“It was colder in the loch when I first 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 off and the wind is dying, so let’s go, Reaper.”
I give the countdown and we’re up, snow crumbling around us, wind stinging our faces, and sprinting the hundred meters across the plains to the walls. All twenty-four of us. Silent again. The wind comes in fits. 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 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 peeks from behind a cloudlayer and we’re bathed with morning warmth.
We’re at the wall. Shouts spread beyond the stone fortification, 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 five 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 five 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 five meters to clear the battlements. Her sword slashes and she screams like a banshee. Then Milia launches the same way off my hands, and the rope she has tied to her waist dangles after her. She anchors up top as I use it to pull myself up the last five 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 fill 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 off the battlements. Milia is down. She bites a dog in the neck and punches it in the balls till it whimpers off.
Mustang tackles someone off 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 fights a big Ceres student. I end the boy with my elbow and take my first 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 fight. 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.
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 flinch 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 fly through the air like chaff 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 horses’ 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 the citadel almost single-handedly. He picks a boy up by the leg and uses him as a club. Mustang drifts about the battlefield like some Valkyrie, enslaving those who lie stunned on the ground.
In five 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 poor boy’s back, braiding the prisoner’s hair in girlish pigtails, till I nudge him to get off. 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 specific 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.
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 different 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 find this new alliance strange, but it is an easy pill to swallow after months of toiling in the ovens.