Chương 21: The Trial Week (2)

Dawn came with Gannik kicking the barracks door open.

"Out." Men scrambled from bunks and the group was taken for training in the yard. Teren expected to be taught about sword-fighting or shield walls, but the first lesson was stance. Not attack. Not defense. Not anything that looked remotely like fighting to Teren's untrained eye. Just stance, without even any weapons or shield in their hands. Feet set. Shield side forward. Knees loose. Weight balanced. Shoulders not too high. Weight not on the heels. Eyes ahead. Not at the ground. Not at the spear point. Ahead.

Do it again. Hold. Reset. Again. After ten minutes, it felt simple. After half an hour, Teren's legs began to ache. After an hour, the ache turned into a slow burn that made every correction feel like a personal insult. The instructor was a broken-nosed guard with a thick neck and a voice like gravel being crunched, which carried across the yard without effort.

"Your feet decide whether you live," he said, shoving one candidate's ankle into place with his boot.

"Not your arms. Not your courage. Feet first." He came to Teren and knocked the spear point aside.

"Too far out." Teren adjusted.

"Now your knee is too low." Teren corrected again.

"Better. Do not look pleased. Better is not good." Teren kept his mouth shut. After stance came shield grip. Then shield lift. Then shield hold. Then shield hold longer. Teren's left shoulder began to burn before the sun cleared the roofline. The shield was not even full battle weight, according to the man instructing them. Just a training shield. Wood. Leather. Iron rim. Heavy enough to make Teren's arm shake and light enough that the instructor called them pathetic for shaking.

By midmorning, sweat had soaked through Teren's tunic. His wrists hurt from holding the spear steady. His shoulders hurt from keeping the shield up. Gannik came to help later, and circled the yard with a thin stick, striking calves, wrists, and backs whenever men sagged too far out of position. No one bantered during training. The few who tried to complain learned quickly. A broad candidate named Hask muttered anyway.

"It's just standing..." Gannik heard him. Five minutes later, Hask was still standing, but now with a shield held straight out from his body while Gannik watched from two paces away.

"It's just standing," Gannik said.

"So stand." Hask lasted less than a minute before his arm dropped. The stick cracked across his shoulder. The man hissed.

"Again!" No one else commented about stance again. At noon, they ate while sitting along the wall under guard. Bread, stew, water. More food than laborers got, less than any free worker would call generous. The candidates shoveled down the food before they could be told that lunchtime was over. One man vomited after gulping water too fast and got cursed for wasting both food and shade. No one joked. Two guards stood nearby with their own bowls.

One said, "All this trouble along the borders won't fill the grain stores." The other shook his head.

"No. But if it turns into war, it'll empty them fast enough."

"Keep your voice down," the first guard hissed. He glanced toward Gannik, who stood near the well speaking to another soldier. The second guard lowered his voice after that. Teren kept eating. War. He had heard enough scattered words to know Karthane was tense and there was trouble beyond the kingdom's borders, but this was the first time anyone near him had said it plainly. He wanted to ask what sides, what cause, what kingdom, what empire, what the hell any of this had to do with him. He kept eating.

Candidates who asked too many questions drew the guards' attention. After lunch, they learned shield work. Hold. Brace. Angle. Step. Do not hide behind it until you blind yourself. Do not swing it like a tavern stool. Do not let a strike turn your body sideways. Do not leave the man beside you uncovered. Teren followed every correction he could. When the broken-nosed instructor slammed a padded club into his shield, Teren staggered but did not fall.

"Again," the man said. Teren set his feet. The club hit harder. This time, Teren kept his place. The instructor grunted.

"There. Remember that." Late in the afternoon, they learned spear grip. Not thrusting. Not yet. Just grips.

"Point where you're told," the broken-nosed instructor said.

"Not where you panic. Not where you guess. Not where your useless brains put it." Teren listened. Every word mattered because he had already died doing this wrong. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Then the instructor set them in pairs and corrected hands, elbows, and distance. He shoved Teren's spear aside with two fingers.

"Too wide." Teren adjusted.

"Still wide." He adjusted again.

"Better. Not good. Better." That was the first praise he received all day. It felt absurdly valuable. Near evening, one of the candidates dropped his shield in frustration after being corrected too many times and cursed at Gannik. The yard went still. Gannik looked at him.

"Say that again." The man's face went pale. He certainly did not say it again. Gannik still had him dragged to the edge of the yard and made him hold a stack of shields above his head until his arms failed. When they did, two guards took him away. He did not return to the barracks that night. No one asked where he had gone. By the time the sun neared the horizon, the candidates were told that training was over for the day and they could go for their evening meal.

Many of the candidates sat down right where they stood, making the guards chuckle at them. Others simply lay back on the dirt, too exhausted to care. Teren lay down with the others and stared up at the darkening sky. Training hurt. Training was humiliating. But training was useful. He had learned more in one day of being shouted at than in all his desperate swings in the pit and against the ashback boar. By the time he sat down to eat, Teren's left arm shook whenever he lifted his water cup or spoon.

His palms had opened in four places. His legs felt too weak to stand on. His body ached like he had been running for weeks. And this was only the first day of the trial week. After supper, the candidates walked back to the barracks far quieter than they had left it. Drem dropped onto his bunk with a hiss.

"If they wanted us dead, there are faster ways."

"They want us useful first before they send us to die," Teren said. The younger candidate groaned from the next bunk.

"I'm not even useful, from what the instructor said."

"Not yet anyway," Drem said.

"That supposed to help?"

"Nah." A few men laughed, tired enough that the sound came out rough. Teren sat on his bunk and looked down at his hands. Blisters. Dirt. A thin line of drying blood where the spear haft had rubbed skin open. For the first time since the time loops began, the pain felt like something he had earned instead of something done to him. He did not trust that feeling or believe that it would last. But when he lay down on his bunk, he fell asleep long before the lamps outside had fully dimmed.

The second day started before Teren's arms had stopped aching from the first. Gannik dragged them out before sunrise and sent them straight to the shield yard. No speech this time. No explanation. Just a line of half-awake candidates in dirty tunics, practice shields on their left arms, and a broken-nosed instructor who looked offended that any of them had survived the night.

"Pairs," the instructor said.

"Shield to shield. Push when I say. Stop when I say. If you fall, get up before the man behind you trips over your useless body." Teren ended up opposite Drem. Drem was shorter, but he had thick shoulders and a low center of balance. The first time they bashed shields together, Teren expected his own extra height and weight to matter. It did not matter enough. Drem hit him under the shield rim with his own and knocked him back two steps.

"Feet," the instructor snapped. Teren set them again. Drem gave him a quick grin over the shield.

"You read books or somethin' before getting chained?"

"Something like that." Drem laughed once, then drove forward again when the instructor shouted. This time Teren braced better. The impact still jolted up his arm, but his feet held. Drem tried to twist his shield aside. Teren shoved into the movement instead of away from it, and for a second they stood locked together, both breathing hard.

"Better," the instructor said from somewhere nearby.

"Do it again before you start thinking you know what you're doing." They did it again. By midmorning, Teren's left arm felt bruised from wrist to elbow. His shoulder burned. His hands had reopened where the spear haft had rubbed them raw the day before. The training stayed simple. That didn't make it easy. Step. Brace. Shield up. Spear low. Spear high. Close the gap. Open the gap. Turn without exposing the ribs. Step back without turning your back. Reset. Again.

Whenever one man failed, the whole line repeated the movement. By the third repetition, men cursed under their breath. By the tenth, even cursing took too much effort. The candidate named Hask, who had complained on the first day, made the mistake of turning his body sideways when the line shifted left. The instructor struck the open space below his ribs with a padded club. Hask folded with a grunt.

"That was a knife," the instructor said.

"Now you're bleeding through your shirt. Stand." Hask straightened, red-faced and gasping. The instructor tapped the same spot with the club, lighter this time.

"This part is yours to protect. This part"—he tapped the edge of Hask's shield—"belongs to the man beside you. Get selfish in a line and someone dies." Teren listened carefully. That rule had already been written into him with tusks. At noon, they ate beside the wall again. The stew was thinner than the day before, but there was still more of it than laborers received. Teren drank water slowly, flexing his left hand to keep it from stiffening. Two guards passed nearby carrying a bundle of practice spears.

"New batch o' slaves came in," one said.

"Any trouble?"

"Just one mage candidate. Two sick. Old Edras took a girl who couldn't even make the crystal glow." Teren's hand stopped over his bowl. The other guard made a low sound.

"Took?"

"Private carriage and all. Red hair, young. A real looker."

"She still must'a done somethin' with the crystal for Edras to take her away."

"Nah, I was there. The crystal didn't even blink."

"Then ya didn't look close." The first guard snorted.

"I was looking at the one being escorted. Much easier on the eyes than the assay." The two men kept walking. Teren forced himself to resume eating. The red-haired girl had arrived while he was behind the barracks with a shield strapped to his arm, learning how to keep his ribs from being opened. She had sat in the same compound. She had been tested. Edras had taken her again. And Teren had missed all of it. He wanted to stand. To go to the fence.

To ask someone where she had been taken, whether she had expected Edras again, and whether she had been a mage in hiding. He did none of that. Gannik was twenty paces away. The restricted fence was watched. Candidates had already been told not to speak to new intake groups. One wrong step now would cost him the route he had chosen. And probably his life. Teren put another spoonful of stew into his mouth and chewed until the urge to swear passed. Drem watched him from the side.

"You know that girl they were talkin' about?"

"What? No."

"You look like you swallowed a bone."

"Just bad stew..." Drem looked into his own bowl.

"That's hardly news." The answer was casual enough to let the matter drop, and Teren was grateful for it. The afternoon brought wooden swords, making Teren grimace with the memory of being stabbed to death by Gannik. The wooden blades were not elegant. They were heavy practice clubs shaped vaguely like swords, with wrapped grips and edges rounded enough not to cut. They still hurt. The broken-nosed instructor began by demonstrating on the youngest candidate.

"Guard high, he hits your leg." The wooden sword cracked against the boy's thigh, making him yelp in surprise.

"Guard low, he hits your head." The next blow stopped a finger's width from the boy's temple.

"Guard wide, he comes through the center. Guard narrow, he takes your hand. Step wrong, you fall. Swing wild, you miss. And he doesn't." Then the instructor made them hold the weapons while he walked down the line and corrected grips with the same patience a butcher might show to spoiled meat.

"It's not a hammer. Not a broom. And not some tavern girl you're frightened to touch. She might bite ya, but your sword won't. Hold it like a weapon or I'll make you carry it with your teeth." The youngest candidate, whose name was Pell, went bright red. Drem glanced at Teren.

"He was looking at you for the broom part. You look like you're scared of your sword." Teren adjusted his grip.

"I was afraid it was the third one." Drem almost laughed, caught himself, and turned it into a cough when Gannik looked over.