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 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 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.
“We’re going to ruin Apollo,” I tell him.
“But why Apollo?” he asks. “Are we merely checking off 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.
“I’ve seen things in the snow, Reaper,” he says quietly. “Impressions in the snow, to be specific. And these impressions are not made by feet.”
“Paws? Hooves?”
“No, dear leader.” He steps closer. “Linear impressions.” I get his meaning. “GravBoots flying 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 off the gory-damned 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 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 offer 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 fire 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 off 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 which they looted and stole in order to supplement the paltry diet they were given at the Agoge. He would scrap and fight 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 fists, her ample thighs.