An hour later the overseer was back out on the field. The next battle with be a battle between the House Ventris and House Restav upon the plains. It will be limited to spears, shields and swords. All swords and spears will be blunted. For further safety the heads of the spears will be removed. There will be a two hour time limit on this battle. The winner is the one with the most men standing at the end.

The two sides were directed to their respective starting points on the field. This time the guards from House Restav decided to essentially turtle their defense and allow the guards from Ventris wear themselves out trying to penetrate their defense. They formed up phalanxes in a circle with three layers and at the center the leader of the guards. This was their standard defense formation which hadn’t been breached in almost a hundred years.

The guards from House Ventris began a quick walk until they were a hundred feet from the opponent. Then they suddenly began to jog and as they jogged they began to form up into an elongated pyramid.

“Hmph,” snorted Lord Restav as he watched the Ventris’ guards start to jog. “What do they plan to do? Bash their heads on our indestructible defense? Ha ha ha!”

In the audience both houses Restav and Draco began laughing but the rest of the crowd simply murmured as they communicated with each other on what House Ventris’ plans to beat this defense could possibly be.

“The best way to crack a turtle is with a wedge,” muttered Hiro under his breath so that only his father heard him.

Luckily, Caden took the hint and smiled as he repeated loudly, “The best way to crack a turtle is with a wedge!”

Now the audience tent was silent as everyone immediately turned back to the field. Indeed the Ventris Guards were forming up a thin wedge, however they were all packed into this wedge very tightly and now they were running. As they ran each person was pushing forward the one in front of them. Then they slammed into the defense of the Restav guards and without even blinking an eye they penetrated that defense all the way to the leader at the center of the formation and proceeded to run him down. They didn’t even bother to slash with the sword or hit him with the spear, they just simply ran him over, from the front of their wedge formation all the way to the end. Then the wedge formation didn’t even stop and instead ran past the last ring and exited the Restav’s defense and came to a halt over two hundred feet away when they turned and faced the Restav’s guards again.

Christof came forward while scratching his cheek, “Sorry about that turds, we were supposed to stop and fight however we didn’t want to have shit plastered to our feet so we keep running, hoping to wipe it off. We’re coming back over now to fight so chin up!”

This really pissed off the Restav guards and they quickly formed up a smaller turtle formation as a little over a third of them had been wiped out by being trampled upon. Then the Ventris guards started forward again. The Restav guards had no leader so they stuck to their tried and true method of turtling up and it turned out to be a bad choice. Not only did the defense not hold up but now the Ventris wedge was not as compact as it was before, they had spread out into an arrow and when it slammed into them it essentially bowled them over, only to then be trampled upon as the wedge passed over them. Soon all of them were on the ground in various states of disrepair and with all of them possessing shoe prints all over their bodies. They were all moaning and groaning and as expected some had soiled themselves.

“Gods almighty! I think we stomped the shit out of these turds Captain!” shouted out one of the Ventris’ men.

“Phew! I believe you’re right. We’d better mosey on down to our side of the field before we catch anything from these bastards. God help us all, what’s with these people?? First the Dracos and now the Restavs, is there some shitting epidemic going on here? Hurry up and move along, I can’t have us catching whatever gods forsaken shit problem they’ve got.” Replied Christof.

The overseer eventually came on the field with a cloth sash in front of his nose as he proclaimed the House Ventris as the winners of this battle. He waved his men on the field and they proceeded to assist some of the Restav’s guards off to the healer tents.

“The next battle between House Ventris and House Restav will be held in an hour. This will be a…” he paused as a runner came running up to him. He took a scroll and read from it before he coughed lightly. “Ahem, so it seems that the final battle between House Ventris and House Restav is already concluded. The healers at the healer tents have informed me that House Restav’s guards will not be able to partake in further matches today due to injuries. That will be the end to the war games between Houses Ventris and Restav. Tomorrow will host the matches between House Ventris and House Joran.” He paused again as another runner came up with another three scrolls. He took the scrolls and opened them one at a time. The contents on each one made his face even more comical as varying degrees of frustration, incredulity, disbelief and finally acceptance went across his face. At the end of it all he simply threw the scrolls away with a sigh. “Ahem…Houses Joran, Killian and Goodard have all conceded their matches against House Ventris.”

The results caused an uproar amongst the audience tent. Never before in the history of the war games had three houses conceded without even a match being fought. Caden had a ridiculous smile on his face and nothing his friends teased him about could wipe it off his face.

“Ahem, I take it that the other houses will still at least take part in their remaining matches so that we can at least have something of a semblance of a war game?” asked the overseer.

“Oh sure! No problems there!” shouted Alric, Lord of the House Joran, “at least we won’t get our asses handed to us.”

“Absolutely, no problems.” Shouted Edward, Lord of the House Killian before he muttered under his breath, “Who the hell wants to get crushed and embarrassed like that!”

“We agree, after all we were only conceding the matches against House Ventris. Don’t want to go up against my soon to be in-laws and all that you know.” Replied Lord Goodard with a wave of his hand.

That statement left the entire audience tent as silent as a mouse as hundreds of heads turned to look towards Lord Goodard and then to where his daughter was sitting playing with Hiro. Hiro, upon realizing that the tent had gone silent looked around and noticed everyone staring at him. He frowned as he went over what had been said just a few moments ago until he realized exactly what Lord Goodard implied.

He looked over to his mother who was shaking her head wearily and subtly pointed to his father. He then looked at his father who was feigning ignorance and a pained smile on his face.

“Um, father can you explain this to me?” asked Hiro.

Caden looked away and pretended that he hadn’t heard anything. He even started humming a ditty.

‘Shit! I’ve been sold downriver by my father!’ was all Hiro could think as he realized that his boat had been sunk.