A SECOND TEST
In order to have an army, I must be able to feed it. So I will take the ovens of Ceres that Jupiter and Mars both lust over.
The new members of our band from House Minerva find it perfectly reasonable to accept my authority. I don’t fool myself. Yes, they were impressed by me hiding my Howlers inside dead horses months ago, and they remember me defeating Pax. But it’s only because Mustang trusts me that they obey. We leave those of House Diana as slaves for now. I need to earn their trust. Tactus, oddly, is the only one who seems to trust me. Then again, the laconic youth was all smiles when I told him I’d be sewing him inside of a dead horse over a month ago. There are two more of Diana that I sewed away. The others call them the DeadHorses, and they each wear braids of white horsehair. I think they’re a bit mental.
If there is anything in the woods and highlands, it is an abundance of wolves. We hunt them to train our new recruits in my way of fighting. No glamorous cavalry charges. No damn lances. And certainly no stupid rules of engagement. Everyone gets cloaks, which are smelly things as they dry and we peel away the rot. Everyone except Pax. They haven’t yet made a wolf big enough for him.
“House Ceres is no stranger to siege,” Mustang says. She’s right. At night, they seem to have more soldiers awake than in the day. They watch for sneak assaults. Blazing bundles of tinder light the base of their walls at night. Somehow, they have dogs now. Those prowl along the battlements. The way from the water is guarded ever since I tried sending Sevro in through the latrines long ago during a sneak attack I arranged when we were at war with Minerva. He barely forgave me for that one. The Ceres students come out no longer. They’ve learned the risks of battling stronger Houses on open ground. They’ll hole up for winter, and when the cold and hunger have weakened the other Houses, they’ll emerge from their fortress in the spring—strong, prepared, and organized.
But they’ll never make it to the spring.
“So we attack during the day?” Mustang guesses.
“Naturally,” I say. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother speaking. She knows my thoughts. Even the mad ones.
This idea is an especially mad one. We practiced it in a clearing in the Northwoods for a whole day after flattening out the wood with axes. Pax makes the plan possible. We hold competitions to see who has the best balance on the wood. Mustang wins. Horsefaced Milia is second, and she’s spitting bitter that she doesn’t beat Mustang. I’m third.
As we did when springing the trap on House Mars, we sneak as close as we dare the night before and bury ourselves in the deep snow. Again, Mustang and I pair off, huddling tight with one another under the snow. Tactus tries pairing with Milia, but she tells him to go slag himself.
“If you look at it properly, I was trying to do you a favor,” he mutters over at Milia as he huddles down under Pax’s smelly armpit. “You’re about as pretty as a gargoyle’s wart. So when else would you get a chance to snuggle with the likes of me? Ungrateful sow.”
Mustang and the other girls snort their derision. Then the quiet of night and the chill of the open ice plain bite into us and we grow silent.
Come morning, Mustang and I shiver into one another, and a new snowfall threatens to ruin our plan, burying us even deeper in the plain. But the wind is manageable and the flakes do not bury us too deep as they spin through the air. I’m first up, though I do not move. And soon after I yawn away the last vestige of sleep, my army wakes organically, one student stirring and grumbling into another till there’s a snake of sniffing and coughing Golds buried together in a shallow tunnel beneath the snow’s surface. I can’t see them, but I hear their waking despite the sound of the snowstorm’s wind.
Ice formed around me in the night outside my thick cloaks. Mustang’s hands are inside my pelts, warm against my side. Her breath heats my neck. As I stir, she yawns and straightens, pulling a little away as she stretches, catlike, under the snow. Snow crumbles in between us.
“Gory hell, this is miserable,” Dax, Milia’s companion, mutters. I can’t see him in our snow tunnel.
Mustang nudges me. We can just barely see Tactus curled into the hollow of Pax’s armpit. The two men snuggle together and wake like lovers, only to flinch away from one another when their ice-crusted eyelids flutter open.
“Wonder which is Romeo,” Mustang whispers, her throat raspy.
I chuckle and carve a hole in the roof of our tunnel to see that my band of twenty-four is alone in the plains except for early morning horse scouts in the distance. They will not be a problem. Wind rolls in from the north river, biting deep into my face.
“You ready for this?” Mustang asks me with a grin as I bring my head back into our shelter. “Or are you too cold?”
“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!”