OoOoO

When Tarun Thrymmson had dreamt of his future only two weeks ago, it had not looked like this. Now all he had left of that future were his dreams. That might explain why Tarun had come to both hate and love the long, empty hours of night.

            A voice had awoken him, dragging him from dreams of The Academy in Amenthere. Tarun imagined the famed home of Goran's brightest minds as a stately place, filled with smooth stone floors that echoed in the dignified silence beneath the footsteps of passing scholars. What awaited Tarun as he blinked his eyes open were musty darkness and the snores of five hundred men.

            They had arrived at Geristan almost five days ago. The men of Trosk, now officially drafted soldiers in the royal army, had been exhausted, footsore and shell-shocked. Most of them had never even been on the western side of The Teeth before. Some like Berin, the surviving twin son of Trosk's former tanner, were still nursing injuries from their ill-fated 'battle' with the Fourth Company. Borse had had to half-carry Berin for the last stretch of the journey into Geristan.

            One of the very first things Captain Jerriod did once the men of Trosk were inside the barracks on the edge of town with the gates shut firmly behind them was to issue them uniforms. Even before eating or sleeping, they were given a new set of clothes and ordered to change right there in the yard. Tarun had disliked the red tunic, stamped ostentatiously with the symbol of the crown, on sight. After days on end of trekking along The Old Mountain Road and sleeping by the roadside though, at least the uniform was clean.

            Further adding to the indignity of it all were their accommodations. Tarun might have expected as much from a military barracks, but that didn't make sleeping in a cavernous thatch building filled with stacked bunks any easier. At home, he and Marden had shared a room, but that was different. Here, surrounded every night by just about every one of his neighbors and strangers alike, Tarun found it very difficult to sleep.

            Sleep didn't come any easier whenever Tarun's mind found its way back to Marden. He still remembered the way Lhara's face had crumpled, tears tracking through the grime on her cheeks when she told him the news that their elder brother was dead.  It still didn't feel real. Maybe it was having left Trosk so abruptly after the fighting ending, but for some reason Tarun kept imagining that Marden was alive and well back at home, preparing to marry Yelaina and take up a place at Calder's table in The Giant's Shoe. To even contemplate otherwise...well...Tarun did not want to, and so he didn't.

            It seemed one person at least did not share Tarun's approach of tending to grief by ignoring it. Tarun recognized the voice; oddly clear in the vast darkness of the bunks, as Calder's. The innkeeper had alternated between blubbering and listless shuffling the whole way from Trosk to Geristan. Yelaina, Marden's intended and easily the most beautiful woman in all of Trosk, had been Calder's pride and joy. Now though he seemed to speak into the night with a strange animation.

            "Now don't you worry...yes I know it's not...won't be long you have to wait..."

            Tarun didn't know who Calder was talking to, but the snatches of conversation he caught didn't make much sense. The only thing any of the men of Trosk had to look forward to now was the day they were freed from their forced service, and that most certainly would be a long time in coming.

            As Calder prattled on, Tarun became increasingly sure that the innkeeper was talking to himself. It wouldn't be long before the one-sided conversation drew whoever was on night watch into the bunks to investigate. That would likely mean soldiers crashing around, barking demands for quiet and consequently no peace to be had. Calder needed to wrap up his babbling, and soon. Rather than do so however, it seemed he only became more animated with every passing minute.

            "...don't know what I'd do without...he was with you when it...you can't dissuade me you know..."

            Tarun ground his teeth in irritation. He was just beginning to reach for the edge of his thin sackcloth blanket when someone else sat up in their bunk first.

            "Calder, do you need anything?" Garrit, Tarun's cousin called out softly in the dark. Calder jumped, his head nearly hitting the bottom of the bunk above.

            "Er...no! No, just...restless. Restless is all, Garrit."

            "You sure? It sounded like you might have been talking to someone?"

            "Don't bother about it...I'll try to rest now."

            Tarun watched as Calder turned from Garrit and laid himself back down in the bunk. Garrit remained sitting upright for a few moments more before shrugging, scratching at his stubbly chin (the army didn't allow for the longer, braided beards often sported by mountainfolk), and resettling himself.

            "You sure you're alright?" asked Garrit.

            "...Go back to sleep, Torlson."

            A few minutes later and Garrit was indeed snoring once more. The same couldn't be said for Tarun. Now that he was awake, he found his ever-active mind flipping through unwanted thoughts.

            Marden and Yelaina had been in the inn when it collapsed. Lhara had told him as much. Calder grieved his daughter often and openly, accepting her death even as it by all appearances ate him alive from the inside out. Even though it was dark, Tarun knew the innkeeper's eyes would be deep set in grey sockets, his cheeks hollowed and face grey when the sun came up. Calder was making himself ill with mourning, and it could almost have been expected that his mind would start to go after his health. Such grief was, in Tarun's opinion, as useless as it was unsafe, especially here and now in Geristan. That was partially why Tarun shoved all thoughts of Marden from his mind by stretching out a hand in search of distraction.

            He found it, tucked away right where he had left it between the straw mattress and the bunk. The loose sheaf of parchment; training lists torn from the wall of the mess hall when nobody was looking, was Tarun's private escape. Using a shaved crow feather for a quill and blood from a shallow cut he kept re-opening on his forearm for ink, Tarun had been stealing hours of precious solitude after the final bell to write. Or rather, to copy.

            Taking care not to make the bunk squeak, he spread the lists on his pillow and turned them over, blank backsides looking up at him awaiting words. The makeshift ink where he had already written was dry, and in the faint moonlight filtering through cracks in the wall his tight, jagged letters appeared almost black.

            Slate grey eyes scanning to the place where he left off, Tarun read the line twice silently to himself to prompt his memory. He was currently transcribing one of his da's old books, this one an architect's ledger penned to detail the magnificence of Derbesh's harbor front. Thrymm had traveled between Anset, Joska and Derbesh before coming to Trosk and meeting Tarun's ma, Mira. Among the few possessions which had made the move to Trosk with Thrymm were his small but precious book collection; a collection which Tarun didn't imagine was getting much attention with just Lhara left in the house...

            There he went, thinking of Lhara and Marden again. Tarun brought his mind to heel and set it to the task at hand by using the standard-issue boot knife he had been given to re-open his 'ink well'. The cut stung, and would no doubt scar from the repeated interruptions to healing. Neither of these things troubled Tarun though. In fact, few things troubled him whenever he set quill to parchment, thoughts of home most especially.

            Feather scratching carefully across the calf skin, Tarun worked almost until the dawning. When the first shifting and sighing from other bunks warned of early risers he had to put the pages away, but even then he did not sleep. Instead Tarun lay awake, sleeves carefully rolled down over his arms and mind briefly eased. Another day of training, drilling and orders awaited the Gorian army's newest recruits. They were now just muscle to be handed a sword and told to do stars only knew what. Die at the end of a Factionist pike, probably. If that was to be his fate, then Tarun was determined to at least leave something more than a bloodstain behind. Well...or at least he'd leave bloodstains with some rhyme and reason to them.

OoOoO

            Following the usual routine of Geristan's barracks, all soldiers were up, dressed and breakfasted before the sun crested The Teeth. The new recruits gathered in the training yard while enlisted soldiers split off with their respective marshals to attend to their assigned duties for the day. For the past four days the men of Trosk had spent nearly every minute from morning to nightfall getting chain of command and company battle formations drilled into their minds and bodies. All that essentially amounted to, in Tarun's reckoning, was 'do what we tell you, how we tell you, the same way and time as everyone around you, with a sword in your hand.' It wasn't particularly hard to figure out, especially if you were someone easily told what to do in the first place.

Learning how to handle weaponry was different. At first, Tarun had approached swordplay with the same thinly veiled distaste as he had formation drilling. He had expected it to be little more than being handed a blade and wildly swinging at the nearest available target. Instead, Tarun was finding the art of the sword to be surprisingly engaging. The forms, techniques and footwork involved took not only a lot of coordination, but also a good memory and understanding of how one's body and mind worked together. The warriors' art was not something Tarun had ever envisioned himself embracing, but swordplay was far more involved than herding sheep and for that Tarun was unexpectedly grateful.

            Despite that however, his disdain for rank and file followed to reason that Tarun was not a star recruit. There hadn't been a day yet where he hadn't been yelled at by the Pedrum, the training officer, for stepping out of formation or altering a prescribed guard stance just to see how it worked. Pedrum stalked around the palisade yard, stroking his black boxed beard and smacking limbs into line with a wooden broadsword. Usually Frandel, the almost universally hated Red Obad, came to scoff at the mountainfolk's "lack of discipline". Between Frandel and Pedrum, Tarun imagined he could get a lot better with crossbows in a much shorter span of time if given his choice of target...

            Today was different though. Instead of Frandel, it was Jerriod who stood off to one side, wrist clasped loosely behind his back and a watchful eye on the Fourth Company's newest recruits.

            Andris, the younger son of Trosk's later butcher, noticed Tarun looking and sidled up to him.

            "The red fiend left for Amenthere before dawn today. I heard the soldiers on stable duty talking about it at breakfast."

            "You sure?" Tarun asked.

            "Mmhmm. I hope he gets ambushed by Factionist bandits along the roadside!"

            Tarun pursed his lips, shaking his head ever so slightly. "I think it's the Factionists that would do worse in that fight. Let Frandel go back to his master, and good riddance."

            Pedrum smacked his wooden broadsword against his leg, cutting any further talk between the men short. Silently they moved into formation; rows of ten standing shoulder to shoulder with an arm's length between in all directions. Any man who lagged or did not find his proper place was made to stand to one side for an hour with a heavy rock held overhead. Tarun's shoulders still ached from his stint with the boulder two days ago.

            It had rained yesterday evening and the barracks yard, completely stripped bare of grass and churned underfoot by hundreds of men each day, was just about damp enough to be called muddy. That would mean having to scrub their uniforms by hand in the barrels of rain water before being able to sit down to dinner tonight. Tarun groaned internally, but at least knew a thing or two about laundry from years spent helping Lhara. Some of the other men had no such experience, and would do doubt be scrubbing at their tunics for hours until they managed to get the dirt smears out in the cold water.

            With that grim prospect to look forward to, it was no surprise that everyone's hunched posture earned a number of smacks to the backs of the knees from Pedrum's stick before he considered them officially 'assembled'. Finally the training officer made his way to the small podium at the front of the yard next to where Jerriod stood watching.

            "For crown and country!" shouted Pedrum, slamming his first to his breastplate; the official salute of the Gorian army.

            "For crown and country" the men of Trosk echoed back, a shade less enthusiastically. Pedrum was not satisfied.

            "Is that how a soldier greets their commanding officers? Again! For crown and country!"

            "For crown and country!" They repeated the words louder and past bared teeth, but this time the volume at least appeared to suffice.

            "Men, at ease."

            Jerriod's gaze passed over them each in turn from beneath straight black brows. There were fine wrinkles around his eyes and flecks of silver in his short cropped hair, but he still held himself like a man at the peak of his life. The captain of the Fourth marked his rank only by mild additional embossing of his armor and a travel-worn red cloak. Jerriod didn't even need that much though for an outside observer to know that he was clearly the one in command here.

            "Today we'll be continuing with your footwork using standard issue long swords. All of you pick up a training sword and pair off," Pedrum was saying.

            Dozens of wooden training swords were right where they had left them yesterday, packed into barrels at the side of the yard. Tarun had found one with a balance that he liked and stealthily marked it with a red thread pulled from the hem of his tunic tied around the grip. He made a beeline for the barrels, and just barely grabbed it before another man did.

            "Faster now, pair off! When you're given an order in battle, you may have only seconds to see it through!"

            Tarun didn't have to hurry; a partner usually always came to him. For some reason the younger, unmarried men of Trosk had started gravitating to him the way they once had done for Marden. Sure enough, Garrit, Andris and Berin emerged from the press around the sword barrels and all approached where Tarun stood waiting.

            "Andris," Tarun interrupted before the butcher's son could speak. "I think you had better pair with Berin today. Otherwise Borse will insist on going with Berin...Your da goes too easy on you and you know it, Berin."

            "Who will Da spar with then?" asked Berin.

            "Hopefully Hengar. Those two are just about the only ones who can match each other for strength anyways. Garrit, you're with me?"

            "You got it," said Garrit, his wooden sword resting on his shoulder.

            The two cousins found a spot near the far edge of the training yard away from the traffic between barrack buildings.

            "Now, to review from yesterday..." Pedrum had begun to walk amongst the pairs of men, his voice booming off the wooden palisade fence. "...begin with right foot forwards, left foot back. We cut downward from the right, keeping arms extended with only the smallest of bend at the elbows to circle the blade forward. First partner, you are cutting downwards on a diagonal toward your opponent's left shoulder. The aim is to put your blade through their neck at the seam between helmet and gorget. For odd-handers; the same instructions, only opposite."

            By unspoken agreement, Garrit went on the attack while Tarun took up the defense. They were both very close in height and build, with perhaps a few extra pounds on Garrit's side. This made it easy enough for Garrit to line up the edge of his wooden sword with the crook of Tarun's neck, while Tarun prepared to block him accordingly. 

            "The second partner, you will be using an angled edge, rolling upward to meet the first partner in mid-cut. One contact is made between the blades, the second partner will come around to the left, rotating the blade to contact the right side of your attacker's head. This is called an active parry, and shifts the offensive to the second partner after countering the first partner's attack."

            They began well enough, with Garrit swinging from the high guard position down on an angle toward Tarun, and Tarun using the counter to rotate around into his own attack. Pedrum and Jerriod walked the yard as the pairs repeated the maneuver, Pedrum threading through the midst of the men while Jerriod kept to the outer edge. Pedrum could be heard calling corrections from practically everywhere. The training officer seemed to be able to be in three places at once with a spare set of eyes in the back of his head. Always his wooden sword hung at the ready beside him, reading to offer some quick 'improvement'.

            With both Jerriod and Pedrum converging on their spot, Tarun noticed that Garrit's leading leg was bending at an odd angle, one that would definitely earn a swat from Pedrum once he noticed it. Arms still working in his own pattern, Tarun did a sweep of his cousin's form and was quick to notice the problem.

            "Keep your knee pointed forward, not just your toes," he said quickly, before Pedrum got close enough to notice. Garrit had been told as much yesterday, and Pedrum wouldn't appreciate having to repeat himself.

            Thankfully, Pedrum meandered past Tarun and Garrit without any bruising corrections being handed out. Tarun was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when a scrape of metal on metal immediately behind him announced Jerriod's presence.

            "Switch roles, soldiers. You...Tarun was it? I want you on the first offensive, but this time use the back edge of the blade to lead." Jerriod explained further when Tarun hesitated. "Right grip above left, right and left wrists cross on the downswing with the point to your opponent's right."

            It wasn't an angle that Pedrum had taught them yet, and it took Tarun a moment to readjust. Garrit looked equally off-balance, unsure how to block a back-edged attack. Jerriod stood to one side, not pressuring them to hurry out loud but watching expectantly all the same. Once Tarun was ready he fell back into stance and began.

            The swing itself didn't feel too much different from what they had been practicing. It came in on a slightly new angle from what Garrit was expecting though. He was able to block the swing, but couldn't quite manage to turn it into an active parry like the exercise called for. His sword hung awkwardly in midair, leaving his midsection open just like what Pedrum had spent all of their third day cautioning against.

            "Now switch, and this time you-" Jerriod pointed at Garrit "-are on the offense with a back-edge lead, and you defend."

              Uncertain, Garrit changed his own grip to mirror what Tarun's had just been. Tarun dropped his sword down low to await the swing, brain rushing to think up a way to avoid getting stuck as Garrit did.

            The angle of the blade will change, so I won't be able to use the same edge to meet the cut...I could point my tip down, and he'd slide off, but then I'm still caught hanging with my hilt above my blade...

            Tarun ransacked everything that Pedrum had told them in the past couple of days, looking for options even as Garrit squared off and prepared his swing.

            A different angle...so I change my angle too...no...wait! I change my parry!

            At the last possible second, Tarun lifted his sword from a low to middle guard. Rather than meet Garrit's angled blade with a flat edge, he crossed their swords squarely in the middle. It was a hard impact, but the rebound was strong enough to carry Tarun's sword up, behind his head, and around in an arc to the right. Like a striking hawk, the wooden blade swooped in toward Garrit's vulnerable left shoulder and smacked him hard. If Garrit were to have been in armor, it would have been a glancing blow at best. It was still a hit though, and one which Garrit would have had to have been far more acrobatic in order to counter.

            "Ack!"

            Knocked off balance, Garrit stumbled a few paces and ruefully rubbed his shoulder. Feeling rather proud of himself, Tarun glanced at Jerriod to gauge the captain's reaction.

            Jerriod raised a coal-black eyebrow at Tarun. "A serviceable parry...against a single opponent with a single weapon. If you had been fighting in a melee or against a southerner with one of their wicked little belawa knives, that swing behind your head would have offered your heart and lungs up on a silver platter. Carry on."

            With that Jerriod turned away, leaving Tarun and Garrit bruised and at a loss.

            "We haven't started training against multiple weapons yet," grumbled Tarun sourly.

            "I hope they don't start anytime soon yet!" Garrit exclaimed, giving his shoulder one more rub. "Come on, let's keep working on the normal swing for now."

OoOoO

Later that evening in the mess hall, shivering in clothes still damp from the rain barrel, Tarun and the other mountainfolk gathered in their usual corner. There were men in the Fourth Company from all over Goran, and for the most part they all seemed content to mingle freely. Most were central-westerners though, with aquiline features, smooth hair and lilting accents, completely unlike the strong brogue which Tarun was coming to realize he and the other men of Trosk spoke with. Perhaps it was their fair heads of coarse hair, rough manners and foreign speech, or perhaps it was knowing that they'd been forcibly drafted after putting up a fight at Trosk; for whatever reason, the other soldiers in the Fourth seemed to be slow to welcome their new comrades. Considering that most if not all of them had lost friends and family to the blades of the Fourth Company at Trosk, that reluctance to mingle suited the mountainfolk just fine.

            There were blisters rising on Tarun's hands, even work-roughened as they already were. With a sigh, he changed his grip on the fork before tearing into the sausage and potatoes on his plate. Neither was served with any seasoning and the potatoes were a bit under-boiled, but it was warm food and Tarun was hungry after a long day in the yard.

            "Argh, if Ma could see this excuse for dinner, she'd have a fit." Andris sat back on the bench, dropping his knife into the potatoes.

            "I think Ma has more to worry about than the flavor of your food," growled Hengar.

            The petulant scowl on Andris' face promptly fell. With their da Gerdiom dead, killed at the Battle of Trosk, and Andris and Hengar gone with the army, that left their ma Alina and sister Taena alone along with Hengar's wife Eima, Garrit's sister. At least Eima had both her ma and da, Tarun's aunt and uncle, to help her with hers and Hengar's infant son; Torl had been badly injured at Trosk and unable to walk when the Fourth left.

            Tarun was just about to wonder if Lhara was perhaps staying with Eima, Torl and Rhena when he stopped himself. No thinking of home, he told himself sternly. Instead he kept eating with an air of single-minded determination.

            "Seems like Borse had decided not to let Berin out of his sight until the day we get back to Trosk," said Garrit, looking to change the subject.

            Sure enough, the barrel-chested former tanner sat right next to his son, watching Berin eat out of the corner of his eye even as he himself took a drink from his mug of watery ale. For now, Berin seemed to be enduring the constant presence of his da, as well as the death of his twin, with reasonable calm. Tarun wondered if Thrymm would be hovering around him now, with Marden...

            Stop it, he hissed at himself.

            "Seems like it." Andris resumed picking at his food. "I heard Orwell, the old High Elder once say that the winter when Yelaina and the twins were born was a hard one for Trosk's mothers. Neither Yelaina's ma nor Berin's saw the spring, and Borse took it hard. Can you imagine, a bear of a man like that being left with two new babes by himself? Small wonder he's always been so protective of them."

            "And now both he and Calder are mourning again," said Hengar darkly.

            At the mention of the innkeeper everyone's mood curdled even further. Calder sat a short distance down the bench between Borse and the other men, chasing his sausages around the plate without ever taking a bite. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. His muttonchops were scraggly, his formerly round, jolly face sagging like the jowls of an old hound.

            The cloud of melancholy at their table was interrupted when Jerriod stood at the front of the mess hall. The captain of the Fourth always took his dinner with the men, rather than in his private quarters, something that seemed to work wonders as far as keeping order among those now off-duty for the night.

            "Soldiers, I recommend that you all rest as well as you can tonight, because tomorrow will be a very busy day. Tomorrow this entire barracks must be cleaned, repaired and organized from top to bottom. The marshals will see to organizing you and giving you specific assignments at breakfast in the morning. By sundown this outpost must look its absolute best, both inside and out. Until then, apart from those on night-watch, you are dismissed."

            "Cleaning the barracks?" Garrit repeated, incredulous. "Why, so the locals can marvel at how tidy a bunch of men living on their own can be?"

            The soldiers all stood, filling the hall with the scraping of benches and clattering of plates. As they filed out into the yard to head for the bunks, Tarun couldn't help but wonder. Was this some kind of exercise in menial discipline, or something else? The place of a soldier was not to question though, and for that reason Tarun went to bed that night more annoyed at the notion of cleaning than he had ever been in his life.

OoOoO