Red Rising — Chapter 37: South

37

South

“Shit on a pike!” I yelp as Mustang puts salve on my back in the

warroom. She icks my back with a nger. “Why?” I moan.

“The measure of a man is what he does when he has his power.”

She laughs. “You mock him for Cicero and then spit out Plato.”

“Plato is older. He trumps Cicero. Ow!”

“And what was that about blood brothers? That means absolutely

nothing. You might as well have said you were pinecone cousins.”

“Nothing binds like pain shared.”

“Well, here’s some more of that.” She pulls a bit of leather out of

a wound. I yelp.

“Pain shared …” I shudder. “Not inicted. Psychotic … ow!”

“You sound like a girl. Thought martyrs were tough. Then again,

you could be barking mad. Fever when you were stabbed, probably.

You traumatized Pax, by the way. He’s crying. Good work.”

I actually hear Pax’s snies from the armory.

“But it did work, eh?”

“Sure, Messiah. You made yourself a cult,” she mocks dryly.

“They’re building idols to you in the square. Kneeling in

supplication of your wisdom. O mighty lord. I will laugh when they

nd out they don’t like you and can have you ogged anytime they

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do a naughty. Now hold still, you Pixie. And stop talking. You annoy

me.”

“You know, when we graduate, maybe you should look into being

a Pink. Your touch is so tender.”

She smirks. “Send me to a Rose Garden? Hah! Now, that would

tickle my father pink. Oh, stop squealing. The pun wasn’t that bad.”

The next day, I organize my army. I give Mustang the duty of

choosing six squads of three scouts each. I have fty-six soldiers;

more than half are slaves. I make her put a Ceres in each group, the

most ambitious. They get six of the eight commUnits I found in

Ceres’s warroom. The things are primitive, crackling earpieces, but

they give my army something I’ve never had—an evolution beyond

smoke signals.

“So I’m assuming you have a plan besides just going south like

some Mongol horde …,” Mustang says.

“Of course. We’re going to nd the House of Apollo.” True to my

promise to Fitchner.

The scouts strike out that night from House Ceres, fanning out to

the south in six directions. My army follows at dawn, just before the

winter sun rises. I will not squander this opportunity. Winter has

forced the Houses into fortresses. Deep snows and hidden ravines

make heavy cavalry sluggish, less useful. The game has slowed, but I

won’t. Mars and Jupiter can battle it out for all I care. I’ll come back

for both later.

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At nightfall on the second day of our move south, we see the

fortress of Juno, already conquered by Jupiter. It lies to the west on

a tributary to the Argos. Mountains frame it. Beyond that are the

wintry six-kilometer-high walls of the Valles Marineris. My scouts

bring me news of three enemy scouts, cavalry, in the fringes of the

woods to the east. They think it is Pluto, the Jackal’s men. The

horses are black, and the hair of the riders is dyed the same. They

wear bones in their hair. I hear that they rattle like bamboo

windchimes as they ride.

Whoever the riders are, they never come close. Never fall into my

traps. A girl is said to lead them. She rides a silver horse draped

with a leather mantle sewn with unbleached bones—apparently the

medBots are not so good in the South. Lilath, I think. She and her

scouts disappear south as a larger warband appears from the

southeast and skirts along the Greatwoods.

These are now real armies of heavy horse.

A single rider comes forward from the larger warband. He carries

the archer pennant of Apollo. His hair is long and unbraided, his

face hard from the winter winds that roll in from the southern sea.

A cut on his forhead nearly claimed both his eyes, eyes that stare

now at me like two burning coals set in a face of hammered bronze.

I walk forward to meet him after telling my army to look as

weathered and pathetic as humanly possible. Pax manages poorly.

Mustang makes him go to his knees so he looks relatively normal.

She stands on his shoulders for comic relief, and starts a snowball

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ght as the emissary comes near. It’s a rowdy, foolish aair, and it

makes my army look wonderfully vulnerable.

I fake a limp. Toss away my wolfcloak. Fake a shiver. Make sure

my pathetic durosteel sword looks more a cane than a weapon.

Bend my long body as he approaches and I spare a look back at my

playing army. My look of embarrassment is almost split in half with

a laugh. I swallow it down.

His voice is like steel dragged over rough stone. No humor to him,

no recognition that we’re all teenagers playing a game and that the

real world still ows on outside this valley. In the South, things

have happened to make them forget. So when I oer him a self-

eacing smile, he does not return it. He is a man. Not a boy. I think

it is the rst time I’ve seen someone fully transformed.

“And you are but a ragged remnant from the North,” the Apollo

Primus, Novas, scos. He tries guessing the House we hail from. I’ve

made sure the Ceres standard is the one he sees. His eyes icker. He

wants it for his own glory. He also happily notices that more than

half my army of fty-six is enslaved. “You will not last long in the

South. Perhaps you would like shelter from the cold? Warm food

and bed? The South is harsh.”

“I can’t wager it will be worse than the North, man,” I say. “They

have razors and pulseArmor there. Proctors turned their favor from

us.”

“They are not there to favor you, weakling,” he says. “They help

those who help themselves.”

“We helped ourselves as best we could,” I say meekly.

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He spits on the ground. “Little child. Do not whine here. The

South does not listen to tears.”

“But … but the South cannot be worse than the North.” I shudder

and tell him of the Reaper from the highlands. A monster. A brute.

A killer. Evil, evil things.

He nods when I speak of the Reaper. So he has heard of me.

“The Reaper of yours is dead. A shame. I would have liked to test

myself against him.”

“He was a demon!” I protest.

“We have our own demons here. A one-eyed monster in the

woods and a worse monster in the mountains to the west. The

Jackal,” he condes as he continues with his pitch. I would be

allowed join Apollo as a mercenary, not a slave, never a slave. He

would help me defeat the Jackal, then retake the North. We would

be allies. He thinks me weak and stupid.

I look at my ring. The Proctor of Apollo will know what I say

here. I want him to know I am going to ruin his House. If he wants

to try to stop me, this is his invitation.

“No,” I say to Novas. “My family would shame me. I would be

nothing to them if I joined you. No. I’m sorry.” I smile inside. “We

have enough food to march through your lands. If you let us, we

will brook no—”

He slaps me across the face.

“You are a Pixie,” he says. “Stien your quivering lip. You

embarrass your Color.” He leans toward me over his saddle pommel.

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“You are caught between giants, and you will be crushed. But make

a man of yourself before we come for you. I do not ght children.”

It is then that Mustang throws a snowball at his head; naturally,

her aim is true and her laugh is loud.

Novas does not react. All that moves is his horse beneath him as it

wheels to take him back to his roving warband. I watch the man go,

and feel disquiet seep into me.

“Ride on home, little archer!” Tactus calls out. “Ride home to

your mommy!”

Novas rejoins his thirty heavy horse. Our only cavalry is our

scouts. They cannot stand against ionBlades and ionLances at full

tilt, even with the deep snowbanks to muddle the heavier horses.

Our weapons are still durosteel. Armor no better than duroplate or

wolfskin. I don’t even wear armor. I don’t plan on ghting a battle

where I need to for a while. We’ve not had a bounty after capturing

Ceres’s fortress and their standard. The Proctors have forsaken me,

but the weather has not. Normally, infantry falls like dry wheat to

cavalry, but the snow and its treacherous depths protect us.

We camp on the western bank of the river that night, nearer the

mountains, away from the open plains in front of the dark

Greatwoods. Apollo’s heavy cavalry now has to cross the frozen

river in the darkness if they want to raid our camp as we sleep. I

knew they’d try when they thought us weak, ripe for the taking.

They fail miserably. Arrogants. As dusk settled, I had Pax and his

strongmen take axes out to soften the thick ice of the river

bordering our camp. We hear horse screams and plunging bodies in

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the night. MedBots whine down to save lives. Those boys and girls

are out of the game.

We continue south, aiming for where my scouts guess Apollo’s

castle lies. At night we eat well. Soups are made from the meat and

bones of animals my scouts bring back. Bread is kept stored in

makeshift packs. It is the food that keeps my army content. As the

great Corsican once said, “An army marches on its stomach.” Then

again, he didn’t fare so well in the winter.

Mustang walks beside me as I lead the column. Though she’s

swaddled with wolfcloaks as thick as my own, she hardly comes up

to my shoulder. And when we walk through deep snow, it’s almost a

laugh to see her try to keep apace with me. But if I slow, I earn a

scowl. Her braid bounces as she keeps up. When we reach easier

ground, she glances over at me. Her pert nose is red as a cherry in

the cold, but her eyes look like hot honey.

“You haven’t been sleeping well,” she says.

“When do I ever?”

“When you slept next to me. You cried out the rst week in the

woods. After that, you slept like a little baby.”

“Is this you inviting me back?” I ask.

“I never told you to leave.” She waits. “So why did you?”

“You distract me,” I say.

She laughs lightly before drifting back to walk beside Pax. I’m left

confused both by my response and by her words. I never thought

she’d care one way or the other if I left. A stupid smile spreads on

my face. Tactus catches it.

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“Smitten as a lovebird,” he hums.

I hurl a handful of snow at his head. “Not a word more.”

“But I need another word, a serious word.” He steps closer, takes a

deep breath. “Does the pain in your back give you a hard-on like it

gives me?” He laughs.

“Are you ever serious?”

His sharp eyes sparkle. “Oh, you don’t want me serious.”

“How about obedient?”

He claps his hands together. “Well, you know I’m not prime fond

of the idea of a leash.”

“Do you see a leash?” I ask, pointing to his forehead, where his

slave mark could be.

“And since you know I don’t need a leash, it may do to tell me

where we are bound. I would be more … eective that way.”

He’s not challenging me, because he speaks quietly. After the

whipping we both received, he’s taken to me in a frighteningly loyal

way. Despite all the smiles and sneers and laughs, I have his

obedience. And his question is sincere.

“We’re going to ruin Apollo,” I tell him.

“But why Apollo?” he asks. “Are we merely checking o the

Houses at random, or should I know something?”

The tone in his voice makes me cock my head. He’s always

reminded me of some kind of giant cat. Maybe it’s the frighteningly

casual way in which he lopes along. Like he’d kill something

without even tensing his muscles. Or maybe it’s because I can

imagine him coiling up on a couch and licking himself clean.

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“I’ve seen things in the snow, Reaper,” he says quietly.

“Impressions in the snow, to be specic. And these impressions are

not made by feet.”

“Paws? Hooves?”

“No, dear leader.” He steps closer. “Linear impressions.” I get his

meaning. “GravBoots ying very low. Do tell me, why are the

Proctors following us? And why are they wearing ghostCloaks?”

All his whispers mean nothing because of our rings. Yet he doesn’t

know that.

“Because they are afraid of us,” I tell him.

“Afraid of you, you mean.” He watches me. “What do you know

that I don’t? What do you tell Mustang that you don’t tell us?”

“You want to know, Tactus?” I’ve not forgotten his crimes, but I

take his shoulder and bring him close like he’s a brother. I know the

power touch can have. “Then knock House Apollo o the

gorydamned map and I will tell you.”

His lips curl into a feral smile. “A pleasure, good Reaper.”

We stay away from the open plains and cling to the river as we

move farther south, listening to our scouts relay news of enemy

holdings over the comms. Apollo seems to control everything. All

we see of the Jackal are his small bands of scouts. There’s something

strange about his soldiers, something that chills the heart. For the

thousandth time, I think of my enemy. What makes the faceless boy

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so frightening? Is he tall? Lean? Thick? Fast? Ugly? And what gives

him his reputation, his name? No one seems to know.

The Pluto scouts never come near despite the temptation we oer

them. I have Pax carry the banner of Ceres high, so that every

Apollo cavalryman in the surrounding miles can see it glimmer.

Each realizes the chance for glory. Parties of cavalry dash into us.

Scouts think they can pry our pride away and gain themselves status

in their House. They come stupidly in threes, in fours, and we ruin

them with the Ceres archers or Minerva’s spearmen or with buried

pikes in the snow. Little by little, we gnaw at them as the wolf

gnaws at the elk. Always we let them escape, though. I want them

angry as hell when I arrive on their doorstep. Slaves like them

would slow us down.

That night, Pax and Mustang sit with me by a small re and tell

me of their lives outside the school. Pax is a riot when you get him

going—a surprisingly energetic talker with a penchant for

complimenting everything in his stories, including the villains, so

half the time you don’t know who is good and who is bad. He tells

us of a time he broke his father’s scepter in half, and another time

he was mistaken for an Obsidian and nearly shipped o to the

Agoge, where they train in space combat.

“I notion you could say I always dreamt of being an Obsidian,” he

rumbles.

When he was a boy, he would sneak from his family’s summer

manor in New Zealand, Earth, and join the Obsidians as they

performed the Nagoge, the nightly necessity of their training, in

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which they looted and stole in order to supplement the paltry diet

they were given at the Agoge. He would scrap and ght with them

for morsels of food. He says he would always win, that is until he

met Helga. Mustang and I lock eyes and try not to bust out with

laughs as he waxes grandiloquent on Helga’s ample proportions, her

thick sts, her ample thighs.

“Theirs was a large love,” I tell Mustang.

“A love to shake the earth,” she replies.

I’m woken the next morning by Tactus. His eyes are cold as the

dawn’s freeze.

“Our horses have decided to run away. All of them.” He guides us

to the Ceres boys and girls who were watching the horses. “None of

them saw a thing. One minute the horses where there; the next they

were gone.”

“Poor horses must be confused,” Pax says sorrowfully. “It was

stormy last night. Perhaps they ran for safety to the woods.”

Mustang holds up the ropes that held the horses during the night.

Pulled in half.

“Stronger than they looked,” she says dubiously.

“Tactus?” I nod my head to the scene.

He looks over at Pax and Mustang before answering. “There are

foot tracks …”

“But.”

“Why waste my breath?” He shrugs. “You know what I’m going to

say.”

Proctors pulled the ropes apart.

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I do not tell my army what happened, but rumor spreads quickly

when people huddle together for warmth. Mustang does not ask

questions even though she knows I’m not telling her something.

After all, I did not simply nd the medicine I gave her in the

Northwoods.

I try to look at this newest kink as a test. When the rebellion

begins, things like this will happen. How do I react? Breathe the

anger out. Breathe it out and move. Easier said than done for me.

We move to the woods to the east. Without horses, we’ve no more

play to make in the plains near the river. My scouts tell me the

castle of Apollo is near. How will I take it without horses? Without

any element of speed?

As night falls, another kink reveals itself. The soup pots we

brought from Ceres to cook over our res are cracked through. All

of them. And the bread which we kept so securely wrapped in paper

in our packs is full of weevils. They crunch like juicy seeds as I eat a

supper of bread. To the Drafters it will look an unfortunate turn of

events. But I know it is something more.

The Proctors warn me to turn back.

“Why did Cassius betray you?” Mustang asks me that night as we

sleep in a hollow beneath a snowdrift. Our Diana sentries watch the

camp’s perimeter from the trees. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I betrayed him, actually,” I say. “I … it was his brother that I had

to kill in the Passage.”

Her eyes widen. And after a moment she nods. “I had a brother

die. It’s not … it wasn’t the same thing. But … a death like that, it

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changes things.”

“Did it change you?”

“No,” she says, as though she just realized it. “But it changed my

family. Made them into people I don’t recognize sometimes. That’s

life, I suppose.” She pulls back suddenly. “Why did you tell Cassius

that you killed his brother? Are you that mad, Reaper?”

“I didn’t tell him slag. The Proctors did through the Jackal. Gave

him a holocube.”

“I see.” Her eyes go cold. “So they are cheating for the

ArchGovernor’s son.”

I leave her and the warmth of the re to piss in the woods. The air

is cold and crisp. Owls hoot in the branches, making me feel

watched in the night.

“Darrow?” Mustang says from the darkness. I wheel about.

“Mustang, did you follow me?” Darrow. Not Reaper. Something is

amiss. Something in the way she says my name, that she says my

name it all. It is like seeing a cat bark. But I can’t see her in the

darkness.

“I thought I saw something,” she says, still in shadow, voice

emanating from the deeper woods. “It’s just over here. It’ll blow

your mind.”

I follow the sound of her voice. “Mustang. Don’t leave the camp.

Mustang.”

“We’ve already left it, darling.”

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Around me, the trees stretch ominously upward. Their branches

reach for me. The woods are silent. Dark. This is a trap. It is not

Mustang.

The Proctors? The Jackal? Someone watches me.

When something watches you and you don’t know where it is,

there is only one sensible thing to do. Change the bloodydamn

paradigm, try to even the playing eld. Make it have to look for

you.

I break into movement. I sprint back toward my army. Then I

dash behind a tree, scramble up it and wait, watching. Knives out.

Ready to throw. Cloak curled about me.

Silence.

Then the snapping of twigs. Something moves through the woods.

Something huge.

“Pax?” I call down.

No response.

Then I feel a strong hand touch my shoulder. The branch I crouch

in sinks with the new weight as a man deactivates his ghostCloak

and appears from thin air. I’ve seen him before. His curly blond hair

is cut tight to his head and frames his dusky, godlike face. His chin

is carved from marble, and his eyes twinkle evilly, bright as his

armor. Proctor Apollo. The huge thing moves again below us.

“Darrow, Darrow, Darrow,” he clucks over at me in Mustang’s

voice. “You were a favorite puppet, but you’re not dancing as you

ought. Will you reform and go north?”

“I—”

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“Refuse? No matter.” He shoves me o the branch, hard. I hit

another on the way down. Fall into the snow. I smell dander. Fur.

And then the beast roars.

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