Red Rising

The next day at orientation, Fitchner leads the students on a run around their new environment. House Mars will live in a castle in the highlands. Fitchner kills a deerling. The group runs to Phobos Tower and surveys the battlegrounds beyond, which consist of mountains, forest, rivers, and the Proctors’ observatory at Olympus. 

Sevros complains about House Mars’s geographical disadvantages. Fitchner says the group may struggle to find food on their land. The group observes a table full of food, and Cassius and Darrow race to eat from it. As they eat, Cassius remarks on House Ceres’s castle nearby. Darrow realizes that members of House Ceres lie in wait. He and Cassius ambush five young men and take them all down. Darrow takes a slingBlade from one of them. 

Fitchner and the other House Mars students approach, and House Ceres’s Proctor does as well. She and Fitchner bicker, flirt, and gossip. Reinforcements from House Ceres arrive on horseback, and the House Mars initiates run away. Titus remains, fighting, and urinates on himself after a blow from Ceres’s stunfist. 

At dinner Titus acts eager to kill other students, but Fitchner scolds him. He explains that this test requires strategy in warfare, resourcefulness, and a thirst for domination. Darrow concludes that they will win against the eleven Houses by enslaving them.  

Darrow studies the standard of House Mars, which they will use to enslave other students. Sevro has killed a wolf and brings it inside for food. Cassius announces that the group should select an interim leader before the Institute awards the coveted Primus position to someone from House Mars. The group argues whether Cassius and Darrow’s fight for the table of food earns them leadership roles. They watch Darrow twirl a knife with his fingers, and Darrow stares Titus down.

Antonia challenges Cassius’s desire for a single leader. She recommends the group function without one until someone earns the Primus position. They all hear a horn; their standard and wall map transform to mark the beginning of the war. 

The group fights amongst itself. Darrow leaves, and Cassius, Roque, and Lea follow him. They all conclude that another House could overtake them as Mars argues over strategy. They do reconnaissance outside. Cassius and Darrow find a bag of supplies. Titus’s faction fails to feed itself, while Darrow and Cassius eat bars from their supply pack.

Cassius tells Darrow they must unify House Mars for success in the war. He suggests killing Titus. Roque explains that this war will create castes from the Gold students and teach them how to conquer as their ancestors did. Cassius and Darrow continue strategizing against Titus. Darrow compares the test to the Gold game, capture the flag. Their fellow student, Vixus, brings a slave back to the castle.  

House Mars has split apart. Titus and Antonia have gathered tribes for themselves. Cassius describes his highRed nanny to Darrow, who is reminded of killing Julian. Darrow and Cassius’s tribe consists mostly of midDrafts and lowDrafts. Darrow is relieved to have matches from the supply pack so he can cook meat for his tribe. He initiates a fight between shy Lea and a girl named Thistle. 

Roque and Darrow observe Titus’s tribe cutting raw deerling meat for food. Darrow, feigning confidence, leads his tribe’s strategic planning. Sevro is a tribe of one and wears wolfskin on his mysterious travels around the area. Roque encourages Darrow to bring the tribes together after Titus’s tribe injures Lea. 

Darrow goes to Titus’s camp. Titus and three others threaten him. Darrow lies that he has come to compare maps. Darrow encourages them to join his tribe, and Vixus scoffs, mocking him. Darrow strikes Vixus several times, and Vixus falls. Darrow runs away.

Darrow runs, alerting Cassius and his tribe that Titus is after him. Cassandra pursues Darrow. The fastest runner, Quinn, fells Cassandra with a stick. Darrow and his tribe retreat to a fort on House Mars’s land. 

Rather than attacking Darrow’s tribe, Titus’s tribe makes a concerted attack on House Ceres. They take Ceres’s slaves, capture one of their horses, and burn their crops. Titus takes one Ceres girl by lassoing her around the neck and pulling her out of her castle window. 

Cassius explains how he knows that Titus did not kill Priam, although Titus implied as much in Chapter 22. Cassius thinks Titus killed his brother Julian.

Titus’s slaves are not particular assets to him, and his tribe fails comically when defecating in the wild. Titus cuts off a male slave’s ear after he laughs at the tribe. Titus leads his five slaves before the gate of House Ceres and commands four of them to beat the girl he captured with the lasso. Later, Titus arranges for the beaten girl to be trampled by her own House members. House Ceres responds by withdrawing into their castle. 

Darrow and the members of his tribe creep to the castle to observe Titus’s tribe. They have little food, and their slaves endure menial labor outdoors. Darrow and Cassius also hear tribe members raping female slaves, which reminds Darrow of similar screams that he once heard in Lykos as a boy. 

Cassius is outraged, and Darrow acts stoic. Fitchner arrives, shrugging off the plight of the assaulted women and justifying it as natural selection at work. Darrow says he knows how to attack Titus’s tribe. 

Darrow sends a letter of apology to Antonia. Darrow and Roque go to find Quinn, assigned to fetch Antonia’s response. Unsuccessful, they return to their camp to learn that Titus caught Quinn and cut off her ear. Cassius, who is romantically involved with Quinn, followed to retaliate. He emerges from the camp, bloody and injured from his fight with Titus. Darrow says his plan will stay in place

Darrow helps Cassius with his injuries. The two set out on their mission. They stop at a loch to drink and eat. A girl approaches on a mustang; Darrow recognizes her as the one who mocked him while he rode the pony with Matteo. 

Cassius, wanting her horse, flirts with the girl, nicknamed Mustang. She deduces that they stole Darrow’s slingBlade and that their House has few resources of its own. Darrow asks Mustang’s position in the Draft, since he can’t tell her House from her appearance. Darrow feigns seeing a snake near the horse and exploits Mustang’s distraction. Cassius trips the horse. Darrow nears Mustang’s body, and she whistles a signal. 

Darrow discovers Mustang comes from House Minerva as several of her allies approach on horseback. Cassius and Darrow flee into the loch, where they tread water. All see smoke rising from Roque’s signal in the distance. Darrow and Cassius pretend that the smoke is coming from their castle, giving away their location to Minerva. Mustang leaves two sentries to watch Cassius and Darrow as they tread water in the freezing lake. 

Sevro attacks the sentries and greets Cassius and Darrow as they exit the loch. Sevro has decided to help protect Mars’s standard. Sevro suggests stealing Minerva’s standard in case they take siege of Mars’s castle. 

Darrow and Cassius arrive at Minerva’s castle on horseback and fool the sentry into thinking they are allies. Darrow destroys the command center. A girl finds him and runs away to warn her friends. Darrow captures the Minervans’ cook, June, and he and Cassius take six horses. Sevro, having captured Minerva’s standard, joins them as they exit.