35
Oathbreakers
My friends are with me. What would they mean by that? Which friends? The Sons of Ares? Or was the mystery friend being more general, alluding to those who support my chances at the Institute? Do they know the significance of the Pegasus? Or were they simply reuniting me with something she thought I might miss?
So many questions; none of them matter. They are outside the game. The game. What else is there but the game? All the true things in the world, all my relationships, all my aspirations and needs, are wrapped up in this game, wrapped up in me winning. To win, I’ll need an army, but it cannot be made of slaves. Not again. I now need, as I’ll need at the head of a rebellion, followers, not slaves.
Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.
A week after I inject Mustang and her fever fades, we set off to the north. Her strength grows the more we move. Her cough is gone and her quick smile returns. Sometimes she needs a rest, but soon she comes close to outpacing me. She lets me know it too. We make as much noise as possible when we move to draw our prey to us. On the sixth night of setting obnoxiously large fires, we get our first nibble.
The Oathbreakers come along a stream, using its sounds to mask their approach. I like them immediately. Were our fire not a trap, they would have caught us unawares. But it is a trap, and when two step into the light, we almost spring it. Yet if they are smart enough to come along the stream, they are smart enough to leave someone in the dark. I hear an arrow nock on a bowstring. Then there’s a yelp. Mustang takes the one in the dark. I take the other two. I stand up from my snowpile, my wolfcloak shedding snow, and knock them down from behind with the flat of my bow.
Afterwards, the one Mustang struck nurses his swollen eye by our fire as I speak with their leader. Her name is Milia. She’s a tall willow with a long horseface and a slight hunch to her shoulders. Rags and stolen furs cover her bony frame. The other uninjured one is Dax. Short, comely, with three frostbitten fingers. We give them extra furs and I think that makes all the difference in the conversation.
“You understand we could make you slaves, yes?” Mustang asks, brandishing her standard. “So you’d be twice Oathbreakers and twice shunned once this game is over.”
Milia doesn’t seem to care. Dax does. The other just follows Milia.
“Could give a rat’s prick. No difference between once and twice,” Milia says. They all bear the slave mark of Mars. I don’t recognize them but their rings say they are from Juno. “Rather bear shame than bruise my knees. Do you know my father?”
“I don’t care about your father.”
“My father,” she persists, “is Gauis au Trachus, Justiciar of the southern Martian hemisphere.”
“I still don’t care.”
“And his father was—”
“I don’t care.”
“Then you are a fool,” she drawls. “Twice a fool if you think to make me your slave. I will cut you in the night.”
I nod to Mustang. She stands suddenly with the standard and puts it to Milia’s head. The mark of Mars becomes that of Minerva. Then she erases the Minerva mark and Milia’s forehead is only dirt and gold. Dax’s eyes widen.
“Even if I free you?” I ask Milia. “You’re still going to cut me?”
She doesn’t know what to say.
“Mily,” Dax says quietly. “What are you thinking?”
“No slavery,” I elaborate. “No beatings. If you dig a shit pit, I dig a shit pit for the camp too. If someone cuts you, I cut them. So, will you join our army?”
“His army,” Mustang corrects. I look over at her with a frown.
“And who’s he?” Milia asks, her eyes not leaving my face.
“He’s the Reaper.”
It takes a week to gather ten Oathbreakers. The way I look at it is those ten already made it clear they don’t want to be slaves. So they might like the first person who will give them purpose, food, furs, who is not demanding that they lick a bootheel. Most of them have heard of me, but all are disappointed that I don’t have the famous slingBlade I used to beat Pax. Apparently he’s become quite the legend. They say he picked up and threw a horse and rider into the Argos as Mars’s slaves fought Jupiter’s.
As we grow, we hide from the larger armies. Mars may be my House, but with Roque dead and Cassius an enemy, only Quinn and Sevro are left as friends. Pollux perhaps, but he’ll go whatever way the wind blows.
I cannot be with my House. There’s no place for me there. I may have been their leader, but I remember how they looked at me. And now it is crucial they know I am alive.
Despite the war between Mars and Jupiter, stalwart Ceres stands unconquered by the riverside. Behind their high walls, bread smoke still rises. Mounted warbands from both armies roam the plains around Ceres, crossing the frozen Argos at will. They carry low-charged ionSwords now, so they can electrocute and maim one another with a brush of metal. MedBots scream over the battlefield when skirmishes break into pitched frays, healing wounded students as they bleed or moan from broken bones. The champions of each army wear ionArmor to protect themselves against the new weapons. Horses smash together. IonArrows fly. Slaves mill about hitting each other with older, simple weapons across the wide plain that separates the highlands from the great river Argos. It is a spectacular thing to see—but foolish, so foolish.
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.”