Griffon crossed her arms and frowned. “I still don’t see why I’m going with you for this.”
“You’re one of the best fighters on our team,” Daniel said. “You’re there in case we get spotted.”
It made sense to her. Daniel was far from one the best fighters of their group. He was fast and smart, but she had yet to see him win in a one-on-one fight with anyone. Though he wasn’t the best fighter to be sure, he hardly gave himself enough credit. If he just had more confidence in himself, he would excel. Zachery was a better fighter, but not by much. She had no idea how the Woods girls faired in a fight. She had never paid much attention to anyone outside of their group, though she vaguely remembered Robin being quite capable.
Curious, she looked at what they chose to carry as weapons: Lace carried two daggers looped through her belt while Robin had a longsword hanging from her back. She wasn’t surprised to see Daniel and Zachery with their usual short sword and longsword, respectively. Griffon pulled the strap on her shoulder tighter. She was still disappointed with the weight of the weapon. It was far too light compared to what she preferred, but it was still the heaviest option.
Zachery examined the tree line in front of them. “So,” he said, “are we ready for this?”
Griffon turned on her heel and started walking. “Probably not,” she said, “but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?”
Daniel shrugged and started after her. “You have an interesting take on fun, given the circumstances.”
The rest followed them silently into the trees. They walked as quickly as they could through the thick bush to get as far as they could as fast as possible. They were heading straight north. Given the fact that the forest came to an abrupt end not too far to the south, this was the most likely direction the other team would be. It would keep their fort at roughly the same distance from Vigil while being far enough away from them to keep the exercise interesting.
They ended up following a creek that Lace and Robin had found the night before, giving them a good reference point so they wouldn’t get lost in the thick forest. They made good time. When the sun was directly overhead, they spotted it. It was only a corner of the fort roof, but it was enough to make them stop in their tracks and drop to the ground. Without a word, they doubled back and looped around to the west so they could come out on the far side of the fort. They stopped with the fort nearly a hundred feet away on the other side of a thick line of trees. Griffon and the others gathered in the thick undergrowth to stay out of sight of prying eyes.
Zachery’s voice was barely heard in the quiet of the forest. “Robin and I will lag behind and watch your backs. The three of you can move up and get a better look.”
Griffon frowned. She wasn’t the quietest of them but rather than make a fuss of it all she bit her lip and said nothing as everyone else nodded their consent. Without a word, she followed Daniel and Lace through the foliage. They moved agonizingly slow, making sure every movement would not cause a noticeable disturbance in the forestry around them. They carefully chose the placement of each foot and hand on solid ground so as not to stumble. Crouching like this was uncomfortable and awkward. She hated every moment of it. She was only supposed to be here in case something went wrong, yet here she was crawling beneath the brush to do something Zachery should have been doing. Griffon paused and looked toward her companions, who had disappeared. She assumed they had branched off to each side of her to see the fort at different angles. It took her several minutes to reach a point where she could clearly see the fort across the pond.
It was structurally identical to theirs. This one, however, sat with the entrance facing the water. The forest also grew directly next to the fort. She looked to the roof of the fort and saw four people sitting at each corner. She recognized Alan on the side closest to her right away, but the others’ faces were hidden from her view. She saw no one else in or around the fort. That meant there were either more inside or they were out scouting like Griffon and her team. She decided they were most likely scouting. It would be pointless to be on the lower floors at the moment, seeing as how the four at the top of the ladder would be more than enough to hold off any number of attackers since they’d have to climb the ladder to the roof in single file.
Griffon continued examining the area but saw nothing that stood out as useful or out of the ordinary. She was about to start making her way back when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She jumped, but a firm hand on her back kept her from moving too much. She turned and saw Lace motioning to head back. Griffon nodded. They both slowly crawled back to where they’d left Zachery and Robin. Daniel was already kneeling down next to them and speaking in whispers.
“The others must be going to our fort, unless they’re patrolling the area.” Daniel said, again running his hand through his hair, something he seemed to do whenever he was thinking particularly hard.
Lace shook her head. “I don’t think they would be patrolling. That’s too much risk of getting ambushed with how thick the forest is.”
“Did you see anything useful?” Daniel asked Griffon.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t able to look very long, couldn’t get close as quickly as you two.”
He nodded and looked up at the sun through the trees. “We’d better start heading back. We can talk about everything when the whole team is around.”
They started back the way they’d come and returned just over two hours later. Everyone gathered on the roof and Daniel began the brief overview of what they’d seen.
“Their fort is identical to ours, from what we can tell. The doorway faces the pond and the area around it is pretty thick.”
Griffon looked to Clara. “Did you see any of them around while we were gone?”
She laughed and the others around them smiled. “Only one. I don’t think he was the best choice of scout since he stumbled through the brush and into the clearing, looked terrified as he crawled back into the trees.”
Griffon nodded. “There were four of them on their roof keeping watch, so I figured the others were probably doing exactly what we were.”
“So, any ideas on how we want to do this?” Zachery asked. “We have three choices, after all.”
Everyone was quiet as they considered the options. Griffon preferred combat elimination. Capture seemed like too much of a hassle, whether it was the flag or the other team. She also simply preferred to fight if she had the choice.
“I think it’s too soon to get set on one strategy,” Lace said.
Clara raised a hand. “I disagree,” she said. “If we get caught in a fight, we need to know if we should go ahead and use up our one elimination or try to hold off and capture. We should decide now.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Let’s try to avoid elimination if we can,” he said. “Knocking one of them out just locks us out of another option. If we try to capture and end up taking someone out by accident, or if they take one of us out, we can even the playing field by just eliminating the person we captured.”
Clara nodded. “Well,” she said, “let’s decide who will be doing what for the foreseeable future.”
“I’ll take guard duty,” Griffon said with no hesitation. “It beats skulking around the forest.”
The others quickly called out what roles they wanted to fill. After several minutes, it was decided that Zachery and Griffon would take the first night watch and rotate out periodically with the rest of the team. In the meantime, Daniel, Lace, Robert, and Robin would keep an eye on the enemy fort from a safe distance. The rest would rotate guard duty during the day, as well as gather water when they started to run low. It was far from a perfect setup, but it seemed that it would work for the time being, at least until they had a solid plan for how they were going to win and learned how the other team would operate.
Griffon was far from a tactician, but even she knew that all this would likely be decided by who would get t
hat first elimination, unless both parties eliminated one another at the same time. An elimination would essentially lock both teams into two of the three options. The team that lost a member without using its one kill would be locked into the captures, while the team that made the elimination would have to either finish off the rest of the team or take the flag. The first encounter would determine the entire nature of the game, and in the heat of the moment even the most solid plan could go out the window.
Griffon sat on the roof, a hunting knife in hand. She was absentmindedly digging into the wooden roof beside her with the tip of her blade as she continually swept her eyes over the dark tree line. Four uneventful days had passed. She had expected something to happen by now. Based on what Daniel and the others had said, the other team was doing exactly what they’d been doing. Everyone was waiting for someone else to make the first move. No one wanted to leave Vigil. This was the one chance they all had to be a Dragon Guard. Everyone had sacrificed something to be here. They all had their reasons, and none of them wanted to take the chance of going home.
Yet Griffon was growing tired of waiting. Since the day she’d left Forge, or even the day she’d arrived at Vigil, she hadn’t gone more than twenty-four hours without doing something. She was starting to feel pent up and irritated at everything. She’d even thrown her plate at Zachery the night before after he had made a joke at her expense for the third time that day. The others had started giving her a wide berth after that. She looked at the small hole she had dug into the wood before sighing and placing the knife at her belt. She looked behind her at Zachery, who was slightly hunched over.
She rolled her eyes and grabbed one of the small pebbles that she had started to bring up during night watches. With a little more force than was needed, she threw it at the back of his head, making him jump as he was snapped awake. He turned to glare at her. She scolded him with her eyes before turning back around to continue her watch. She kept scanning the forest, making random choices on where she placed her eyes so she never developed a pattern that could be exploited by anyone trying to sneak closer. One of those choices landed her gaze on a low-hanging tree branch that swayed from side to side. She almost chalked it up to the wind. Then she realized that at the moment the air was perfectly still.
She focused on the spot for only a moment before continuing to scan the immediate area around it, periodically bringing her eyes back to the same spot. She never saw anything else out of the ordinary, but all the same it was close to sunrise and the others would be waking soon, so she saw no reason to wake anyone over it. It might have been nothing at all as at this point the branch had stilled itself once again. She continued the watch until the sun slowly started to peek over the horizon. She heard the others below start to wake.
Zachery stood up behind her. “Now that they’re up,” he said “I’m going to get some sleep.”
Griffon didn’t reply as he descended the ladder into the fort. She sat there for a while longer, listening to the chatter of the rest of her team below. She glanced over the edge and saw Lace and Daniel start off toward the tree line. She didn’t think they were going scouting just yet so she wondered what exactly they were doing. She didn’t wonder long. A minute later, they returned with Lace holding two rather large rabbits by the ears.
Moments later, Griffon heard someone climb the ladder behind her and turned to see Clara making her way up to sit with her.
Clara nudged her with her shoulder. “Sleep well?”
“Funny.” Griffon looked over the edge and saw Daniel start the process of cleaning the catch. “Where did the rabbits come from?”
Clara also peered over the edge. “Lace set some snares when they were out scouting yesterday.” She nudged her again. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve just seemed . . . agitated, I guess.”
“I’m tired of waiting. I want to do something.”
Griffon looked over the edge again and watched Daniel. He passed the knife and rabbit to another team member. Then he and the other three scouts headed toward the forest. They never saw anything different when they were out. It was the same report each day: four people atop the fort and the rest were never seen.
Griffon sighed and picked at loose slivers of wood. “I just hate sitting here doing nothing.”
“Well. I like it,” Clara said. “Gives me time to think.”
“I’d rather stay out of my own head. Thanks, though.”
“Ah,” Clara said. “So that’s it.”
“What?”
“That’s why you like the training and the fighting. It’s a distraction, right?”
Griffon said nothing and stared at Clara, a look of irritation on her face.
Clara didn’t seem to notice and continued speaking. “I was the same way for a long time. It’s why I read so many books. It was a way of distracting myself, a way to stay out of my own thoughts when I didn’t want to deal with everything and everyone else.”
“What about now? You still have your head in a book whenever you get the chance.”
“Yeah, but now I do it just for fun.”
Griffon chuckled in spite of herself. After another moment, she and Clara headed down to join the others as they waited for the rabbits to be prepared. Clara was right. Griffon didn’t like to be alone with her thoughts for too long. They always drifted to her brother, which made her feel guilty that she was even here. That she’d left him behind.
Just before they reached the ladder, something in the trees caught Griffon’s eye. The movement was so slight that she almost missed it. The bushes just on the edge of the tree line where she’d noticed the branch sway now rustled unnaturally. Something wasn’t right.
Griffon reached for the string at her shoulder to release her weapon. Clara noticed her intense gaze and followed it. She had only just landed her eyes on the same spot when all at once, six people burst from the trees and charged toward the fort.
“We’re under attack!” Griffon shouted down to the others as she raced to the ladder.
Clara followed as Griffon jumped down the hole to the second floor and again down to the first; she was at the doorway before the other team had made it even halfway across the clearing. She lifted the wooden blade with both hands, while around her the others readied themselves. It was six versus seven. They had the advantage in numbers for the moment but that could change in an instant.
Griffon turned and saw Clara just heading down the ladder. “Clara,” she said, “get on the second floor in case any get past us.”
Clara nodded and climbed back up without objection. Griffon knew Clara was the weakest fighter in their group and Griffon didn’t want to risk her being eliminated. Now, with her safe, it was an even fight. But the question remained, what was the plan was for this attack? Was it to eliminate some of their members from the game or try to take the flag? She had no more time to ponder their strategy. The group ahead of them was close enough to clash and the first came for Griffon.
She didn’t recognize the boy but it didn’t matter. She raised her sword and blocked the first blow, letting it slide along its length to the ground. She was about to bring it up into his chest but hesitated as her instincts yelled for her to do it but her brain told her not to in favor of the single elimination rule. She was only allowed one. If she used it now and needed it later, she would be in trouble. But at the same time she had no real way to capture him in the midst of a fight. If she didn’t do either one, it would be an endless fight until they were both exhausted.
She thought far too long on the dilemma. The boy recovered and brought his sword around hard at her midsection. She barely avoided the strike by jumping back into the doorway. That wasn’t a blow she had been expected to block or even dodge. It had been too fast and had too much power behind it. They were trying to take them out.
Griffon grinned. That made things easier
for her. She swung for the boy’s legs. Her speed caught him off guard and knocked him off his feet and to the ground. She was about to bring her sword down across his chest when something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She turned quickly and saw Jane duck around the corner of the fort to head inside. She was going for the flag while they were distracted with the rest of her team. She glanced back to the fight in front of her. Her team was slowly pushing the attackers away from the door. From what she could see, they hadn’t lost anyone yet.
Griffon didn’t know Jane well but she knew she was a more skilled fighter than Clara. She decided that her team would be able to handle this without her in spite of the number disadvantage. Griffon turned and ran inside. Jane was already up the ladder. Griffon heard her and Clara clashing above. She leaped onto the ladder and quickly climbed its length. When she reached the top, she saw that Jane had Clara pinned against the second ladder with their wooden blades locked together. Just as Griffon finished climbing Jane shoved Clara hard into the wall, causing her to slam the back of her head into the hard wood with a solid thud stunning her.
Without thinking, Griffon charged at Jane and swung at her back. But Jane must have heard her coming. She ducked low. Before Griffon had time to adjust her swing, Jane rolled past her. Griffon skidded to a stop and stopped her sword before she struck Clara in the head. She turned just as Jane swung her longsword at her back. With her own sword pointed down, Griffon blocked the blow, letting it slide down her blade before pushing forward with her shoulder to try to throw Jane backwards.
The maneuver only half worked. Jane stumbled back a step before regaining her footing, allowing her to drop down and sweep her leg, knocking Griffon to the ground. Jane quickly leapt onto Griffon, pointed her sword down, and tried to jab her in the chest. But Griffon managed to use the large hilt of her own sword to knock it away. Jane lifted hers again and tried to slash downward. Griffon again brought her sword up across her chest just in time to prevent a killing blow. Jane put the full weight of her body, along with her arm strength, into her attack. Griffon was able to hold her back, but wouldn’t be able to for much longer. From her position beneath Jane, she couldn’t get the leverage to knock her off or strike back.
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