“Now?” Jode yelled. A flash of white appeared in his hands.
“No!” I scrambled up the hill like a mountain goat on fire.
Then I heard them laughing.
“Assholes,” I muttered. But something inside me loosened up a little. If they were messing with me, it meant they were doing something together. It was a good sign.
When I got back over to them, I found them deep in discussion about the proper archer’s stance.
“I think I’m ready,” Jode said.
He looked overextended and stiff, like he should be planted in a fountain, spurting water from his mouth, but I let it go. He’d gotten mentally prepared and he didn’t look like he was going to injure himself. I’d get my shot at coaching him later.
“Okay, Robin Hood.” I stepped back with Bas, Marcus, and Daryn. “Let it rip.”
No time passed between the moment he released the arrow, and the eruption on the other hill. It happened in an instant.
An explosion cracked into the air, like an entire forest of trees splitting in half. My chest bucked at the pressure. Rocks flew apart.
Then, the aftermath—a dusty cloud lifting up, to the sound of a small avalanche rumbling down the hillside.
We practically killed ourselves rushing over there. The branch I’d set up was nonexistent. Pulverized. In its place we found a small crater about three feet wide and two deep, blackened at the center, surrounded by fine gray ash around the edges.
Serious explosive power.
“Incredible,” Sebastian said.
I had to agree. It sure as hell beat a sword.
With everyone armed up, we moved into actual training. I went over basic safe-handling guidelines. Don’t draw a weapon unless you plan to use it. Be aware of your surroundings at all times. Never fire without a target in mind. Then I broke us into two groups based on our weapons—aerial and hand-to-hand. It was the right thing to do from a tactical standpoint, but that left me with Marcus as my training partner, so. The potential for problems was high.
Jode and Bastian stayed behind to practice at our new firing range, Daryn staying with them, while Marcus and I headed back to the grass clearing. He brought up the scythe, I called up the sword, and we got started—using the flat of the blade and the base of the staff because we didn’t want to kill each other. Actually, that’s inaccurate. We did want to kill each other, but we avoided the business end of our weapons and proceeded to safely beat each other down. What we did in no way resembled sparring. The level of intensity went way beyond that. We took turns having the last say—him winning, then me—but it was pretty much always a dead heat.
Late that afternoon, with both of us covered in sweat and fresh bruises, he backed me up to the river. I stepped into water that was pure glacier melt. Water so cold it burned. I made a move to get around him and my foot landed right into a depression. Next thing I knew I was ass-planted, water up to my chest, an eighteen-inch blade a few centimeters away from my nose.
“Who’re you fighting?” Marcus yelled.
“What are you talking about?” I yelled back. The cold pierced deep into my muscles. I’d only been in a few seconds, but I was already shivering badly.
“I know it ain’t me,” he said. Then his attention moved to Daryn, who was coming along the riverbank from our firing range.
Marcus flipped the scythe around, offering me the end of the staff to help me up. Did he care what Daryn thought of him? Or did he want to highlight who was on the winning end of our sparring exercise? Like me sitting in a river didn’t make that clear enough.
I pushed the scythe away, got up, and broke into a jog. The sun had already dipped behind the mountains and my teeth were rattling. I had to get up to the hut and in front of a fire.
Daryn jogged over and met me, blocking my path to the trail. She looked at my sopping clothes. At how I was shivering. She couldn’t seem to decide what to say and I couldn’t look at her without picturing Samrael’s arm wrapped around her, the two of them smiling.
“Gideon…”
Don’t ask.
Don’t ask if I’m okay.
“I think we should train with the horses. I think it would help.”
Right. That was what I needed.
I couldn’t even respond. I went right around her, back to the hut.
We ended the day around the stone circle. All of us together, but not together.
Jode and Bas hadn’t done well in their training either. Daryn had grown quieter than normal. Marcus and I had gone backwards. We sat around the fire pit and ate rice and beans out of a pan. Passed around a couple of cans of peaches and some chocolate bars. Then I got the fireplace going in the hut and we crashed.