I watch with Mustang and Milia as two armored warbands of Mars and Jupiter streak toward each other across the plains in front of Phobos Tower. Pennants flap. Horses trample the deep snow. It’s a clash of armored glory when the two metal tides collapse into one another. Lances spark with stunning electricity on broad shields and armor. Dazzling swords slam other blades like their own. HighDrafts battling highDrafts. Slaves run in scores to smash into each other, pawns in this giant chess match.
I see Pax in a rusty bulk of crimson armor so ancient it looks like a frysuit. I laugh as he tackles a horse. But if ever there was a picture of a perfect knight, it would not be Pax. No, it’d be Cassius. I see him now. His armor glows as he stuns opponent after opponent, galloping through the enemy, his sword humming left and right, flickering like a tongue of fire. He can fight, but I’m shocked at how foolishly he chooses to—diving nobly into the enemy’s gut with a force of lancers, capturing enemies. And then the surviving troops regroup and do the same to him. Over and over, neither side taking substantial advantage.
“What idiots,” I say to Mustang. “All that pretty armor and swords blind them. I know. Maybe if they slam into one another three or four more times, it may just work.”
“They’ve got tactics,” she says. “Look, a wedge formation there. And a feint there that’ll turn into a flank sweep.”
“Yet I’m right.”
“Yet you’re not wrong.” She watches for a moment. “Like our little war over again, except you’re not running around howling at people like a moontouched wolf.” Mustang sighs and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Ah, the good old days.”
Milia watches us with a wrinkled nose.
“Tactics win battles. Strategy wins wars,” I say.
“Oooo. I am Reaper. God of wolves. King of strategy.” Mustang pinches my cheek. “You are just too adorable.”
I swat her away. Milia rolls her eyes.
“So, what is our strategy, milord?” Mustang asks me.
The longer I draw out any conflict with an enemy, the more chances the Proctors will get to ruin me. My rise must be meteoric. I don’t tell her this.
“Speed is our strategy,” I say. “Speed and extreme predjudice.”
The next morning, House Mars’s warband finds their bridge across the Metas blocked by trees felled in the night. As expected, the warband turns around and rides back to the castle, fearing some sort of trap. Their watchmen in Phobos and Deimos cannot see us; they peer down and send smoke signals that there is no enemy in the barren deciduous woods around the bridge. They do not see us because we have been bellydown in the same position in the woods fifty yards from the bridge since black dawn. Each of my Oathbreakers has a white or gray wolfcloak now. It took a week to find the wolves, but perhaps that was for the better. The hunt created a bond. My ten soldiers are a scrappy lot. Liars, wicked cheats who would rather ruin their futures than be slaves in this game. So a proud, practical but not very honorable lot. Just the sort I need. Their faces are painted white with bird dung and gray clay, so we’ve the look of spectral winter beasts as breath billows from our grinning maws.
“They like being valued by someone fearsome,” Milia told me the night before, her voice as cold and brittle as the icicles hanging from the aspen trees. “As do I.”
“Mars’ll take the bait,” Mustang whispers to me now. “Not so much brainpower left in the House.” Not with Roque gone. She chose a place close to me in the snow. So close that her legs stretch along mine, and her face, twisted sideways as she lies on her belly, is only inches from my own underneath our white cloaks. When I inhale, the air is already warm from her breath. I think this is the first time I’ve thought of kissing her. I chase the thought away, and summon the sight of Eo’s mischevious lips.
It is midday when Cassius sends troops—mostly slaves, for fear of an ambush—to clear the felled trees from the bridge. In fact, Cassius plays too clever a game. Since he believes he is fighting Jupiter, his assumption is that the ambush will be a sudden cavalry charge once the bridge is clear. So he has his horses go around the river, south through the highlands, and loop around on the far side of the bridge near Phobos to spring an ambush on the cavalry he assumes will come from the Greatwoods or the plains. Milia, the shifty girl, brings me news of this movement of horse in the form of a howl from her perch nearly a mile off, where she serves as lookout in the high pines. It is time to move.
We do not howl or shout as we eleven sprint through the leafless woods toward the toiling slaves. Four highDrafts sit on horses watching the work. One is Cipio. We sprint faster. Faster through the barren trees, coming from their flank. They do not see us. We fan out. Racing one another to make the first strike.
I win.
Jumping five meters forward in the lowGrav, I fly out of the woods like a demon possessed and take Cipio at the shoulder with a blunted sword. He spills from the saddle. Horses whinny. Mustang takes down another highDraft with her standard. My troops swarm forward, silent and shadowed with white and gray. Two more of my Oathbreakers leap onto the highDrafts’ horses and bludgeon the riders with clubs and blunted axes. I ordered no killing; it’s over in four seconds. The horses don’t even know where their riders went. My troops flow past the horses into the slaves as they clear the bridge of the felled logs. Half don’t even hear us till Mustang has turned six into Minerva slaves and ordered them to help us subdue the rest. Then there’s shouting and the Mars slaves turn their axes against my troops.
Those from Minerva recognize Mustang and are set free when she clears away the mark of Mars. It’s like a shifting tide. Six slaves are ours. They tackle Mars’s other slaves and pin them down as Mustang runs over and converts them. Eight, by the same process. Ten. Eleven, till only one offers trouble. And he’s the prize. Pax. He doesn’t have his armor, thank God. He’s here for labor, but it still takes seven of us to take him to the ground. He’s roaring and screaming his name. I dive at him and take a fist to the face. I’m spitting and laughing as we pile on till there’s twelve of us holding the genetic monster down. Mustang frees him of the mark of Mars and his roars become laughter so high pitched, it sounds like a girl’s.
“Freeeeeedom!” he roars. He jumps up, looking for someone to maim. “Darrow au Andromedus!” he shouts at me, ready to break my face till Mustang shouts him down.