Schooled in Magic (42 page)

The problem was simple enough - too simple. An opposing team, the Snakes, held the fortress. To win, all the Snakes had to do was hold it long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And they had solid walls that would block magical attacks, giving them a protection that her team would lack, badly. If they marched right up to the fortress, they would be mowed down before they could actually do anything. A frontal assault would lead to bloody disaster.

Some of the boys had been skeptical of having a girl in their midst, no matter how hard they tried to hide it. They didn’t think she could handle Martial Magic; some had been condescending, while some had been outright rude. One of them had actually offered to carry her pack on one of the five-mile marches Sergeant Harkin had led them on, even knowing that it would get them both in trouble. Her cheeks stung at the memory as she turned to face her team. She was
not
going to let this opportunity to prove herself slip away.

“Jade, I want you and Rupert to pretend to launch a frontal assault,” she said. They
could
use the trees for cover, as long as they didn’t get too close. “Don’t actually press it, but force them to keep their heads down.”

“Understood,” Jade said. He might have doubted her, yet she knew that he would follow orders. She would have been surprised if he didn’t resent taking orders from a mere first-year, but at least one of their failures had occurred because someone hadn’t obeyed orders quickly enough to save the day. “We’ll engage them at long range and just keep firing.”

Emily smiled. “Cat and Bran go left, sneak around and take them from that side. Pillion and I will go right. Hopefully, they’ll be looking at Jade and not to either side.”

It
sounded
workable, but she was coming to learn that there was a difference between a plan outlined on paper, or in words, and actually putting it into operation. None of them questioned her openly, thankfully. She wasn’t sure
what
she would have done, even though she did have the right to chew them out for questioning her. They couldn’t escape the fact that she was
nothing more than a first-year, although she had
escaped a would-be kidnapper.

Jade and Rupert headed off towards the enemy fort. A moment later, she heard the sound of charms flying through the air. She hesitated, then cast an anti-surveillance spell into the air, putting as much power into it as she could. Bran copied her, hopefully blanketing enough of the battlefield to confuse any enemy troopers trying to spy on them. In their place, Emily would certainly have tried to spy on the attackers before she got into firing range.

“All right,” she said to Bran. “Go.”

Staying low, she started to run around the thicket before dropping to the muddy ground. It was never a pleasant sensation at the best of times–the mud clung to her body every time she moved–but it was better than being stunned by a charm. Or running into a concealed hex and being frozen in place. She glanced at Pillion, who had hit the ground beside her, then started to crawl forward, keeping her senses primed for magical booby traps. If she’d been charged with holding a small position with only a handful of men, she would have scattered landmines around liberally.

The sound of spells being exchanged grew louder as Jade and Rupert pressed their attack. She saw flickers of light from where they were hiding, pounding away at the makeshift fort as they slowly crawled forward. The defenders were firing back through murder holes they’d placed within their structure, trying to see the attackers as they came into view. It didn’t seem to have occurred to them that the main attack might be just a diversion.

Every time you think a plan is going perfectly
, one of the books had said,
you’re just about to lose
. Emily shivered and kept crawling forward, watching for mines as the enemy fort came into view. It wasn’t really a fort at all, she told herself, as she spied three of the enemy defenders, including Aloha. There was no sign of the other three at all and that bothered her. Sergeant Harkin had told her that the defenders intended to defend, but he
hadn’t
said that they were bound to stay in the fort. The books also claimed that the best defense was a heavy offense.

She exchanged glances with Pillion, trying to decide what to do. They could attack, now, and be reasonably sure of removing all three of the visible defenders from the exercise, but where were the others? Were they trying to launch a counterattack, or were they setting an ambush, or ... what? It would be easy to take the fort and lose all of the team in the process. That, the Sergeant had pointed out more than once, was no victory.

Shaking her head, knowing they might be seen at any moment, she used her hand to signal a countdown, before throwing the first charm into the undefended rear of the fort. Hobo, a tough sixth-year who was probably the strongest in the class, was first to fall.

A hail of charms blazed out of the woods as the three visible defenders fell to the ground, pretending to be dead. The other three
had
been trying to counterattack against Jade and Rupert. Emily hugged the muddy ground as the blasts of light flashed over her head, just before the other assault team engaged the remaining defenders from the rear. And then it was all over.

Sergeant Harkin blew his whistle, signifying the end of the exercise. Emily stood up, looking down at her uniform and rolling her eyes. As always, she’d ended up covered in mud, but no one seemed to care. Apart from the Sergeant, who was always impeccable, everyone else was dripping with mud too. She caught sight of Aloha and looked away, unwilling to make eye contact with her roommate. No matter what else happened, Aloha and her team would be embarrassed by being beaten so easily. But it sure hadn’t felt easy at the time.

“Well done,” Jade said, clapping her on the shoulder as they walked back to the Sergeant’s position. “I hope we were sufficiently diverting?”

“You were very diverting,” Emily said. They’d be debriefed, of course, and then lectured on what they’d done wrong. And after that, they could go for a shower. “Although I think they nearly managed to counterattack you.”

“Yeah,” Jade said. He grinned. “We thought we’d let them get very close before dealing with them.”

Sergeant Harkin studied them as they lined up in front of him. They had changed, Emily realized, since they’d first started the class, lining up automatically rather than being hectored into position. And, despite the aching in every muscle, she knew she was fitter than she’d been back home, and probably stronger too. Nothing built muscle like heavy exercise and unsympathetic pushing from a Sergeant. Maybe she’d never be a strong as Jade, or Hobo, but she was coming along. The Sergeant had even promised that they’d be studying unarmed combat soon enough.

“A terrible defeat for the Snakes,” Harkin observed, without preamble. “Where, exactly, did you go wrong?”

Aloha’s current team leader spoke up, reluctantly. “We didn’t watch all of the possible angles of approach. And we allowed ourselves to be forced to remain under cover.”

“A good answer,” Harkin said. “Where else did you go wrong?”

There was a long pause, before Aloha tried to answer. “We sent three people away to counterattack. We weakened ourselves at the wrong moment.”

Harkin smiled. “And was that really a mistake?”

It was a trick question, Emily was sure. The books noted that in war, the simplest things were hard and the easy answers tended to lead to more problems further down the line. And yet they’d also been told that to stand still risked eventual defeat. There didn’t seem to be any real answer at all.

“Yes,” Aloha’s leader said. “It weakened us at the wrong moment.”

“As Aloha said,” Harkin reminded him, coldly. “But she was right, for the wrong reason. Why was it a mistake? Why would it have been a mistake even if Emily had launched a frontal assault with her entire team?”

We’d have been slaughtered
, Emily thought. Losing everyone would have been a black mark on her record, even if there were no other repercussions.
Unless ...

Harkin looked from face to face. “Would anyone like to tell him the answer?”

Emily saw it in a sudden flash of inspiration. “They had reinforcements on the way. All they had to do was hold on until relieved.”

“And how do you know,” Harkin inquired, in a uncomfortably polite voice, “that they had reinforcements on the way?”

“Because they should have called for them as soon as Jade launched the frontal assault,” Emily said, fighting to keep her temper under control. The Sergeant could get under her skin far quicker than any other tutor, even though there was no genuine malice in his words. “They would have had to call, because we might have been the spear-point of an entire army intending to ram itself through the hole.”

There were some chuckles, which faded away as the Sergeant glared around him. “You’re right,” he said finally. “By splitting their numbers, the defenders weakened themselves when all they had to do was wait and hold position. They were aggressive and paid for it by losing their position. The road to the nearest city now lies open.”

He looked over at the defenders, and then back at the Redshirts. “I’ve told you before that the objective is victory. Throwing away your own people for nothing weakens you more than it weakens the enemy. Always keep one eye on your final objective.

“Congratulations, Redshirts,” he concluded. “And now that we have all had a chance to discuss the recent exercise, you can follow me on a run. Incidentally, anyone who falls behind Sergeant Miles will be the punching bag in the next exercise.”

He turned and sprinted off towards the running track. There was a pause, and then Jade led the students after him. Emily forced herself to keep her speed under control as she ran, having learned that pushing her legs to run as fast as they could go would exhaust her very quickly. Sweat poured down her back as she heard Miles barking encouragement behind her, along with the occasional tap of his baton to the rear of any straggling student. She’d been tapped enough with his baton to know that she didn’t want to be tapped again.

“Come on,” Harkin bellowed, just like a gym teacher. “You think that the enemy’s going to stop chasing you because you’re tired?”

Emily winced. One of their exercises had involved trying to hide from enemy huntsmen who knew the forest like the back of their hands. She’d been caught quickly, tied up and left helpless until the exercise had terminated. The huntsmen had known more about tying knots than the Sorcerer Malefic, she’d decided later. Escape had been completely impossible. Harkin had promised them that they’d do the exercise again, later. Emily wasn’t looking forward to it.

Her heart was pounding and she was breathing heavily when Harkin finally called a halt, just outside the school. Before, she wouldn’t have been able to complete such a run, not without staggering to a halt and begging for mercy. Now, she knew that she would recover very quickly, if only because of a mixture of good food and solid exercise. Harkin cast an eye over them as they lined up in front of him, studying their muddy uniforms. At least he didn’t seem to expect them to keep their clothes
clean
.

“Good,” he said, finally. “We may be graduating to more advanced running next week.”

Emily groaned, inwardly. More
advanced
running? She could see ways to toughen up the other exercises, or the climbing frame device that he’d used to teach them how to scramble up and down trees, cliffs and even house walls, but how could they run harder? Maybe he intended to force them to run faster, or get walloped with the baton. It seemed clear to her that both of the Sergeants were deliberately holding back as they ran.

“Each team will also be expected to join us on a ramble through the countryside,” the Sergeant added, after a moment. Emily suspected that it was going to be more of a hellish cross-country march. “There will be five days spent away from Whitehall in the mountains, where we will live off the land as we visit some places of historical interest. We will sleep under the stars, just as fully-trained soldiers do when on campaign.”

He smiled, rather dryly. “You are responsible for ensuring that your other tutors know that you will be gone, once we post the rota,” he warned them. “There shouldn’t be any real disruption to your studies, but if your tutors kick up a fuss, inform us and we’ll see what we can do. If worst comes to worst, we can add you to a different team for the trip. I suggest that you do your reading and make sure you know what you want to bring.”

Emily winced at the droll amusement in his voice. He’d let them make mistakes because they hadn’t read the material properly, and then pointed them out after it was too late to easily fix
the mistakes. It wasn’t a mistake she intended to repeat, particularly if they had to carry everything on a five-day route march. The five-mile marches were bad enough.

“Now, you may go shower,” he concluded. “Emily, stay behind for a moment.”

Emily watched as the rest of the class headed for the showers, wondering nervously what Harkin intended to say to her. It could be anything from congratulations to a private rebuke, one so unpleasant that even the Sergeant would hesitate to issue it in front of the entire team.

“You did well,” Harkin said. “But you do realize that you capitalized on an enemy mistake?”