A hundred generations of men have used that inhuman logic. The sadness her words create in me makes me miss home. But that happened there too. I remember the screams that made the soup ladle tremble in my mother’s hand. Remember how my cousin earned antibiotics from that Gamma.
Nyla blinks and stares for a moment at the floor.
“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 off, 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 fixed 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 fix 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 suffered in the assault were superficial. 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 matter who it is focused on. 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 off it, Reaper,” Tactus replies, confident 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.”
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 wolfishly 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 fifty 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 off Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought them of my floggers 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.”
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 off, you selfish 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 off 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-five 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 five lashes and give the lash to Pax.
They start the count at six.
“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 sacrifice 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 different 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.
37
SOUTH
“Shit on a pike!” I yelp as Mustang puts salve on my back in the warroom. She flicks my back with a finger. “Why?” I moan.
“The measure of a man is what he does when he has 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 woun
d. I yelp.
“Pain shared …” I shudder. “Not inflicted. 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 sniffles 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 find out they don’t like you and can have you flogged anytime they 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 fifty-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 find the House 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.
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 of 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 wind chimes 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 forehead 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 fight as the emissary comes near. It’s a rowdy, foolish affair, 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 flows on outside this valley. In the South, things have happened to make them forget. So when I offer him a self-effacing smile, he does not return it. He is a man. Not a boy. I think it is the first time I’ve seen someone fully transformed.
“And you are but a ragged remnant from the North,” the Apollo Primus, Novas, scoffs. He tries guessing the House we hail from. I’ve made sure the Ceres standard is the one he sees. His eyes flicker. He wants it for his own glory. He also happily notices that more than half my army of fifty-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.
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 confides as he continues with his pitch. I would be allowed to 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. “Stiffen your quivering lip. You embarrass your Color.” He leans toward me over his saddle pommel. “You are caught between giants, and you will be crushed. But make a man of yourself before we come for you. I do not fight 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 fighting 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 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 o
f 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 first 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.
“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 … effective 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.