Recruited Mage by David Fredric Page B

grass at the bottom. There were about fifty chairs at the far end and sitting on them was a man in a fancy uniform surrounded by a group of men in thick leather aprons. As we walked around the hole I noticed that there was a small section of palisade in the middle. We were told to wait whilst the men in the aprons watched us and Tain talked to the man in uniform. Eventually Tain walked back towards us carrying a large bundle of what looked like string attached.
    “Now t his is your first assessment,” he said before he was interrupted by Donal.
    “What? Assessment? For what and why?” Donal spluttered out.
    “Look, all will be explained; there was a change of plan that I will tell you about later. For now you have to do this. The man said there was no time for a full brief and this is all he told me; this is an explosive. It contains a large jar of fireshot powder and this.” He pointed to the string that had came from the bag. “This is a fuse.” We all looked at each other confused at what he meant. “A fuse is a special string that burns slowly along its length until it reaches the fireshot powder then it explodes it. You have to explode that bit of wall,” he pointed at the section of palisade. “As it explodes you will hide behind that barricade, which should shield you.” He then pointed to a small pile of wooden items. “You will use this to light it.” He pulled out a small stick with something black on the end. “When you strike it on this it will light.” He passed a block of something and the stick thing to Donal. Next he handed the explosive to Oldross, and said “call them a fire and block, now take the explosive and place it at the base of the wall, then unravel the fuse and bring the lose end back behind the barricade  and light it. Now go, the quicker the better! Run!” We obeyed and climbed into the hole, helping each other down. We ran to the section of Palisade and placed the explosive next to it. Then we quickly unravelled the fuse and brought the lose end of the fuse to the barricade. When we all were hunched down behind the barricade Donal struck the stick on the block and the end of the stick caught fire brightly. Donal then touched the fuse with the stick, sparks erupted from the fuse and the string started to burn, leaving no trace of the fuse behind. We were shaking with nerves; none of us had seen an explosion before. We peeped around the barricade, watching the fuse burn up towards the explosive.
    Put your fingers in your ears this is going to be loud.
    I quickly put my fingers in my ears and told the rest to do so. It was just in time before there was a huge bang and the ground shook. Earth was thrown past the barricade and high in the air. We all jumped in shock and my ears started ringing. There was a lot of acrid smoke burned my throat as the sound pierced my ears.
    What could do that? I can’t stand this! I peered around the barricade; there was a small hole where we had put the bomb but the palisade had gone. Then I realised that the palisade was all over the ground in the form of hundreds of splinters. I stood from beside the barricade and walked to the small hole in the ground. Donal, Oldross, and Rador joined me. We started coughing in the smoke and all that was said in the next minute was “Wow!” Suddenly Tain shouted for us to run to him and we did. Donal who was holding the burning stick, that seemed to have not got any smaller whilst it had been lit, put it out by sticking it in a puddle. The men were walking around the hole toward the gate. We helped each other out of the hole and presented ourselves in front of Tain who seemed a bit pleased. 
    “Good.” He said. “Now that they have seen what you are like they would like to see you lot doing something else. They want you to climb the main building to the top.” We looked at him to see if he was joking but he was not.
    “Are you serious?” asked Rador and Tain nodded.
    “You will have to work together,”