8. Rising Coin
Rising Coin
By the time the snow turned to slush the year I turned four, promotion came calling.
A steward in blue tabard called our names at dawn roll: “Maise, Perrin, Grit, Danarre.” Four out of thirty-one younglings judged worth the grain we ate. We alone got to move forward.
Our reward was relocation across the drainage ditch that separated the youngling barracks from the junior trainee quarters. The distinction mattered. Children on our side of the ditch received real training. Children on the other side received enough food to survive until the next culling.
The junior trainee barracks had stone walls, iron-grated windows, and better construction than anything we’d slept in before. A rational expense. Blankets thick enough to keep lungs from freezing cost less than hiring replacements.
Cold arithmetic guided every kindness here.
On the second floor we found our room: four cots, one narrow shutter, and a cedar chest with a real lock.
The mattress straw was fresh and free of mouse droppings.
The wool blankets smelled only of lanolin.
Gray light filtered through the shutters, and the stone floor held a chill that seeped through boot leather.
The walls blocked wind, and that alone felt like wealth.
Maise flopped onto her cot and laughed. “I could get used to this.”
Perrin checked the chest’s hinges, already plotting how to pick them. Grit tested the window bars, gauging escape routes that only he could see .
I stood in the doorway and breathed the new air.
It carried the scent of barrack life: sweat, soap-ash, and old wood.
But it lacked rot. I’d slept in worse places in my previous life, but this body had known nothing except cold floors and thin blankets until now.
My shoulders had grown broader over the past year, though I remained short for my age.
Between my shoulder blades, warmth stirred.
The sensation had become dimmer but steadier over the months, present without demanding attention.
I’d felt the same heat once before, on Ironside’s walls in the moments before the flamberge.
Hel had reached back through death to mark what she’d already paid for.
The Brand was older than the body that carried it now.
Maise kicked my boot. “Close the door, Captain. The draft is cold and I prefer the warmth.”
The title had stuck. They’d named me that after I tricked an older cadet into knocking himself out on a beam and claimed victory for the group. I let it pass. Leadership given freely cost less than leadership taken by force.
◇ ◆ ◇
Our rations doubled.
Bowls arrived thick with barley and bits of salted pork instead of thin oat slurry.
At supper the quartermaster set down a loaf per table rather than a loaf per room.
The bread was dark rye, dense enough to hold together when you tore it, and it tasted of caraway and honest grain.
Steam rose from the serving pots, carrying the smell of rendered fat and onions.
I watched the staff record every ladle in their ledgers. Survivors cost resources, so survivors had to pay back what they consumed. We paid with drills .
Sword forms moved from wooden batons to iron-cored blades. We were still too small for full weight, so the metal was thinned, but the balance was real. Rulfen moved across the yard with his cane, smacking calves until footwork lined up with intent.
Every week the targets hung higher. By winter I could land a thrust to a straw head suspended above my own.
Then they added archery.
Maise snarled when string burn opened her forearm, then shot a dozen arrows until the next one flew true.
Pain only made her more determined. Her red hair whipped in the wind as she drew again and again, teeth gritted against the sting.
Grit planted every arrow dead center by week two, his patience suited perfectly to the weapon.
The bow favored patience. Perrin discovered he could draw faster under pressure than anyone his size.
I practiced pull-and-release until new calluses split and regrew harder.
Spears remained forbidden officially. Unofficially, Rulfen left a stack of cracked ash shafts behind the armory and turned his blind eye when I slipped one under my tunic at dusk.
He tested me twice monthly in the fenced north pen, thirty passes and no strikes to the head. He won most bouts, but the margin narrowed each time.
“Good,” he grunted after each session. The word was measurement rather than praise.
I preferred it that way.
◇ ◆ ◇
The house tutors introduced letters.
De Blaise heirs learned rhetoric while bastards learned to run tallies.
The same ink drew both, and I paid attention to everything.
I copied ledgers, noting patterns: which barns emptied first, which caravans paid late, which merchants tried to short the house on weight.
Information had value, and I intended to collect as much as I could carry.
Then came healing lore.
The lessons went beyond the crude field medicine I’d known in my previous life.
I’d learned tourniquets and pressure bandages and rough stitchwork with whatever thread we could find.
That knowledge had kept my Wolves breathing long enough to reach proper healers.
Here I learned the foundations of why those methods worked, and what else could be done when divine intervention wasn’t available.
The apothecary lessons came twice weekly, held in a stone chamber that reeked of dried herbs and vinegar. Bundles hung from ceiling rafters, casting long shadows in the lamplight. The instructor spread plants across wooden tables worn smooth by generations of students and named them one by one.
“Willow bark,” he announced, holding up strips of gray-white wood. “Chew it when fever burns too hot.”
The others wrinkled their noses as he passed out samples. The bark tasted bitter and woody. Maise spat hers into her palm. Perrin made a face. Even Grit’s jaw worked reluctantly.
I chewed methodically, letting the juice coat my tongue. Bitter, yes, but I’d tasted worse. In my past life, I’d seen men die screaming from wounds that should’ve healed clean. Fever took more fighters than enemy steel ever did .
“Calendula petals ground with honey,” the instructor continued, placing dried orange flowers on the table. “Pack this into cuts that refuse to close.”
More grimaces from the other children. They thought healing meant calling a priest for divine intervention. They didn’t understand that most wounds killed you slowly through rot and poisoned blood, long after the fighting ended.
I memorized everything.
Comfrey root for broken bones. Yarrow leaves to stop the steady seepage that drained a man’s strength. Echinacea for when wounds started to turn colors they shouldn’t.
“Who can tell me what kills more soldiers than swords?” the instructor asked.
My hand rose. “Infection. Bad water. Wounds that fester because no one cleaned them properly.”
He nodded. Around me, the other cadets shifted in their seats. They wanted to learn about glory and steel. They didn’t want to think about men dying slowly in muddy tents while fever ate them from the inside.
But I’d watched it happen. I’d held dying men while infection consumed them. Every bit of this knowledge could’ve saved more of my Wolves.
Between my shoulder blades, warmth flickered as I absorbed each lesson, filing away plant names and preparation methods. The vessel learns. Good. The thought wasn’t mine. It came from somewhere deeper than memory, cold and approving, and vanished before I could catch it.
◇ ◆ ◇
The months settled into rhythm: training, lessons, the slow work of growing stronger.
But House de Blaise never let comfort last long. Older trainees viewed our promotion as an insult. They’d held these barracks before us, earned the better rations and the warmer beds through years of effort. Now four bastards half their age lived where they’d bled to earn their place.
That bred resentment, and resentment bred violence.
The attack came two months after we’d moved. They cornered Perrin outside the latrine trench after evening meal, when the corridors emptied and the duty watch focused on the main yard. The night air bit cold, and breath fogged white in the torchlight spilling from distant windows.
Four against one. Short clubs wrapped in cloth to muffle sound. Practiced work.
Perrin dropped the first with a head-butt, cracking the older boy’s nose in a spray of blood. But the remaining attackers got him pinned against the stone wall. Cloth-wrapped wood rose and fell in measured rhythm. He yelled once.
I was moving before thought caught up. Bare feet on cold flagstone. Heat poured between my shoulder blades and drowned out the ache of still-growing bones. The door to our room slammed open behind me as Maise rolled from her cot, already reaching for the iron bar she kept tucked under her mattress.
Grit appeared from the shadows of the corridor. The sharpened stick he’d carved from kindling balanced in his small fist. He made no sound .
Shapes huddled around Perrin. Clubs rose and fell in measured beats, deliberate and practiced. This wasn’t their first time beating a younger trainee.
They’d chosen the wrong target.
The first attacker noticed us too late. Maise hit him with elbows and fury, her iron bar cracking across his wrist. Bone snapped with a wet crunch. He screamed. His nose followed, flattened by her next swing. Blood steamed in the cold night air.
I went low, hooking my ankle around the leader’s leg while he turned toward Maise’s assault. He toppled backward, arms windmilling for balance that wouldn’t come. His skull met frozen ground with a thud that rattled his teeth. The club tumbled from his fingers.
Grit slid behind the last one standing and pressed his sharpened stick against the soft hollow of the throat. The older cadet went rigid. Then his bowels released. The stink filled the narrow space.
“Move and I poke holes,” Grit whispered. The point dimpled skin but didn’t break it.
Perrin rolled onto his side and spat red onto gray stone. His left eye was already swelling shut, and blood trickled from split lips. But he grinned through the damage. “Took you long enough.”
The leader tried to push himself up, hands scrabbling for purchase on icy stone. I planted my knee between his shoulder blades and drove his face deeper into the muck. Ice crystals and frozen dirt filled his mouth when he gasped for air.
“First rule,” I murmured near his ear, pressing harder until his ribs creaked. “Don’t fight anyone who’ll make you spit teeth. ”
His face went slack. The fight drained out of him all at once, replaced by the hollow look of someone recalculating his odds and finding nothing.
I’d already sent the lesson. I didn’t need his teeth. I punched him anyway. His head snapped to the side. Eyes rolled back. He went limp beneath my knee.
Maise stood over her victim, iron bar dripping red. Grit held his position, stick steady against exposed throat. Both waited for instructions.
「The vessel grows teeth.」
They were mine. Touch them, and the response would be immediate.
We worked in silence. Rope from the equipment shed, knots I’d learned in another life when binding prisoners meant the difference between information and ignorance.
By dawn they’d wake naked in the courtyard, their clothes folded in neat piles just out of reach.
They could explain the frostbite to Master Rulfen.
They’d remember what happened when someone bloodied our own. Authority flowed from demonstrated consequence, and power respected results.
We dragged Perrin inside and tended his wounds with willow bark and spite. No healer, no report to the duty officer. House de Blaise didn’t shelter weakness, but it rewarded those strong enough to settle their own accounts.
“Nose isn’t broken,” Maise announced, probing Perrin’s face with careful fingers. “Just ugly. More than usual.”
“Thanks,” Perrin mumbled through swollen lips. “Your bedside manner needs work. ”
I ground willow bark between stones and mixed it with water from our wash basin. The paste would dull the pain and reduce swelling. Field medicine learned in mud and blood, now applied to bruises and pride.
“Next time they’ll bring more,” Maise said, cleaning blood from her knuckles.
“They won’t try again,” I told her. “Word will spread through the barracks by morning. Four older boys beaten by children half their age. That kind of humiliation keeps people cautious.”
I tested the weight of the captured club. Crude work, but functional.
“Someone stronger might come instead. Someone with more to prove. But these four are finished.”
In the distance, naked bodies shivered against stone in the pre-dawn cold.
They’d live, and they’d remember. My people. My rules.
No further ambushes came that season. But I caught older cadets watching us in the corridors, measuring what we’d become and calculating what we might grow into. That suited me fine. Let them watch. Let them wonder. I had years of growing left to do, and enemies worth preparing for.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 819 | Age 4
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: de Blaise Estate, Junior Trainee Barracks
「Knight of Swords」 — Stirring
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleepin g
Active Charge: Find the one who broke Hel’s claim.
The vessel grows teeth. Hel approves.