Red Rising — Chapter 36: A Second Test

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 nd 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 ghting. 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.

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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 attening 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

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snow. Again, Mustang and I pair o, 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 akes do not bury us too

deep as they spin through the air. I’m rst 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 sning 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.

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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 inch away from one another when their ice-crusted

eyelids utter 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 rst 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 o and the wind is dying, so

let’s go, Reaper.”

I give the countdown and we’re up, snow crumbling around us,

wind biting our face, and sprinting the hundred meters across the

plains to the walls. All twenty-four of us. Silent again. The wind

comes in ts. We carry the long tree between us, huddling tight to it

as we did in the night when it shared our tunnel with us. It’s heavy,

but we’re twenty-four and Pax’s parents gave him the genes to

knock over bloodydamn horses. Panting. Legs burning. Gritting as

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the wood weighs down our shoulders in the deep snow. It’s a

trudge. A shout comes from the wall. A lonely, hollow call that

echoes over the still winter morning. More shouts. Still few. Barks.

Confusion. An arrow whistles past. Then another. It’s amazing how

quiet the world is as the arrows sail, carrying death. The wind has

faded again. Sun peaks from behind a cloudlayer and we’re bathed

with morning warmth.

We’re at the wall. Shouts spread beyond the stone fortication,

from their towers. A signal horn. Barking of dogs. Snow falls from

the parapets as archers lean over the stone battlements. An arrow

shivers in the wood by my hand. Someone goes down bloodylike,

Dax. Then Pax roars the word and he, Tactus, and ve more of our

strongest take the long wood beam we cut from the tree trunk and

shove the tip as hard as they can into the wall. They hold it there at

an angle. They are roaring from the burden. It’s still ve meters

short of the top of the wall, but I’m already sprinting up the thin

slope. Pax grunts like a boar as he heaves against the angled strain.

He’s shouting, roaring. Mustang is right behind me, then Milia. I

almost slip. My balance and Helldiver hands keep me scrabbling up

the knotted wood. In our fur, we look like squirrels, not wolves. An

arrow hisses through my cloak. I’m against the wall at the top of the

wobbling beam. Pax and his boys roar gutturally from the exertion.

Mustang is coming. I cup my hands. She stirrups her foot at the run

and I hurl her up the last ve meters to clear the battlements. Her

sword slashes and she screams like a banshee. Then Milia launches

the same way o my hands, and the rope she has tied to her waist

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dangles after her. She anchors up top as I use it to pull myself up the

last ve meters. The wooden beam crashes to the ground behind

me. My sword is out. It’s mayhem. House Ceres was caught

unaware. They’ve never had an enemy on the battlements. And

there are three of us, screaming and slashing. Rage and excitement

ll me and I begin my dance.

They only have bows. It’s been months since they’ve used swords.

Ours aren’t sharp or fused with electricity, but cold durosteel is

nasty to take in any form. The dogs are the hardest to manage. I

kick one in the head. Throw another one o the battlements. Milia

is down. She bites a dog in the neck and punches it in the balls till it

whimpers o.

Mustang tackles someone o the battlements. I slidetackle one of

the archers as he levels his bow at her. Outside, Pax shouts for me to

open the gates. He’s actually crying for combat.

I follow Mustang down into their courtyard, jumping from the

parapets down to where she ghts a big Ceres student. I end the boy

with my elbow and take my rst glimpse of the bread fortress. The

castle is an unfamiliar design, a courtyard leading to several

buildings and a huge keep where the bread bakes, making my

stomach rumble; but all that matters to me is the gate. We rush to it.

Shouts from behind us. Too many for us to ght. We get to the gate

just as three dozen House Ceres students run at us across the

courtyard from their keep.

“Hurry!” Mustang shouts. “Uh, hurry!”

Milia shoots arrows at the enemy from the parapets.

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Then I open the gate.

“PAX AU TELEMANUS! PAX AU TELEMANUS!”

He shoves me aside. He’s shirtless, massive, muscled, screaming.

His hair is painted white and spiked with sap to form two horns. A

piece of wood as long as my body serves as his club. The House

Ceres students inch back. Some fall. Some stumble. A boy screams

as Pax thunders close.

“PAX AU TELEMANUS! PAX AU TELEMANUS!”

He wants no nickname as he charges forward like a minotaur

possessed. When he hits the mass of House Ceres students, it is ruin.

Boys and girls y through the air like cha on reaping day.

The rest of my army sprints in behind the mad bastard. They

begin to howl, not because I told them to, not because they think

they are Sevro’s Howlers, but because it was the sound they heard

when my soldiers cut their way out of horse’s bellies, the sound that

made their hearts sink as they were conquered. Now it’s their turn

to howl as they turn the battle into a mad melee. Pax screams his

name, and he screams mine as he conquers me the citadel almost

single-handedly. He picks a boy up by the leg and uses him as a

club. Mustang drifts about the battleeld like some Valkyrie,

enslaving those who lie stunned on the ground.

In ve minutes, the ovens and citadel are ours. We shut their

gates, howl, and eat some bloodydamn bread.

I free the House Diana slaves who helped me capture the fortress

and take a moment with each to share a laugh. Tactus sits on some

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poor boy’s back, braiding the prisoner’s hair in girlish pigtails, till I

nudge him to get o. He slaps at my hand.

“Don’t touch me,” he snaps.

“What did you say?” I growl.

He stands fast, his nose coming only to my chin, and speaks very

quietly so only we can hear. “Listen, big man. I am of the gens Valii.

My pure blood goes back to the Conquering. I could buy and sell you

with my weekly allowance. So you don’t demean me in this little game

like all the others, you schoolyard king.” Then louder so others can

hear: “I do as I like, because I took this castle for you and slept in a

dead horse so we could take Minerva! I deserve to have some fun.”

I lean close. “Three pints.”

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever are you growling about?”

“That’s how much blood I’m about to make you swallow.”

“Well, might makes right,” he chuckles, and turns his back on me.

Then, mastering my anger, I tell the members of my army that

they will never be slaves in this game again, so long as they wear

my wolfskin. If they don’t like that notion, they can clear out. None

do, but that’s expected. They want to win, but to follow my orders,

to understand that I don’t think I’m some high and mighty emperor,

their proud hearts need to feel valued. So I make sure they know

they are. I pay each student a specic compliment. One they

remember forever.

Even when I am ruining their Society at the vanguard of a billion

screaming Reds, they will tell their children that Darrow of Mars

once clapped them on the shoulder and paid them a compliment.

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The defeated students from House Ceres watch me free my army’s

slaves and they gape. They don’t understand. They recognize me,

but they don’t comprehend why there isn’t a single other Mars

student, or why I’m in power, or why I think it is allowed to free

slaves. While they are still gaping, Mustang enslaves them with the

symbol of House Minerva, and they become doubly confused.

“Win me a fortress, and you get your freedom too,” I tell them.

Their bodies are dierent from ours. Softer from much bread and

little meat. “But you must be starving for some venison and wild

meat. Some protein is missing in your diets, I think.” We brought

plenty to share.

We free several slaves taken by House Ceres months prior. There

are few, but most are House Mars or Juno. They nd this new

alliance strange, but it is an easy pill to swallow after months of

toiling in the ovens.

The night ends on a sour note as I am woken an hour into sleep.

Mustang sits on the edge of my bed as my eyes utter open. When I

see her, I feel a spike of terror in me, assuming she’s come for a

dierent reason, that her hand on my leg means something simple,

something human. Instead, she brings me news I wished never to

hear again.

Tactus outed my authority and tried to rape a Ceres slave during

the night. Milia caught him, and Mustang barely stopped her from

cutting Tactus a thousand dierent ways. Everyone is up in arms.

“It’s bad,” Mustang says. “The Diana students are in their wargear

and are about to try and take him back from Milia and Pax.”

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“They’re mad enough to ght Pax?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get dressed.”

“Please.”

I meet her in the Ceres warroom two minutes later. The table is

already carved with my slingBlade. I didn’t do it, and it’s much

better work than I could have managed.

“Thoughts?” I fall into the seat opposite Mustang. We’re a council

of two. It’s times like this when I miss Cassius, Roque, Quinn, all of

them. Especialy Sevro.

“When Titus did this, you said we make our own law, if I

remember right. You sentenced him to death. So are we still doing

that? Or are we doing something more convenient?” she asks me as

though she already thinks I’m letting Tactus o the hook.

I nod, surprising her. “He’ll pay,” I say.

“This … it just pisses me o.” She takes her feet o the table and

leans forward to shake her head. “We’re meant to be better than

this. That’s all Peerless are supposed to be—transcendent of the

urges that”—she holds up ironic airquotes—“enslave the weaker

Colors.”

“It isn’t about urges.” I tap the table in frustration. “It’s about

power.”

“Tactus is of House Valii!” Mustang exclaims. “His family is

ancient. How much power does that asshole want?”

“Power over me, I mean. I told him he couldn’t do something.

Now he’s trying to prove he can do whatever he wants.”

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“So he’s not another heathen like Titus.”

“You’ve met him. Of course he’s a heathen. But no. This was

tactical.”

“Well, the clever shit has put you in a tight spot.”

I slap the table. “I don’t like this—someone else picking the

battles or the battleeld. That’s how we will lose.”

“It’s a no-win, really. We can’t come out ahead. Someone is going

to hate you either way. So we just have to gure out which way is

the least damaging. Prime?”

“What about justice?” I ask.

Her eyebrows oat upward. “What about winning? Isn’t that what

matters?”

“You trying to trap me?”

She grins. “Just testing you.”

I frown. “Tactus killed Tamara, his Primus. Cut her saddle and

then rode over her. He’s wicked. He deserves any punishment we

give him.”

Mustang raises her eyebrows as if this is all to be expected. “He

sees what he wants, and he takes it.”

“How admirable,” I mutter.

She tilts her head at me, lively eyes going over my face. “Rare.”

“What’s that?”

“I was wrong, about you. That’s rare.”

“Am I wrong about Tactus?” I ask. “Is he wicked, really? Or is he

just ahead of the curve? Does he just grasp the game better?”

“No one grasps the game.”

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Mustang puts her muddy boots on the table again and leans back.

Her golden hair falls past her shoulders in a long braid. The re

crackles in the hearth, making her pupils dance in the night. I don’t

miss my old friends when she smiles like that. I ask her to explain.

“No one grasps the game, because no one knows the rules. No one

follows the same set of rules. It is like life. Some think honor

universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the

end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?”

I shrug. “In the storybooks. In life there’s no one left to poison

them, often.”

“They expect an eye for an eye, the House Ceres slaves. Punish

Tactus, you piss o the Diana kids. They get you a fortress and you

spit on them for it. Remember, as far as they are concerned, Tactus

hid in a horse’s belly half a day for you when you took my castle.

Resentment will swell like a Copper bureaucracy. But if you don’t

punish him, you’ll lose all of Ceres.”

“Can’t do that.” I sigh. “I failed this test before. I put Titus to

death and thought I was meting out justice. I was wrong.”

“Tactus is an Iron Gold. His blood is as old as the Society. They

look at compassion, at reform, as a disease. He is his family. He will

not change. He will not learn. He believes in power. Other Colors

are not people to him. Lesser Golds are not people to him. He is

bound to his fate.”

Yet I’m a Red acting like a Gold. No man is bound to his fate. I

can change him. I know I can. But how?

“What do you think I should do?” I ask.

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“Ha! The great Reaper.” She slaps her thigh. “When have you ever

cared what anyone thinks?”

“You’re not just anyone.”

She nods and, after a moment, speaks. “I was once told a story by

Pliny, my tutor—a ghastly fellow, really. And a Politico now, so take

this all with a shipload of salt. Anyway: On Earth, there was a man

and his camel.” I laugh. She keeps going. “They were traveling

across this grand desert full of all sorts of nasties. One day, as the

man prepared camp, the camel kicked him for no reason. So the

man whipped the camel. The camel’s wounds grew infected. It died

and left the man stranded.”

“Hands. Camels. You and metaphors …”

She shrugs. “Without your army, you’re a man stranded in a

desert. So tread carefully, Reaper.”

I speak with Nyla, the Ceres girl, in private. She’s a quiet one. Smart

as a whip, but not physical in any way. Like a shuddering songbird,

like Lea. She has a bloody swollen lip. It makes me want to castrate

Tactus. She didn’t come in wicked like the rest. Then again, she got

through the Passage.

“He told me he wanted me to rub his shoulders. Told me to do

what he said because he was my master because he spent blood

taking the castle. Then he tried … well … you know.”

A hundred generations of men have used that inhuman logic. The

sadness her words create in me makes me miss home. But that

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happened there too. I remember the screams that made the soup

ladel tremble.

Nyla blinks and stares for a moment at the oor.

“I told him I was Mustang’s slave. House Minerva’s. It’s her

standard. I didn’t have to obey him. He just kept pushing me down.

I screamed. He punched me, then he just held my throat till things

started to fade and I barely smelled his wolfcloak anymore. Then

that tall girl, Milia, knocked him o, I guess.”

She didn’t mention that there were other Diana soldiers in the

room. Others watched. My army. I gave them power and this is how

they use it. It’s my fault. They are mine but they are wicked. That

will not be xed by punishing one of them. They have to want to be

good.

“What would you like for me to do to him?” I ask her. I don’t

reach out to comfort her. She doesn’t need it, even though I think I

do. She reminds me of Evey too.

Nyla touches her dirty curls and shrugs.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing isn’t enough.”

“To x what he tried to do to me? To make it right?” She shakes

her head and her hands clutch her sides. “Nothing is enough.”

The next morning, I assemble my army in the Ceres square. A

dozen limp; few Aureate bones can really be broken because of their

strength, so most of the injuries suered in the assault were

supercial. I smell the resentment from Ceres students, from Diana

students. It’s a cancer that’ll eat away at the body of this army, no

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matter who it is focused toward. Pax brings Tactus out and shoves

him to his knees.

I ask him if he tried to rape Nyla.

“Laws are silent in times of war,” Tactus drawls.

“Don’t quote Cicero to me,” I say. “You are held to a higher

standard than a marauding centurion.”

“In that, you’re hitting the mark at least. I am a superior creature

descended from proud stock and glorious heritage. Might makes

right, Darrow. If I can take, I may take. If I do take, I deserve to

have. This is what Peerless believe.”

“The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,” I say

loudly.

“Just come o it, Reaper,” Tactus drawls, condent in himself as

all like him are. “She’s a spoil of war. My power took her. And

before the strong, bend the weak.”

“I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I

wish. No?”

He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap.

“You are from a superior family to mine, Tactus. My parents are

dead. I am the sole member of my family. But I am a superior

creature to you.”

He smirks at that.

“Do you disagree?” I toss a knife at his feet and pull my own out.

“I beg you to voice your concerns.” He does not pick his blade up.

“So, by right of power, I can do with you as I like.”

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I announce that rape will never be permitted, and then I ask Nyla

the punishment she would give. As she told me before, she says she

wants no punishment. I make sure they know this, so there are no

recriminations against her. Tactus and his armed supporters stare at

her in surprise. They don’t understand why she would not take

vengeance, but that doesn’t stop them from smiling wolshly at one

another, thinking their chief has dodged punishment. Then I speak.

“But I say you get twenty lashes from a leather switch, Tactus.

You tried to take something beyond the bounds of the game. You

gave in to your pathetic animal instincts. Here that is less forgivable

than murder; I hope you feel shame when you look back at this

moment fty years from now and realize your weakness. I hope you

fear your sons and daughters knowing what you did to a fellow

Gold. Until then, twenty lashes will serve.”

Some of the Diana soldiers step forward in anger, but Pax hefts

his axe on his shoulder and they shrink back, glaring at me. They

gave me a fortress and I’m going to whip their favorite warrior. I see

my army dying as Mustang pulls o Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me

like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought

them of my oggers too.

I whip him twenty brutal times, holding nothing back. Blood runs

down his back. Pax nearly has to hack down one of the Diana

soldiers to keep them from charging to stop the punishment.

Tactus barely manages to stagger to his feet, wrath burning in his

eyes.

“A mistake,” he whispers to me. “Such a mistake.”

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Then I surprise him. I shove the switch into his hand and bring

him close by cupping my hand around the back of his head.

“You deserve to have your balls o, you selsh bastard,” I whisper to

him. “This is my army,” I say more loudly. “This is my army. Its

evils are mine as much as yours, as much as they are Tactus’s. Every

time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and

perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when

you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.”

Tactus stands there like a fool. He’s confused.

I shove him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. I follow him,

shoving.

“What were you going to do?” I push his hand holding the leather

switch back toward his chest.

“I don’t know what you mean …” he murmurs as I shove him.

“Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside

someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not

hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I

promise.”

I shove him again. He looks around. No one speaks. I strip o my

shirt and go to my knees. The air is cold. Knees on stone and snow.

My eyes lock with Mustang’s. She winks at me and I feel like I can

do anything. I tell Tactus to give me twenty-ve lashes. I’ve taken

worse. His arms are weak and so is his will to do it. It still stings,

but I stand up after ve lashes and give the lash to Pax.

They start the count at six.

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“Start over!” I shout. “A little rapist cur can’t swing hard enough

to hurt me.”

But Pax bloodywell can.

My army cries in protest. They don’t understand. Golds don’t do

this. Golds don’t sacrice for one another. Leaders take; they do not

give. My army cries out again. I ask them, how is this worse than

the rape they were all so comfortable with? Is not Nyla now one of

us? Is she not part of the body?

Like Reds are. Like Obsidians are. Like all the Colors are.

Pax tries to go light. But it’s Pax, so when he’s done, my back

looks like chewed goatmeat. I stand up. Do everything I can to

prevent myself from wobbling. I’m seeing stars. I want to wail. Want

to cry. Instead, I tell them that anyone who does anything vile—

they know what I mean—will have to whip me like this in front of

the entire army. I see how they look at Tactus now, how they look

at Pax, how they look at my back.

“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do

not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me

because you do not know where you are going. I do.”

I motion Tactus to come toward me. He wavers, pale, confused as

a newborn lamb. Fear marks his face. Fear of the unknown. Fear of

the pain I willingly bore. Fear when he realizes how dierent he is

from me.

“Don’t be afraid,” I tell him. I pull him forward into a hug. “We

are blood brothers, you little shit. Blood brothers.”

I’m learning.

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