Chapter Nine #2
Still, Theos fell asleep with a little more peace in his heart than he’d felt the night before.
He had a plan. There was still a lying, spying, virgin Elkati sleeping on his floor, and the blow to the nose seemed to have added “snoring” to the list of Finnvid’s negative qualities, but at least Theos had a goal.
He would add “fighting capably” to the list of the Elkati’s qualities.
It was enough to let him fade into a peaceful sleep.
The sense of serenity lasted through the next morning.
After breakfast, he took Finnvid to the training yards and they joined in the mass run, thousands of soldiers coursing around the outside of the yards in a continuous, seething mass.
It was one of Theos’s favorite exercises; it reminded him that he was part of something larger, something mobile and powerful. This was what it meant to be Torian.
Finnvid kept up. As bodies started dropping out of the mass, heading off to whatever other training they had scheduled for the day, Finnvid looked wistful as they left, but he didn’t stop running.
“This could be your skill,” Theos told him as they ran.
“You’re starting too late to ever be a great soldier, and I’m not sure you’re going to fill out enough to even be a good one.
But you could be a runner, carrying messages.
” It was better than nothing. He glanced over at the Elkati.
“How old are you, anyway? You’ve got your full height, I expect? ”
“I’ve been confirmed,” Finnvid said between gasps.
Too bad he wasted his breath on something so meaningless. “Confirmed? As what?”
“As a man.” Finnvid was keeping his eyes on the track in front of them. “Surely you have initiation rituals?”
“We do.” Not that Finnvid would have passed any of them.
Well, he could have gotten into the barracks as a recruit.
All that required was basic health and fitness.
But any further? “We have different initiations. To become a soldier, recruits must run the tests at one of the festivals. There’s another ritual after the first enemy is killed.
To become a Sacrati, warriors must excel in all areas of training and warfare, spend a winter in the mountains alone, and be voted in by the other Sacrati.
” He looked curiously at Finnvid. “What were the requirements for being confirmed?”
“I had my twentieth birthday,” Finnvid replied without meeting Theos’s gaze.
“Oh.” So, not an achievement exactly. “How long ago was that?”
“Last spring.”
“So you’ll probably still put on some muscle,” Theos decided.
“But you’ll always be light. So running should be good for you.
Or archery, possibly.” Generally, only women trained as archers, since it was considered a defensive skill and they could stay behind the city walls and send death down on anyone foolish enough to threaten the city while the men were away fighting.
But Theos had heard talk of archers used as an offensive force, and maybe that would be something Finnvid could try. “Do you hunt? Can you use a bow?”
“I’ve hunted. But not with a bow.”
“Snares? Spears?”
Finnvid hesitated, then said, “Falcons.”
Theos tried to figure that out. “You hunt falcons? For food? How do you kill them without using bows or snares?”
“No, we hunt with falcons. For rabbits, or small birds . . . that sort of thing.”
Finnvid’s Torian was almost perfect, and sometimes Theos forgot that it wasn’t his first language. “A falcon is a wild bird,” he explained. “I’m trying to think of what word you mean, but there’s nothing really close—”
Finnvid stopped running, stepping off the track so those behind them could get by.
Theos stepped aside well, and stared as Finnvid explained, “We train the birds. We breed them and raise them and train them, and they hunt for us.” He was still gasping for air, but the words were clear enough, even if hard to accept.
“Falcons?”
Finnvid managed a grin, and lifted his arms a little to flap in demonstration. “Falcons.”
“They fly away, find game, and come back to you?” Finnvid nodded, and Theos said, “I’d like to see that someday.
” Finally, the Elkati civilization had produced something interesting.
“When we take over the valley, I’ll have to make sure the— Where do the falcons live?
Are there people who work with them full-time? How many of them are there?”
“They live in a mews—it’s a small building, like a henhouse.
There are full-time falconers. Not many, because it’s not the most efficient way to get meat, so hunting with them is a bit of a luxury.
But there are a few. And I think there are about twenty falcons in the mews, last time I checked.
” He raised his eyes. “Any more questions?”
“Well, having found ones that you’ll answer, I suppose I’m a bit overexcited.” Theos thought for a moment, then nodded decisively. “Yes, when we take over the valley, I’ll have someone show me the mews, and I’ll make sure they’re protected. I’d like to see the falcons at work.”
“And that’s within your power?” Finnvid asked. “To protect something your compatriots have just conquered?”
Theos shrugged. “Not if it were strategically important, or something really valuable. But if I decided to guard a little building and some birds? Nobody in authority would object to that. And I can look after myself if it’s just other soldiers causing trouble.”
“I’m sure you can,” Finnvid said. He didn’t sound sarcastic, but who could ever know, for sure?
Anyway, it was time to get back to business. “So you can’t use a bow. You’re obviously not much good at hand-to-hand. Do you have any sword training?”
“The basics.” Finnvid frowned, then shrugged. “Even in the Elkat valley, I’m not known as a great swordsman. Here . . . I suppose here I’ll be even lower in the rankings.”
“I expect so,” Theos said mildly. “I can teach you a little, but, really, you’ll probably always be low in the rankings, here. You’ve wasted too much of your life.”
“Wasted my life? Learning languages and rhetoric and philosophy? Improving my brain?”
“Aye.” For someone with an improved brain, Finnvid asked a lot of stupid questions. “You’ve wasted your life.”
“Was the time I spent learning about healing wasted? Would Andros say that it was?”
“No,” Theos conceded. “That might actually be a bit useful. It’s all the rest that was a waste.”
Finnvid shook his head. “It’s impossible for me to even explain all that you’re missing, because one of the things you’re missing is the ability to understand my explanations.”
“That must be very frustrating for you.” Theos turned and strode off toward the small pond at one end of the field, speaking over his shoulder as Finnvid tried to keep up.
“I think we’ll start with basic footwork.
Balance and mobility are the keys to almost everything else you’re going to be working on. ”
“Balance and mobility,” Finnvid said, apparently leaving his haughtiness behind at the promise of learning something. “Okay. What do I do?”
Theos took the Elkati over to the floating logs in the pond. “The bigger the log, the easier. Start with the biggest. When you can make it from one end to the other without falling in the water, shift over to the next smallest log.”
Finnvid squinted at the water. “This is how you train soldiers? With logs?”
“We train soldiers with everything. This is somewhere to start.”
After a moment, Finnvid stripped off his tunic and bent to tug at his boots. “Okay,” he said, his voice full of determination. “Start at the biggest log, move to the smaller ones.” He jogged purposefully toward the water.
Theos waited for the first splash, which came when Finnvid was only a few steps on to the bobbing, spinning log. “Keep at it,” he ordered when Finnvid’s head bobbed to the surface. “I’ll come back in a while and check on you.”
Finnvid looked as if he was fighting the temptation to rebel, but finally he dragged himself out of the muddy water and started back toward the logs.
Theos headed for his own training. He heard the next splash but pretended he hadn’t. The boy was trying, and Theos wouldn’t laugh at him, no matter how tempting it was.
So he went down to train with the wooden swords, and if he was a little less focused than usual, it didn’t mean anything.
Maybe he was still tired from his time in the field, or maybe the distractions of trying to deal with the political situation had gotten to him.
Maybe he shouldn’t have had the third mug of ale the night before.
Any of those reasons were better than admitting that maybe his mind was somewhere else.
That maybe he was thinking about a stubborn Elkati, and what it would have felt like if Theos had extended a hand to pull the boy from the pond.
Maybe they would have stumbled a little, and fallen into each other, and Theos could have discovered whether Finnvid’s smooth skin was still warm from exercise or whether the water had made it cool and slippery.
No. He wasn’t thinking about any of that.
When he finished his drill and went to check on the boy, he walked quickly because he wanted to get things done that day, not because—not because anything! He wasn’t hurrying because he wanted to see Finnvid. He didn’t want anything to do with him.
And when he saw Finnvid on the second-largest log, scrambling from one end to the other like a drunken otter, the warmth he felt was just . . .
Damn it. He had an itch for the Elkati. The sullen, spying, lying Elkati virgin bedwarmer. Theos wanted the boy, and the boy didn’t want him back. Finnvid thought Theos’s urges were unnatural and shameful.
And they were meant to share a bedroom through the long, cold winter.
All because Theos couldn’t keep his mouth shut and had gone diving into something that should never have been his business.
“Don’t look down!” he ordered, and his voice broke Finnvid’s concentration. The boy slipped, spun, and fell into the water with a splash and a curse. “And don’t get distracted,” he added when the boy’s head surfaced.
Good advice for himself as well, of course. He sighed, trying not to notice the way Finnvid’s wet trousers clung to his legs as he sloshed out of the pond. It was going to be a long winter.