“Not enough.”
“I will personally promise that House Mars will brook no aggressiontoward House Diana so long as our agreement is not violated. If you help me take Minerva, I will help you take Ceres.”
“House Ceres…,” she says, looking over to her bodyguards.
“Don’t be greedy,” I say. “If you go after Ceres on your own, both Mars and Minerva will set upon you.”
“Yes. Yes.” She waves an annoyed hand. “Ceres is near?”
“Very. And they have bread.” I look at the pelts her men wear. “Which I imagine would be a nice change from all that meat.”
Her weight shifts on her toes and I know I have her. Always negotiate with food. I make a note.
Tamara clears her throat. “So you were saying I could make my army twice as large?”
31
THE FALL OF MUSTANG
I ride dressed for war. All in black. Hair wild and bound by goat-gut. Forearms covered with durosteel vambraces looted in battle. My durosteel cuirass is black and light; it will deflect any edge less than an ionBlade or a razor. My boots are muddy. Streaks of black and red go across my face. SlingBlade on my back. Knives everywhere. Nine red crossbones and ten wolves cover Quietus’s flank. Lea painted them. Each crossbone is an incapacitated opponent, who are often healed by medBots and then thrown back into the fray. Each wolf a slave. Cassius rides at my side. He shimmers. The durosteel he received as a bounty is polished as bright as his glimmering sword and his hair, which bounces like coiled golden springs about his regal head. It’s as though he’s never been stood around and pissed on.
“Well, I do believe I am the lightning,” Cassius declares. “And you, my brooding friend, are the thunder.”
“Then what am I?” Roque asks, kicking his horse up beside us. Mud flies. “The wind?”
“You’re full enough of it,” I snort. “The hot sort.”
The House rides behind us. All of it except Quinn and June, who stay behind as our castle’s garrison. It is a gamble. We ride slowly so that Minerva knows we are coming. What they do not know is that I was there in the night just hours before and that Sevro is there now. Mud still sticks underneath my fingernails.
Minerva’s scouts dart across their rocky hilltops. They make a show of mocking us, but really they count our number to better know our strategy. Yet they seem confused when we ride into their country of high grass and olive trees. So confused that they withdraw their scouts behind their walls. We’ve never come in full force like this. The Howlers, our scouts, ride in full view on their black horses, black cloaks fluttering like crow wings. Our highDraft killers move as the vanguard of the main body—cruel Vixus, craggy Pollux, spiteful Cassandra, many of Titus’s band. The slaves jog about their owners, those who captured them.
I ride forward with Cassius and Antonia flanking me. She carries the standard today. Only a few archers man the walls, so I tell Cassius to make sure we are not ambushed from the flanks in case any of Minerva are about. He gallops away.
Minerva’s fortress is ringed by a hundred meters of barren earth made mud from the torrential rains of the last week. It is the killing field. Step into the ring and the archers will try to kill your horse. If you still do not retreat, they will try to kill you. Nearly twenty horses of both Houses litter the field. Cassius led a bloody assault on a Minervan warband up to the very gates of the castle itself just two days before.
Beyond the killing field is grass. Oceans of grass so high in some places that Sevro could stand tall and still not be seen. We stand at the edge of the mud ring amidst a meadow of autumn wildflowers. The ground squishes underfoot and Quietus whinnies beneath me.
“Pax!”I then shout.“Pax.”
I hurl the name against the walls until their main gate opens ponderously, as ponderously as it once opened that night when Cassius and I snuck inside. Mustang rides out. She trots slowly through the mud and pulls short of us. Her eyes take in everything.
“Is it to be a duel?” she asks with a grin. “Pax of Wise and Noble Minerva versus the Reaper of the Bloody Butcher House?”
“You make it sound so exciting,” Antonia yawns. She’s not got a spot of dirt on her.
Mustang ignores her.
“And you’re sure you’ve no one hiding in that grass waiting to ambush us when we come out to support our champion?” Mustang asks me. “Should we burn it and find out?”
“We’ve brought everyone,” Antonia says. “You know our numbers.”
“Yes. I can count. Thank you.” Mustang doesn’t look at her. Just at me. She seems worried; her voice lowers. “Pax will hurt you.”
“Pax, how are your balls?”I shout over her head. She winces as a drum beats suddenly from inside the fortress. Except it’s not a drum. Pax comes out of the gate. His war axe thumps his shield. Mustang shouts him back and he obeys like a dog, but the beating of the axe on the shield does not cease. We agree that the stakes should be all the remaining slaves between the two of us. A hefty bounty.
“I thought Handsome was the duelist?” Mustang says, then shrugs. Her eyes keep going to the grass. “Where is that mad fellow? Your shadow—the one who leads that wolfpack? Is he hiding in the grass? I don’t want him popping up behind me again.”
I shout for Sevro. A hand rises amongst the Howlers. Mud covers the faces that peer out from beneath the black wolfcloaks. Mustang counts. All five Howlers accounted for. In fact, all our forces save one, Quinn, are accounted for. Still Mustang isn’t satisfied. We are to remove our army six hundred meters from the edge of the mud ring. She will burn away all the grass within one hundred meters of where we now stand. When the grass is done burning, the scorched earth will be the duel field. Ten men of her choosing will join ten of my choosing in creating a circle in which to fight. The rest of hers will stay inside the city, and mine will stay six hundred meters removed.
