Red Rising(95)

As I leave the way I came, I see the hillside north of the castle erupt in flame. The brush stacked in the shape of the Reaper’s slingBlade burns hot in the night.

Sevro, if he is still with Mars, will find me. And I could use the little bastard’s help.





36


A Second Test



In order to have an army, I must be able to feed it. So I will take the ovens of Ceres that Jupiter and Mars both lust over, and I will take them with speed and supreme aggression.

The new members of our band from House Minerva find it perfectly reasonable to accept my authority. I don’t fool myself. Yes, they were impressed by me hiding my Howlers inside dead horses months ago, and they remember me defeating Pax. But it’s only because Mustang trusts me that they obey. We leave those of House Diana as slaves for now. I need to earn their trust. Tactus, oddly, is the only one who seems to trust me. Then again, the laconic youth was all smiles when I told him I’d be sewing him inside of a dead horse over a month ago. There are two more of Diana that I sewed away. The others call them the DeadHorses, and they each wear braids of white horsehair. I think they’re a bit mental.

If there is anything in the woods and highlands, it is an abundance of wolves. We hunt them to train our new recruits in my way of fighting. No glamorous cavalry charges. No damn lances. And certainly no stupid rules of engagement. Everyone gets cloaks, which are smelly things as they dry and we peel away the rot. Everyone except Pax. They haven’t yet made a wolf big enough for him.

“House Ceres is no stranger to siege,” Mustang says. She’s right. At night, they seem to have more soldiers awake than in the day. They watch for sneak assaults. Blazing bundles of tinder light the base of their walls at night. Somehow, they have dogs now. Those prowl along the battlements. The way from the water is guarded ever since I tried sending Sevro in through the latrines long ago during a sneak attack I arranged when we were at war with Minerva. He barely forgave me for that one. The Ceres students come out no longer. They’ve learned the risks of battling stronger Houses on open ground. They’ll hole up for winter, and when the cold and hunger has weakened the other Houses, they’ll emerge from their fortress in the spring—strong, prepared, and organized.

But they’ll never make it to the spring.

“So we attack during the day?” Mustang guesses.

“Naturally,” I say. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother speaking. She knows my thoughts. Even the mad ones.

This idea is an especially mad one. We practiced it in a clearing in the Northwoods for a whole day after flattening out the wood with axes. Pax makes the plan possible. We hold competitions to see who has the best balance on the wood. Mustang wins. Horsefaced Milia is second, and she’s spitting bitter that she doesn’t beat Mustang. I’m third.

As we did when springing the trap on House Mars, we sneak as close as we dare the night before and bury ourselves in the deep snow. Again, Mustang and I pair off, huddling tight with one another under the snow. Tactus tries pairing with Milia, but she tells him to go slag himself.

“If you look at it properly, I was trying to do you a favor,” he mutters over at Milia as he huddles down under Pax’s smelly armpit. “You’re about as pretty as a gargoyle’s wart. So when else would you get a chance to snuggle with the likes of me? Ungrateful sow.”

Mustang and the other girls snort their derision. Then the quiet of night and the chill of the open ice plain bite into us and we grow silent.

Come morning, Mustang and I shiver into one another, and a new snowfall threatens to ruin our plan, burying us even deeper in the plain. But the wind is manageable and the flakes do not bury us too deep as they spin through the air. I’m first up, though I do not move. And soon after I yawn away the last vestige of sleep, my army wakes organically, one student stirring and grumbling into another till there’s a snake of sniffing and coughing Golds buried together in a shallow tunnel beneath the snow’s surface. I can’t see them, but I hear their waking despite the sound of the snowstorm’s wind.

Ice formed around me in the night outside my thick cloaks. Mustang’s hands are inside my pelts, warm against my side. Her breath heats my neck. As I stir, she yawns and straightens, pulling a little away as she stretches, catlike, under the snow. Snow crumbles in between us.

“Gory hell, this is miserable,” Dax, Milia’s companion, mutters. I can’t see him in our snow tunnel.

Mustang nudges me. We can just barely see Tactus curled into the hollow of Pax’s armpit. The two men snuggle together and wake like lovers, only to flinch away from one another when their ice-crusted eyelids flutter open.

“Wonder which is Romeo,” Mustang whispers, her throat raspy.

I chuckle and carve a hole in the roof of our tunnel to see that my band of twenty-four is alone in the plains except for early morning horse scouts in the distance. They will not be a problem. Wind rolls in from the north river, bitting deep into my face.

“You ready for this?” Mustang asks me with a grin as I bring my head back into our shelter. “Or are you too cold?”

“It was colder in the loch when we I first tricked you,” I say, smiling. “Ah, the old days.”

“All part of my master plan to win your trust, little man.” She smirks mischievously. She sees the worry in my eyes, so she grips my thigh and comes close so the others can’t hear. “Think I’d be squatting here with you in the snow if this plan could go belly up? Negative. But I’m freezing my balls off and the wind is dying, so let’s go, Reaper.”