Chapter 12: The Wheel of Pain

The years passed. The faces around James changed constantly, a bleak carousel of youth devoured by the camp’s cruelty. Some boys died outright, their bodies succumbing to exhaustion, disease, or simple malnutrition. Others were sold off, hauled away by rough men in the middle of the night, traded like livestock to distant places James would never see. A few were beaten to death for some minor infraction or simply to remind the rest of their place. And in the dead of winter, when the wind howled through the crooked huts and the firewood ran low, more than one boy simply froze where he slept, curled tight and rigid in the darkness, never to wake.

Through all this, James remained. He watched with a strange detachment as the years ticked by, counting not by birthdays but by who disappeared next. His survival was never guaranteed, but he had something the others didn’t—a hidden edge. Whenever the soul-crushing monotony of the wheel threatened to overwhelm him, the macro would carry his body through the hours, letting his mind rest in blank, oblivious darkness. When the macro lapsed, he came to, his body ached, muscles burning and joints stiff, but his spirit remained unbroken. He grew taller, shoulders broadening, arms and legs thickening with the slow, brutal hammer of manual labor. And perversely, his retreat into the macros paid an unexpected dividend. His uncomplaining focus on the wheel was rewarded with better food, which contributed to his growth.

As he changed, so did his duties. The guards took note of his growing strength and began to assign him heavier work: hauling water in battered buckets from the river, chopping wood until his hands blistered, stacking logs for the camp’s endless fires. Eventually, they gave him an ax to chop trees down and drag the trunks back to camp. Maybe it was a sign of trust—an acknowledgment that he was useful, disciplined, and unlikely to make trouble. Or maybe the guards just didn’t care anymore. In a camp run by brutality and indifference, who could he really hurt with an ax? There were too many of them, each one bigger, meaner, or better armed than he could ever hope to be. Even if James had wanted to try something reckless, there would be no uprising, no bloody escape. The numbers simply didn’t add up.

So he took the ax and swung it day after day, cutting down trees and splitting logs in the yard while the cold wind bit at his face and the sky threatened snow. It was a strange kind of freedom, the rhythm of the ax almost meditative, the violence of the act confined to wood and splinters. In time, his hands grew thick with callus, his shoulders corded with new muscle. The work was honest, in a way—the only task that felt like it belonged to him.

Not every lesson was administered with a fist or a lash. An older man, neither fully a guard or a prisoner, took an interest in him and quietly shared the skills of survival. Out beyond the camp’s edge while looking for trees to cut, James learned to read the signs left behind by animals—tracks of rabbits, deer, foxes, even wolves. He learned which berries would nourish and which would rot his guts or send him hallucinating through the brush. His appraisal perk, once a novelty, sharpened through constant practice. The man pointed out herbs that could heal wounds, roots that dulled pain, and mushrooms best left alone unless one wished for a vision quest that ended with death.

By the time he turned fourteen, or at least thought he was fourteen, James was nearly unrecognizable, even to himself. Gone was the frail, frightened child. In his place stood a teenager with the body of a young god—lean, sinewy, every muscle cut and defined by the relentless, daily grind. His skin was weathered by sun and wind, hands thick with callus. Here, the transformation was formed by years of relentless suffering and survival, which had shaped him into something stronger, something enduring. The camp had turned boys into corpses or monsters; James was determined to be neither.

One day, the guards dragged him from the woodpile to a makeshift pit at the edge of the camp, a patch of hard-packed dirt ringed by ankle-high stones and cast-off planks. The man waiting there watched him in silence for a moment, eyes narrowed, sizing up his frame as if appraising livestock. He gestured to James to slowly turn around for his inspection. When the man finally spoke, his voice was blunt, heavy with indifference and practicality.

“We’re going to sell you off, eventually,” the man said, barely glancing at James. “But we need you to learn how to fight first. We will make more money.”

James looked up, startled. So this was confirmation of why he was taken. Instead of unanswered speculation over the years, a cold, dispassionate statement. The man hefted a battered sword, its edge nicked and scarred by years of use, and let it drop at James’s feet. Metal hit dirt with a dull thud.

“You know what this is?”

James nodded, the answer obvious. “A sword.”

“Pick it up, boy.”

He hesitated, suspicion prickling at the base of his neck. “You’ll kill me.”

The man’s mouth twisted in something like amusement. “Nope. We’re going to beat the weakness out of you and turn you into a warrior.”

There was no more discussion. Training began immediately. The man barked orders, demonstrating each movement, his eyes merciless and alert for even the smallest mistake. James’s body, already hard from years of labor, was forced into new positions, every muscle stretched and tested. The days became a blur of sweat, pain, and repetition. A different version of the wheel, but with plentiful food and clothing that fit for the first time in years.

They started with the basics—stance, balance, and the art of holding the sword so it became an extension of the arm, not a dead weight. Lunges, thrusts, and basic attacks followed, each drilled over and over until James’s thighs burned and his shoulders trembled from fatigue. The man emphasized the importance of the lunge, demanding perfect precision—front knee bent, back leg locked, heel barely scraping the dirt as the sword thrust forward.

From there, the training became more technical. He was taught the language of parries and ripostes—first counter-ripostes, then the subtlety of the second counter, requiring him to recover from an attack and retaliate with flawless timing. The man drove him relentlessly through sequences of attacks on the blade: beats to knock aside an opponent’s guard, prises de fer—forceful takings of the blade that included binds, froissements, coulés, and glisses. These were techniques to control an enemy’s weapon, to dominate the exchange, and sap their resolve. The training was as mental as it was physical; he had to learn to read intent, to anticipate the flicker of movement before a strike.

Footwork was an obsession. The man drilled him on steps—advances and retreats, small and large, each movement exact and economical. He made James practice the appel, a sharp stamping of the front foot to draw an opponent’s attention or mask a sudden change of direction. The balestra, a cross between a jump and a step, gave James particular trouble. It required him to explode forward from a half-crouch, covering distance with a burst of speed and power, yet land poised and ready for the next attack. Again and again, he was made to repeat it, the man’s voice harsh in his ear whenever he faltered or stumbled.

Jumps and lunges followed, then the fleche—a reckless, all-or-nothing attack that sent James diving through the air at his opponent, sword arm extended, body stretched in desperate momentum. At first, he landed in the dirt more often than not, but the man pulled him to his feet, demanding he try again, and again, until the motion became instinct, pure muscle memory.