…or, Sting Like A Butterfly
Things didn’t get any better for the MU side with the first engagement of Hydra heroes, a tall, lanky swordsman wielding a falchion and a half-elf woman with a pair of small axes. They cut down the first Dragons to challenge them at the edge of the woods without effort.
The woman was something to watch. She had a shaved head and black tattoos over the right half her face and her right arm and leg. She wore a one-piece armor of some kind of scaly black leather that looked like a sleeveless, legless bodystocking.
If they weren’t completely abstract, the pattern of the tattoos was something too arcane for me to recognize. Her axes were long handled with small blades sculpted like butterflies, with a spear-like tip. They were the sort of weapon specially designed for looking cool in mock combat. She wielded them like a short pair of swords or batons, slapping them together in a V to catch a blade, slapping away a spear, and stabbing and slashing her way through her opponents.
A crossbow bolt raced through the trees towards her. She brought her axes across in front of her chest and it broke into three pieces, the head tumbling end over end to bounce off her chest without much effect. She waved an axe at the shooter and the head flew off, glowing silvery-white as it flew towards him. The projectile struck him in the ribs before zooming back to her handle.
“That isn’t fair!” Pala said. “How many points is that?”
“Heroes are in a separate pool from soldiers,” I said.
“Then they could let anyone be a hero,” she said. “No matter how many points they’re worth.”
“True, but there are practical limits,” I said. “If a team could find a hundred point hero, or somebody so loaded up with equipment that they were worth that much, the other team could field that many more ten or twenty point heroes. A single person just isn’t worth that much on a big battlefield. They can only cover so much ground, and if they get taken out, that’s it.”
“If they aren’t worth that much they shouldn’t cost so many points,” Pala said.
“Anyway, when you get too many heroes on the field, it stops being skirmish and starts being more like a bunch of single combats,” I said. “That’s why there’s an implied gentleman’s agreement to limit the use of the ones they do have. Otherwise, we might as well be watching gladiator matches.”
There was a flurry of activity inside the trees, and the illusioncast that had been covering that area abruptly shifted, showing a wide view of the half-elf stalking forward through the trees, Dragons with crossbows and spears retreating before her. A black-cloaked figure shimmered into view behind her, running at her back with a knife.
She flipped her axes around and thrust them out behind her, impaling the assassin in the gut. He was stopped in his tracks. His dagger blade doubled in length, the tip punching out to score a graze across her shoulder, wounding her armor more than her. She pulled her axe heads out and he fell over.
“Iason should be out there doing that,” I said.
“Maybe he’s just doing a better job of not being noticed,” Marlot said.
“I don’t think he even showed up,” I said.
“The best assassins never do,” she said. “That’s plausible deniability for you. A really good alibi for murder is if the victim’s still alive and can testify that you weren’t there to kill them.”
“I-I don’t think that would work very well,” Pala said.
“No? It’s how I became the most successful assassin in Westphale,” Marlot said.
The half-elf ducked to the side as three crossbow bolts converged on the spot where she had been, followed by a flurry of others. The human warrior was being engaged on all sides by Dragons with swords. He spun around and lines of blue fire flared from his falchion blade. The lines hung in the air around him, revolving and catching his opponents’ attacks. His own weapon sliced out through the whirling wall of force like it wasn’t there, turning the advantage away from his attackers.
Then a flurry of crossbow bolts sailed in at him, too. Some of them were caught by the blue lines, but there were too many to be blocked at once. He took grazing hits to a leg and his arms, and started to back away. The half-elf also yielded the woods as one of MU’s solo fighters came up to challenge her, backed by the crossbows. A burst of phantasmal flame—shaped appropriately like three winged dragons—from a wand-tip routed them and the line of scouts who’d been advancing in their wake.
“Whoo!” Pala shouted, clapping and shaking the stand by thumping her feet. “More magic! Go Dragons! More magic!”
Several people looked up and back at her in annoyance. I don’t think it was just because of the stomping. This wasn’t exactly a cheering moment.
The illusionary fire “knew” it was surrounded by vegetation, and reacted accordingly. The far end of the woods was quickly ablaze. The Dragons retreated from it. The trees might have been a staging area for their first attack on enemy territory, but instead they’d lost half a squad and been forced to torch it. The illusionary flames would last for about twenty minutes, taking the woods out of the equation until near the end of the next period. If the Hydras inflicted more losses that the Dragons couldn’t match, we’d be hard-pressed to hold the border after that.
“Now they should have them run out of the woods,” Pala said, waving her hand in a circle and pointing to the seventh squad, scattered aimlessly. The illusioncasters were avoiding them, like they didn’t know what to do with them, either.
“What?” I said.
“They should be running really fast out of the fire,” she said. “It would be very scary and no one would expect it.”
“Except everybody would see them forming up and moving over there,” I said. “So any surprise would be lost, and if the Hydras were able to pin them down coming out of the fire, they’d be in a really bad spot.”
“If I were on the team, I wouldn’t let them pin me down,” Pala said.
“Yeah, well, that’s really easy for you to say, since you’re not,” I said. “It’s one thing to fantasize about what it’s like to be out on the field, but it’s different when you’re actually out there. The people you’re fighting aren’t going to just line up and follow your script.”
“Listen to him,” Marlot said. “This comes from years of fantasizing about what it’s like to be out on the field.”
“Hey, I’ve been in real fights with my axe,” I said.
“Yeah? Who won, it or you?” she asked.
“I was never allowed to fight for real,” Pala said. “I trained and I trained and I trained, but none of my cousins would fight me. None of them dared. They would have gotten thumped.”
If everybody she knew was afraid of fighting her, I could see why she’d think a mad charge out of the fire would work. It might have worked with the ogress leading it; but Pala, for all that she was bigger and probably stronger than an ogre, was pretty and human-looking. Her size would just earn her a faster, harder response.
“Where did you have fights, Jamie?” Pala asked. It was the first time she’d called me by name. Her accent almost turned the “J” into a “Y”.
“In the woods,” I said. “Iason and I, we kind of did this adventuring thing.”
She gasped.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Yeah, kind of,” I said. “There are some freaky things out in the deep woods. Killer crows. Lightning worms. Plant and tree monsters.”
“I heard there was a ghoul attack on a stargazing club,” Pala said.
“This area’s wet enough for ghouls,” Marlot said.
“What are they, aquatic?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But ghouls rise when a waterlogged corpse is exposed to the light of the new moon. Marshy areas and places criss-crossed with rivers tend to have them, if they’re sparsely populated enough to give the ghouls places to nest.”
“How many people die in the river, though?” I asked. “And don’t the existing ghouls just eat the bodies that would become new ones?”
“It only takes two or three to get a colony started,” Marlot said. “Ghouls aren’t like zombies or skeletons; they’re a breeding undead.”
“That is gross,” Pala said. “Why would you know something like that?”
“That’s the kind of thing you have to know when you’re a top assassin,” Marlot said.
“Why?”
“For a cover story,” she said. “‘In case you ever need to claim to be an expert in the breeding habits of ghouls.”
“Oh,” Pala said. Doubtfully. “That—that makes sense?”
“No, it doesn’t,” I told her. “Marlot is just being Marlot. Ignore her.”
“That’s a good idea,” Marlot said. “For your own protection.”
Out on the field, the light was turning from bright sunlight to dusky amber and orange. It continued to redden. A minute after it had started to change, it was purple and the first period was over. Casualties were being tallied. There was no break, but the “dead” were allowed to leave the field and the general coaches could decide if they wanted to buy back any downed fighters. The defenders of the battle standards were allowed to move closer to their charges during the night, though the anti-camping rule stopped them from simply encircling it.
Within the first minute of the second period, the remaining magical light had turned from purple to blue and then faded, leaving the hexagonal pit under natural nocturnal illumination.
Well, that and the orange glow of illusionary firelight.
Both sides’ defenders were digging in. The Dragons were pulling their line back. The armies didn’t rest for the night period, but the tactics changed. There would be sneak attacks and stealth missions.
Every once in a while somebody would make a serious attempt on the flag in the second period, but that was like a massed charge in the first period. You had to be ready in case it happened. The fact that you were ready meant it probably wouldn’t.
The point of the opening periods of skirmish was attrition. The sides started out equal, or close enough that you couldn’t hope to get through their territory without leaving yours wide open. If one side chipped away enough at the other in the first two periods, the third one went from little sorties to being one side on offense and one side on defense. If the attackers fucked up and lost a bunch of guys, the momentum could change. If not, they’d eventually get to the standard.
Skirmish matches rarely ended before the third period. That was the earliest one side would find itself outnumbered by the other. The “average” match went for five. There was a huge incentive for the team with the momentum to seal the deal in the fifth period, because if the other side held out for another night, all the lost soldiers on both sides “regenerated”.
Also, the crowd got antsy after two hours.
The game would keep going until one side united the standards or ceded victory to the other, though.
Considering how the first period had gone, MU would pretty much have to turn things around in the overnight or face an onslaught at the start of the next day period. Iason could have helped there: fast, stealthy, and keen-eyed. I didn’t know what the goth kids on the Harlowe squad were if not just goth kids, but they probably could have helped, too. They’d gone off on their own, apart from the others, and were watching the field like spectators. I could still spot the guy by the cherry of his cigarette, and make out the shape next to him because of it.
Iason was still missing and out of action, from what I could tell. The rules did allow fighters to deploy late, as long as there were no enemy combatants near the standard. There was rarely any tactical reason to do so, though. The sides were theoretically equal. Having fresh fighters at the end of the match wouldn’t make up for weakness at the beginning. Even for a stealthy solo seeker like Iason, there was no little benefit to holding him back; his ability to change the course of the battle with his kills would decrease as things heated up.
Though, if they were holding him back and he wasn’t just absent, the first night would be the time to deploy him. Keep the star assassin out of the mix during the day so he can’t be targeted, unleash him under the cover of darkness. That could make sense. If he didn’t show up on the field in the second period, though, it probably meant he wasn’t going to. There would be no reason to set him loose during a later daytime period, and no reason to hold him back for the second night when the coaches couldn’t know if the game would go that long.
“I don’t like the dark times as much,” Pala said. “All the sneaking around and waiting for something to happen. Not as much fighting and magic. I want something dramatic.”
At that moment, an announcement sounded throughout the stands: “Yam-us Bowman to reception. Uh, Yah-mos Bowman to reception, please.”
I looked at Marlot.
“Eh,” she said. “I’ve seen dramatic-er.”
