The Altered Seven

The War Games

The Fifth Cohort formed two lines behind their centurions, Dakota and Gwen. They marched north, skirting the edge of the city, and headed to the Field of Mars-the largest, flattest part of the valley. The grass was cropped short by all the unicorns, bulls, and homeless fauns that grazed here. The earth was pitted with explosion craters and scarred with trenches from past games. At the north end of the field stood their target. The engineers had built a stone fortress with an iron portcullis, guard towers, scorpion ballistae, water cannons, and no doubt many other nasty surprises for the defenders to use.

"They did a good job today," Piper noted. "That's bad for us."

"Wait," Killian said. "You're telling me that fortress was built today?"

Piper grinned. "Legionnaires are trained to build. If we had to, we could break down the entire camp and rebuild it somewhere else. Take maybe three or four days, but we could do it."

"Let's not," Killian said. "So you attack a different fort every night?"

"Not every night," Piper said. "We have different training exercises. Sometimes death ball-um, which is like paint-ball, except with...you know, poison and acid and fire balls. Sometimes we do chariots and gladiator competitions, sometimes war games."

Piper pointed at the fort. "Somewhere inside, the First and Second Cohorts are keeping their banners. Our job is to get inside and capture them without getting slaughtered. We do that, we win."

Killian's eyes lit up. "Like capture-the-flag. I think I like capture-the-flag."

Piper laughed. "Yeah, well...it's harder than it sounds. We have to get past those scorpions and water cannons on the walls, fight through the inside of the fortress, find the banners, and defeat the guards, all while protecting our own banners and troops from capture. And our cohort is in competition with the other two attacking cohorts. We sort of work together, but not really. The cohort that captures the banners gets all the glory."

Killian stumbled, trying to keep time with the left-right marching rhythm. Piper sympathized. She'd spent her first two weeks falling down.

"So why are we practicing this, anyway?" Killian asked. "Do you guys spend a lot of time laying siege to fortified cities?"

"Teamwork," Piper said. "Quick thinking. Tactics. Battle skills. You'd be surprised what you can learn in the war games. Like who will stab you in the back."

They marched to the center of the Field of Mars and formed ranks. The Third and Fourth Cohorts assembled as far as possible from the Fifth.

The centurions for the attacking side gathered for a conference. In the sky above them, Reyna circled on her pegasus, Scipio, ready to play referee. Half a dozen giant eagles flew in formation behind her-prepared for ambulance airlift duty if necessary.

Piper propped her gladius against her shield and checked Killian's armor. Every strap was correct. Every piece of armor was properly adjusted.

"You did it right," she said in amazement. "Killian, you must've done war games before."

"I don't know. Maybe."

The only thing that wasn't regulation was Killian's glowing white sword-not Imperial gold, and not a gladius. The blade was like a knight's, and the writing on the hilt was Greek.

Killian frowned. "We can use real weapons, right?"

"Yeah," Piper agreed. "For sure. I've just never seen a sword like that."

"What if I hurt somebody?"

"We heal them," Piper said. "Or try to. The legion medics are pretty good with ambrosia and nectar, and unicorn draught."