Under the dense canopy Jireh gave them the signal to fan out into a “V” formation. They picked their way through the foliage for about fifty yards when the command they had all been waiting for issued from his lips.

“Contact front!” He yelled, spurring them to action.

Keeli dove to the left, while Sid went right.

“Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh,” Jireh said, dropping to a knee and imitating a machine gun.

He was opening fire on an imaginary objective with a stick he had picked up along the way. It substituted for a real weapon of war, which none of them were allowed to own.

“Pew-pew-pew!” Keeli added the chatter of her own imaginary weapon to Jireh's and Sid soon followed suit. Wolo - on rear guard - didn't have anything to shoot at, so he kept quiet conserving both his ammo and his voice.

“First squad...” that was Keeli, “...flank left and assault the objective, fifty yards, front!” Jireh ordered, enthusiastically.

Sid assumed he was talking about the fallen log that lay across their path. He didn't think it was quite fifty yards, but now was not the time for insubordination.

Keeli was up and moving in a flash, and Sid patted himself on the back for catching her mistake a second before Jireh pointed it out.

“Three to five seconds, Lieutenant!” Her commander scolded.

In this case, as opposed to before, drawing attention to her rank was his way of saying she should have known better.

“Oh, right!” She dove behind a tree in an attempt to correct her error. “It's really wet over here!” She whined. Jireh shot Sid a look before responding,

“War is Heel, Lieutenant!”

Sid smirked, imagining Keeli arched up like a cat afraid to get its feet wet.

“I'm just sayin'!” She yelled, not wanting to appear squeamish about such things. After a moment’s pause she was up and moving again.

“I'm up, he sees me, I'm down!” She yelled, before plopping down into some thick weeds that grew up out of a shallow depression.

“That's better, Lieutenant!” Jireh commended her.

“Why does she always get to be the assault element?” Sid half whined.

“Because she's better at it than you!” The older boy teased, overlooking Keeli’s earlier mistake.

She was moving again in a flash. They watched her furry head bob through the trees off to their nine o’clock.

“I'm up, he sees me, I'm down!” She yelled again.

This time she came to rest behind a bush and Sid was surprised that Jireh didn't get after her for her poor choice of cover. She continued on like that several more times, using the age-old mnemonic for counting off a three to five second rush.

“I’m up, he sees me, I’m down!” Her voice grew fainter and fainter, in part from the distance, and in part because of her exhaustion from the warmup exercises.

Jireh and Sid watched her pop up and down again and again until she was far to their front left, and in line with the objective.

Now It was time for the assault.

If she followed her training - they knew - this next rush would take her all the way across in front of them until she was in a direct line with Sid on the right flank.

“Lift and shift!” Jireh yelled as soon as her head came up out of the weeds.

He and Sid pretended to shift their fire to the right. The idea was to keep the enemy’s head down by continuing to lay down suppressing fire, while making it safe for the assaulting element to clear the objective from the left. Sid had read all about it in a field manual and as a reward, Jireh had named him their Intelligence Officer. His moment of pride was short-lived, however, when Wolo had noted that Military Intelligence was commonly considered to be a contradiction in terms.

“Second squad!” Jireh yelled, indicating Sid. “Prepare to assault through the objective!”

The younger boy raised himself to one knee, expectantly.

Keeli had sprinted across the fallen log pretending to shoot all the bad guys, and now it was Sid's job - as second squad - to clean up any that remained.

“Execute!” Jireh commanded, sending Sid scrambling through the undergrowth.

There was no point in three to five second rushes, now. The enemy was supposed to be in disarray and aware of their presence. This was an all-out charge by Second Squad toward the objective. Sid ran through the brush and hurdled the log, pew-pewing all the way. When he dropped behind a tree on the far side of the enemy position, it was Wolo's turn to move.

He - being Fourth Squad - and Jireh - Third Squad - had practiced this movement a hundred times. Jireh signaled quietly with his left hand – knifing the air toward the objective - and Wolo, who had been waiting expectantly, bolted from his position in the direction the knife-hand indicated. He stopped at a tree ten yards to their front and knifed the air with his own left hand. Jireh was up and moving before the signal, but no one corrected him for his impatience. When he stopped and signaled ten yards in front of Wolo, it was Wolo’s turn to move again. They leapfrogged to the objective ten meters at a time, each taking their turn to guard the rear as the other moved forward.

“Good job, team!” Their leader congratulated them, as he and Wolo took up their new positions on the far side of the log to the left and right of Sid.

Sid, having advanced through the objective first, was now on point.

That wouldn't last long, he knew.

“Alright, Let's move!” Jireh commanded.

He took the lead from Sid and Keeli fell in behind him, with Sid behind her, and Wolo on rear guard again.

They assaulted several more objectives on their way to their true destination - the fallen tree that Keeli had enticed Jireh with an hour and a half earlier. As they proceeded along, Jireh allowed each of them a turn at playing the assaulting force - even Wolo.

“I want to write a book that leaves your mind watering for more,” Sid told his friends, in between pew-pews.

“Ha, I see what you did there, like mouthwatering, only mind, instead.”

He had correctly guessed that Keeli, if anyone, would like his wordplay.

“Does it work?” He asked, smiling.

“Eh, sort of. You could have just said thirsting.”

To his mind, thirsting seemed too obvious, and didn’t draw the same connection to mouthwatering.

“I want to write a book that makes people never want to read another one!” He added, turning serious as the foursome cleared another objective on their way to the fallen tree.

“That bad, huh?” Jireh quipped. “I mean, I already don’t want to read it.”

Keeli laughed with him, hitting Sid on the arm – playfully - to show that it was only a little friendly joshing. Even Wolo smiled, while Sid’s mood turned dour. They knew what he meant. He shouldn’t have to explain or defend himself, especially among his friends. But leave it to monkey boy to turn everything he did and said into a joke.

“The first thing contradicts the second,” Jireh observed.

“What?”

“You said you want to write a book that leaves people thirsting for more,” he paraphrased, “then said your dream was to make them never want to read another one.”

The young dog bristled.

“Let’s move!” Their leader commanded, not waiting for Sid to respond.

What makes Jireh so great? He asked himself as they trudged through the dry leaves and low brush. Why is he so good at everything?

He knew in his heart that his friend had to be bad at something. No one, after all, was perfect.

I’d be better, he assured himself, if he wasn’t around pointing out all my flaws!

It wasn’t his best piece of logic but thinking that he was only subpar because he stood in his friend’s shadow made him feel a little better. One day he would be on his own, and then he would shine. He was sure of that.

“Why don’t you try to live a life that other people will want to write books about?” Keeli asked, trying to sway him from his self-inflicted darkness. “That’s my goal!” She told him, as their final objective came into view.

“Mycah, why are we following kids? What happened to Roana, and Beatrice?”

“These four are the core of the tale you are going to learn. We will follow other characters, but these are the most important. Their lives are heavily intertwined and affect so many others. Each goes on to lead an extraordinary life.”

“Why are they practicing for war?” It wasn’t an odd thing for children in my time to be trained at a young age in the martial arts, but in this time wars were fought with guns by armies, not paladins with swords. The streets of this country – The Territory of the Republic Minded, known by its acronym Torm – were fairly safe and well-policed. There had been no war on this soil for over a hundred and fifty years. All of the wars the great nation of Torm had engaged in since then had been fought on other people’s ground – usually in the defense of those people. They were a mighty force in the world, secure in their ability to conquer all who might stand against them.

“Young children often become obsessed with foolish dreams.” Mycah said. “They wrap themselves in blankets of fiction that only time, and rough weather can strip away.”

“When you say, “rough weather” what do you mean?”

“There is little need for reality in mild weather. You are free to dream to your hearts delight.” He pointed at the looming rain clouds. “Storms force you to face all the preparations you did not make. They rob you of the luxury of fantasy.”

“Something bad is coming with that storm, isn’t it?”

“There are many storms on the horizon. That is not the worst of them.”

He said no more as we watched the quartet move out into a clear patch amongst the dense trees.