Capture the Flag at Camp Half-Blood was not, he had learned quickly, a game. It was a tactical exercise conducted at divine-enhanced speed by demigods who trained every day and who brought the full weight of their divine abilities and interpersonal rivalries to bear on what was nominally a recreational activity.
It was also, he admitted privately, excellent.
The teams were organized by cabin groups, with the traditional Ares-Apollo alliance facing Athena-Hermes-others. Kael was assigned to the Athena-led team by virtue of being Apollo cabin but not sufficiently solar in his combat approach to fit Ares's preferred front-line tactics, which suited him perfectly.
Annabeth ran their team's strategy. She was nine and she was in charge and nobody was questioning it because her strategy was simply better than anything anyone else had proposed, and Camp Half-Blood, for all its various flaws, generally let competence lead in the arena.
She laid out the plan in fifteen minutes: three-layer defense, offensive two-person strike team, three dedicated blockers, and a shadow element — which was where she placed Kael — to provide environmental disruption without engaging directly.
'Shadow element,' he said.
'You're not going to win a direct fight against the Ares cabin's front line,' she said, without cruelty, with accuracy. 'You're going to make the Ares cabin's front line unable to see their flag's location correctly.'
He appreciated this. He appreciated it specifically because she had assessed his actual capabilities without either inflating or dismissing them, had identified the highest-value use of what he could do, and had integrated it into a larger strategy without ego. This was, he thought, what good tactical thinking looked like.
The game was messy, as capture the flag always was when the plan met contact with the enemy. The Ares team's aggressive push disrupted the first two layers of their defense. Annabeth adapted in real time, redirecting blockers, calling audibles via camp communications. He moved through the tree line, deploying shadow screens at calculated points — not attacking the Ares team directly but interfering with their sightlines, placing shadow between their advance team and their own flag's location so that the retrieval team on his side could operate in the confusion.
They won. Annabeth's revised strategy, executed under pressure, got the flag with ninety seconds left on the clock.
Afterward, sitting by the creek with the rest of their team, Annabeth sat next to him and said, 'Your shadow placement on the eastern approach was good. But you telegraphed the third screen — I could see you setting up your position before you deployed it.'
'I know,' he said. 'I was using the tree as a reference point. It was visible.'
'You need a way to set up without a visible reference. Movement tells people where you're going to be.'
He thought about this. She was right. 'I'll work on it.'
She nodded. Then: 'You were good.'
He looked at her. She had said it simply, as assessment, the same way she would have said the shadow placement was off — it was just the other end of the same honest scale. He felt, unexpectedly, that this meant more than praise delivered more warmly.
'So were you,' he said, with equal directness.
She accepted this the same way she had delivered the compliment: factually, without embarrassment. 'I know,' she said. 'But you're the first person on the team who has said it the right way.'
'The right way being—'
'Like you mean it as information rather than as a compliment.'
He thought: yes. That is exactly the distinction. And she is nine years old and she already knows that there is a difference and prefers the first.
He thought: I am going to be very careful to always give her the information version.