Red Rising — Chapter 35: Oathbreakers

35

Oathbreakers

My friends are with me. What would they mean by that? Which

friends? The Sons of Ares? Or was the mystery friend being more

general, alluding to those who support my chances at the Institute?

Do they know the signicance of the Pegasus? Or were they simply

reuniting me with something she thought I might miss?

So many questions; none of them matter. They are outside the

game. The game. What else is there but the game? All the true

things in the world, all my relationships, all my aspirations and

needs, are wrapped up in this game, wrapped up in me winning. To

win, I’ll need an army, but it cannot be made of slaves. Not again. I

now need, as I’ll need at the head of a rebellion, followers, not

slaves.

Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.

A week after I inject Mustang and her fever fades, we set o to

the north. Her strength grows the more we move. Her cough is gone

and her quick smile returns. Sometimes she needs a rest, but soon

she comes close to outpacing me. She lets me know it too. We make

as much noise as possible when we move to draw our prey to us. On

the sixth night of setting obnoxiously large res, we get our rst

nibble.

377

The Oathbreakers come along a stream, using its sounds to mask

their approach. I like them immediately. Were our re not a trap,

they would have caught us unawares. But it is a trap, and when two

step into the light, we almost spring it. Yet if they are smart enough

to come along the stream, they are smart enough to leave someone

in the dark. I hear an arrow nock on a bowstring. Then there’s a

yelp. Mustang takes the one in the dark. I take the other two. I stand

up from my snowpile, my wolfcloak shedding snow, and knock

them down from behind with the at of my bow.

Afterwards, the one Mustang struck nurses his swollen eye by our

re as I speak with their leader. Her name is Milia. She’s a tall

willow with a long horseface and a slight hunch to her shoulders.

Rags and stolen furs cover her bony frame. The other uninjured one

is Dax. Short, comely, with three frostbitten ngers. We give them

extra furs and I think that makes all the dierence in the

conversation.

“You understand we could make you slaves, yes?” Mustang asks,

brandishing her standard. “So you’d be twice Oathbreakers and

twice shunned once this game is over.”

Milia doesn’t seem to care. Dax does. The other just follows Milia.

“Could give a rat’s prick. No dierence between once and twice,”

Milia says. They all bear the slave mark of Mars. I don’t recognize

them but their rings say they are from Juno. “Rather bear shame

than bruise my knees. Do you know my father?”

“I don’t care about your father.”

378

“My father,” she persists, “is Gauis au Trachus, Justiciar of the

southern Martian hemisphere.”

“I still don’t care.”

“And his father was—”

“I don’t care.”

“Then you are a fool,” she drawls. “Twice a fool if you think to

make me your slave. I will cut you in the night.”

I nod to Mustang. She stands suddenly with the standard and puts

it to Milia’s head. The mark of Mars becomes that of Minerva. Then

she erases the Minerva mark and Milia’s forehead is only dirt and

gold. Dax’s eyes widen.

“Even if I free you?” I ask Milia. “You’re still going to cut me?”

She doesn’t know what to say.

“Mily,” Dax says quietly. “What are you thinking?”

“No slavery,” I elaborate. “No beatings. If you dig a shit pit, I dig

a shit pit for the camp too. If someone cuts you, I cut them. So, will

you join our army?”

“His army,” Mustang corrects. I look over at her with a frown.

“And who’s he?” Milia asks, her eyes not leaving my face.

“He’s the Reaper.”

It takes a week to gather ten Oathbreakers. The way I look at it is

those ten already made it clear they don’t want to be slaves. So they

might like the rst person who will give them purpose, food, furs,

who is not demanding that they lick a bootheel. Most of them have

heard of me, but all are disappointed that I don’t have the famous

slingBlade I used to beat Pax. Apparently he’s become quite the

379

legend. They say he picked up and threw a horse and rider into the

Argos as Mars’s slaves fought Jupiter’s.

As we grow, we hide from the larger armies. Mars may be my

House, but with Roque dead and Cassius an enemy, only Quinn and

Sevro are left as friends. Pollux perhaps, but he’ll go whatever way

the wind blows.

I cannot be with my House. There’s no place for me there. I may

have been their leader, but I remember how they looked at me. And

now it is crucial they know I am alive.

Despite the war between Mars and Jupiter, stalwart Ceres stands

unconquered by the riverside. Behind their high walls, bread smoke

still rises. Mounted warbands from both armies roam the plains

around Ceres, crossing the frozen Argos at will. They carry low-

charged ionSwords now, so they can electrocute and maim one

another with a brush of metal. MedBots scream over the battleeld

when skirmishes break into pitched frays, healing wounded students

as they bleed or moan from broken bones. The champions of each

army wear ionArmor to protect themselves against the new

weapons. Horses smash together. IonArrows y. Slaves mill about

hitting each other with older, simple weapons across the wide plain

that separates the highlands from the great river Argos. It is a

spectacular thing to see—but foolish, so foolish.

I watch with Mustang and Milia as two armored warbands of

Mars and Jupiter streak toward each other across the plains in front

of Phobos Tower. Pennants ap. Horses trample the deep snow. It’s

a clash of armored glory when the two metal tides collapse into one

380

another. Lances spark with stunning electricity on broad shields and

armor. Dazzling swords slam other blades like their own. HighDrafts

battling highDrafts. Slaves run in scores to smash into each other,

pawns in this giant chess match.

I see Pax in a rusty bulk of crimson armor so ancient it looks like

a frysuit. I laugh as he tackles a horse. But if ever there was a

picture of a perfect knight, it would not be Pax. No, it’d be Cassius. I

see him now. His armor glows as he stuns opponent after opponent,

galloping through the enemy, his sword humming left and right,

ickering like a tongue of re. He can ght, but I’m shocked at how

foolishly he chooses to—diving nobly into the enemy’s gut with a

force of lancers, capturing enemies. And then the surviving troops

regroup and do the same to him. Over and over, neither side taking

substantial advantage.

“What idiots,” I say to Mustang. “All that pretty armor and swords

blind them. I know. Maybe if they slam into one another three or

four more times, it may just work.”

“They’ve got tactics,” she says. “Look, a wedge formation there.

And a feint there that’ll turn into a ank sweep.”

“Yet I’m right.”

“Yet you’re not wrong.” She watches for a moment. “Like our

little war over again, except you’re not running around howling at

people like a moontouched wolf.” Mustang sighs and puts a hand on

my shoulder. “Ah, the good old days.”

Milia watches us with a wrinkled nose.

“Tactics win battles. Strategy wins wars,” I say.

381

“Oooo. I am Reaper. God of wolves. King of strategy.” Mustang

pinches my cheek. “You are just too adorable.”

I swat her away. Milia rolls her eyes.

“So, what is our strategy, milord?” Mustang asks me.

The longer I draw out any conict with an enemy, the more

chances the Proctors will get to ruin me. My rise must be meteoric. I

don’t tell her this.

“Speed is our strategy,” I say. “Speed and extreme predjudice.”

The next morning, House Mars’s warband nds their bridge across

the Metas blocked by trees felled in the night. As expected, the

warband turns around and rides back to the castle, fearing some sort

of trap. Their watchmen in Phobos and Deimos cannot see us; they

peer down and send smoke signals that there is no enemy in the

barren deciduous woods around the bridge. They do not see us

because we have been bellydown in the same position in the woods

fty yards from the bridge since black dawn. Each of my

Oathbreakers has a white or gray wolfcloak now. It took a week to

nd the wolves, but perhaps that was for the better. The hunt

created a bond. My ten soldiers are a scrappy lot. Liars, wicked

cheats who would rather ruin their futures than be slaves in this

game. So a proud, practical but not very honorable lot. Just the sort

I need. Their faces are painted white with bird dung and gray clay,

so we’ve the look of spectral winter beasts as breath billows from

our grinning maws.

382

“They like being valued by someone fearsome,” Milia told me the

night before, her voice as cold and brittle as the icicles hanging

from the aspen trees. “As do I.”

“Mars’ll take the bait,” Mustang whispers to me now. “Not so

much brainpower left in the House.” Not with Roque gone. She

chose a place close to me in the snow. So close that her legs stretch

along mine, and her face, twisted sideways as she lies on her belly,

is only inches from my own underneath our white cloaks. When I

inhale, the air is already warm from her breath. I think this is the

rst time I’ve thought of kissing her. I chase the thought away, and

summon the sight of Eo’s mischevious lips.

It is midday when Cassius sends troops—mostly slaves, for fear of

an ambush—to clear the felled trees from the bridge. In fact, Cassius

plays too clever a game. Since he believes he is ghting Jupiter, his

assumption is that the ambush will be a sudden cavalry charge once

the bridge is clear. So he has his horses go around the river, south

through the highlands, and loop around on the far side of the bridge

near Phobos to spring an ambush on the cavalry he assumes will

come from the Greatwoods or the plains. Milia, the shifty girl,

brings me news of this movement of horse in the form of a howl

from her perch nearly a mile o, where she serves as lookout in the

high pines. It is time to move.

We do not howl or shout as we eleven sprint through the leaess

woods toward the toiling slaves. Four highDrafts sit on horses

watching the work. One is Cipio. We sprint faster. Faster through

383

the barren trees, coming from their ank. They do not see us. We

fan out. Racing one another to make the rst strike.

I win.

Jumping ve meters forward in the lowGrav, I y out of the

woods like a demon possessed and take Cipio at the shoulder with a

blunted sword. He spills from the saddle. Horses whinny. Mustang

takes down another highDraft with her standard. My troops swarm

forward, silent and shadowed with white and gray. Two more of my

Oathbreakers leap onto the highDrafts’ horses and bludgeon the

riders with clubs and blunted axes. I ordered no killing; it’s over in

four seconds. The horses don’t even know where their riders went.

My troops ow past the horses into the slaves as they clear the

bridge of the felled logs. Half don’t even hear us till Mustang has

turned six into Minerva slaves and ordered them to help us subdue

the rest. Then there’s shouting and the Mars slaves turn their axes

against my troops.

Those from Minerva recognize Mustang and are set free when she

clears away the mark of Mars. It’s like a shifting tide. Six slaves are

ours. They tackle Mars’s other slaves and pin them down as Mustang

runs over and converts them. Eight, by the same process. Ten.

Eleven, till only one oers trouble. And he’s the prize. Pax. He

doesn’t have his armor, thank God. He’s here for labor, but it still

takes seven of us to take him to the ground. He’s roaring and

screaming his name. I dive at him and take a st to the face. I’m

spitting and laughing as we pile on till there’s twelve of us holding

384

the genetic monster down. Mustang frees him of the mark of Mars

and his roars become laughter so high pitched, it sounds like a girl’s.

“Freeeeeedom!” he roars. He jumps up, looking for someone to

maim. “Darrow au Andromedus!” he shouts at me, ready to break

my face till Mustang shouts him down.

“He’s on our side,” Mustang says.

“The truth?” Pax asks. His giant face splits into a smile. “What

news!” And he’s got me in a bear hug. “Freeeedom, brothers … and

sisters! Sweet freedom!” We leave Cipio and the other highDrafts

moaning on the ground.

The smoke signals plume up from Phobos and Deimos as we

sprint through the vale’s woods into the dwarf mountains to the

north before the horsemen of Mars can loop back around the

blocked bridge to assail us. The watchmen saw it all. And they must

be horried. It happened in less than a minute. Pax won’t stop

laughing like a girl.

House Mars will be confused by the sudden depletion of their

ranks. But I need more than that. I need them to replace the vision

they have of me, one of a awed leader, with something

supernatural, something beyond their understanding. I need to be

like the Jackal—nameless and superhuman.

That night, I slither through the snow north of Castle Mars. Riders

patrol the glen. Their hooves are soft on the grass in the night. I

hear their bridles clinking in the darkness. I do not see them. My

wolfcloak is white as the falling snow. I’ve pulled its head up, so I

look like a guardian creature from the colder levels of hell. The rock

385

face is steeper than I remember. I nearly fall as I pull myself along

the snowy vertical. I reach the castle wall. Torches icker on the

ramparts. Wind whips the ames about. Mustang should be about to

light the blaze.

I strip away my cloak and ball it up. My skin is coated in

charcoal. I push the metal tongs into the spaces between the stones.

It is like climbing my drill again except I’m stronger and I’m not

wearing a frysuit. Easy. The Pegasus bounces against my chest as I

pull myself up. I’m not even panting when I reach the top six

minutes later.

My ngers cling to the stone just beneath the ramparts. I hang,

listening to the passing sentry. Of course it is a slave. And she’s not

stupid. She sees me as I pull myself over the rampart and shoves a

spear against my throat. I ash my Mars ring and hold my nger to

my lips.

“Why should I not call out?” she asks. She was once of Minerva.

“Did they tell you to guard the wall for enemies? I’m sure they

did. But I’m of House Mars. The ring says so. I can’t be an enemy

then, yes?”

She frowns. “The Primus told me to watch the walls for intruders

and to kill or call out …”

“This is my home. I am of House Mars. I am your master and I

demand you continue to watch the wall for intruders. It is

imperative.” I wink. “I swear Virginia would be happy if you

followed your orders to the letter.”

She cocks her head at Mustang’s real name and looks me over.

386

“My Primus is alive?”

“House Minerva has not fallen,” I say.

The girl’s face almost breaks she smiles so hard. “Well … then … I

suppose this is your home. Can’t stop you from entering it. Bound by

oath to obey, I am. Wait … I know you. They said you were dead.”

“Thank your Primus that I draw breath.”

I learn from her that the Housemembers sleep while the slaves

guard the fortress at night. That is the problem with slaves. They are

so willing to nd a way around their duty, and so excited to share

secrets. I leave her behind and steal into the keep using a key she

accidentally dropped into my hand.

Sneaking through my home, I am tempted to pay Cassius a visit.

But I’m not here to kill him. Violence is the fool’s way out.

Sometimes I’m the fool, but tonight I’m feeling smart. I’m also not

there to steal the standard. They will be guarding that. No. I’m there

to remind them that they once were afraid of me. That I am the best

of them all. I can go where I please. Do what I please.

I stay in the shadows even though I could use the same argument

on every slave guard they have. Instead, I carve a slingBlade on

every door in the keep. I slip into the warroom and carve a

slingBlade into the huge table there to create the myth. Then I carve

a skull into Cassius’s chair and drive a knife deep into the back of

the wood chair to create the rumor.

As I leave the way I came, I see the hillside north of the castle

erupt in ame. The brush stacked in the shape of the Reaper’s

slingBlade burns hot in the night.

387

Sevro, if he is still with Mars, will nd me. And I could use the

little bastard’s help.

388