Eighth Fire (34 page)

LeOmi spun out of the way and Bruce’s momentum
along with his divided attention caused him to stumble forward
toward the edge of the ring. She stifled her impulse to help him
continue his journey forward to a fifty foot drop into the moat.
Instead she grabbed his collar and pulled him back. He looked a
little embarrassed when he turned to face her. She said, “Thanks
for the workout; I enjoyed it.”

“Where’s Ralph and Keith?”

She pointed down. “When they got tired of being
hit they went looking for the flag. It looks like they got
sidetracked.” A kangaroo behind Ralph leaned back on its tail,
raised its feet and thrust Ralph toward another kangaroo which
reared back and launched Ralph into the air toward the moat.

Slone was standing with his arms folded across
his chest. “Where’s the flag?”

Bruce shrugged and LeOmi said, “I’m not
telling.”

Slone said, “Let’s find it,” turned and started
trotting toward the inner ring and then down the incline. Bruce
followed.

LeOmi had no idea where the flag actually was,
but she knew what had happened to it and how best to locate it.
Mark joined her and they walked the inner perimeter of the outer
ring scanning for another kangaroo to pick it up. They hadn’t made
it quite half way around when they spotted it floating in the
moat.

Mark looked to where Nick, Jamal and Chenoa
were. They were surrounded but no one was getting near them. He
pressed the buttons on his walkie-talkie ring and said, “It’s in
the moat where we are.” The three turned to look at The Island. The
crowd parted as the three started running toward the moat.

LeOmi patted him on the shoulder and pointed
down. Slone and his three companions had spotted the flag as well
and were quickly making their way toward it. Mark’s oxy-cap was
still working. He ran to the edge, jumped and entered the water
just a couple of feet from the flag. He started struggling back to
the surface as fast as he could but the fifty foot plunge had taken
him fairly deep. His mind felt one...two...three leviathans lock
onto him. He knew he had just seconds before they had him.

He saw something disturb the surface above him
and realized LeOmi must have jumped in too and watched as she
passed him on her way down. His mind felt two leviathans shift
their focus from him to her.

He broke the surface and saw the ropes Slone’s
crew was using to try to get the flag back to shore. He grabbed the
flag realizing too late that being in the water put him too low to
make the thirty yard throw to the outside bank. He might be able to
make the twenty yard throw to The Island but he didn’t want to give
the flag to Slone. He felt something bump him from below and he
rose up out of the water over a foot, just enough to attempt the
throw. The pole landed in the water just close enough to the
outside shore for someone to reach it.

LeOmi let him go and surfaced. Mark said, “Any
second now, brace yourself, don’t fight; they just want to get us
out of the water. We smell worse than skunks to them.” A moment
later an enormous eel like creature’s body crested the surface
beside them. It rolled and a huge fin created a wave that washed
them back onto The Island.

Mark looked across the moat to see who would get
the flag. A player wearing a face mask and dressed in black was
many paces in front of the army of players but still behind Jamal,
Chenoa and Nick. It was Cynthia Dover, the student that had played
a practical joke on Mrs. Shadowitz last year. She had evidently
figured out that strong smells were being used as a weapon. Jamal
recovered the flag and handed it off to Chenoa who began running
for the corral. Cynthia, a second year junior caught her easily,
grabbed the flag and hip butted Chenoa loose from the pole. Cynthia
didn’t make it twenty steps toward her corral before being swarmed
by the other players.

The announcer’s voice boomed, “They’ve got her
surrounded...She’s lost the flag and I can’t tell who’s got it...It
looks like Emerald Tribe has...make that had it...There it goes,
it’s up and Jasper has it...It’s up again going to Jim Jenkins for
Jasper and he’s throwing it toward the corral and...it’s in. One
hundred forty-four points for Jasper.

Skunks were as numerous as squirrels in the
woodlands where Chenoa’s family lived. That necessitated the
discovery of an extremely effective deodorizer. One that worked
immediately was a ten percent solution of an automotive degreaser
containing sodium hydroxide and formulated to make soluble grease
and oils break up on contact. Chenoa used a spray bottle of this to
deodorize the group.

Emerald’s third team was mounted and ready for
the fifth flag. The General stamped his hoof anxiously awaiting
Mark’s command to begin. The breeze had picked up now and he knew
if it increased much more that laying down a smoke screen would be
ineffective. He glanced to his right and saw his friends waiting
just as eager as he was to start the play. He called, “Box
formation if the wind picks up.”

Everyone nodded their agreement. The standard
box formation was where eight players surrounded the center flag
carrying player and three riders took point in case the flag needed
to be passed. The trouble was, with thirty-six players on the other
teams all trying to get the flag the formation was difficult to
maintain.

Although this was just a five point flag, they
needed every point they could get since Jasper tribe had already
scored the bonus flag. Mark knew the best tactics involved
distracting the other teams’ players and/or horses rather than
trying to get the flag by brute force. The trouble was coming up
with something the other teams weren’t expecting or hadn’t trained
to defend. After more than five thousand years of flags matches and
military history, doing that was an incredibly difficult task.

Mark’s idea for this play was
to set up a series of diversions to confuse and tire out the other
players while his team stayed back. The first diversion would be
reflected sunlight directed toward the other players after someone
had acquired the flag. Nick had seen to it that this team all had
Mylar mirrors stretched on a folding frame and stand. This would
slow the players down providing more opportunity for more grabs for
the flag thus wearing down the riders. Once past the line of
mirrors the players would encounter a smoke screen which they
couldn’t see beforehand because of the mirrors. The standard
defense for a smoke screen was to slow down, split up and lose
yourself in the smoke while getting clear of it as quickly as
possible and then swiftly regrouping to defend the flag. Swiftly
regrouping to defend the flag was difficult to do since there was
always conflict and being wary of traps within the smoke screen.
According to
Omar’s Strategy Guide for
Flags
, the flag bearer almost always
emerged from the screen first and was usually undefended if only
briefly. The key would be to have Emerald players spread out and
close enough to grab the flag as soon as the flag bearer emerged
and make a run for home on their fresh mounts.

“The flag is up and it looks like it’s going to
be pretty far out,” called the announcer.

The flag struck the ground
farther away than Mark had ever seen it. As soon as it touched the
dirt he set The General in motion while watching the other players
to see who would take the lead. It didn’t really matter who took
the lead or got the flag first. His team would slowly fall behind
to implement this smoke and mirrors variation of
Donavan’s
Ploy.

His headache began coming on quickly as he rode.
LeOmi maneuvered up beside him and yelled, “Do you feel it?”

He nodded. “Straight ahead. It’s a lot of people
I think.” He called to the rest of the team, “Something bad is
happening. I need everyone to follow me.” He said to LeOmi, “I need
you to focus on following me and let your emotions be read. I’ll
let everyone read my thoughts. I think we’re going to need all the
help we can get.”

A few minutes later Mark led all four tribe
teams past the flag continuing on course straight for the opening
in the perimeter wall to the engineering section.

The announcer yelled, “I don’t believe it;
nobody got the flag!”

In the stands Tim stood and pulled out his
spotting scope to look at the players on the field. “Something is
wrong. They are all running full out straight for the Engineering
Section.”

Steve stood and shook Tim’s arm. Pointing at the
field, he yelled, “Thralls!” He recalled Mrs. Shadowitz’s
description of them after Mark’s encounter last Christmas:
Foul
manifestations, fetid, soulless things, sub-golem monstrosities,
slaves to their master’s will.

Tim looked to where Steve was looking. He shoved
the scope back into Aaron’s Grasp and drew out his sword, a Chinese
curved blade nearly five feet long. Steve grabbed his arm just
before he remanifested down to the school grounds near the
corrals.

Mark brought his stallion to a stop at the
passage to the Engineering Section and yelled, “I need auto cars
for forty-eight,” as he dismounted. He ran through the opening.
Using his binoculars he could see that a few miles away the battle
was raging around
the sunstone
. It looked
like more than a couple hundred people were engaged in close
quarter combat. Figures were running up a mound of sand around the
pedestal that was supporting
the sunstone
.
When they reached the top of the pile they just dissolved to a pile
of sand. The pile of sand slowly increased in size as more and more
thralls ran up to the top and dissolved.

The rest of the players filed in behind him.
Cynthia Dover reassuringly put her hand on his shoulder and called
out, “How many can remanifest?” About a half dozen students
including her, raised their hands. “Well, what are we waiting for?
Latch on to someone and let’s go!” She said to the wall, “Cancel
the auto cars.”