Chapter 38: Break Out

I sent D'ar'Beth a mental query, “[What now?]”.
“[There is something wrong with this whole situation. You cannot surrender,]” she answered.
S’Alor chimed in with a short “[Agreed]”.
For the first time since the battle started, I realised that I had given S’Alor no thought at all, and I felt vaguely ashamed.
“{Amusement}{Pleasure in the Hunt/Kill} [Watch for me. I will make a path for you,]” S’Alor added.
I shivered mentally at the sheer atavistic pleasure that came through the link to the large cat, and let the Finger know that they should be prepared to break out if the opportunity came.
We fought on for a few minutes, although it started to feel as if it was longer than that as our bodies started to tire. I felt a sudden lessening of the pressure from the one side and noted on my Mental Map that S’alor was approaching from that side.
A huge roar suddenly attracted the attention of the warriors facing us, and I smiled as I realised that S’Alor was making his presence felt. I pulled the Finger in tighter to me and we started moving in S’Alor’s direction.
It took some time and a lot of effort, but with S’Alor joining us, we eventually broke free of thick of the fight and started to run. There were a few individual pursuers, but we cut them down and broke completely free. Shortly afterwards, we were joined by D'ar'Beth, who emerged from behind a small ridge and fell in with the rest of the Finger.
“[Far enough,]” D'ar'Beth finally let me know. For the first time since the ambush had been sprung, I let the Sword Dance drop, and the fatigue came rushing in like the water breaking free from a collapsing dam. I managing to get the Finger to move into positions of all-round defence and then allowed my body to drop down onto the sand. I could feel that all my reserves had been burnt up and I wouldn’t be able to do anything active for some time.
D'ar'Beth examined me critically for a few seconds, then commented, “[Yes. You need the time to recover. S’Alor and I will keep watch. You rest and I will wake you in time or if anything happens.]”

Chapter 37: First Battle

At first I couldn’t see it, but after a few seconds I felt a slight mental nudge from D'ar'Beth. The confusion of the fight clicked into focus and I started to see a pattern forming out of the chaos. The few seconds pause was sufficient, however, for the attackers of the column to charge us and while I was still processing the information, my Finger came into contact with a real enemy for the first time.

I found that while I fell instantly into the full gestalt of the Sword Dance, having D'ar'Beth joining in made me able to split my attention. I was multi-tasking on a level I had never thought possible, focusing on my own fight, managing the Finger in the fight as a group and also able to observe the broader battle and think critically about what was happening.

Our opponents were armed in almost the exact same manner as we were, with long swords, but their appearance otherwise was a little disturbing. They looked like men just like us, except that they seemed to be distorted somehow… there was something just not quite right about them. I couldn’t quite pinpoint the precise differences, I just knew that they were there.

We seemed to be very evenly matched in individual skill, but there were a lot more of them then there were of us. Within a few minutes, it became clear to me that our biggest advantage was in the fact that we were fighting as a true team, that the Sword Dance had added a qualitive advantage that was proving superior to their quantative one, and there were already a large number of our enemies who were clearly out of the fight while we had yet to sustain a single major injury.

The sounds and sights of this fight though were horrific, and I knew that the gruesome injuries that were being inflicted had the potential to haunt my dreams for a long time to come.

Those thoughts were somehow distant from my feelings though as I started to glory in the fight itself, the clash of blades, the physical exertion, the glory of the Sword Dance and the way that it was fast becoming the tightest bond that we had achieved yet.

Each member of the Finger was fighting the warrior to their immediate front,  and yet there was a constant situational awareness that allowed each one to act as the shield for their comrades to each side.

I was becoming lost in the immediate fight, until I got another nudge from D'ar'Beth, and forced myself to think about the larger picture.

The column had been ambushed from both flanks simultaneously, and now that I looked, it was obvious that they had built themselves hides by burrowing into the ground and emerging on some signal. It was still a puzzle how they had managed to avoid the mental probing that had become such an instinctive part of our Sword Dance as we built a Mind Map, but that problem would have to wait for a later time. I noticed though that the “dead spots” that S’Alor had pointed out might have been the indicators of their presence.

What had truely concerned D'ar'Beth was the fact that this battle contained an ambush within the ambush.

The column had been attacked from within its own lines and the main column had fallen back into the center where they were defending themselves fiercely, but there was an outer ring of attackers who were now emerging to press those of us who had been screening the column on the flanks, and we were about to be pinned between the two forces.

I contacted Hand Evans and Desrae and warned them about the danger, and then started trying to extricate Finger from the battle. Breaking contact was exceptionally difficult as the enemy warriors pressed us hard and moving backwards put us on the back-foot both figuratively and literally.

I started pulling the finger in from the flanks to create a circle rather than the extended line that we had been in and that seemed to help, although my Mind Map now showed me that we were definitely surrounded completely, and from what I could sense, there were very few of the other flanking Fingers who were still effective combat forces.

Our briefing during training had been that if we were ever in a hopeless situation, that we should rather surrender as the protocol was that prisoners would be stripped of their weapons and have to give their parole not to fight for a period of time. I was starting to think that this was what I was going to have to do, but at the first hint of this thought I got a very clear message of [NO!] from D'ar'Beth.

Chapter 36: Route march

Morning came too quickly. By the time the sun was visible over the horizon, we were on the move, my finger and Desrae's in the echelon left. We moved at an easy lope, although it was faster than I had thought I would be able to run before coming to War World. The support carts were left behind with a protection element to follow as fast as they could.

We ran on for a number of hours, while I examined the terrain we crossed with interest. We were moving across low rolling ground covered with grass and small bushes. Further out from the road, there was more sub-tropical vegetation with larger bushes and the occasional clump of trees. It was very difficult to see how any-one could ambush us without us knowing about it before-hand considering the way that my internal "mental map" showed me where there were people and animals anywhere within my range.

"[ D'ar'Beth]" I called.

"[Yes Rupert?]"

"[How is it possible that the rest of the Fight got ambushed?]"

"[That is the question that everyone has. Battle here is normally face-to-face with both sides knowing where the other side is. One of the reasons that I am along for this is that I need to confirm my suspicions about how that was possible.]"

"[Oh. OK. Do you think someone can hide their presence from us?]"

"[That shouldn't be possible considering the way that things were set up. If they can, then the problem is most serious.]"

"[Finger, listen.]" I broadcast to the Finger, including Desrae just for her information. "[Forget about detecting any ambush mentally. Time to think as if we were back at home. Use your eyes.]"

I got a acknowledgement from each member of the Finger and I could feel the general sense of awareness increase. S'Alor's response included a touch of 'teach your granny to suck eggs' which I just ignored.

As we ran on, I shifted into the Sword Dance state and pulled the Finger in with me. We had run like this a lot during our training and if felt almost comfortable to do so now. All of us were watching the terrain for any sign of an ambush, but the whole idea of someone being able to hide really irritated me. I had bought into the whole concept of these new mental powers, and yet the more we experienced, the less it seemed that they were going to really help. My mental map showed the column on the march and nothing except small animals in the area surrounding us, but I was now distrustful of that and watched the horizon formed by the rolling terrain as well as checking the tree-lines and looking for dead-ground.

We settled into the run at the higher level of awareness that I felt was necessary, and the miles rolled past under our feet. We paused every two hours to rest and to swap elements of the column around. My finger had rotated back into the main column, out to the right flank, back into the main column and then back onto the left as we approached what we were told would be our stopping point for the night camp.

I could feel the slackening of people's attention directed outwards as everyone started thinking ahead to resting for the night and was about to make a few pointed reminders, when something caught my attention.

Just ahead on the left of the formation, in my Finger's area of responsibility, I sensed that there was something wrong. As I focused on the general area, I called on S'Alor to see if he had noticed what I had.

"[Yes. There seems to be a dead-spot {here}]" he sent.

The area that S'Alor had indicated was right next to the trail, just short of where we were expecting to camp, and right where my Finger would have to pass. I sent out an immediate alert to the Finger and echoed it up the chain of command to Fist Ryan.

As I received an acknowledgement, all hell broke loose as a horde of some sort of creatures erupted from a covered trench and poured into our formation.

The shock seemed to trigger something in me, and I pulled the Finger mentally into a much tighter link than I had thought was possible. I was frantic at first as I thought that my people would be over-run, but as each fought their own private battles, it became clear that the attackers were aiming for the main column and essentially ignoring the screening elements as much as possible. In a few minutes, they were past my Finger and fully engaged with the main force.

I used every second of the respite that was available to me to pull my finger closer together, and once I had them all close, and had done a quick mental check on their state of health and injuries, I turned them all towards the main battle, fully intending to launch an attack into the rear of the attackers.

We were poised to attack, when I got a mental blast from D'ar'Beth, "[Stop Rupert. Wait]".

I couldn't ignore the imperative feel of that communication. It had an implicit expectation that it would be obeyed. I trusted D'ar'Beth enough that I pulled the Finger to an immediate halt and started scanning the battlefield to see what could have caused D'ar'Beth to stop us so precipitously.

Chapter 18: Battle Ready

I moved away from the scene of our fight and was joined by the rest of my finger.

"Wooo that was intense." said Desrae.

"Damn right, but a walk-over. I don’t think it will be quite as easy next time."

"Don’t be too sure. I have been watching just as closely as you and I think that we are a lot better than you realise."

"Maybe. Let’s see what happens. We have definitely lost the element of surprise though."

"Not necessarily. I suspect that even the veteran finger leaders are a little surprised, and they have experience of the real thing. If we keep changing our tactics, I think we will keep them on edge. I also think that our speed is going to be very, very difficult for them to counter."

"Agreed. I think we have just proven though that the use of shields could be an advantage. We couldn’t have broken them as fast if they had been using shields, although if we have to fight a finger that is experienced in the meleé with the parry-dagger, then we might have more of a problem."

"I think you are still underestimating how far we have come. Looks like there is some discussion going on..."

I looked over at Fist Ryon. He had walked off to the side and was involved in an animated conversation with hand Evans and Finger Roberts. The other Finger Leaders had also all congregated in a clump and I saw some arm-waving going on. I grinned at Desrae and the others. Finger Roberts had warned us that we were about to set the cat amoungst the pidgeons.

After about 10 minutes, Finger Roberts left the other two and walked over to us.

"Any pidgeons left alive Finger?" I asked him with a smile.

"Not many!" he smiled back.. "There was some discussion about what you guys did, and whether there was anything that you had done wrong, but mostly they were concerned about what would happen to anyone else that they sent up against you. They are going to consult the other finger leaders and find out if there are any of them that think that their fingers could stand up against you. If not, then they are going to set you against the veteran finger straight away. The whole concept of the competition is essentially scrapped.

"I had to face a few hard questions about what was up with you lot, but Hand Evans supported me. I suspect he is going to have some words with Fist Ryon about believing reports that are passed up through the chain of command. He was hanging around here expecting to see some fireworks. It turns out that he, at least, believed what I told him about you guys. The other hand Leaders have also been called so that they can watch you in your next battle."

"Do you think we will have any trouble with the veteran finger?"

"No. I think that at the very worst, you will find the fight a little more even than your last one, but even then, I think that you have gone beyond what anyone has done before; at least after the first phase of training. Let’s see how it pans out."

We waited for a little while longer until I saw Fist Ryon turn away from Hand Evans and walk over to a bunch of guys sitting under a tree. I had them mapped on my mind-map, but I had paid no particular attention to them up to this point. When I noticed Fist Ryon speaking to them, I realised that they must be the veteran finger that we would have to fight. They were not any brighter on my mind-map than any of the other fingers, but when I focused on them, they seemed to be more intense somehow. As I watched them, both with my eyes and on my mind-map, I saw them get up and start to walk onto the parade-ground. As they started moving, the mind-map images of them seemed to blur slightly and for a moment I had trouble distinguishing the individual warriors. After a few seconds I managed to compensate. I realised that what I had seen was a seasoned finger that had just gone into battle mode by entering the meditative state similar to what we did.

* * *

"[Here comes trouble guys,{image]]" I announced to the rest of my finger.

They all turned to look at the veteran finger, and I could feel them all adjusting their mind-maps in the same way that I had.

I moved back up into battle-mode myself and the rest of the finger followed shortly behind me.

"[Watch out for these guys,] "Finger Roberts warned us, "[they are very very good. The original idea was to put the fear of god into all of you by having the best fingers not only beaten, but wiped out by the best fighting finger of the War Brothers Fight. We were supposed to let you build up a false sense of security and think that you were the best. Once you were all cocky, you were supposed to be taken down a peg or two by them. I suspect that Fist Ryon is personally embarrassed by the way that he ignored what he was told about you and has told this finger to really wipe you out.]

"[Don’t worry. We are anything but cocky. I was just telling with Desrae that we have to be careful; that the next lot won’t be such easy meat.]" I reassured him.

"[OK. Just as long as you know.]

Fist Ryon was standing in the centre of the parade-ground again. "[Join me.]" I heard in my head.

We started walking over to stand near him and as we moved I took the opportunity to evaluate these new opponents.

This new finger looked lean and hard. There were no bearded faces here. All the eyes were wary and very, very aware, and I was sure that we were being evaluated just as closely. Each of the warriors in the finger moved like a velvet coated steel spring; sort of casual movements, but you could see that they were prepared to snap instantly into action at any sign of provocation. I decided right then that the finger leaders we had had for training, including Finger Roberts, must have been away from battle for too long. They didn’t compare to the warriors that I was facing now. They were standing grouped loosely in a square; almost as if there was one tasked with watching each corner. The finger leader, a tall ginger-haired woman, was standing outside the square next to Fist Ryon, and at her back was a flaxen-haired man of about my height.

I started giving instructions to my finger as we arrived, "[Desrae, the flaxen-haired guy is yours, I’ll take the woman. The rest of you pick a corner each. Remember the variations that we have wargamed; I suspect that we will have to try the option that breaks the finger’s unity so that we can defeat them in detail {image/schematic}.]"

"Knuckle Cy Peters, this is Finger Leader Lorraine Jeffry. She leads the veteran finger selected to fight the winners of the battle competition here today. After your win over the last finger, we decided to move directly to a battle between your two fingers. Are you prepared to do this?" Fist Ryon asked.

"Sure Fist." I answered him. I then stuck out my hand "Nice to meet you Lorraine."

"Likewise." Lorraine answered looking slightly startled. She hadn’t been expecting me to greet her. I could see that she was already completely focused and my greeting had thrown her slightly off stride. That was exactly what I was aiming for. Unless I was completely mistaken, Lorraine’s finger was a very tight unit and they would fight that way. I thought that we would need to make every effort that we could to attempt to break that cohesion.

Chapter 17: Combat Competition

As I watched Finger Roberts walk away, I felt a frisson of excitement. I knew that the combat competition wasn’t ‘real’ in the sense that we were fighting real battles, but it was as close as I had been to real combat in a long time. Describing the atavistic thrill to someone who hasn’t experienced it is impossible, but while combat is the most terrible thing that I had ever experienced, at the same time it was the most exciting. When I was honest with myself, the lure of combat was what had drawn me to War World in the first place. I had needed no other reason. I had searched for the adrenaline high in other places; skydiving, base jumping, para-gliding, riding a super-bike insanely fast and various other risky undertakings, but none had provided quite the same level of fear and excitement.

Finger Roberts had explained the rules of engagement to us a few days before, so we knew what to expect. We would essentially be fighting each other full out, but the swords and daggers we were using would be blunted so that the only injuries that we could inflict or sustain would be a lot less serious than could be expected in normal combat. We had already experienced, on an almost daily basis, the ability of our bodies to heal almost any injury, so that wasn’t as much of a worry as it would have been under what were previously normal circumstances.

All around me people were busy warming up. I placed my kit in a pile on the ground and the rest of the finger lined theirs up next to mine. We sat on our kit, ready to watch the action.

Each Finger from the hand was numbered. We were number five, so would go last.

Finger one from our hand moved out into the center of the parade-ground and stood waiting. A few minutes later a finger from one of the other hands moved out to join them. Both fingers had six warriors so I guessed that their finger leaders would be fighting with them. Finger Roberts had discussed this with us and told us that he thought that we had progressed far enough to be able to fight as a unit without him leading us. He had told us that he thought that if he fought with us, there might be some question of where our ability was coming from, whereas if we did it on our own, there would be no doubt that it was our own abilities.

The two fingers had formed up in formation facing each other. Fist leader Ryon was acting as the referee, and he inspected all the weapons and then told them to begin.

I watched the fight with great interest. It was my first chance to see someone else in action. It was immediately apparent to me that neither of the two fingers had truly bonded as units as they were not fully coordinated. More importantly, they were slow. Both fingers started out the fight with the five ‘novices’ on each side in line abreast with their finger leader standing behind them and coordinating the battle.

Watching the fingers fight made me quite nervous; not that I thought that we would have any trouble though, in fact, quite the opposite!

"[Finger Roberts?] I called.

"[Yes Cy?]"

"[Finger, I think there is going to be trouble. We are going to blow these guys away!]"

"[Yes. Be careful when you fight. Expect the unexpected. OK?]"

"[OK.]"

I mulled over that for a while. Eventually I decided that it meant that once they saw how capable we were, they might throw some curve balls at us. I figured that was OK; I thought we should be able to handle whatever happened one way or another. We had discussed and war-gamed a whole host of scenarios for what could happen to a finger in combat, and we had practised our immediate action drills to counter each scenario.

From the look of the battle going on at the moment, neither finger leader was willing to risk anything out of the ordinary. Maybe they thought it best to just let the two sides get some feeling for fighting against live opponents.

The morning passed slowly, with the various combinations of fingers called up to fight. The system was that the finger that won the battle got to stay in the center and fight the next finger to be sent out, so some fingers were getting to stay out for three or four fights. None stayed for longer that that; mostly because they had lost members who were busy recovering from injuries.

All of a sudden it was our turn up. I walked out onto the parade ground with my finger to a murmur from the spectators as we had no finger leader with us.

When we got to the center, Fist Ryon asked "Are you sure you want to fight without a finger leader?"

"Sure Fist." I replied.

"Are you the knuckle-head?" Fist Ryon asked with a smile.

"Yes Fist. We’re Battle Ready."

As I spoke out loud to Fist Ryon, I directed the rest of the finger to deploy in a ‘2-up, three back’ formation.

Walking onto the parade ground we had moved into the ‘mental zone’ so it wasn’t necessary for me to even think about formulating words or commands, I simply thought about the formation in my head and the finger moved as one to take up position. We were all intensely focused, but at the same time, because of being in the zone, we were all completely relaxed. I could feel my apprehension and the butterflies in my stomach, but they weren’t mine alone. My feelings were reflected and amplified by the other members of the finger, and at the same time they seemed to wash through me and leave me behind; calm and focused. Fist Ryon’s joking tone registered with me but it didn’t distract me from focusing on what was important.

As we moved closer I was evaluating our opponents. Each detail was registered and catalogued. I saw the beards on two members of the finger and marked them as vulnerable. The finger leader I saw had muscles that I thought were a bit too bulky, so I marked him as slow, and possibly too concerned with appearances rather that what was tactically important.

They moved into the same line-abreast formation that most of the fingers had taken up so far that day for their battles and I smiled quietly to myself. I had decided that most of the fingers were thinking of this as if they were in some imaginary extended line of battle, and they were forgetting one of the fundamental principles of warfare: protect your flanks.

In the instant that I heard Fist Ryon give the command to start fighting, we started moving. I was in the center of the three at the back. Desrae was to my left. She dashed in front of me and crouched down. I took three steps then used her as a spring-board to jump straight over the line, twisted in mid air, and landed behind the Finger Leader. The two in the front of the formation attacked the line directly, and Desrae and the person on her right ran around the two flanks and attacked from the sides. It was obvious that this was unexpected. We were fighting as if we were in the meleé and not in the line, and even then we were ‘breaking’ doctrine by not forming a ‘square’. I had felt though that the ‘square’ was only really designed as a defence, and not for the attack.

I focused on my fight with the Finger Leader but I remained aware of how the rest were doing. I had landed facing his back and I immediately ran him through with my sword. He was out of the fight within a few seconds. I then attacked the two warriors who had been in front of him. They were engaged to their front and I was able to disable them both while they were parrying blows from the front. By this time the three others had been taken down by the rest of my finger and we were left standing as the victors. No more then twenty-five seconds had passed from the time we got the command to start the fight.

Fist Ryon was standing with a gobsmacked expression on his face. The battles so far on the day had all lasted at least five to ten minutes and the injuries had been very limited. We had wiped out this finger in less that a minute, and if it hadn’t been for their ‘enhancements’, they would all have been dead. As it was, most of them would require some assistance to start healing. It seems that the fingers up to then had focused on their drills, and had used the blunted edges of their weapons to engage each other; ignoring the training to go for damage rather than to worry about sword drill and the clashing of swords.

I looked at Fist Ryon and asked "Victory?"

"Yes." he replied softly, then louder, "Yes. Stand back so we can get them some attention."