There was nothing to see now for a minute and so Laks shifted focus to his stick fighters and verified that they had miraculously worked free of the unexpected difficulties.
Somewhere on the Internet there must be feeds from Chinese webcams on the ground floor of the barracks. These would no doubt make for entertaining viewing later. But the next event that Laks could actually see was his squad of irregulars, spearheaded by Sam and Jay, sprinting across the parking lot toward a side door. Which must mean that the Gurkhas had achieved their next objective, which was to climb up out of the boiler room and, by surprise if possible, violence if necessary, get to that door and open it.
So the raid—in the kabaddi sense of that term—was now on. The raiders had crossed the line into the enemy side and were tagging as many as they could before time expired. Which would probably be as soon as the Blue Herons got a grip on the situation and counterattacked in earnest.
The hardest part of the planning phase had been to get Sam and Jay to wrap their heads around the concept of tactical retreat. Apparently that just wasn’t in the soccer hooligan DNA. Laks had been forced to reach centuries into the past and mention some of the battles in which Sikh cavalry had used the tactic with success. As soon as Sam and Jay had got it through their heads that they were permitted to go on fighting after the tactic had succeeded in drawing the enemy into the open, they grudgingly warmed to the idea.
So that was what happened next. In kabaddi terms, the raiders had done all the tagging they were ever going to do and now desperately had to get back to the safe side of the line. So out of
the barracks door they spilled, some just sprinting in a reasonably convincing pantomime of blind panic, others fighting a rearguard action to keep the doorway clear.
People in combat obeyed instincts. The chase instinct was overwhelmingly powerful. In the School’s wake came the Flock, spilling out into the open. The only member of the Blue Herons who wasn’t in a retaliatory frenzy was Lan Lu himself, recognizable at a distance because his stick was a sort of cobalt blue with golden tips. Other members of the Flock had red or black ones according to seniority.
Laks stood up on the snowboard that Major Raju had procured for him and launched himself down the slope. His great stick, made of Kevlar laminate in a rocket factory outside of Delhi and maculated with corporate logos, made a fine balance pole. His turbaned gatka warriors, now most of the way to the bottom, had been warned over their earbuds. They looked up to see where he was coming down and cleared a gap in their line for him. They used their sticks to wave him toward it like the guys at the airport.
This was a pretty good board on pretty good powder—certainly an improvement on anything Laks had enjoyed at the crowded and waterlogged ski areas just outside of Vancouver. By agreement, Major Raju had procured a used board from a secondhand shop in Kashmir, and they’d scuffed it up a bit to make it look more ragtag, optics-wise.
Lan Lu certainly didn’t see it coming. Or if he did he didn’t understand how fast Laks was traveling. Not a winter sports aficionado, apparently. Anyway Laks was on him before he could get his guard up. Laks cut the Blue Heron’s legs out from under him as he schussed by, then banked into a hard U-turn on the flat and came back around toward his fallen foe. He pulled up well short, though, to give himself a few moments to kick out of his hard plastic boots—not a good fit with light-footed gatka movements. As he was doing this he had a clear view past Lan Lu and back up the western slope, now in brilliant red sunlight—all the sunrises lately had been glorious—to check on the progress of the School.
They were almost down, to the point where some members of the Flock were wheeling to meet them.
Toward Lan Lu he trudged in his stocking feet through knee-deep snow. The Blue Heron was up, dusting snow off his long changshan robe. Good. No broken legs. Keeping an eye on Laks, he looked around until he saw where his blue-and-gold stick had fallen, then picked that up. Looking past Laks he held up a hand to stop three Blue Herons who had been rushing to their master’s defense. With his eyes he drew their attention to the barracks. Indian defenders from the upper stories were now emerging from it to close the jaws of the trap.
Then Lan Lu raised his stick and faced off against Laks and settled into the stately guard position that Laks had admired in so many YouTube videos.
Because of what happened afterward, Laks didn’t get to watch Pippa’s supercut of the fight until much, much later. But it was certainly his impression until close to the end that he was getting his ass handed to him. There was a reason Lan Lu had been at the top of the leaderboard for most of this year. Laks had been so focused on his opponent’s close quarters techniques that he wasn’t ready for the standoff fight that actually ensued. They never seemed to close to within two meters of each other. Lan Lu wasn’t using stick technique at all. He was using spear technique. This turned out to work damned well. He had a way of making his stick flex around Lak’s defenses and tag him in the ribs or the side of the head. Which was confusing and upsetting, because you don’t expect to get hit in the side, or sometimes even in the back, by an opponent who is six feet away and in front of you.