Red Rising

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 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.

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 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 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.