Red Rising(53)

He pops a gumbubble. “Remember, though, the point is not to kill. We don’t care if you’re as ruthless as Vlad Dracula. He still lost. The point is to win. That’s what we want.”

And that simple test of cruelty is already past.

“We want you to show us your brilliance. Like Alexander. Like Caesar, Napoleon, and Merrywater. We want you to manage an army, distribute justice, arrange for provisions of food and armor. Any fool can stick a blade into another’s belly. The school’s role is to find the leaders of men, not the killers of men. So the point, you silly little children, is not to kill, but to conquer. And how do you conquer in a game where there are eleven enemy tribes?”

“Take them out one at a time,” Titus answers knowingly.

“No, ogre.”

“Dumbass,” Sevro snickers to himself. Titus’s pack quietly watches the smallest boy in the Institute. No threats are snarled. No faces twitch. Just a silent promise. It’s hard to remember that they are all geniuses. They look too pretty. Too athletic. Too cruel to be geniuses.

“Anyone besides Ogre have a guess?” Fitchner asks.

No one answers.

“You make one tribe out of twelve,” I finally say. “By taking slaves.”

Just like the Society. Build on the backs of others. It isn’t cruel. It is practical.

Fitcher claps mockingly. “Prime, Reaper. Prime. Looks like someone is bucking for Primus.” Everyone shifts in agitation at that last bit. Fitchner pulls a long box from under the table. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is what you use to make the slaves.” He pulls out our standard. “Protect this. Protect your castle. And conquer all the others.”





22


The Tribes



Fitchner is gone in the morning. In his chair lies the standard. It is a one-foot length of iron tipped with our howling wolf; a serpent coils beneath the wolf’s feet, the star-tipped pyramid of the Society beneath that. A five-foot oak pole connects to the iron end. If the castle is our home, the standard is our honor. With it, we are able to turn enemies into our slaves by pressing it to their forehead. There a wolf sigil will appear until another standard is pressed to the forehead. Slaves must obey our express commands or forever be Shamed.

I sit across from the standard in the morning dark, eating Apollo’s leftovers. A wolf calls out in the mist. Its howl comes through the keep’s high window. Tall Antonia is the first to join me. She glides in like a lonely tower or a beautiful golden spider. I haven’t decided which way her personality runs. We exchange glances but no greetings. She wants Primus.

Cassius and raspy Pollux saunter in next. Pollux grumbles about having to go to bed without having Pinks to tuck him in.

“A positively hideous standard, don’t you think?” Antonia complains. “They could at least have given it a splash of color. I think it should be draped with red for rage and blood.”

“It’s not too heavy.” Cassius hefts the standard by its pole. “Reckoned it’d be gold.” He admires the golden Primus hand within the block of black stone. He wants it too. “And they gave us a map. Swell.”

A new stone map dominates one of the walls. The detail near our castle is remarkable. The rest less so. The fog of war. Cassius claps me on the back and joins in eating. He doesn’t know I heard him weep again in the night. We shared a new bunk in a barracks in the keep’s high tower. Many others still sleep in the main tower. Titus and his friends have taken the low tower even though they don’t have enough bodies to fill it.

Most of the House has woken by the time Sevro drags in a dead wolf by its legs. It’s already gutted and skinned.

“Goblin has brought victuals!” Cassius applauds daintily. “Hmm. We will need firewood. Does anyone know how to make a fire?” Sevro does. Cassius grins. “Of course you do, Goblin.”

“Found the sheep too easy to kill?” I ask. “Where’d you get the weapon?”

“Born with them.” His fingernails are bloody.

Antonia wrinkles her nose. “Where in the hell were you raised?”

Sevro presents his middle finger to her, the crux.

“Ah,” Antonia sniffs. “Hell, then.”

“So, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, it will be some time before anyone has enough bars of merit to become Primus,” Cassius declares when we’ve all gathered around the table. “Naturally, I was thinking that we need a leader before Primus is chosen.” He stands and scoots away from Sevro so that his fingers rest on the edge of the standard. “In order for us to function, we must have immediate and coordinated decisions.”

“And which of you two fools do you think it should be?” Antonia asks dryly. Her large eyes glance from him to me. She turns to regard the others, voice sweet like thick syrup. “At this point, what makes any of us better suited to lead than anyone else?”

“They got us dinner … and breakfast,” Lea says meekly from beside Roque. She gestures to the leftover picnic victuals.

“While running right into a trap—” Roque reminds everyone.

Antonia nods sagely. “Yes, yes. A wise point. Rashness can hurt us.”

“—but they did fight free,” Roque finishes, earning a glare from Antonia..

“With table legs against real weapons,” Titus rumbles his approval, with a qualification. “But then they fled and left the food behind. So it was Fitchner who gave us the food. They would have given it to the enemy, delivering food like Browns.”