13. The Proving Grounds
The Proving Grounds
The wagon rattled through the keep’s main gate an hour before dawn, its cargo of children silent in the morning cold.
Sixty-five of us packed into three wagons, dressed in training leathers and carrying steel that’d seen better days.
Some clutched their weapons like talismans.
Others stared at the road ahead with the blank expressions of cattle being led to slaughter.
They weren’t wrong about the destination.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Maise said from beside me, her flame-red hair tucked beneath a leather cap. She shifted her sword across her knees, adjusting the scabbard where it pressed against the wagon’s side. “I can hear you calculating survival odds from here.”
“Fifty percent.” I watched the road through a gap in the wagon’s boards. “Maybe forty. Depends on whether they’ve restocked the menagerie since last year.”
“That’s supposed to be encouraging?”
“It means half of us will probably survive.”
She laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. We both knew what the Trial of First Wetting meant. It wasn’t a test of skill or dedication. It was a culling.
Cousins and every branch family hopeful showed up at the de Blaise gates carrying a dream of knighthood, and the Trial separated wheat from chaff through the simplest method available: it threw children at monsters and counted whoever still breathed at sunset.
The survivors advanced to the Stone Yard.
The rest became object lessons in the importance of not dying .
Perrin sat across from us, fingers busy with a strip of leather he’d been braiding since we left the keep.
“The real question,” he said without looking up, “is what they’re releasing this year. I heard someone say swine-kin.”
“Source?”
“Kitchen gossip.” He looped the braid through itself, testing the knot. “A maid who claims she overheard one of the handlers talking about feeding schedules.”
“Kitchen gossip is usually about affairs and poisoning,” Maise pointed out. “Not monster husbandry.”
“This particular maid has two brothers who work the menagerie.” Perrin held his braid up to the gray light, checking his work. “She knows things.”
I filed that away. Swine-kin meant pack hunters, some small and vicious, some large enough to gut a horse. If the handlers were involved, we were looking at multiple waves rather than a single release. Not a hunt. A siege.
“Where’s Grit?” I scanned the wagon’s shadows. “He was supposed to be in our group.”
“Already at the Palisade,” Perrin said. “Left before dawn. Said something about scouting the terrain.”
“He told you that?”
“He said ‘going ahead’ and walked off.” Perrin tucked the finished braid into his sleeve. “I filled in the rest.”
That sounded like Grit. The boy spoke in fragments when he spoke at all, but he noticed everything worth noticing and most things that weren’t. If there was useful information to be found at the proving grounds, he’d have it cataloged before we arrived.
◇ ◆ ◇
The wagons stopped at the edge of a clearing, and I got my first look at the Palisade.
It was a ruin, or designed to look like one.
Crumbling walls surrounded a courtyard the size of a tournament field, with half-collapsed buildings creating a maze of cover and blind corners.
A single tower rose from the center, intact enough to serve as an observation point.
The whole place smelled of wet stone and old blood, the kind of smell that sinks into the ground after years of use.
Sister Morrigan stood before the main gate, her white healer’s robes clean against the morning gray. Lord Henrik waited beside her, wolf pelt draped over shoulders that never seemed to carry anything lighter than the decisions of men who ruled through violence and obligation.
“Out,” the wagon driver said. “Move it.”
Sixty-five children spilled from the wagons, forming rough clusters based on affiliation.
I counted twelve distinct groups as they sorted themselves: two from the main family, five from branch families, five loose alliances of bastards and hopefuls who’d banded together out of desperation rather than trust.
My team settled around me without needing instruction. Maise on my right, sword hand free. Perrin on my left, already cataloging the terrain with quick, measuring glances. And Grit, who appeared at my shoulder from a shadow I could’ve sworn was empty a heartbeat earlier.
“Report,” I said quietly .
“Seventeen entry points.” Grit’s voice barely carried past our group. “Two defensible positions in the interior. One kill zone at the center, sloped for drainage. They’re expecting blood.”
“Weapons caches?”
“Two.” He tilted his head toward the east wall, then the south. “Armory and storage building. Both picked clean by the time I checked.”
Perrin swore under his breath. “So the early birds got the good positions.”
“They got positions,” Grit corrected. He didn’t elaborate. He never did.
Sister Morrigan raised her hand, and the morning fell silent.
“The Trial of First Wetting,” she announced, her voice carrying without apparent effort across the frozen courtyard, “is not a test of courage. It is not a test of skill. It is a test of worth.”
Her pale gray eyes swept the gathered children, and I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air.
I’d stood in front of generals and warlords in my first life, men who commanded armies and decided the fate of cities, and none of them had carried the particular weight that Morrigan brought to a simple speech.
She spoke like someone who’d seen the inside of more dying men than anyone standing here, and wasn’t bothered by it.
“Some of you will prove worthy,” she continued. “You will advance to the Stone Yard, where real training begins. Some of you will prove unworthy. You will die, and your bodies will feed the things you failed to kill. ”
No sugarcoating. No words of encouragement. The cold math of selection, delivered by a woman who wouldn’t be the one paying the cost.
“The rules are simple.” Her gaze swept across us one more time, lingering on me for a fraction of a second that I filed away for later consideration.
“Survive until sunset. Any method is permitted. Any alliance is temporary. Any weakness will be exploited. The gates open at dawn. When the horn sounds at sunset, the survivors may leave. There will be no early evacuation. There will be no mercy.”
Lord Henrik stepped forward, and his presence silenced the nervous shifting that Morrigan’s speech had failed to quiet. When he spoke, every word came measured, weighed against its cost and delivered with the economy of a man who’d learned that wasted breath was wasted authority.
“Inside those walls,” he said, “you are not children. You are not family. You are not even human. You are prey.” His winter-gray eyes found mine across the crowd, held for one beat, then released. “Prove me wrong.”
The gates swung open.
For a moment, nobody moved. Then the desperate ones broke for the interior, sprinting toward the positions Grit had mentioned, hoping to claim whatever advantage remained.
They stumbled over each other in the gateway, shoving, cursing, their discipline dissolving into the particular panic of children who’d just been told they might die today.
“Wait,” I said to my team.
Maise’s hand tightened on her sword. “They’re taking the good spots. ”
“They’re taking the obvious spots. Let them.”
I watched the other groups scatter through the ruins, noting who went where, who paired with whom, who moved with coordination and who stumbled on their own panic.
In my first life, I’d watched men do the same thing on a hundred battlefields, scrambling for cover they thought would save them, and the ones who survived were rarely the ones who’d gotten there first.
“There.” I pointed toward a section of wall that had mostly collapsed, offering minimal cover but clear sightlines in four directions.
“We set up between the armory and the storage building. When they release the first wave, both caches will draw attention. We stay mobile and let others absorb the initial rush.”
“And if the others die?” Perrin asked. He’d finished braiding a second strip of leather and was tucking it into the collar of his training jacket, where I knew he kept a thin blade.
“Then we adapt.”
We moved through the gate at a measured pace, four children walking into a killing ground while everyone else ran.
From the tower, I felt Morrigan’s attention tracking our progress. Let her watch. Let her draw whatever conclusions she wanted. I had sixty-four other children to worry about, and most of them wouldn’t see sunset.
◇ ◆ ◇
The morning stretched into hours. Children huddled in their chosen positions, flinching at every sound that carried across the ruins.
Some formed alliances that would probably dissolve at the first spill of blood.
Others sat alone, already abandoned by whatever group they’d thought they belonged to.
I used the time to catalog the competition.
Kasimir’s team had claimed the armory. Six children from branch families who’d trained together since they could walk, led by a boy I recognized from our encounter on the estate grounds the year before.
They were the closest thing to real competition: coordinated, well-equipped, and led by someone who understood that fighting was as much about positioning as strength.
Kasimir carried himself like a boy who expected to survive, which was either confidence or stupidity, and I hadn’t decided which yet.
Terra’s team held the storage building with similar efficiency.
Five children from a merchant family who’d bought their way into House training, compensating for their common blood with expensive gear and private tutors.
Their steel was better than ours. Whether the hands holding it were remained to be seen.
Erik de Blaise, one of Henrik’s legitimate nephews, had established himself near the keep entrance with a team of loyal cousins.
They were well-armed, well-positioned, and radiating the absolute certainty that their bloodline would carry them through.
Erik had never been hit in the face by someone who meant it.
I could tell by the way he wore his confidence like a coat that’d never been rained on.
The rest were fodder. Desperate clusters of bastards and hopefuls who lacked either the training or the leadership to survive what was coming.
Some of them would die in the first minutes.
Others might last long enough to serve as useful distractions.
A few, if they were lucky and stayed low, might stumble into survival the way rabbits sometimes outrun wolves by running the wrong direction .
“Movement at the south gate,” Grit reported.
I looked up. Handlers were working the mechanisms that controlled the tunnel beneath the proving grounds, the one that connected to the menagerie. I could hear the grind of iron chains through stone, feel the faint vibration through the soles of my boots.
“They’re opening the cage,” I said. “Everyone ready.”
Maise drew her blade without hesitation. Perrin’s hands vanished into his sleeves, where I knew he kept at least four knives of varying length. Grit shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, already positioned to move in any direction the situation demanded.
The Brand between my shoulder blades grew warm, heat spreading down my arms in a slow wave that made my fingers tighten on the spear shaft. My pulse quickened. My vision sharpened. The world got clearer and closer, the way it always did when the Knight woke up and started paying attention.
「The Knight of Swords stirs. Combat approaches.」
The south gate began to rise on rusted chains, revealing darkness behind it.
And something in that darkness moved forward.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 824 | Age 9
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: The Palisade, Proving Grounds
「Knight of Swords」 — Flickering
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: Find the one who broke Hel’s claim.
Sixty-five lambs walked through the gate. Hel counts the ones worth keeping.