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THE DAYS SEEMED TO BLUR together as the training began in earnest. Fletcher, Rory and Genevieve would take the soldiers out onto the plains early each morning to train them in maneuvers—marching, turning, forming and reforming into varying ranks in quick succession.
Then there were the more complex formations—making a schiltron to protect from mounted attack, where the men would fall into a circle, the front ranks bristling with poleaxes to skewer the charging beasts, while the back ranks fired indiscriminately into imaginary approaching cavalry.
Another tactic was an ordered retreat, when firing teams would provide cover for one another as they fell back in groups of five. In skirmishing, the men would scatter into a loose formation to make themselves harder targets for falling javelins. They also practiced disciplined charging, designed so that a wall of men would crash into their opponents in a single wave.
Under Fletcher, Rory and Genevieve were given a team of fifteen soldiers each to train, with an equal split of dwarves, elves and humans. The remaining eight were selected by Rotherham to become riflemen, and he trained them separately every other morning, until they could shoot a jackalberry out of a tree at a hundred yards and could hit a trunk three times out of five at four hundred. Their marksmanship was practiced on moving targets, and every night the colony would dine on the fruits of their endeavors—sizzling steaks of agile gazelles, long-horned oryx, and on one night even a single, heavyset buffalo that fed the entire population of Raleightown on its own.
In the afternoons, Sir Caulder trained the recruits until they were coated in sweat, honing their skills until Fletcher barely recognized the sun-bronzed soldiers as they battled one another in the heat of the afternoon. The men soon learned to fear Sir Caulder; those who faced him walked away limping with red welts across their arms and faces. Even so, the men were becoming a formidable force, their practice weapons blurring with the speed and ferocity that they attacked one another. There were more than a few bruises by the end of each training session, and Fletcher amazed the soldiers by healing each wound as if he were wiping away a stain.
As for the evenings, the colonists began to know the hours of the day by the intensity of gunfire, and knew the sun was setting when silence fell across the plains once more. Fletcher made sure that he, Rory and Genevieve were as practiced as their own soldiers in the art of musketry, and though they slept each night with aching shoulders and skinned knuckles, all of them could fire four shots every minute, like clockwork, by the end of the first month. It was a relief when Rotherham declared the men ready, but then came the firing strategies.
They were to fire by rank: the first rank firing and kneeling as they reloaded, the second standing and firing next to provide a blast of musket balls into the enemy every seven seconds. Platoon fire, where five men would fire at a time down the line of infantry, provided a constant buzz of bullets whipping into the enemy.
By the end of that first month, the soldiers were well accustomed to military maneuvers, so Fletcher and his two lieutenants took them on expeditions across the savannah, hunting for game or scouting for ebony. Soon they had more meat than they knew what to do with, even after Ignatius had gorged himself on the surplus.
So Fletcher sent trade convoys to sell the game in Corcillum’s markets, packing the meat in barrels of salt. As for the timber, Fletcher had the men cut, trim and part the trees far out in the savannah, and drag the wood back in makeshift sleds. He joined in every task, making sure that he worked harder than any of them, earning their grudging respect. Before the second month was out, the men had shed all of their puppy fat, and their bodies were as lean and hard as hunting dogs. Even Kobe and his skinny compatriots became layered in cords of muscle, and Fletcher had never felt stronger in his life.
Now that the soldiers were weighing in, Raleightown soon had enough timber to complete all its own repairs and building projects, and fresh logs of ebony eventually found their way onto the trade convoys. Under Berdon’s and Thaissa’s guidance, houses were completed swiftly, and the colonists moved in. Soon the church became their dining hall and meeting place, with new glass in the windows and great long tables of black wood filling it from wall to wall.
Fletcher began to look forward to each night, where the happy buzz of conversation flooded the room and he could lose himself in their contentment. He and Berdon had converted the old blacksmith’s into their own home and they would spend every night reminiscing over old times and making plans for the future.
With every trade convoy’s return, gold and supplies came with them, and Fletcher divided the proceeds fairly between the workers and himself. Noticing the profits, soon new products began to emerge from enterprising colonists. Exotic fruit was plucked by the bushel from the wild trees and sold beside their meats. The first bales of wool from their small herd of sheep soon joined them, though attacks from lions and jackals had reduced their fledgling flock by three already.
But it was not all good news. Fletcher was unable to visit his mother. He had received word from the king’s doctors, who said she was making progress but feared she would regress to her former, animalistic state at the sight of him at such a fragile juncture in her recovery. It killed him to be unable to see her, for she had been whisked away without even a proper good-bye on the night they had returned to their dimension.
Still, being able to fly again kept his spirits up, even at his most despondent. At daybreak each morning, he would mount Ignatius and soar into the cloudless skies. Athena’s wing had finally mended, and her joy compounded his own as they glided above the wild landscape, learning every fold and turn in the land that they had come to call home. It was glorious to fly, and Fletcher could not believe that some people could go their entire lives without experiencing it. But no matter how much he cajoled Berdon, the bluff blacksmith refused to even mount Ignatius, let alone allow the Drake to take him a few feet off the ground.