The Forgotten Olympian |BOOK 1| PJO X HP | Alexandra Marine

Chapter 27 - Alex - War Games

Once we got out of camp, 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," Hazel noted. "That's bad for us."

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

Hazel 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," I said. "So you attack a different fort every night?"

"Not every night," Frank 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."

Hazel 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."

Percy's eyes lit up.

"Like capture-the-flag," we said together, grinning.

"I think I like capture-the-flag," he finished.

Frank 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."

Percy stumbled, trying to keep time with the left-right marching rhythm. I on the other hand, had had the honor of falling face first into the mud two minutes after starting the march.

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

"Teamwork," Hazel 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," Frank said.

"Especially that," Hazel agreed.

"Nice," I remarked, dusting away all the dirt from my shirt.

We 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 us, 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. The only person not participating in the game was Nico di Angelo, "Pluto's ambassador," who had climbed an observation tower about a hundred yards from the fort and would be watching with binoculars.