gallops away with fifteen riders, the huge Gold reining his horse in beside hers like some sort of colossal shadow. Her followers whoop as they ride. She also leaves us company. Two horsemen with stunpikes. Our farming tools lie in the mud on the shore.
“M-mustang is a s-sexp-p-pot,” Cassius manages to shiver out.
“She’s s-s-scary.”
“R-r-reminds m-m-me of my m-mother.”
“S-s-something is wrong w-with y-ou.”
He nods in agreement. “So … the p-plan is sort of w-w-working.”
If we can get out of the loch without being captured.
Night falls in earnest, and with the darkness come the howls of the wolves in the misty highlands. We begin to sink as our durobags leak air from small stress holes. We might have had a chance to slink away in the night, but the remaining Minervans are not lazily sitting around a fire. They stalk through the darkness so that we never even know where they are. Why can’t they be stupidly sitting in their castle infighting like our fellows?
I’m going to be a slave again. Maybe not a real slave, but it doesn’t matter. I won’t lose. I cannot lose. Eo will have died for nothing if I let myself sink here, if I let my plan fail. Yet I do not know how to beat my enemies. They are clever and the odds are stacked heavily against me. Eo’s dream sinks with me into the darkness of the loch, and I’m about to swim to shore, regardless the outcome, when something spooks the horses.
Then a scream slices across the water.
Fear trickles down my spine as something howls. It is not a wolf. It can’t be what I think it is. Blue light flashes as a stunpike flails in the air. The boy screams another curse. A knife got him. Someone runs to his aid and electricity flares blue again. I see a black wolf standing over one body as another falls. Darkness again. Silence, then the mournful whine of medBots descending from Olympus.
I hear a familiar voice.
“Clear now. Come out of the water, fishies.”
We paddle to shore and pant in the mud. Mild hypothermia has set in. It won’t kill us but my fingers are still slow as mud squishes between them. My body shakes like a drillBoy at work.
“Goblin, you psychopath. Is that you?” I call.
The fourth tribe slides out of the darkness. He’s wearing the pelt of the wolf he killed. It covers his head to his shins. Damn small kid. The gold of his black fatigues is coated in mud. So’s his face.
Cassius crawls from his knees to clasp Sevro in a hug. “Oh, y-you are b-beautiful, Goblin. B-beautiful, beautiful b-b-oy. And smelly.”
“He been nibbling on mushrooms?” Goblin asks over Cassius’s shoulders. “Stop touching me, you Pixie.” He pushes Cassius away, looking embarrassed.
“Did you k-kill these t-two?” I ask, shivering. I bend over them and take off their dry clothing to exchange for my own. I feel pulses.
“No.” Sevro cocks his head at me. “Should I have?”
“W-w-why are you asking m-me like I’m your P-praetor?” I laugh. “You know what’s what.”
Sevro shrugs. “You’re like me.” He looks at Cassius with disdain. “And somehow still like him. So, should I kill them?” he asks casually.
Cassius and I share startled glances.
“N-n-no,” we agree just as the medBots arrive to take the Minervans away. He hurt them badly enough to end their time in the game.
“So what, p-p-pray tell, are you doing w-w-wandering ab-b-bout in a wolfsk-k-kin all the way out h-here?” Cassius asks.
“Roque said you lot would be out east,” Sevro replies curtly. “Plan is still a go, says he.”
“Hav-v-ve the Minervans arrived at the castle?” I ask.
Sevro spits in the grass. The twin moons cast eerie shadows over his dark face. “How the piss should I know? They passed me on the way. But you have no leverage, you know. It is a dead-end plan.” Is Sevro actually helping us? Of course his help begins with listing out our inadequacies. “If the Minervans get to the keep, they will
destroy Titus and take our territory.”
“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.
27
THE HOUSE OF RAGE
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 eithe
r 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.