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Clouds drop soft showers. The canyon walls fifty kilometers west and forty kilometers east of our little valley tower six kilometers high. Between them is an ecosystem of mountains, forests, rivers, and plains. Our battlefield.
Ours is a highland territory. There rise mossy hills and craggy peaks that dip into U-shaped, grassy glens. Mist blankets all, even the thick forests that lie like homespun quilts over the foothills. Our castle stands on a hill just north of a river in the middle of a bowl-like glen—half grass, half woods. Greater hills cup the glen in a semicircle to the north and south. I should like it here. Eo would have. But without her, I feel as lonely as our castle looks on its high, removed hill. I reach for the locket, for our haemanthus. Neither is with me. I feel empty in this paradise.
Three walls of our hill
castle stand atop eighty-meter stone cliffs. The castle itself is huge. Its walls rise thirty meters. The gatehouse swells out from the walls as a fortress with turrets. Inside the walls, our square keep is part of the northwestern wall and rises fifty meters. A gentle slope leads up from the glen’s floor to the castle’s western gate, opposite the keep. We run down this slope along a lonely dirt road. Mist embraces us. I relish the cold air. It purifies me after hours of fitful sleep.
The mist burns away as the summer day dawns. Deerling, thinner and faster than the creatures of Earth, graze in the fir woods. Birds circle above. A single raven promises eerie things. Sheep litter the field and goats wander the high rocky hills we run up in a line of fifty and one. Others of my House may see animals of Earth, or curious creatures the Carvers decided to make for fun. But I see only food and clothing.
The sacred animals of Mars make their home in our territory. Woodpeckers hammer oak and fir. At night, wolves howl across the highlands and stalk during the day through the woodlands. There are snakes near the river. Vultures in the quiet gulches. Killers running beside me. What friends I have. If only Loran or Kieran or Matteo were here to watch my back. Someone I could trust. I’m a sheep wearing wolves’ clothing in a pack of wolves.
As Fitchner runs us up the rocky heights, Lea, the girl with the limp, falls. He lazily nudges at her with his foot till we carry her on our shoulders. Roque and I bear the load. Titus smirks, and only Cassius helps when Roque tires. Then Pollux, a lean, craggy-voiced boy with buzzed hair, takes over for me. He sounds like he’s been smoking burners since he was two.
We trudge through a summer valley of forests and fields. Bugs nip at us there. The Goldbrows drip with sweat, but I do not. This is an icy bath compared to the rigors of my old frysuit. All about me are trim and fit, but Cassius, Sevro, Antonia, Quinn (the bloodydamn fastest girl or thing I’ve ever seen on two feet), Titus, three of his new friends, and I could leave the rest behind. Only Fitchner with his gravBoots would outpace us. He bounds along like a deerling, then he chases one down and his razor whips out. It encircles the deerling’s throat, and he contracts the blade to kill the animal.
“Supper,” he says, grinning. “Drag it.”
“You could have killed it closer to the castle,” Sevro mutters.
Fitchner scratches his head and looks around. “Did anyone else hear a squat ugly little Goblin go … well, whatever sound Goblins make? Drag it.”
Sevro grabs the deer’s leg. “Dickwit.”
We reach the summit of a rocky height five kilometers southwest of our castle. A stone tower dominates the peak. From the top, we survey the battlefield. Somewhere out there, our enemies do the same. The theater of war stretches to the south farther than we can see. A snowy mountain range fills the western horizon. To the southeast, a primordial wood knots the landscape. Dividing the two is a lush plain split by a massive southbound river, the Argos, and its tributaries. Farther south, past the plains and rivers, the ground dips away into marshes. I cannot see beyond. A great floating mountain hovers two kilometers up in the bluish sky. It is Olympus, Fitchner explains, an artificial mountain where the Proctors watch each year’s class. Its peak shimmers with a fairy-tale castle. Lea shuffles closer to stand beside me.
“How does it float?” she asks sweetly.
I haven’t the faintest clue.
I look north.
Two rivers in a forested valley split our northern territory, which is at the edge of a vast wilderness. They form a V pointing southwest to the lowlands, where they eventually form one tributary to the Argos. Surrounding the valley are the highlands—dramatic hills and dwarf mountains scarred with gulches where mist still clings.
“This is Phobos Tower,” Fitchner says. The tower lies in the far southwest of our territory. He drinks from a canteen while we go thirsty, and points northwest where the two rivers meet in the valley to form their V. A massive tower crowns a distant dwarf mountain range just beyond the junction. “And that is Deimos.” He traces an imaginary line to show us the bounds of House Mars’s territory.
The eastern river is called the Furor. The western, which runs just south of our castle, is the Metas. A single bridge spans the Metas. An enemy would have to cross it to enter between the V into the valley and strike northeast across easy, wooded ground to reach our castle.
“This is a slaggin’ joke, isn’t it?” Sevro asks Fitchner.
“Whatever do you mean, Goblin?” Fitchner pops a gumbubble.
“Our legs are as wide as a Pinkwhore’s. All these mountains and hills and anyone can just walk right in the front door. It’s a perfect flat passage from the lowlands right to our gate. Just one stinking river to cross.”
“Pointing out the obvious, eh? You know, I really do not like you. You foul little Goblin.” Fitchner stares at Sevro for a purposeful moment and then shrugs. “Anyway, I’ll be on Olympus.”
“What does that mean, Proctor?” Cassius asks sourly. He doesn’t like the look of things either. Though his eyes are red from weeping through the night for his dead brother, it hasn’t dulled his impressiveness.
“I mean it’s your problem, little prince. Not mine. No one’s going to fix anything for you. I am your Proctor. Not your mommy. You’re in school, remember? So if your legs are open, well, make a chastity belt to protect the softspot.”
There’s general grumbling.
“Could be worse,” I say. I point past Antonia’s head toward the southern plains where an enemy fortress spans a great river. “We could be exposed like those poor bastards.”
“Those poor bastards have crops and orchards,” Fitchner muses. “You have …” He looks over the ledge to find the deer he killed. “Well, Goblin here left the deer behind, so you have nothing. The wolves will eat what you do not.”
“Unless we eat the wolves,” Sevro mutters, drawing strange looks from the rest of our House.
So we have to get our own food.
