Isaac unholstered his talkie-cone.
"HQ to Recon. Advance and take position. All others, wait for my signal."
The armonion machine crackled with static for a few seconds, then opened to intelligible speech.
"...Recon team to HQ. Copy that, will-do."
With a signal of her hand, Daphne and the others broke into a trot, the grass and dew soft upon their feet; when it was sure there was little noise, they accelerated into a gallop, whispering 'Ura' and 'Fura' to the wind to soften their landings and carry their legs.
To the west, she saw outlines of four figures approaching rapidly from the north; Daphne motioned her team to swerve east to avoid contact. When they were out of sight and sound, she unholstered the talkie-cone midway, the machine softened in rise and fall with wind and fabric.
"Recon to HQ. One Padishah squadra just passed us to the west, heading south."
Isaac's voice came in without hesitation.
"HQ to Recon. Copy-that." He drew a little arrow in blue, pointing south from the gap between House ARTAIA and MANASURA. From their size, it was probably the Padishahs' own reconnaissance team.
It was barely three minutes until Daphne's voice came through again.
"Recon to HQ. We've reached just north of House ARTAIA, behind the giant boulders. We have view of both the tree and all four directions. The Padishahs have blocked the way up the tree. The spiral stairway is clogged throughout with lots of wood and stones. There is a network of huge stakes protruding from the trunk."
That will be hard to climb or assault, Isaac thought. But it also means that the Padishahs aren't going to go up or down the usual way too. What were they thinking?
"HQ to Recon. Copy-that. Do you see any movement?"
Daphne and the others craned their necks to the canopy. Upon a single torchlight at the very top, they made out the shapes of perhaps a dozen people, all still.
"Recon to HQ. Shapes of a dozen people up the canopy. No movement from around us."
"HQ to Recon, copy-that."
Just like Isaac thought, the Padishahs were behaving defensively. He wanted not to move until the Padishahs had made a move themselves, but the more the night went on, the less certain their plans would become, and the more tired and weary the teams would be. It was time to test the waters.
"HQ to all Tridents. Advance as planned."
"Lucian to – Trident West to HQ, will-do."
"Trident East to HQ, will-do."
Elwin waited until the acknowledgements faded. Then he spoke.
"Trident North to HQ, will-do."
From their skycraft, the professors were watching the movements begin.
"Wait, is that –" remarked Professor Irina, refracting the oil in the colossal mirror-lens to zoom in on the field below. All of them, including the headmaster, briefly saw Elwin's running silhouette through a thin gap in the mist; on his back they saw the enormous backpack of the armonion-machine, antennae poking out of it.
"Are they using armonion machines?!" Professor Irina remarked, incredulous. They all took a peek at Professor Aionia, who stood quietly.
"They may have made the machine, but do they understand how to use it?" commented Professor Helen. "Professor Aionia, what was the suggested frequency in your blueprint patent?"
"Eight-hundred and ten mil-sals."
Professor Helen nodded, striding into the skycraft bridge.
"Captain Hugo, could you tune the armonion to eight-hundred and ten?"
And as he turned the refinement knob upon the armonion machine, much more compact and improved from the first iteration, crackles of voices began to appear, unequivocally that of the students they knew.
Lucian's voice rang through for all the professors to hear.
"Trident West to HQ. No resistance so far. We're almost in position for assault."
Lucian with his Trident West hugged the cliffs upon shore with a thin track of ice they made upon the water. They moved without sound, and before seven minutes had passed were at the foot of the great temple where Professor Thales's classes were held. The villas, and the lake-ship, lay just beyond.
"HQ to Trident West, copy that. Hold your pos–"
The voice distorted to incoherence. Isaac holstered his talkie-cone at once, and Daphne's hushed voice rang clear through the bell-cone.
"Recon to HQ! Three Padishah squadras moving southeast. They are avoiding the road and embracing the forest outskirts."
Isaac drew a little arrow, and realized at once that Robert would be intercepted.
3 squadras versus 3 were even odds, but the Celendirs could not afford to engage them now when they needed all the force they could spare for the assault on the flags.
Isaac spoke at once. "HQ to Trident East. Swerve further northeast. Avoid those Padishahs."
"Trident East to HQ, following command," said Robert, slicing a bramble into two to make space for a new path. They hushed and worked their way through the branches as silently as they could. A minute in, they heard – then saw – three Padishah squadras sneak past the tree where they had been.
Daphne's timely warning had saved them from the blind.
"Trident East to Recon, you have our thanks."
"Cut the chatter," interrupted Lucian.
Aware of the happenstances of his allies, Elwin and his five squadras were racing past the little gardens and the lamp-posts, not as a mass but in two columns, making as little noise as possible with a sona to dampen their sounds. At this pace, they were 3 minutes to the Duellium Arena. The machine weighed heavy on his shoulders; running like this without a moment of rest would have sapped the strength from him a year ago, but with training from his Tanaar, he was more than prepared.
"Recon to HQ! Four Padishah squadras heading center-west, coming down from Duellium Arena."
"HQ to Trident North, swerve around those four."
And just as Isaac's command concluded, Katherine saw shapes of at least sixteen Padishahs emerging through the parked paths. Elwin could swerve left, but there was nothing but open space for at least fifty yards; to the right ran a thin stream, into whose banks they could duck. Katherine hurriedly signaled Elwin towards the stream.
"Trident North to HQ," whispered Elwin, "negative. We will be hiding instead."
The nineteen compadres of Trident North quickly ducked into the stream in a line, wetting the bottom folds of their battle uniforms. Elwin draped his cape over the bell-cone as the footsteps of the Padishahs passed them by with just yards to spare.
"Thank the MAHA," he whispered.
"Yeah," nodded Katherine.
When the Padishahs had all run by, Elwin clambered over the grassy banks, laying low; seeing no one else, he signaled the rest of Trident North to continue, speaking into his talkie-cone.
"Trident North to HQ. Avoided with success."
Nice! Thought Isaac, pumping his fist. So far, their stealthy coordination was paying off, and at the same time, the armonion machines made him aware of how the Padishahs also moved and the general direction they were going to assault.
Elwin and his compadres jogged and jogged through the trees of the park, passing its many benches, taking care to avoid the lampposts that illuminated the central roads. The mist had moistened the leaves under their feet – there was not much of a crunch as they stepped on them.
The embrasured walls of the Duellium Arena was just fifty yards away, with the Tree of Naran and Naru at their four o'clock more than two hundred yards down the giant boulders and twisting roots. No torches or rustling could be heard in the arena; beyond the arena to the north lay a giant clearing, and from that clearing the steps to the summit of the hill began in earnest, the hill which Elwin had climbed two-hundred-and-ninety-seven times completely blindfolded while dodging swinging cylinders of metal.
Elwin signaled the rest to continue, weaving through the smaller boulders and trees; the five squadras of Trident North turned past the gap in the wall and into the arena when –
In their speed, they collided straight into what seemed like less than a dozen figures. Each groaned and looked up who precisely they ran into, and Elwin did also, shaking his head, his armonion machine spared, when he noticed a glint of gold from the sashes that they wore –
The eyes of the Padishahs went wide and their faces contorted in shock as they recognized the sky-blue sashes of the Celendirs – and for a moment, both parties were struck dumb with the prospect of running into each other in the dead of night this north without having had a sliver of warning – when one of the Padishahs kicked a jet of fire with the first movement of the Dance of the Sparks, beginning the skirmish.
Elwin slid out of the way, Mirai and the four other Torch Bearers raising a wall of packed earth to shield him as he hurriedly spoke:
"Elwin to HQ! We've been ambushed by two squadras!"
"Two –" hollered Isaac, but it was interrupted by a loud bang over the bell-cone.
A fireball went off by Mirai's side, but Katherine deflected the bursting flame to the sky – she ducked under the flying pebbles of earth as the first contact between Celendirs and Padishahs exploded into action.
"Get behind me," hollered a muscular first-year like them, his role the Torch Bearer. With his quick earth he raised walls upon them all to shield from the force of the counterattack; Katherine and the others stood behind him.
"Can you launch your fire when I make split-second gaps?"
"We can."
"Ready, go!"
And as soon as the earthen wall in front of them opened into shifting embrasures, Katherine and her fellow Artillery Guardians launched long jets of fire with the dancephrase they knew so well, shooting out in all angles like cannonballs from a rotary fortress, their brows dripping with sweat and Quans sizzling from the effort.
"One down!"
"Two down!"
"That's three!" they shouted, peering through the embrasures until one of the Padishahs leapt from a tree into their midst, on his back a cylinder of some sort. The brave opponent froze the mist of the air into thin katars and sliced at their hair and robes; Elwin dodged out of the way as Mirai tore stones loose from the wall of the arena, and covering her fists with it like gauntlets, grabbed a hold of those icy knives; Katherine then blasted him away towards the moat with a flaming kick, whereupon he fell unconscious.
The four remaining Padishahs fought with brave fervor despite being outnumbered; two of them launched cards of frost at the Celendirs, but Elwin and the others melted them as they approached, and returned the water as blades in the mist; the Padishahs dodged and rolled out of the way as if to escape, but just when they all thought the skirmish was about to be over, Elwin saw out of the corner of his right eye that the Padishah that had fallen unconscious from Katherine's kick was moving again – and before they had any time to react, the Padishah boy had lit the end of a firework tube as thick as his arm, and shot it upon Elwin's armonion machine.