She didn’t come again, although he strained his ears for another hour, no further words were spoken. But he knew he had heard it. She had come.
He settled back into the needle discomfort of the mattress, tiredness finally overtaking him. The sobs had ceased and even Barkus’s snores seemed softer. He drifted into a dreamless, untroubled sleep.
Chapter 2
It was a year into his time in the Order when Vaelin first killed a man. A year of hard lessons imparted by hard masters, a year of punishing unending routine. They woke at the fifth hour and began with the sword, hours of swinging their wooden blades at the posts on the practice ground, trying to fend off Master Sollis’s attacks and copying the increasingly complicated sword scales he taught them. Vaelin continued to be most adept at parrying Sollis’s blows but the Master frequently found a way past his guard to send him bruised and frustrated to the dirt. The lesson of not allowing oneself to be fixed by his eyes had been well learnt but Sollis knew many other tricks.
Feldrian was given over entirely to sword work but Ildrian was the day of the bow when Master Checkrin, a muscular, softly spoken Nilsaelin, had them loosing arrows at the butts with their boy sized strongbows. “Rhythm, boys, it’s all in the rhythm,” he told them. “Notch, draw, loose… Notch, draw, loose…”
Vaelin found the bow a hard skill to master. The weapon was tough to draw and difficult to aim, leaving his fingertips raw from the bowstring and his arms aching with growing muscle. His arrows often sank into the edge of the target or missed altogether. He came to dread the day he would face the test of the bow, four arrows sunk into the bullseye at twenty paces in the time it took a dropped scarf to fall to the ground. It seemed an impossible feat.
Dentos quickly proved himself the best archer, his shafts rarely failing to find the bull’s eye. “Done this before, eh boy?” Master Checkrin asked him.
“Aye, master. My uncle Drelt taught me, he used to poach the Fief Lord’s deer till they cut his fingers off.”
To Vaelin’s annoyance Nortah was second best, his arrows finding the bull with grating regularity. The tension between them had grown since the first meal, unleavened by the blond boy’s arrogance. He sneered at the failings of the other boys, usually behind their back, and spoke constantly of his family though none of the others did. Nortah spoke of his family’s lands, their many houses, the days he had spent hunting and riding with his father who he claimed was First Minister to the King. It was his father that taught him the bow, a longbow of yew like the Cumbraelins used, not the composite horn and ash of their strongbows. Nortah thought the longbow a superior weapon, all things considered, his father swore by it. Nortah’s father seemed to be a man of many opinions.
Oprian was the day of the staff, taught them by Master Haunlin, the burnt man Vaelin had first seen in the dining hall. They sparred with wooden staffs of about four feet in length, later they would be replaced with the five foot pole-axe used by the Order when they fought en masse. Haunlin was a cheerful man, with a quick smile and a liking for song. He would often sing or chant as they practised, soldier’s songs mostly and a few love ballads, sung with a strange precision and clarity that reminded Vaelin of the minstrel he had once seen in the King’s Palace.
He took to the staff quickly, liking the way it whistled when he swung it, the feel of it in his hands. At times he even preferred it to the sword, it was easier to handle and more solid somehow. His appreciation for the staff deepened when it became clear Nortah had no ability with it at all. His staff was often snapped out of his hands by an opponent’s blow and he was ever sucking numbed fingers.