Chapter Five
It was cold at dawn.
For the first time in over a month, Athdara had slept on an actual bed and not simply a pallet upon the cold and rocky ground.
She’d had a roof over her head and there had been a fire in a pit in the middle of the room, with the smoke curling up to the ceiling and escaping through specially designed holes in the walls.
It had been like heaven to her.
Although the bed had not exactly been comfortable, it was certainly better than what she’d had. She also had two blankets and not one, so she wasn’t freezing. The fire had kept the dormitory warm, and all of it would have indeed been heavenly as a whole had she not been in a room full of men.
That was the rub.
Sleeping outside, as she had with the dregs for those long weeks, she and Marina had been given the opportunity to sleep by themselves and away from the group.
There had been a little more privacy for them, as the only women in the group, and she didn’t realize how much that measure of privacy had meant to her until Cutty showed her where she would sleep in the dormitory.
With a man on either side of her.
Since Athdara had worked hard to get in that slot, she didn’t want to create a problem from the onset, but she did politely ask if she could move her bed away from the others, and Cutty had agreed.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t go too far, so she ended up behind a pillar, which afforded her a little bit of privacy but also blocked some of the heat from the firepit.
It was either freeze or lose her privacy.
She chose to freeze.
Athdara slept dreamlessly that first night, not even dreaming of the dark-eyed stranger she’d spent the evening with, until someone came into the dormitory before dawn and used a spoon to bang on something metal.
The message was clear—it was time to rise.
So she did. Men were farting and snorting as they pulled themselves up and proceeded to dress.
There were great buckets of icy water brought in by the servants of Blackchurch, but bringing those was about all they did.
They didn’t clean after the recruits, or feed them, or anything of the sort. All they did was bring up the water.
Athdara had a bowl with her, one of her personal and precious possessions, and she had to push and shove her way to the buckets of clean water to get some.
Once she had her bowl about half-full, she rushed back to her little corner behind the pillar and unwrapped a prized sliver of soap.
It came from a bigger white bar of Castile soap she’d purchased months ago, and this was the last of it, but she washed her hands and face with it in that freezing water.
It was heavenly.
Using a rag, she washed every other part of her skin that was exposed because cleanliness was one thing she wouldn’t give up.
She was willing to give up food and privacy and quite possibly even her sanity, but she insisted on bathing as best she could every morning.
She didn’t feel normal otherwise. When Athdara was a child, her mother had been a great advocate of bathing, and it was simply a habit that Athdara had gotten into.
With hands and forearms, face, neck, belly, and feet washed, she quickly dressed.
She’d slept in her linen hose and tunic, and those went underneath her leather breeches and heavier tunic that she’d paid dearly for back in Paris.
When she fled with Nikolai, with coins that Alen gave her before he died, she’d been able to purchase things she and her little brother needed, clothing included.
The breeches and tunic were part of a very small collection of clothing she had, and she took good care of them.
At least, as good as she could have, but given the rough and tumble of her first few weeks at Blackchurch, the clothing was starting to show wear.
She could only imagine the wear it was facing now that she had been accepted as a recruit.
The servants came back, banging on the metal bell, and she quickly ran a comb through her hair and braided it tightly.
Boots went on her feet, boots she’d stolen off a dead man in Paris two years ago.
They were a little small, but they’d served her well.
Finished with dressing, she tucked her possessions under her bed and rushed out of the dormitory with the rest of the men.
The sun was just starting to come up over the eastern horizon as the recruits stumbled out of the old cloisters of Blackchurch and headed south, toward the recruit field.
As they walked, servants stood in a line, handing out bread to those who passed by.
Athdara grabbed two hunks, shoving them in her mouth and chewing as fast as she could.
They passed through the old gardens of the cloister, now nothing more than dead vines and weeds and grass, and through a gap in the old stone wall to the field beyond.
More sunlight beamed as the sun broke free of the horizon, casting golden rays upon the green grass of Devon.
It had been a damp night, so there was dew on the grass.
Everything smelled wet. Athdara was walking behind a couple of men who were talking about the exercise from the previous day.
One man had an enormous bruise on his face and one eye swollen shut.
He mentioned something about the beating he took, and Athdara interrupted the pair before she could stop herself.
“Was there fighting going on yesterday, then?” she asked, watching the two men turn to her in surprise. She gestured at their battered faces. “It looks like there was fighting. Were the men pitted against one another?”
One man snorted, looking her up and down. “So you’re the new dreg?”
“I’m not a dreg anymore,” Athdara said. “But I am new.”
The man shook his head. “How can you handle yourself in a fight, love?”
His companion chuckled as Athdara tried not to become incensed. “I don’t have any black eyes, do I?” she said. “Better than you, I think.”
“Is that so?”
“It is,” she said. “I heard you talking about fighting. Is that what the lesson will be today?”
The man with the black eye couldn’t seem to muster the will to snap at her to clap back at her for insulting him and his injured face. He yawned. “Probably,” he said. “I’ve seen people like you come and go here, even in the short time I’ve been here. We all have. Do you know what your problem is?”
“I am certain you are going to tell me.”
“You’re arrogant,” he said. “You think you can last in a fight. That is the kind of attitude that will get you thrown out of here. Remember, love—if they carry you off the field, you’ll not come back.”
Athdara nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’ve been educated in all the rules. But you didn’t answer my question—will we be fighting today?”
The man frowned. “Don’t you know what session you’re in?”
“What session?”
The man came to a halt, his companion along with him.
“Listen to me, lass,” he said, lowering his voice.
“The first class for all recruits is a physical training class with the meanest, fiercest trainer that Blackchurch has to offer. The Lords of Exmoor figure that if you can survive him, you can survive anything, so put away your pride and be prepared to learn. Otherwise, the Leviathan will make sure you are carried from the field. You’ll be lucky to get up again if that’s the case. ”
Athdara was listening with some trepidation. “The Leviathan?”
The man with the black eye nodded. “The creator of doom and chaos,” he said. “If Munro’s chaos doesn’t get you, his doom will. Be on your guard.”
That didn’t help her sense of apprehension, but she nodded. “Munro,” she repeated. “Is that his name?”
“Aye.”
“Then I thank you for the warning,” she said. “My name is Athdara. You have been kind to tell me this.”
The man looked her up and down before snorting again, perhaps baffled by this tall, elegant woman in the midst of raw, brutal recruits. “You couldn’t find a husband to keep you out of a place like this?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be a Shadow Knight, love.”
“And yet here I am,” she said, pushing past them politely. “Thank you again. I appreciate your advice.”
Leaving the pair standing there watching her go, Athdara rushed after the group as they entered a big, sloping field next to the lake.
Dregs and recruits had different fields to work in, and this one was much nicer than the one she’d just come from.
More advanced warriors had their own fields, too, at the top of the slopes, so they were much drier and on level ground.
Every level of trainee was segregated, and every group of trainees spent at least six months to a year with any given trainer at Blackchurch, and there were several.
One would teach tactics, one would teach archery, one would teach combat techniques, one would teach interrogation methods, and so on. Everyone had a purpose.
What is your purpose?
Tay had asked Athdara last night, and she told him that although she didn’t know, she was going to find out.
She never mentioned that her purpose was in regaining her father’s dukedom, and that was why she found herself at Blackchurch.
She wanted to learn how to outfight her uncle.
She wanted to make connections with warriors, and she wanted to know how to raise an army.
She needed to know how to fight, how to be a commander, before she could regain what had been stolen from Nikolai.
Everything—all of this—was for her little brother, the rightful duke.
But she had to get through Blackchurch training first.
God help her, she couldn’t fail.