The Sports Captain's Tale

Chapter Five

“You fucking cheats!”

Blair stamped up and down, his face purpling until it looked like a blancmange. I would have felt sorry for him if it had been someone – anyone – else. He’d had a stroke of good luck and taken ruthless advantage of it, only to lose because we’d had a plan in place that had been better than his. And now he was bitching and moaning because his perfect victory had been stolen … honestly, I didn’t know why he was so pissed. We might have scored enough points to proceed to the finals, but so had he.

“You cheated,” Blair repeated. “And you …”

Sergeant Wills cleared his throat. “Kai? Would you care to comment?”

I met the sergeant’s eyes, evenly. “Nothing we did broke the rules,” I said. “We brought nothing into the arena. We didn’t hack the tracking spells. We didn’t even try to free ourselves after we were taken out” – I gave Blair a hard look – “or anything else that could reasonably be called cheating. We just outthought them and then outfought them.”

“You freed yourselves,” Blair snapped. That was a bit rich, coming from him. “You cheated!”

“Mildred freed us,” I countered. “She wasn’t hexed herself, therefore it wasn’t cheating and perfectly legal.”

Blair reddened. I was tempted to point out he’d tried to free himself, which really was cheating, but it would just make me a tattletale. The sergeants hadn’t noticed or Blair would have been frog-marched to the stocks or flogged by now … probably. They weren’t impressed by his lineage or anything else he might have to offer. They would have done something if they’d noticed.

“Perfectly legal cheating,” Darrell commented, sourly. Her face was stained with mud, but I could tell she was embarrassed. She’d had a stroke of bad luck, compounded by a lack of time to recover. Blair would rub her nose in her failure until she snapped and tried to hurt him. “We never even thought of it.”

“But you kept three of your people in the base,” Blair said. “Surely, that is against the rules!”

“No,” Sergeant Wills said, simply. “Good practice is not to let yourself get trapped in your own base. It’s quite possible to lose, as you tried, by putting the base under siege. But it isn’t against the rules to leave someone in the base …”

He paused, his eyes moving from team to team. “Darrell and Ham do not have enough points to proceed to the finals,” he said, as if there was anyone in the room who had any doubt of it. “Blair and Kai will be facing the winners of the next match, winner take all. You have two weeks to prepare yourself before your final challenge.”

“Winner takes all,” Blair said. “How ...”

Sergeant Wills glared him into silence. “BattleBorne is not just about taking out the enemy team,” he said. “It is about learning to work together, as a team, and devising newer and better tactics that can later be used on the battlefield. Points are awarded for victory, true, but also for innovation. If you come up with something new, be it a new technique or an adaptation of an earlier technique, the judges will award points for that too. There is no point in grumbling, like Prince Hastings, when your enemy comes up with something new and beats you. You need to adapt to the new reality and come up with something new yourself.”

I nodded. Prince Hastings had been first in line to his throne after his father died, only to be booted out of the line of succession and his kingdom when his younger brother raised a gunpowder army and effortlessly crushed the royal guardsmen. He’d been making the rounds of the Allied Lands since then, trying to drum up support for a bid to reclaim the throne, but he’d been given little more than sympathy and sometimes not even that. If the broadsheets were to be believed, he was so rude and unpleasant his peers preferred to deal with a known usurper to the legitimate heir. I couldn’t blame them.

That, and the fact his brother controls the kingdom and its resources and has a head start in building up a gunpowder army, I reflected. There’s nothing to gain from backing a loser when the winner could take your head too.

Sergeant Wills cleared his throat. “Kai?”

I grinned. “I took the liberty of hiring a pub down in Dragon’s Den for the party,” I said, as if it had all been my own idea. “And you’re all welcome to join us.”

“Well, I’m glad it was you who won,” Ham said. I heard what he didn’t say and smirked. Losing to me might be bad, but losing to Blair would be terrible. “I’ll see you down there.”

Darrell snorted. “I need a shower, then we can head down too,” she said. “Congratulations.”

I watched her go, wondering if there’d be a chance to rekindle our relationship. Not bloody likely … though it might be worth finding out if she’d like to be a reservist. She had the skills and I could hardly refuse the chance to ask her, even if she said no. If nothing else, she was far better than Blair. I wouldn’t want him at my back. It would be a good way to get a knife put in it.

“We won,” I said to my team, once we were alone. “Tonight, we party.”

Mildred looked down. “I don’t go to parties,” she said. “I …”

“You’re coming with us,” I said, firmly. Poor Mildred had never been invited to parties … I wondered, suddenly, if she’d ever been kissed. She certainly didn’t have any close friends … not even someone to chat with, every so often. “You’ll enjoy it.”

“Are we invited too?” Karen asked. “We might get in trouble if we went down …”

“Blame it on me,” I said. Karen and Bill were third-years, which meant they’d get in trouble for leaving school without permission … but they’d also get in trouble for ignoring a direct order from an older student who happened to be their captain. Perhaps the Grandmaster would let it pass, if he found out about it. If he didn’t, the only person he could punish was me. I could take it. “Just tell them you were following my orders and you’ll be fine.”

Bill grinned. “You poor bastard.”

“Go get showers,” I said, firmly. “And meet me in the Great Hall in twenty minutes.”

I showered and changed, then headed down to the hall. Half the senior students were already heading down to the town – any excuse for a party – while the remainder were either getting ready to go or making a show of staying in the castle. I made a mental bet with myself that Blair would come to the party, insisting he was a winner because he got to take his team into the finals, then shrugged. It was unlikely anyone would cause trouble in Dragon’s Den. The town council would report the troublemaker to the Grandmaster and the troublemaker would suffer.

“You could wear something a little nicer than that,” Karen said to Mildred, as they entered the hall. “Don’t you own a dress?”

“It got stolen back in first year,” Mildred said, practically whispering. Even I could tell she was nervous. “I never bought a replacement.”

Karen squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll go shopping tomorrow after class, if you like,” she said. “We can buy you something new.”

I shot her a sharp look. Karen might mean well, but she was also taking advantage of Mildred so she could go to town on a weekday. I’d have to have a word with her later. The last thing I needed was trouble between them … really, the last thing Karen needed was to get into bad habits. Ordering a senior student around … if she tried that on Darrell or one of her peers, Karen would be lucky if she wasn’t beaten to within an inch of her life. If Mildred had a little more confidence …

Mildred stayed close to me as we walked down the road to Dragon’s Den. Night was already falling, but the town was surprisingly and brightly lit. I saw small groups of teenage students lining up outside the shops, bars, and brothels, the latter trying to hide under obscurification spells even though everyone already knew who – or at least what – they were; I spotted guardsmen keeping a wary eye on things from a distance, unwilling to intervene unless something got really out of hand. I winced inwardly. I’d considered the guard as a career, before I’d come into my magic, only to have Dad tell me it was a bad idea. For once, my old man probably had a point.

“It’s loud,” Mildred muttered, as we stepped into the pub. No one had waited for us before getting the party started. “Does it have to be so loud?”

I shrugged. The noise – one would have to be very charitable indeed to call it singing – was loud, but it could be worse. I’d attended matches where rival teams of supporters had sung their songs at the top of their lungs, each one trying to drown out the other by creating a discordant racket that had often led to fights. It wasn’t helped by someone having set up an outline of the match on the big board, triggering off arguments over whether or not we’d cheated and, if we had, who’d really won the match. I heard someone loudly insisting I had cheated and another denying it, the argument turning rapidly into a fistfight that drew in others who just wanted a fight. A handful of beer maidens carried their trays through the room, faces fixed in unconvincing smiles. I shook my head politely as they offered me beer. I needed to keep a clear head.

Mildred stayed close to me as I ordered a couple of orange juices. It felt as if everyone was coming up to me, slapping me on the back – perhaps a little harder than necessary – and congratulating me on my great victory. They made it sound as if I’d done it all on my lonesome. I hoped the others weren’t too annoyed, if they heard it. Karen and Bill were dancing on the far side of the bar, while Mark and James were drinking beer and Jerry was heading off with one of the beer maidens. I hoped he remembered his protective spells. He was too young to have children. So was she.

The racket grew louder. Someone took her top off and started to dance on the counter. Her boyfriend tried to grab her, only to be dragged down by two more. Darrell knocked their heads together, hard, then helped her friend off the bar and out the far door. I hoped she was just drunk, rather than under someone’s spell. Grandmaster Gordian might take a more relaxed attitude to drinking than his predecessor, but there were limits. If she’d been enchanted, the caster would be in deep shit. If he was caught … I looked around for Blair – it was his sort of assholery – but there was no sign of him. Who knew? Perhaps he’d gone to bed with one of the waitresses too.

Poor girl, I thought, nastily. She must really need the money.

“This is just too loud,” Mildred said. She looked as out of place as … well, something very out of place indeed. “I need to go catch my breath.”

“Go outside,” I said, pointing to the far door. “Take a breath and then come back in.”

Mildred left. I turned back to my drink. I could stay for another hour or … I was between girlfriends. I could try to pick up one of the waitresses myself, or go down to the brothel, or … who knew? Perhaps Darrell would be interested in a night of passion before we went back to school? I smiled at the thought – she was a handful between the sheets – then pushed it aside. It wasn’t going to happen. The last time I’d made eyes at her, because I’d been fool enough to think we could stay lovers even as we competed with each other on the pitch, she’d hexed me.

I sipped my drink and waited. Perhaps Mildred wouldn’t come back. She was a sorceress in training, skilled enough to pass her exams and go on to senior year. She’d be perfectly safe … wouldn’t she? Ice ran down my spine. She might be good at spellcasting from a safe distance, but … would she have the nerve to walk home on her own? In the dark? I stood, unsure quite what was bothering me, and headed for the door. A whore caught my arm, her dress bursting with promise, only to have me shrug her off. It wouldn’t annoy her that much. There was no shortage of potential customers in the bar.

There was no sign of Mildred, either, as I stepped outside. I cursed under my breath and cast a tracking spell. It wobbled alarmingly, suggesting someone was trying to obscure her precise location without being too obvious about it. And that meant … I repeated the tracking spell, drawing on the remains of the entanglement charms. No mundane street thief, or common or garden rapist, could do that. She wouldn’t hide herself, which meant …

I picked up speed, allowing the spell to pull me into an alleyway. It was rare for anyone to really bother a student from Whitehall, not when the students were magicians and capable of defending themselves, which meant … I muttered a pair of night vision spells, then a hearing spell, as I reached the alleyway. Two people were at the far end, one pressing the other against the wall. Mildred was being held in place by … I ground my teeth in sudden fury. Blair. Of course it was Blair. Was he insane? If he tried to rape her … I swallowed hard, fighting to control my anger. Did he really think he was immune to punishment? Did he really think Mildred would keep her mouth shut? Did he really think …?

He was whispering, but the spell carried his words to my ears. “You got lucky,” he hissed, his voice low and threatening. To me, it was merely annoying. I knew I was a fair match for him. To Mildred, who froze when confronted with the unexpected … it had to be terrifying. “Your team won through sheer luck. But it won’t happen again. If you stay on the team …”

Blair leaned forward, pushing her against the wall and leaving her in absolutely no doubt what would happen if she stayed on the team. I was shocked. Trying to lure someone away through cajolery or bribery was one thing, outright threatening them was quite another. And he’d picked on the weakest link, the teammate who had the least emotional investment in a glorious victory. I would have admired his animal cunning if he hadn’t been a shitty person …

I started forward, intent on beating the shit out of him, as he pushed Mildred even harder. Her eyes went wide, an instant before there was a brilliant flash of light and Blair morphed into a frog. I heard his outraged croaking as he tried to hop away, then grinned at Mildred. She was staring around wildly, as if she didn’t quite believe what she’d done. I felt my grin grow wider. If she hadn’t turned a fellow student into something before now, she was probably the only one ... Blair kept hopping, until I put my foot on him. I felt his magic twist as he tried to undo the spell, to escape before it was too late. But it was already too late. I altered the spell and made it stronger, then kicked him down the alleyway.

It won’t last forever, I thought, as I caught Mildred’s arm and pulled her in the other direction. That would get me expelled. But he’ll have a few nasty hours before it wears off.

“Kai!” Mildred seemed torn between hugging or hexing me. “You … he … what …?”

“It’s alright,” I said. What was I supposed to say? “I … you bested him! You beat him!”

“I …” Mildred staggered against me. “I … he said he’d kill me …”

“Not after that,” I told her. “You scared him.”

“Really?” Mildred didn’t seem to believe me. “Did I?”

“Yeah.” I winked, although I wasn’t sure she could see me. “Bullies are always cowards. You put them in a world of pain and they go running.”

I sighed, inwardly, as I hurried her back to the school. It was true – a bully always had a cowardly heart – but it was difficult to expose it. A bully only becomes a bully because he’s allowed to get away with a small act of bullying, then a slightly larger act of bullying, then an even bigger act … with each act, the level of force you need to reveal his inner coward grows higher and higher. Sure, Blair had been shocked – and the adjustments I’d made to the spell should give him a nasty fright – but he wouldn’t be knocked down for good. He’d think she got lucky. He might even tell himself I cast the spell.

Mildred shuddered against my arm. “He said I only got the place on the team because we were … sleeping together.”

“Oh,” I said, deadpan. Someone said that about Darrell too. She kicked him in the crotch hard enough to do real damage. “And are we sleeping together?”

I didn’t need the spell to see her blush. “No!”

“No,” I agreed. “So you know he’s lying.”

She said nothing for a long moment, then: “What do we do now?”

“We train for the final match,” I said. Blair would be doing the same, as would whoever won the next match. They’d copy our trick, if I was any judge, and then … we’d just have to come up with something new. “And we kick his ass right across the field.”