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Obviously I can’t expect that from Dean. The most I can hope is that he’ll refrain from outright sabotage.
In that case, I guess I should be grateful that he has Anna to distract him. He doesn’t seem to give a shit that Bram is in a foul mood. He doesn’t seem concerned about anything.
I, on the other hand, have the weight of the world on my shoulders.
We each have a white tail tucked in the waistband of our shorts. Like flag football, anyone from the opposing team can steal our tail. Then you go directly to jail. You can break your teammates out of jail, but you risk losing more men to do it. At the same time, we have to protect our own flag while attempting to steal the flags from the other teams.
Our flag stands at the top of a ten-foot pole. We can move the flag, but not conceal it entirely. It has to stay on the pole.
“We should take the flag to the furthest corner of our territory, so they have to advance across the most ground to attack us,” Jules Turgenev says, in an imperious way.
The other Freshmen Heirs aren’t taking too kindly to me being in charge. Jules is in my same dorm, and we haven’t had any conflict up to this point. He mostly keeps to the other Frenchies, be it his roommate Emile, or the Paris Bratva. But like most of the Heirs, he’s fit, good-looking, haughty, and used to telling people what to do.
“No.” I try to sound calm but authoritative. “We’re taking it up on the hill. It’ll be visible, but no one will be able to sneak up on us.”
Jules exchanges a dubious look with Hedeon Gray. I ignore them both. I’m in charge. As long as my orders make sense, nobody will challenge me directly.
Quickly, before anybody else can pipe up with their strategy, I divide the Freshmen into groups. We need jailers, guards to keep the flag safe, and attack squads to go after other flags.
I’m torn because I know how fucking fast Dean is, but I’m not sure if I can trust him to go after a flag. It might be safest to appoint him jailer where the worst damage he can do will be to let his prisoners go too easy—which I think his pride will prevent.
In the end, my need to win overrides my caution. I task Dean, Bram, Valon Hoxha, and three more of their crew with capturing the Sophomore flag.
Gritting my teeth, I assign Anna to their team as well. The last thing I want to do is push Anna into Dean’s arms, but I know how badly he wants to impress her. He won’t fuck up if she’s watching.
My other dilemma is whether to focus on attacking one particular team or try to steal multiple flags at once.
We know the territories of the other teams, but not precisely where they’ll be keeping their flags. The Juniors are north, closest to the school, in a rocky area full of boulders, crevices, and scrubby olive trees. The Sophomores are west of us in the vineyards. And the Seniors have the most defensible area of all: the river bottom.
I decide to send out a second unit against the Juniors, but to leave the Seniors alone, at least at the beginning. Maybe it’s cowardly, but something tells me that stealing Pippa Portnoy’s flag isn’t going to be easy.
Professor Howell is running the challenge. He starts us off by ringing a klaxon that you can hear clear across the island. It blares out, probably startling every last sheep and goat for miles around.
My first two attack teams sprint off north and west, in the direction of the Junior and Sophomore teams. Dean stays put, watching me out of the corner of his eye.
I’m reserving Dean’s team. I haven’t told the first two teams, but they’re the pawns, so to speak. I don’t want to risk my fastest runners first, so I sent out the B-teams, knowing they might be caught. Meanwhile, I set up my defensive players in a perimeter with several perched up in hidden vantage points so they can call out warnings to the players below.
So begins a six-hour sweaty, bloody battle that drags on and on. The territory we have to cover is huge, and it soon becomes clear that this is a battle of endurance and attrition as much as of bold attacks.
Twice our attack squads are captured, once by Kasper Markaj, who put the majority of his players on defense, and who is resolutely hunting down the opposing players and locking them up in his near-impregnable jail, and once by Pippa Portnoy, whose Senior players seemed to melt out of shadows and creep up out of the field grass with supernatural speed.
I soon realize how much more experienced the upperclassmen really are. We almost lose our flag in the first twenty minutes when Calvin Caccia’s Junior team launches a blitzkrieg up our hill. If I hadn’t personally snatched six or seven tails off his attackers, splitting his group in half, we wouldn’t have been able to hold them off.
I have to be in a hundred places at once, sweat running down my face and stinging my eyes as I try to coordinate a dozen different groups, shifting and moving them like pieces on a chessboard, altering my strategy with each new wave of attacks from our enemies.
And all the time, I can’t stop watching Anna. She’s following my instructions perfectly, but I can’t help feeling that we aren’t working together like we used to. She isn’t fighting me, but sheisn’t giving me advice either—she’s just obeying. There’s nothing satisfying in that. It feels hollow.
I think she could help me more, if she wanted to.
At least she’s accomplishing her purpose in spurring Dean to his best efforts. He comes back twice from Markaj’s territory, filthy and drenched in sweat, his team decimated to him and Valon alone. The third time he’s recovered Anna and the rest of his men, having successfully broken them out of jail. I wish he’d have brought the flag back instead, but it’s better than nothing.
I hear Professor Howell’s klaxon sound again and a puff of silver smoke goes up in the sky from the direction of the Senior’s territory. That means they captured the Sophomore’s flag. Kasper Markaj’s team is out of the competition.
I’m glad it’s not us, but I feel bad for him all the same. He’s a decent dude, and quite honestly I’d rather face off against him in the subsequent challenges instead of the more aggressive Calvin Caccia, or the more devious Pippa Portnoy.
A skinny spy called Casey Pope groans from inside our jail. “What!?” he cries. “First out? No fucking way. Not possible.”
“Unless I’m colorblind, that’s definitely our shade of gray,” Ozzy laughs. He’s sitting in jail right next to Casey, but he doesn’t seem too upset about it. I got the impression that he and Miles were giving the game about the same level of seriousness they would apply to a rousing round of Monopoly.
