Page 36 of Flamesworn

Theron may not have beenone of Ares’ supplicants, but he could have been an excellent spy if he put his mind to it. Ares sat on the roof of a storage building, feet swinging, as Theron flirted outrageously with the guard on duty. He had an easy charm that any commander would appreciate, but he seemed determined to use it for things like sticking his tongue down the pretty guard’s throat while Kataida slipped quietly into the storage building and snuck back out again with spare uniforms.

How many mortals would die at the Needle this time, wetting the sand for the sake of a few miles of earth? Without the call to be on both sides of the war at once, Ares had the time to watch soldiers train in plazas and retired elders complain that they could no longer raise a sword. They sat on the high, open gates of Axon as haggard groups of people from Elixi, the city hidden in the Soldiers, begged for shelter.

They had to stop supplies from the north, Evander said one morning, in the crowded civic building. “The farmers, it seems, were unaware of their change in government.”

“We should expect more refugees soon enough,” Atlas said, but Stavros was quiet, and Ares slipped out of the building later to find him speaking softly to a soldier behind a tea shop, their heads close together.

“Stavros?” Kataida asked, when Ares found her hauling boxes of supplies into a fortified warehouse. “There’s no reason he can’t be at a teahouse. He visits them all the time.”

“It looked like he was giving orders,” Ares said. Kataida frowned, easing the box onto another in the back of the warehouse. “I would watch him, that’s all. Wars are lost from within just as they’re won from without.”

Kataida looked uncertain, but she didn’t argue. She slept less, lying awake with her gaze fixed in the dark, like so many soldiers before her who felt had the encroaching heat of battle, the suffocating terror and the heavy weight of grief. But unlike the soldiers who wept in their quiet homes, Ares could feel Kataida trembling with anticipation and shame.

Ares came to her then, crawling over the bed like the inhuman creature they had been at the start of all things, and she dug her nails in their neck and whispered what she would do to them, wicked and hot and horrible. Ares no longer felt the desperation of an uprooted god, but they craved her all the same, and they could at least give her this—the warmth of them without shame, burning the guilt away while drummers practiced their war marches in the cool evening air.

The day the army marched out, Kataida stood stonelike in her proper uniform as her father gave his equally stiff farewells, both of them sinking into formality to hide the grief that even Ares could taste on the air. Theron was quiet and sulky, and he pulled Kataida behind a house after their father left as though to light a cigarette and speak privately. No one but Ares followed, and when Ares reached the alley, Kataida and Theron were already changing into their new, nondescript uniforms.Kataida pinned her dark hair behind a cap and helped hide Theron’s, which was longer than most soldiers’ and required far more pins. They slipped out the back way, moving between houses while other soldiers took the main road, and emerged in the sand just outside of Axon, where soldiers were arranging themselves in perfect lines.

“Menelaus will know me,” Kat whispered. “He checks the troops himself.”

“That leaves us with Dad or Stavros,” Theron hissed back, and cursed under his breath as Evander passed a few paces away, marching steadily toward the front of the lines.

“Stavros,” Kat said, and gestured for Theron to follow. She eyed Ares. “Can you hide us?”

“Nothing can truly hide you,” Ares said, and Theron made a face. “But I’ll be with you, Akti.”

Theron shuddered, but Kataida stopped to brush her fingers along Ares’ sleeve, a small sign of affection. Ares was starting to recognize it now, the way she’d lightly touch their chin or let her shoulder brush theirs, and it warmed them just like the strike of a palm or the sting of a lash.

They took their place toward the back of the line, and Ares smiled as the wind that blew over the city surged with power, filling their lungs like a bellows. Evander was speaking to Menelaus at the front, but Stavros was moving steadily toward them on the left, weaving through the troops with his hands behind his back.

“Shit,” Theron whispered, and Kataida stepped on his foot to silence him as Stavros started down their line, examining the soldiers there. Ares wondered what would happen if he caught them. They’d have to sneak Kataida to the front lines another way—there was no chance she’d miss this battle, not when her soul called to the blade and blood. But it would be trouble, the messy, mortal kind Ares didn’t know how to navigate, and theynarrowed their eyes as Stavros passed in front of Kataida and Theron.

Stavros paused, looking into Theron’s eyes, then Kataida’s. He adjusted the line of Theron’s uniform and passed over Kataida. Then he stopped, looking right at Ares.

Ares smiled.

“Your hair is longer than regulations, soldier,” Stavros said. “And I see no weapon.”

“Yes, you do,” Ares said, and Stavros’ mouth twitched ever so slightly.

Then he moved on, and Theron’s shoulders dropped a good two inches. He immediately tensed again as drums sounded behind them, the ground shaking with the beat of boots keeping time. Evander started to sing an old Arkoudai war chant, one of the ones Atreus himself had sung when Ares lay in his hand as a sword, and Ares grinned as the music washed over them. Even Kataida and Theron sang, and Ares sang with them, stepping out of line to look at the soldiers around them. It was a death song as well as a war song, an ode to the soldiers who would leave Axon and never return, and Ares thought of the weight of Markos’ body in his arms and shivered. They wished Azaiah were there, but Azaiah would come soon enough. He was never far behind.

The Arkoudai left Axon singing, and war moved across the sands of Arktos.

Ares danced as they marched, the way they’d always danced in the heavy hours before battle, letting the anticipation build until the air tasted of copper and their brother’s storm rolled in from the horizon, making the sky go gray. Fire dragons licked at the sand where Ares danced and wound through their hair, and when Ares made their way to Evander and held out a hand, Evander took it. Thousands of Arkoudai saw, for one breath, their Strategos lift a hand so that War could spin beneath it, body twisting like the dancers in old Katoikos who fought forfarmland and ancient orchards. The drums rolled like thunder, and Ares danced ahead of the troops. They let their uniform slide away. Their feet were bare, their body naked as it had been when the first Death took their hand. Maybe Kataida would have thought that first form was beautiful, if she saw it, but Ares could only barely remember what it felt like.

“I do not know if this is a blessing,” Evander said, as he reached the spot where Ares stood. The Needle was just visible over the horizon, a long spire of a compass, half buried in the collapse of the Iperian empire. Many battles had been fought and won there, and Ares could feel the blood that had been shed, the viscera and bile and tears and sweat. They licked their lips, and an Arkoudai uniform appeared over their body again.

“You do not want me to bless you,” Ares said.

“Does the enemy wish it?”

Ares let their power spread like a shallow tide over the sand. “Yes,” they said at last. “They shed blood for me now—sacrifices, like warriors in Mislia and Staria did, before they learned that war doesn’t spare you just because you throw some pretty creature down on an altar.”

“Sacrifices?” Evander’s eyes narrowed. “Not humans?”

“Oh, yes.” Ares turned to look Evander up and down. “Someone hates you enough to spill mortal blood on an altar for it. Some demons may appreciate it perhaps, but I have no need for corpses.”

“You leave enough in your wake.”

---