“They’ll see it coming a mile out?” I hissed as Jack hoisted James axe, feeling the weight of it in his hands.

“Well, what are they going to do? Move the whole stronghold?” Jack replied. He looked up the tree then back across at the stronghold’s walls.

“I would bet that they put it so close to the edge of the forest just so this could happen, Same with the stronghold against the cliff face, its there so attackers can climb down from above,” he said, “They made sure there was a way into them, otherwise it would be impossible to take the fucking things, we don’t have time for a siege.”

“And when that tree comes down, they will be sitting there waiting for us on the other side, I suppose you expect me to go in first too? Just start killing everything that moves” I whispered.

Jack looked at me for a moment, “Yeah, that sounds about right. The fuck else are you good for,” he said, smirking.

“You know you’re meant to send the pawns in first, leave the knights for after,” I said, pulling the axe from his hands and tested the edge. It was razor sharp, nanite sharp. It would bring down a tree.

“What? You think you’re a knight? Smallest knight I’ve ever seen,” Jack smirked.

“Well, the sword and the armour… Aren’t those the prerequisites?”

“I would have through there was a height restriction,” Jack teased. The others sat patiently, watching the walls for signs of movement while Jack and I bickered back and forth. We didn’t want to make a move until the rest of the section got here. So, we had picked a tree, and now we waited, the sun was high in the sky now. We had retreated into the shade of the canopy, still watching the tops of the walls.

“You’re the strong one aye? Why not just toss me over the wall then” I joked, leaning back against the base of a tree.

“I thought no one tosses a dwarf?” Jack ripped a nutrition bar in half, tossing me some.

“Would you two shut the fuck up,” Samantha said, cutting my retort short.

Jack scowled and I took a bit of the bar, washing the dry food down with a swig from Jacks canteen. I felt a tickly on my EM sense as it scanned the forest around us. Pulling myself to a crouch I grabbed a sword from my back, looking in the direction of the movement, only relaxing then the rest of our section came into view.

“Good. Now that we're all here.” Jack said, he pulled his lighter from his pocket and tossed it to Samantha. “Think you can climb up there and set the brush alight?”

“This wood is wet, there is no way it will take a flame,” Sam said.

“That thing is a blow torch, it will burn at two thousand degrees. If it nothing else it will create a shit tonne of smoke.” Jack said, and Sam nodded.

She slid the lighter into her pocket and began scrambling up the tree, the flat of her hand gripping to the bark without issue. Three minutes later small wisps of smoke began trailing from the branches. When Sam slid back down, landing gracefully in the dirt there was a faint glow of a fire. “Okay, you’re right, its burning” Sam said, “Better get chopping, before the whole forest is burning”

“No you idiot,” I said, stopping Jack before he started to hack at the tree trunk, “You need to make the notch on the other side first” I pointed to the side of the tree facing the stronghold. “Fuck man, Dad would be so disappointed.”

“Shut up,” Jack hissed as he came around the side of the tree and swung the axe over his head.

The nanite sharpened axe blade cut easily into the wood, with two more swings a wedge of wood fell away to create the notch. I took the thick slice of wood as Jack moved around to the opposite side of the tree. Using a sword, I began slicing the wood thinner to make a wedge while Jack swung sideways into the tree, creating a smooth horizontal cut.

I stopped Jack after his second cut, which slid most of the way into the tree. I was balanced now by the heart of the tree, only a few inches thick. Jack handed the axe back to James.

“Everyone ready?” I asked, when no one protested, I slide the wedge into the slice and stepped aside. Jake slammed the side of his shield against it.

The Tree groaned and began to tilt, small embers drifting lazily down around us. Jack hit it again, this time there was a shower of embers as the centre of the trunk cracked, and the tree began to fall. “Timber” Keg muttered as it fell through the air. The rest of us ignoring him and tightening the grip on our weapons. I stood beside Mia, as the Tree crashed down in an explosion of sparks and smoke, crushing part of the wall and the roof of a small building.

Mia looked at me and nodded before she took off at a sprint, jumping up onto the downed tree trunk and racing along it. I followed, with the others right behind.

Unlike the wet wood of the tree, which lightly smouldered and smoked heavily, the dry wood of the stronghold’s buildings lit up, light flames from the tree licked the building, the fire spreading. I followed Mia up the tree trunk and over the broken wall, jumping before we reached the flame covered branches, Mia’s black hair whipped through the air as she fell, rolling in the dirt of a courtyard.

She went right on the offensive, stabbing out with her spear, slicing through a man’s side as he ducked out of the way. I drove my swords down from above, down through the base of the man’s neck and into his heart. He fell to the ground dead as I pulled the sword free. The Section from Asia, now consisting of only the fighters from Japan and South Korea, they had swarmed the burning tree, some trying to douse the flames using their augments. Now, we were dropping down on top of them.

They were outnumbered, and they paid dearly for it. Mia and I moved through the fighters before Jack and the others had even hit the ground. Swords in my hands and the spear in hers we sliced through the less experienced fighters. When she faced resistance I stepped up, removing limbs. When someone posed a threat to me, Mia’s spear slipped past to strike creating openings to exploit. By the time Jack and the others joined the fight, three people were already dead.

Jack and Keg used their shields to batter through the fighters while James and Olivia attacked from the edges, surrounded by the rest of our section. Samantha ignored the main fight, sprinting around the side of the clearing, heading straight for the Ice and fire augment users.

As one of them waved an arm, a layer of ice spread across the ground under Samantha’s feet. She acted as though she expected it, dropping to her knees and sliding along the ice, narrowly avoiding a ball of fire. Her spear spun in her hands as she slid between the two men, blood splashed on the icy ground and the ice users hands fell limp as his wrists were slashed open. The other man staggered aside, blood trickling from a cut on his thigh. Before he could react, Samantha swept them both off their feet with her spear, stabbing one through the heart while the other died while being mobbed by our section.

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I stepped to the side of a wide swipe from a broad sword. The man who wielded it twisted his body from the momentum, I stepped forward and slid my blade into his exposed neck, before kicking another man in the knee. Mia stabbed out with her spear, her motion reserved and measured, yet powerful. The man died with steel through his heart.

There was a definitive split between fighters, every man and woman here was a trained killer, but the difference in sword experience was staggering. Simple mistakes created large openings, I stabbed into another man’s armpit with one blade before removing his head with the other. I dodged out of the way as Jack shield bashed a Korean fighter past me.

I stepped back further to watch as the man deflected Jacks follow up attack, then as Jack blocked the counter with his shield. They smashed at each other, Jack using his strength to push the man back across the courtyard. They were the last two still fighting, the rest of the Asian Section lying dead at our feet with three of our own. Jack ducked a sweeping attack and stabbed up, the other man sliding his sword along it to deflect. This is taking too long, I thought, sighing. I twisted the dial in my mind and pushed off from the dirt. I covered the distance to their fight in an instant, my sword snaking past both Jacks and the other man’s weak defences, slicing along the inside of his arm and plunging the blade into his chest. I twisted time back to normal as the body fell to the ground.

“The fuck did you do that for?!” Jack yelled, “I could have killed him,”

“Next time, do it faster, flapping around with that sword like an idiot, just stab the bastard in the heart and be done with it,” I hissed, wiping beads of sweat from my face and looking up at the midday sun.

“I needed the practice,” Jack muttered, wiping the traces of blood from his sword and sliding it into the sheath.

“You’ll have plenty of that, these guys will be back.” I kicked the food of a dead man, “they have a day and a half still. In a few hours, they will be released from the compound, and I’ll bet my left nut that their section will be on their way here, and whole.”

We all knew the implications, the group from Japan and Korea will re-join the Chinese. If it was me, I knew I would. Enemy of my enemy is my friend or some shit like that.

Jack pulled his canteen from his bag, taking a swig. “You’re right, we need to fix these defences,” He said, looking at the smouldering tree as it lay across the wall. “Or maybe make new ones. Sam, what’s in there?” He asked, calling out to Samantha as she pulled a door to a building open, sticking her head in before pulling it out again.

“A load of crates, tools, Shit I think those are bottles of wine!” She called, glancing back into the storeroom

“Leave the wine, last thing we need to get pissed. The tools we can use” Jack said.

By Jacks estimate, we had until morning before they arrived. I followed him into the shed which was lined with crates along the floor and tools stacked against the walls.

“Trenches,” Jack said, “We need trenches, Mum always loved telling us about the land wars, remember Ōrākau? We need trenches,”

“This isn’t a fucking pā, Jack. We don’t have the elevation or the manpower.” I said, ripping open a crate and grabbing some vacuumed packed roasted pork.

“How man trenches do you want?” I was resigned to his plan, I had never been able to change his mind on anything. I pulled open the meat packet and bit off a chunk.

Jack looked at the stack of shovels and spades. “How many of us are there, fifteen? Sixteen?” he asked.

“Give or take, yeah,” I said between mouthfuls.

“Okay, so at least one trench, two if we can make it. We just need to slow them down as they hit the walls. There was a well in the courtyard, we can soak the holes, make it muddy. Space them out and we can pick them off.” Jack pulled an armful of spades from the wall, “grab that crate. We can have lunch, then we better get to work.”

The military taught a lot of life skills, but from where I was standing, they taught people how to dig holes above all else, within hours there was a half ringed trench around the opening left by the downed tree. One side lightly sloped while the other a steep edge, leaving the trench nine feet wide and six feet deep.

The high water table left the bottom of the trench thick with mud and I sloshed through it, shovelling loose dirt.

“Jack, what’s to stop them doing the same thing we did?” James called from the top of the trench.

Jack straightened up, leaning on his spade, contemplating the surrounding forest. From our place in the trench all I could see was dirt walls, Jacks head only just peeking out over the edge. “Good point, how many trees do you think you can cut down in an hour?” Jack asked.

“maybe…ten, not sure, I’ve never cut down a tree before.” James scratched his chin.

“Take five or six of the section, start cutting down the trees closest to the walls. If you can, we need to double the free space. Drop them randomly too, create some debris to block their path.”

James nodded, stabbing his spade into the soil and walking back toward the storeroom.

“I still think we should just let them come, a big fight will be more fun,” I smirked.

“This is why I’m the oldest and you’re the dipshit. Come on, let's get this second trench sorted.”

By the time we were finished, the sun had set behind the treetops, Small pocket flashlights lit up the forest as James and his new team moved around the fringes, hacking down trees. There were two half rings of trench surrounding the break in the wall, the closer side planted with thin twenty-inch stakes of wood to dissuade attempts to jump over them. Beyond, it looked as though a tornado had blown through.

Trees lay covering the ground, stacked on top of one another in a chaotic mess. Climbing up and over the rough trunks would certainly do what Jack wanted. It would split any attacking party. Then it would be up to us to cut them apart.