“Four victories and two defeats, it’s very good for someone ranked among the last First Green.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Zac answered.

“What did you expect, exactly?”

“Something like that, actually. I’m satisfied with my score. And I even won a weapon. Twenty-one rounds, come on Mahon! Did you even try?” Zac teased his friend again.

“Well, it was actually the hardest battle I’ve done so far.” Mahon chuckled.

“Lucky me, then.” Zac commented, but his smile betrayed his real thoughts.

He knew it was Mahon’s doing. He already knew what his friend would do the moment he proposed the bet. They had spent so much together, Zac could guess his friend would want to give him a weapon, anyway. The bet was just the perfect excuse. It made things less awkward. That was just how they acted together.

“You’re ready for the next matches?” Zac asked.

“Ye..ah. I saw the pretenders fight. They don’t look that good.”

Zac chuckled. “Mahon, First Green, casually insulting every other student for their poor strategy skills.”

Mahon threw an amused look at his friend. “So what should we bet for the next battles?”

“Honestly, you should make it appear as close as you can. They are people not worth stamping over, and whichever you’re paired against, you don’t want to insult them. Except Jorik maybe, but that’s because he knows where you come from.”

“Wouldn’t it be even more enjoyable if I were to crush them? Imagine Ravatoris losing in the semifinals against the commoner in less than thirty rounds.”

“Don’t joke with that. Seriously. Ravatoris is dangerous. Dozens of times more than Tiarsus. Don’t provoke him.” Zac said with a very serious voice.

“Hmm.” Mahon acquiesced reluctantly. “And the woman?”

“Taenya? Same things. I mean, just play it low. If only for not nipping in the bud our opportunity as a music group.”

“Uh… Ok, ok. I’ll restrain myself. I will still win, though.” Mahon finally agreed to his friend’s argument.

Zac smiled widely. “Of course you should win. You still have to advertise us a minimum.”

“We’ll start the semi-finals now.” Yordar’s voice interrupted them. “I’ll carry them myself one after the other in this classroom. Each battle will have a different scenario we’ve never studied together before. Everyone is welcome to stay and learn from it.” He paused for a second before adding in a threatening tone. “I hope I don’t need to remind you what will happen to anyone disturbing our contestants.”

A perfect silence answered his words, and the professor flashed a happy smile.

“Then we may begin. Mahon and Taenya, you’re first. Let me explain your scenario and objectives.”

The map was relatively simple. They had similar armies, and the battlefield was cut in half by a forest. The two armies stood on each side of the forest, and it was a battle to death. Yordar had chosen a simple scenario to let Mahon and Taenya express their skills without constraint.

The professor gave them half an hour to prepare their three first moves and overall strategy, and a comfortable silence fell on the classroom while everyone was focused on the problem.

The obvious call would be to rush to the forest, because the first one in there will have the field advantage. But if we both manage to reach the forest, the quicker one will not always have the advantage, because his formations would be all messed up. So fast enough, but not too fast.

Mahon started his own analysis of the problem, trying to consider Zac’s advice and beat the First Black without making it too obvious. He planned multiple strategies, depending on how well Taenya managed to deal with the situation. He ordered his units in a way he could switch from a strategy to another without costing him too much. Most of the thinking would then happen during the battle as he’d adapt to the woman’s tactics.

He waited ten more minutes before writing his three first envelopes and handing them to Yordar a couple of minutes before the timer ended. Taenya gave her own envelopes shortly after, and the battle began.

The two armies spread out in a mirrored motion, trying to reach the forest from all around. Mahon attentively watched the situation, but he had correctly assessed Taenya’s strategy, and both sides were approaching the forest in a similar way. He completed his next set of instructions and the process continued until both armies were a round away from the forest.

Taenya switched her strategy exactly at that time. Most of her units reassembled on the left flank, not daring to enter the forest. Mahon’s army, on the other hand, entered immediately inside and held their ground.

What is she trying to do?

It smelled fishy that she suddenly decided to stop on the edge of the forest. Carefully, Mahon modified his strategy not to rush in too quickly. He had already planned to wait once inside the forest, anyway.

The two armies stayed unmoving for the next rounds, facing each other with the forest in between. Mahon’s own army a few meters inside, and Taenya’s one a few meters before. Mahon couldn’t grasp what the woman was trying to do, but he knew for sure she’d not have abandoned the best position without reason.

After a couple rounds of inactivity, where Mahon could feel the gazes of the other students stuck to their every action, he ordered his army to move forward once more.

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The rounds went on, and he claimed three quarters of the forest before Taenya’s units suddenly spread out and started circling the forest.

That can’t work, she has not enough pressure to hold… Wait. She isn’t considering…

Mahon’s thoughts stopped there as he instantly realized Taenya’s ruthless plan. He winced at her savageness and prepared for a hard battle while Yordar opened Taenya’s next envelope.

“All units set the forest on fire.”

The woman didn’t even twitch under the exclamations of surprise coming from the watching crowd. The next rounds were chaotic for Mahon’s armies, but the Last Red managed to save most of his units as he escaped the forest right into Taenya’s grasp.

She waited for him there and tried to turn the battle into a gigantic fray in which her now larger army would easily seize the victory, but Mahon wasn’t fooled by her stratagem. She wanted to prevent him from using tactics by engaging all their units together and win with her number, and it would have worked with anyone else than Mahon.

Alas, she was facing a Last Red commander. Even though Mahon never considered she would use such a barbaric strategy, he was still in control of the situation. Here and there, he withdrew some units. He moved them around and micromanaged where they would be the most efficient.

Taenya committed to her strategy, and her units were soon all entangled with Mahon’s own, rendering any further tactics on her side almost useless. The outcome of the battle wasn’t in her hands anymore. Only Mahon could decide what would become of this battle.

She watched how he slowly erased the difference in numbers between their two armies. A dozen soldiers saved in a brilliant pincer attack turned into fifty warriors freed from a certain death. The number grew to a hundred after a flank attack perfectly countered the advance of the enemy’s soldiers.

Soldier by soldier into units by units, Mahon bridged the gap between the two armies in a snowball effect. Taenya watched, powerless, as her opponent managed to reverse the odds. She had failed to entangle only one of Mahon’s units in her initial assault, and the Last Red had been able to use that single unit to change the outcome of the battle. One unit freed another until enough were freed he could keep her units entangled while using some strategy.

He traded soldiers favorably with her until the switching point upon which Taenya’s army started to become smaller than Mahon’s own. By that time, she recognized her loss and spoke out loud.

“What an impressive reversal... I don’t think I could have ever done something similar myself, and that’s proof enough of your superior skills. I forfeit.”

She bowed slightly to Mahon before walking back to her seat in a stunned silence.

“Mahon has won his semi-final against Taenya. A brilliant show of skills from both contestants!”

Yordar’s declaration was immediately followed by a round of applause and cheers from the crowd of students. Taenya’s ruthless igniting of the forest had rendered speechless most of them, but the increasing tension of Mahon clinging to victory and getting closer step by step had captivated the whole assembly.

They had all been clamping to their seats as Mahon had realized clutch moves one after the other. No one knew if he’d be able to hold it long enough to flip the situation around. From their point of view, each tactic he employed was another uncertain bet, and the tension had been increasing to the very end.

Mahon went back to his seat as Yordar announced the next semi final, brother against brother.

“I just need to ask.” Zac whispered to his friend as the second scenario was set up. “Did you see that coming and let her set the fire on purpose not to win too easily?”

“Come on, how is igniting a forest even a strategy? No one would even consider destroying all that just to get an advantage.” Mahon complained.

Zac chuckled quietly. “Yeah, well, she did. And almost won.”

The two friends focused back on the fight at hand a few seconds later as Yordar asked for silence while the two brothers thought about their strategies. Mahon glanced at the map and realized the scenario wasn’t too different from their own. The map was the exact opposite of his scenario. It was mostly forest with a big open glade in the middle of it.

They would also have to take into account the forest and its undeniable advantage in such a scenario, and in that, it was very similar to Mahon’s previous battle. Everyone almost expected Ravatoris or Jorik to ignite the forest and lead the battle into a regular fight in the glade, but the two nobles played by the standard rules.

They sent scouts forward and fought for the control of the edge of the forest. They engaged their units with parsimony, and the first half of the battle was only to get a positional advantage over the other. It was a close call until Jorik lost the initiative with a costly mistake, and the balance started to tilt towards Ravatoris’ side until his final victory.

It was also a great demonstration of the skills of the two protagonists, and they got their fair share of cheers and applause, but Mahon couldn’t stop himself from thinking something was wrong.

Jorik had lost because he made a mistake with his scout units. Yet the First Black was the best scout commander at school, and Mahon had witnessed it several times already. It couldn’t have been just a fluke.

There is no way he didn’t do this on purpose. Is he actually on his brother's side, and they’re playing an even greater scheme together?

Mahon was already tired from thinking about Jorik’s schemes with the actual nobility, and he couldn’t even fathom the implications of a possible secret collaboration between the two brothers.

Are they just acting against each other where they’re, in fact, colluding in the shadows for a coup d’état or something?

He didn’t get much time to think about it, as Yordar called him on the front again for the strategy final duel.

“Congrats to Ravatoris for his victory! Jorik, you can go back to your seat and Mahon, come here again for the final match of this strategy tournament!”

Mahon walked to the stage and passed beside Jorik on the way there. They exchanged a quick glance. Jorik slightly shook his head while looking straight into his eyes in a discreet attempt to pass a message. Alas, the noble broke his eye contact half a second later, and Mahon failed to grasp the meaning of his action correctly.

Is he saying he isn’t colluding with Ravatoris? Or that he really made a mistake? Or that I shouldn’t talk about it?

He arrived too quickly near Yordar to sort it out, and the professor didn’t give him time to consider it any further.

“For this last scenario, I’d like to give you something truly unique. A real possibility to prove your skills.”

Yordar took out a very simple map. The field was just flat. And that’s it. There were no landscapes, forests, rivers, or even buildings. It was just empty and flat.

“You’ll start from opposite sides of the battlefield with identical armies.”

The scenario seemed way too simple to stop at this, and Mahon patiently waited for Yordar’s next revelation, which he knew would change everything. The professor didn’t disappoint and took out a single flagged figurine that he placed at the center of the battlefield.

“The first to get a hold of this flag will be the winner of this strategy tournament.”

Both Mahon and Ravatoris frowned. It couldn’t be just a mad rush to the flag, right? It didn’t make any sense. There was a small silence during which the two men turned to Yordar with a puzzled look.

“And I’ll be defending the flag myself with half an army.” Yordar added with a predatory smile.