…or, Cloud On Her Tongue
The first skirmish match of the year was a big one, with the Magisterius University Dragons going up against their traditional rivals, the Blackwater Hydras.
I wasn’t invested enough in the area to care about that except for knowing which team to root for. But two big schools made for one big match. Both teams were supposed to be good, and they were well-matched, and the return fighters knew each other. It wouldn’t be an easy contest either way. Considering all that and the size of the field, it seemed like we were in for an epic spectacle.
I had to credit the home team a slight edge, though. Iason had sounded impressed by the abilities of the newly-formed seventh squad. For Iason to be impressed, they had to be good. Between them and the dwarves, the Dragons could probably protect their standard from anything indefinitely. If they were able to go on offense, they might be able to rage across the field.
They weren’t quite a secret weapon, but the MU team was using them in new ways. If the strategies were good they’d be kept and refined, but they’d never be used with the same element of surprise. I had to guess this was going to be a big night for the monster squad, and the whole team by extension.
It seemed like it was a big night for Pala, too.
“I’m so excited!” she said, about ten times on the walk up past the north fields and the towers towards the hexagonal skirmish grounds.
By the third time Marlot said, “Do you think she’s excited?” it was getting pretty old.
The grounds covered more than fifty acres enclosed in a tall palisade. The gates were open when we got there, but they were still turning the signs to designate which side of the field was home base and which was away and marking the bleachers. Tradition was the away team didn’t have to reveal which side they’d picked until thirty minutes before the start of the match, meaning the home team had to be ready to fight six different battles while the visitors only had to prepare one.
Of course, the home team would know their field from any direction, including any recent changes, so the phrase “home field advantage” kept plenty of meaning.
Inside the gates there was a festival atmosphere, with concession stands and merchandise booths set up on the broad grassy strips between the outer walls and the backs of the stands. The big stadium-style bleachers for ticket holders were only found in the middle of each of the six sides of the fields. In between them was standing room and a series of smaller wooden bleachers and benches for the general attendance and student passes. They couldn’t have built up the whole perimeter and ever hoped to fill it. Skirmish was a big deal, but it wasn’t that big a deal.
“I want to get sugar clouds!” Pala yelled, looking around at the tents. “And hot dogs and apple cider!”
“Um, they’ll probably have hot dogs,” I said. I looked at Marlot, but she was already making her slow way towards the seating. “Um, I’m going to go with Marlot to find us seats,” I said, since we’d only got the general seating. “Once I know where we’re sitting, I’ll come back down and help you with the food. Okay?”
“Okey dokey,” she said.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll be right back, then,” I said, and then caught up to Marlot.
“So, when’d you change your mind, exactly?” I asked her when we found seats, at the top of one of the smaller bleachers so that nobody would have to sit behind Pala.
“Exactly never,” she said. “Ever.”
“That first night Iason was talking about the skirmish field, you said you had better things to do than squint across it,” I said.
“Who says I’m going to?” she asked. She hefted her bag. “I brought my knitting.”
“So why come?”
“Do you want to be left alone with that tall drink of bubblegum?” Marlot asked. “Are you trying to add a very big notch to your headboard?”
“My bed is a mattress on a platform,” I said. “I don’t have a headboard.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“No problem,” I said. “I just wondered why the change of heart.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked.
“No.”
She whacked me in the side with her bag.
“So much for elven senses,” she said. “I want to spend time with you, doofus, and when you’re out supporting your boyfriend’s team seems like about the only time I’m not going to have to deal with him or any of the girls you’re chasing.”
“You don’t like dealing with Iason?”
“Do you?”
“Point,” I said.
I stood up to stretch and took a look around the field. Three hundred yards on a side. Five hundred something yards across, Marlot had said. Less than a third of a mile. It didn’t sound like much when you put it that way.
The whole thing was sunken into the ground, relative to where we were, but it had hills and ravines and ridges and outcroppings and low stone walls to give the terrain some variety. The team from Blackwater Provincial College had picked the side where they could put their standard on the biggest hill, but there was no obvious advantage either way. The field designers simply would not be that stupid.
“I’m gonna go find Pala,” I said.
Marlot turned around and craned her neck.
“You might want to engage a diviner,” she said.
“You’re all kinds of funny,” I said.
Pala seemed to think I’d have trouble spotting her, too. She was waving what looked like an improvised baton as I approached her.
“Look!” she said. I saw it was a paper cone with sticky blue lumps on it. “They have candy clouds but they call it—”
“Cotton candy,” I said. “Yeah. We call it that here.”
“Oh,” she said. She looked puzzled. “Why?”
“I guess it reminds people of cotton? I don’t know,” I said. “I always thought it was more like a spider web.”
“Spooky,” she said. “I like clouds better.”
“Did you want to get anything more than that?” I asked, since it seemed like the cotton candy was already gone.
“Oh, yes. I was just so excited I had to eat it right away,” she said. “They have apple cider and lemonade, and I didn’t know which to have. Is lemonade like apple cider?”
“Kind of,” I said. “Only it’s made with lemons instead of apples, and it’s not cider.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Lemonade,” I said.
“Oh!” she said. “I’ll try that. Do they mull it?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Oh.” She made a face. “Then I’ll probably stay with the cider.”
“You could get one of each so you can try the lemonade,” I said.
“Is that allowed?” she asked.
“Your money,” I said, assuming she had actually paid for the cotton candy and not walked off with it in a misunderstanding.
“I did not know if it was rude, or if I should get back in line to get seconds,” she said. “I only bought one candy cloud.”
“No, it’s not rude,” I said. “If you get everything you want at one time, you only have to go through the line once and it saves everybody time.”
“Nobody tells me these things,” she said.
In the end, Pala got a sixty-four ounce mug of hot cider, one of cocoa, and one of fresh-squeezed lemonade. None of those things were advertised with the giant collector cups. Considering how afraid she was of making a faux pas, it was kind of amazing to see how few people wanted to argue with a twelve-foot tall blonde. The reactions she got were a mixture of “smitten” and “smote”. The concessioner offered her a pallet for carrying her drinks, along with the hot dogs, and the bags of “candy clouds” she’d asked for. Considering how much money she’d spent, I was surprised he didn’t offer to have it delivered.
She accepted it, though, and offered to carry my food for me if I would carry her spear.
Incidentally, the spear was heavier than it looked. She dropped the shaft into my waiting hand and my fingers bent backwards. I was wrenched off balance. I had to pull my hand back, and the thing smashed the toe of my shoe.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” she said, embarrassed. “I’m so clumsy!”
“It’s okay,” I said. I squatted down beside the dropped weapon and took up the spear end of it with both hands. Lifting with my knees, I raised it up and started dragging the thing alongside her. It was like trying to pull a mountain range by an outcropping, but I made some progress.
“You and Marlot are both silly,” she said. “You know that?”
“Yeah,” I grunted. I let the spear fall next to the bleachers. Let somebody try to make off with it while Pala was getting herself settled.
“What have we got?” Marlot asked.
“Deep dish pizza, nachos, hot dogs,” I said.
“Are those all beef?” Marlot asked, looking at one of the purple-cased dogs.
“Parts of them might be,” I said.
“Looks like all the food court places have booths here,” Marlot said.
“You want me to get you a fast food burger at a skirmish match?” I asked.
“No, I want you to get me a salad,” Marlot said.
“That’s not what you eat when you’re watching skirmish,” I said.
“It is what I eat when I’m knitting,” Marlot said.
“Fine,” I said, hurrying to go before the crowds got thicker. I got her a grilled chicken salad and got back just as the armies were assembling on the field. The MU’s general coach was planting the standard on top of a mound that had been flattened and crenellated. Giant illusionary panels on the fence around the actual field flickered into being, some of them flipping between different members of the MU team milling about, stretching, and sparring lightly. We could see them with our own eyes, though. Most of them were showing what was happening five hundred yards away; the placement of the other standard, the preparations of the other team.
Nobody was getting into formations or their defensive positions yet. They’d wait until the last minute, to avoid giving away the game.
There was an “ooh” audible from both ends of the field as a giant, bull-headed man, easily as big as Pala, came out of the exit tunnel beneath the home side bleachers. We were on the left wing, so we had a clearer view earlier than the people in the actual home row.
The minotaur was followed by a half-orc, a pair of lizardmen, a muscle-bound guy who might have been human until he turned and I saw the extra eye in the center of his forehead, and then what looked like a couple of goth kids, and then a wererat and werebear.
“That’s the special squad Iason was talking about,” I said.
“Really?” Marlot asked. “I thought they were the cheerleaders.”
“I don’t see the ogress,” I said. “I guess they must be keeping her back for greater effect when the match actually starts… let everybody see the minotaur now, and then bring her out.”
“That sounds backwards to me,” Marlot said. “Even if she were a full ogre, I really wouldn’t want to follow that act.”
“Minotaurs are exotic,” I said. “Ogres are a known and terrifying quantity.”
The pre-match announcements started, which helped me a little in matching the loose groupings on the field with the squads that were on the program. The dwarves were squad six. I wondered how they felt about not being number seven. There was a longbow squad, a buff squad of spellcasters, and four squads of flexible infantry with embedded wizards. Then were there the solos. Some schools called them “elites” or “heroes”—most fans still called them those things—but those labels were now considered denigrating to the rest of the squad.
That was where IASON, CALLED MANBLOOD was listed.
I didn’t see him out on the field. Considering what he’d be doing, and considering the wooded spots and overgrowth and ravines that ran all over the place, I figured the pre-period was my best shot of actually seeing him—and maybe getting his attention a little.
“I don’t see Iason,” I said to Marlot.
“Ooh, there!” Pala said, smacking me on the back—ow—and pointing.
“What?” I asked, confused, thinking that she must have seen him. I didn’t know where she’d have met him.
I saw she was pointing at a human-sized woman made out of rock, like a stone golem with a lot of attention given to form but not so much to texture. She’d just ran out onto the field and joined the rest of the Harlowe squad. There was a bit of a stir at her appearance, but nothing like when her teammates had come on.
In fact, there was a bigger reaction on the field than in the stands.
“Is that an ogre?” Pala asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m not sure what that is,” and I went to check the program.
I didn’t find anything in squad seven that matched her—unless she was PETERS, RAQUEL (HUMAN)—before the announcements were finished and the gong sounded.
The squads scrambled to positions.
The match was on.
