Maria, the squadron, now at full strength, bowed to the rest of the assembly and moved forward onto the bridge.
There was a powerful thunderclap.
A few members of staff now entered the mists of the arch. The others went back to the pavilion.
The last battle was beginning.
On the other side of reality, Petrus’s commando landed at the edge of the gray tea plantations in Ryoan. On yet another side, the staff materialized around the plantations in Inari. At the far end, or side, or quadrant of the world, Aelius and Santangelo, in the golden pavilion, were beginning to suspect that something was brewing.
And so, the action got underway in Ryoan. The only interspecies rugby team ever was deployed with lightning speed and efficiency, increased tenfold, I must say, by Petrus’s gift for encouragement. No sooner was he back on his feet, crouching behind the rows of tea, than he pulled a bottle from his bundle and generously shared out the contents, then stood up straight, like the very devil, brandishing his first ball of maple twigs—at which point the team swarmed onto the plantation and almost immediately encountered the opponent. Alejandro and Jesús closed the diagonal on the left, keeping the right distance from the last elf on the line. They saw the first ones, including Petrus, collide head on with a group of bears armed with spears, then deceive them with the art of evasion Paulus had praised—and it was magnificent, because the elves of the alliance fell like drunks between the enemy’s paws, then slipped away like eels, leaving their opponents behind them, now busily hitting each other. For a moment Alejandro and Jesús only had to run, but finally, they drew level with the ruck and faced their first adversaries. Ordinarily, higher-ranking officers do not excel in close combat, but Alejandro de Yepes and Jesús Rocamora were the sons of arid lands, where lords and serfs labor under the same yoke and the same rigorous climate. They were as agile as any survivor of hostile conditions, and they knew when to fall to the ground and twist sideways to avoid a blow with an ax, a toss of the spear, or those odd whirlwinds, miniature tornadoes, that whistled like arrows in flight then disintegrated on reaching the ground. After a moment, real arrows began to fly, aiming at random above the rows of tea, and new tornadoes came swooping down in bursts, sometimes coming close to the very enemy they were supposed to protect. But it was all happening very quickly, and it would have taken a clever soldier on Aelius’s side to thwart the plans behind such a mysterious attack. The commando spread out by passing, dodging, dropping, passing again, with a diabolical precision that no doubt would enthrall numerous coaches in human lands, and I must say that this match, absurd as it was for being played only by one side, was nevertheless an impeccable incarnation of the essence of rugby. Petrus didn’t like chivalry and its moral sentimentality; he thought that, of all the evils, war was the ugliest and vilest; that one must win quickly, brutally, and absolutely; and that spies and assassins were the true artisans of victory. But he hated these requirements of war as much as he hated war itself, and since he knew that the aftermath would be as hideous as the enemy’s hatred, he was not sorry that the opening scene was a good performance. The beauty of rugby stems from its organic quality: the team is nothing without its members, who are nothing without the team. When, after lengthy entanglements, endless scrums, and pitiful advances, the line spreads out and covers giant portions of the field, it’s not just the fluidity of movement, but also the combined effort of heart and legs that rouse the spirit, because the player who scores is heir to the precision and enthusiasm of all the others. And so, Petrus of the Deep Woods, this meticulous and fiery elf, sly and crafty, but also frank and amiable in the company of friends, and ultimately passionate about elsewhere, although he was loyal to his fathers and his mists, had in this war at least one battle which, like French rugby, suited his nature and evinced a refinement and panache that Scotch whisky truly had not spoiled. He knew that a succession of massacres lay ahead, and he was savoring this last engagement, fought without damage or casualties. At the dawn of a tragic time,