Victory Guaranteed
Al knew early in life that he was destined for great things.
Another opportunity to prove it had now arisen and he was determined to not let the chance pass by. As he hauled himself over the final rung, the rough untrimmed boards at the top of the ladder scraped against his shins with the same intimate familiarity as they had always done. However, he was proud of the fact that his skin had grown tough and hardy with the passing of the past months. Each scrape was only a hot and prickly passing sensation now, rather than a physical injury in the form of prolonged redness or a few tiny ruby beads of blood. Tough, it was all about being tough. There was never any hope of victory without a fair measure of toughness, courage, and pain.
Al, short for Alan although everyone seemed to have forgotten that the name Alan had ever belonged to him, liked words such as victory, toughness, and courage. They were good masculine words, words that boded well for success in life. Al knew that choosing the right words was important if you wanted to get your point across with a precise and exact amount of nerve and authority.
Yes, he’d known very early on of the right way to get others to look to him for leadership and encouragement. His earliest memories saw him toddling across the floor, scarcely more than two or three years old, with his enraptured and adoring little sister crawling along behind him. She’d liked having someone to follow and he was more than happy to be that someone. He was one of life’s shepherds rather than one of life’s sheep and he held that knowledge ingrained within his bones.
“You’ve rigged up a trap,” Tom said, his voice ripe with appreciation and awe.
“Just as my father would’ve done,” Al grunted as he pulled the cord he’d wrapped around the centre pole so tightly that it burned his palms. Al aspired to be a man like his father. George Samson was man among men, a king among kings. George had served in the military and his peers held him in high regard before his honourable discharge. George, in Al’s well-considered opinion, knew the answer to most things and what he didn’t know he made it his business to find out. “You always said that we couldn’t win this, Tom.” Al’s words were an accusation, lightly said but strongly meant. The type of thing that George would say to his subordinates to remind them of their place in the general scheme of things.
“No. I don’t remember saying that,” Tom said quickly, and his frown seemed to prove that he meant it. “I might’ve said it would be challenging, but I never said we couldn’t win.” He touched the ropes reverently and both of them knew he had cleverly designed the action as an acknowledgement, an apology, and a distraction all rolled into one.
“Baxter!” Jon’s roar was so close to Al’s ear that Al thought his eardrum might explode into a hundred painful pieces. Jon waved his arms around, venturing dangerously close to the edge of the platform as he did so. “Go home.”
Baxter, the lovable and inescapably stupid beagle that he was, gazed up at his master from the ground. From here, his brown eyes gleamed widely, his pink tongue lolled, and he showed absolutely no interest in obeying Jon’s command. Al inwardly groaned. “Jon. You know you were supposed to tie him up before you came.” Unfortunately, Baxter had already caused enough mischief with his unnerving ability to sniff out and find Jon regardless of where in the woods he may be. Battles were no place for a lolloping dog with a dripping pink tongue and the fixated idea that everyone must love him.
“I did tie him up.” Jon was already descending the ladder, apparently well aware that he’d committed a punishable offense. “I’ll have to take him home. You can do it without me.”
Al pushed away the annoyance that scrabbled across his skin like a crab in the tide. Jon’s presence would be sorely missed but victory was still possible without him. “You go. We just can’t have Baxter here today.”
Jon nodded sheepishly, a man aware and more than willing to acknowledge that his lack of foresight and professionalism had caused the problem. “Good luck.”
Al gravely inclined his head. No further words were necessary.
“Where’s he going?” Zil asked as Jon climbed down the ladder and jumped the final few feet to the ground. “He can’t just up and leave. Today is important. We have to win this. We need every man on board.”
“I told him he could go,” Al said curtly. Axel, more commonly referred to as Zil, was Al’s right-hand man and everyone knew it. However, Al’s word was law and he didn’t appreciate Zil’s questioning. Not today, not when there was so much at stake.
Round and plump Jackson, a man who had only responded to his surname for so long that most of his friends didn’t realise that he’d ever had a first name to begin with, farted and burped at the same time. This was a party trick of Jackson’s and one that Al secretly admired. Most people didn’t understand how much concentration and focused alignment of the muscles were necessary to perform such a coordinated act on a whim.
Al moved around Jackson, the original immovable object, to tie the other end of the rope to a beam at the side of the construction. He checked it for tautness and hardness, appreciating the pure maleness of the length of tied rope. There was never any room for gentleness and ineffectual loosening of standards in such a mission, and especially not now.
“I think I can hear them coming,” Jackson remarked conversationally, shifting almost imperceptibly to the rear. Jackson was an important part of the team but he held no interest in being the bravest and he’d never tried to hide that indisputable fact.
“The end is nigh,” Zil pronounced ominously. It was a curiously old-fashioned phrase but Al thought it curiously relevant to what they were about to embark upon.
Tom spoke for all of them, his voice tense with nervousness and anticipation. “It’s time. Are we ready, Al?”
Al took a deep, shuddering breath, aware that they had now reached the point of no return. They would end today triumphant or defeated and he knew he himself could only accept one of those choices. Triumph carried no compromise and for him, it was the only option available. They had the benefit of their stockade and the undoubtable strength of their team behind them – surely, triumph in such a moment could be nothing but assured? All or nothing. United we stand and divided we fall. “We’re ready.”
His kinsmen remained silent as they gathered closely around him, staunch and fiercely loyal until the end. His tribe, his brothers in arms. His men. Summoning all the dignity his ten-year-old self could muster, Al stood at the edge of the treehouse platform and waited for their classmate Knotty Bowen’s ruffian gang to appear on the other side of the clearing.
The End