Hey people. Been a while. huh? Oh well. Thanks for all your reviews! And now, it's...

"SHOWTIME"

Harry's Madness

Chapter 29

White against Might

Lashwind Toll, small set of islands off the shore of Greenland, now White Shore territory, several leagues distant from England, 11:00 p.m., Aug. 8, First Year of the War of the Long Twilight.

Ron looked up into the night sky. It was dark up there, bitterly dark, but he thought he still saw some light up there. He smirked. Ah. Stars. The White Shore was weaving a culture around itself (much like the Black Tide was), and that culture seemed to consist entirely of things about stars. Stars, stars, stars, everywhere stars, and for some reason to Ron it all felt right. Stars decorated much of the artwork of the Shore, and the songs being composed invariably had something about stars in them. The people of the White Shore (and they truly were a people now: babies were being born at an astonishing rate, so much so that Durmstrang's Medical Ward was now an impromptu nursery held together by one very much worried Head Nurse) were fascinated by stars. Much of the lost science of Astrology had been unearthed again, and many members of the White Shore were amauter astronomers of one sort or another. At Durmstrang, where an oddly cozy, homely feeling seemed to prevail, a meteor passing overhead was cause for celebration among the soldiers, all going out to set up their telescopes and stare at the skies to see the flaming snowball passing overhead. Ron himself did not participate in such activities; he was usually sharpening his blade while the others were gone, begruding them the time lost through stargazing when they could be practicing and enhancing their fighting ability. Hermione had told him that too much work would drive them to leave; but Ron had pointed out to her (rather coldly) that the individual fighting strength of their men was the one thing they could count on. The Tide's soldiers were naturally savage and evil, and so fought well. The Ministry had so many soldiers they didn't have to fight well. The Shore was the one group who honestly needed to train and train and train. Ron knew, in his heart knew, that they didn't yet have the training they needed to take on the other groups. Ron honestly believed that a force of their soldiers, against an equal force of enemy soldiers of either kind, would get slaughtered.

(Unbeknownst to him, the White Shore already trained and drilled 50 more than either of their foes did, and the training and drilling had greatly reinforced individual strength. A single member of the White Shore was so well trained that, in comparison, the bark of a Black Tide soldier was worse than their bite, and the horribly trained Ministry units were even worse off. Still, Ron didn't know this, and maybe it was his insanely intense training that drove the White Shore to such heights of power. In the coming battles, it would serve them well. Oddly, the string of luck for the Shore came at exactly the same time that the string of luck for the Tide left, and the two groups had very different views of that summer and autumn after it was over. The Tide thought it had been horrible and that it was lucky to stay alive; the Shore thought they could mop it up in a month or two. The Shore was wrong.)

Right now, that fear was omnipresent; here they were, heading out in the darkness, to attack a Ministry naval outpost. Ron hoped his soldiers were up to the task. The soldiers themselves, all hunkered down in the single ship the White Shore actually had, were silent (as ordered), and waiting as the ship gently floated along the sea. The Ministry naval post, located on Lashwind Toll (named for the ferocious windstorms that raged upon the island every now and then), was a small, poorly armed place, and the force coming towards it intended to take it quickly and quietly. The Ministry had considered increasing the defenses around Lashwind Toll so that the White Shore would be unable to take it, but the fiasco in London had erupted first, and all Ministry soldiers were busily dealing with the backlash from the burning of the city. Most of the backlash was centered in England, where Alexander Ceras' underground newspaper, the Underground Hope, had spurred many into taking up torches and arms against the Ministry, and the fire and flame they wielded had made the Ministry pull troops out of its bases around the world to stop the rebels from smashing up homes, businesses, and (most especially) places of high Ministry business (recruiting posts for Aurors, for example). Committing a mistake of monumental proportions, they had declared all rebels to be "foes to the right and common cause of Wizardry" and had declared that all of them were to be put to the blade. Now outlaws whom Ministry soldiers would kill on sight, the various groups of "rioters" (who were mostly good, naturally peaceful people who suddenly found a rage in their hearts and just had to be rid of it somehow, even if it meant smashing in a window or a storefront, beating it in with their hands or fists or any piece of spare metal they could find) found themselves forced to disappear, most of them into small hidey-holes and safehouses that Alexander Ceras (with the help of Neville Longbottom, who had become the official Black Tide emissary to this heavily-Tide funded army) had constructed for them, and there, they seethed and waited. When the time came, the Tide would let out a clarion call, to one and all, to join the great army and march to eternity together, to wipe out the Ministry once and for all, to finish this land and finish it for the Tide forever... but that time was still a ways off as of yet, and the people, for now, were merely tired, oppressed, and poor.

The Ministry grew ever more and more tyrannical as the days passed on, and some newspapers (none of them government-approved or even tolerated; several of the editors were hanged) declared Susannah Bones the "dictator of the century". A few took some openly pro-Shore or Tide opinions in their pages. They were all soon wiped out. The tales of Ministry knight atrocities (one woman, the editor of the pro-Shore Water Dreams, was raped by three supposedly honorable Ministry Maven, and the story became one of Alexander Ceras' biggest selling tactics) became almost unheard of stories amongst the good Wizarding people, who, up until this point, had never had reason to doubt the veracity of their Ministry or the truth of its stories. The Ministry, though desperately propagandering itself to the people, was fighting a losing battle. The power of mouth-to-mouth and ear-to-ear was too much for them, and they were already losing ground.

None of this, of course, was on Ron's mind at the moment. Instead, on that night of Aug. 3. the thing most on his mind was the ability of his soldiers to stand toe-to-toe with the Ministry soldiers and win when things were sword to spear and sickle to fist. Ron hoped they could win.

He was completely surprised by the victory they won that night.

-

The plan was exceedingly simple. One group of warriors, those with Ron on the ship, would land at the port, where the Ministry officials would probably be quite curious as to what the devil an apparently empty ship was doing there. Whenever the men inside the ship heard someone attempt to open the door, they would rush out and take them down. Once done, Ron himself would contact a second group, led by Hermione, who was waiting inside a Thunderbird-generated stormcloud to the north, where, riding upon the Bleak Anchor commanded by Capt. Isaacs (who had been given the command of the ship by Capt. Vustag himself, who had stated that Isaacs was a better leader than he could ever possibly hope to be, and that he would be proud to serve underneath him, which had made Isaacs blush furiously and shrug embarassedly, then make Vustag his first mate on the spot), they would proceed to fly over the encampment and hurl one or two spells at the soldiers below. They were especially aiming for captains and lieutenants, who could be picked out by the brighter clothes they wore. A group of well-placed ice spells would quickly seal off the high command, and two or three thunderbolts would guarantee that the soldiers so attacked did not survive. Afterwards, the last group of warriors, this time headed by another member of the team that had freed Walter Andrews, a small little Wizard from Spain named Pierre, would land from a second airship that was also hiding in the stormcloud, and they would charge the north while Ron and his group hacked their way through the front gates. The goal was to take the port in as best a condition as possible, one reason ice spells were being used; ice spells generally only damaged living flesh and not stone. Still, the White Shore expected some collateral damage, but that was okay. They needed this port, and even the foundations of the buildings would be a great prize, saving them much time on the reconstruction.

And, as the boat sidled up to the port, the battle began for real.

-

Windglean, Ministry outpost on Lashwind Toll, harbor, same time.

The harbor master, a very average man named Jonathan Tomas, was mostly bored, as he sat behind his long white desk and awaited the end of his shift. Nothing much happened up here. Oh, there had been that large shipment of troops up north a while ago (the ill-fated expedition that a certain now-dead member of the Order had cooked up; on a random note, the wolves had eaten everything but Daedulus Diggle's eyes, and they were still rolling around in the wastes somewhere, staring sightlessly at the white nothing that had consumed him and the troops that had went with him) but the eagerly-awaited return of their ships, complete with the new, crying, back-broken children who would be on them (former White Shore members, easily defeated by highly-trained Ministry troops; this was the lie the harbor master had been told and believed when Daedulus Diggle had sailed past him) had never materialized, and so the harbor master regretfully believed that they must have taken a different route going home- too many children on board, perhaps, to risk taking such an out-of-the-way route as this back home. Far from the mainland as they were, they never received many owls from the ministry, and had received no word of the defeat of the troops of north, long ago (relatively speaking) as it was.

Musing that no one ever visited them up here nowadays, the man berated himself for following his father's footsteps and joining the Navy. His father had been a drunk old fool, but even that had not diminished the awe he somehow inspired in Jonathan whenever he saw him in his great black Ministry officer's coat (he was a second gunnery sergeant aboard a battleship, the Deep Drake, which survived the burning of England and was later transferred to the White Shore, about two years into the war, and sunk four months later, by a group of Longbottomers- sailors whose story will be told another time). That awe had (in part) spurred Jonathan to become a member of the Navy as well, but unfortunately for him, his last name got him into trouble almost from the start. Nothing was said to the young man (not at the beginning of his training, anyway), but everyone knew his father was a bastard and nobody wanted him to be in a position of leadership at all. His father having been advanced under a series of old, now-discontinued laws regarding senority in leadership positions, the Ministry Navy was determined not to make the same mistakes with Jonathan Tomas Jr. Deciding that a position in the far north would be best, they stuck him as close to Greenland as possible, and here he had stayed, five years having passed since he started work as a seaman and eventually became a Harbor Master for this small place of frost near the middle of nowhere. The Ministry had rather hated promoting him even to the decidedly undesirable position of Harbor Master, but the young man was honestly good at his job- so they promoted him and hoped he didn't share his father's almost megalomaniacal tendencies when ruling over his men, or the habit of his father's of dipping a wee bit too deep in the whisky when he was alone. In his cups, the man had almost been hanged once, by soldiers who refused to take it any longer; but Jonathan Tomas Jr. was not the man his father was, and so ended up far better than the Navy could have hoped. Still, they were loathe to stick anyone with the name "Tomas" in high command, so here he stayed, leading his men on the frozen northern edge of the world.

The man, sitting at his small desk in the small harbor, was very capable for what he did; but, having had no chance to train at harder and bigger things and henceforth never having the chance to expand his mind to deal with them, he was, in the end, a rather low-ranking middle-class soldier. He was not a great general (he was okay at defending things, and- as a bonus- he did have perfect knowledge of his harbor) and he was only an average soldier- he was, really, average in every way.

He was totally unprepared for the skill he was about to face. It was like an atom bomb deciding to have a blasting match with a firecracker. The poor man was in over his head, and he didn't even know it yet.

The ship slowly sailed into harbor, and the harbor master looked up.

" Huh" he said, as he moved to open it.

-

Ten minutes later.

The inside of the ship was dark and very, very cramped. Soldiers and their armor are big things, and put in a small place they tend to take up a lot of room very fast. One soldier was literally sitting on the greaves of his two companions, using his long-shafted halberd to keep himself upright. When discovering this problem, Ron had come up with a genius solution; the other two soldiers, both swordsmen, would stand up suddenly, propelling their shorter companion forward and letting him and his time-buying halberd enter the front ahead of them. The plan was simple: when the door opened, pikemen would rush out and buy everyone time to get outside the ship and get ready. Afterwards, pikemen in the lead, they would advance on the enemy harbor and keep their forces occupied while the other troops moved into position. Pikes were long weapons, and their strength was at their tip; henceforth, they possess many great disadvantages. They were horribly unwieldy in close combat, real damage could only be dealt with the very end of the weapon, and they were as heavy as lead; but they are absolutely exceptional at what they are supposed to do, and in this battle, what Ron wanted was exactly what pikes were supposed to do. Halberds and pikes, besides being excellent calvary deterrents (no horseman really wanted to run into one of those sharp, wicked looking things when they were leveled at him, and they had been the end of many a fine horse in their time) were also good at another thing, and that thing was time. Pikes were the greatest tool an infantry captain could hope to have when it came to buying time for his troops. No one wanted to step into the range of a pike (or halberd, depending on what they were being called at the time; Hermione, in a fit of pique over a strange inability to say "halberd" without smiling over an old sexual joke Ron had shared with her in their bed somet time ago, had even called them "long axes", which had made Ron burst out into laughter that his men didn't understand and really didn't want to understand), and the very fear of stepping into the long, sweeping arc of death that a pike represented to them was enough to buy commanders time to utilize other, more effective moves. Halberds also made great companions to swords, as they allowed an experienced soldier to "tie up" an enemy's movements, constricting his range of motion by jabbing and twisting the halberd, forcing him to duck and dodge instead of striking back, and with the enemy so preoccupied, it was a simple matter for a soldier or another halberdier to run up and strike the killing blow. Few soldiers could dodge multiple weapons without taking at least a small blow, and so most simply died when such a situation came.

All these things and more were on the minds of the soldiers now sitting quietly on the ship and waiting for the harbor master to open the door and invite death on his head. Actually, that same quiet was the one thing that should have told Ron that his doubts about his men were totally unfounded. His men were totally, completely, unnervingly silent. He had only said the word" Silence" to them, and now this. On a Ministry ship of the same size with the same number of soldiers, the men would undoubtedly be moving about, cursing and swearing when an elbow met an eye or a knee met a groin. On a Tide ship, again of same size and with the same number of soldiers, the sheer depravity and salivating, drooling evil that heavily prevailed over them all would have caused at least a few of them to laugh, or at least quietly chuckle, as they considered the flames that would shoot up and the blood they so longed to spill the instant they were off the ship. Yet the White Shore was completely, totally quiet. No one moved. It seemed no one breathed. Ron himself was afraid that he was the noisiest one on the ship, yet all he'd done was breath and quietly (so quietly the metal didn't even scrape on the scabbard) draw Lyonheart out. Ron thought about this and wondered.

The wondering, though, took the wrong turns, and Ron escaped what might really have been the central issue. The armies of most countries, including the U.S., Great Britain, and France, all believed that the best way to train a soldier is to break him first. They view it almost as they view breaking a horse: shatter a man's spirit, and then rebuild whatever's left into the machine you want it to be. That is why so many soldiers laugh at the same jokes; it is why so many soldiers all think alike. They are taught to. A man with the guts and temerity to tell his drill sergeant, when the man says " You must be a complete damn idiot" (generally for no reason; drill sergeants are taught to act tough, mean, and gritty, and assail people for the simple purpose of cowing them into submission), to fry in hell, is generally sent to the brig. Of course, for those with a defiant streak, this training works perfectly; they are cowed and do whatever they are told. But for those men and women with the incredible strength of soul to actually sign up and register for their duties, who deliberately risk their lives in the defense of something greater, this kind of training is nothing more than a shame and a slap in the face and a rude awakening, all in one. Someone with that kind of soul should be taught to obey you, yes- you are the boss, after all- but that boss should not be shown to be some weak, stupid, screaming thing that rants for no reason and attacks you because you put your shirt on wrong, or because your medals are not perfectly laser straight. Many a soldier has left boot camp with zero respect for his drill sergeant in his mind- a great deal of fear, yes, but there is no respect. Many confuse fear and respect, but only with imbeciles are the two things ever one and the same. Fear inspires hatred; respect inspires devotion.

The White Shore, having had zero experience with any military, treated it like both a noble, sacred thing and a job all at the same time; this allowed them to keep the honor and duty they felt had to come with being a soldier, yet also allowed their men to have fun with their work and let it all hang out, too, figuratively speaking. As a job, they respected their superior officers and their wisdom; as a noble, sacred thing, they respected the act itself, and privately trained to get better, as well. Instead of degrading their men, the White Shore lifted them high; and the result was that, with a feeling both strong-rooted and deep, each soldier honestly believed that nothing but their very best would do. This, combined with Ron's extended practice hours, resulted in an army of quickly trained, powerful soldiers who obeyed every command given to them with all the willpower and might they could muster. When Ron said Silence, he might as well have told his men to turn to stone, for they moved not at all, not even to move a hand towards an itch or blink an eye that was fiercely burning from contact with the cold, dry air. Ron was surprised at this, and almost opened his mouth to say something, but held back his tongue. Any word now would simply break the silence, and Ron had to admit, they were fulfilling his command to the letter. He'd asked for silence, and boy, silence was what he got. Everyone was so quiet it was almost unnerving. Even those nights he'd laid awake next to Hermione, insomnia claiming him (as it so often did) instead of sleep, he had never heard such deep, uneventful, perfect silence.

He would have liked to say it was peaceful, but the silence was enforced, and so seemed hard, instead of peaceful. Then a small sound- loud inside the enclosed ship- and someone began tapping at the wall.

" Hmm... a ship? What's it doing out here? And no one's on it... demons, maybe? Or perhaps it has a magic captain, piloting it when all the Wizards are asleep... huh? A door? Hey, let's see what is"

At that point, Ron shouted " Now"

The door flew open, Tomas went down from a blow the high-velocity wood had delivered to him when the door seemingly leapt out of its hinges, and the Shore was on the move.

They were on the coast for a full five minutes before anyone found out, and that was only because a member of the guard had happened to go take a piss.

-

Private Traven walked outside, the air bitter and cold against his flesh; but because of the large number of men at the bathrooms at this hour (one man had managed to smuggle in large quantities of whisky; this resulted in much merry-making by the men, and afterwards, much water-making as each overworked liver threw a portion of its workload off onto the bladder, who was understandably very angry at being used in such a foul, mistreated way but who was also, very understandably, unable to do a damn thing about it) he had been forced to endure it if he wanted to elimnate a burning need in his crotch. Unzipping his pants, the soldier let loose with a stream that he could almost have sworn reached twenty foot in length. Back turned to the docks, the wind howling in his ears, the man didn't hear a damn thing when the door was kicked down and the men flooded outside it. He likewise heard nothing as they set up a small staging area that would last until their men were all out of the boat. Ron was currently calling Hermione on a small crystal ball they'd designed that would work in the snow (one odd note: physical cold had the ability to drain magic, and long-distance communications were a pain in the ass for a military unit in a snowstorm, because it fritzed out their communication devices- but Durmstrang had figured out ways around it, and the White Shore was grateful for their abilities now) and it was not until the communication was finished and the remaining two groups were well on their way towards the port that Private Traven turned around and was greeted by a group of heavily armed white bearing soldiers bearing on him while he was zipping up his pants.

Eyes bugging out of his head, Traven ran inside screaming" White Shore! White Shore! Here! Here"

The Ministry soldiers grabbed their weapons with a curse.

- Part 2 coming up soon. Happy New Years! And, in a belated Christmas gift to you all:

Harry's Jester powers did come to him suddenly, without warning, without question. But the manner in which they came is a matter best left to other things. Suffice for now to say that the rage in his soul is a damn valuable prize for a few... entities that exist in our universe. And suffice it to say that there are things in the looking glass which will terrify anyone, even Harry.

But "terrify" does not always mean "will not use". Remember that.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!