Chapter 3: Sorted Solitude

Every morning at the Academy started in the exercise yard. The unsorted were not separated from everyone else during this part of the day, and I soon got to enjoy the catcalls and hoots of derision from the other students when we arrived. I could only assume that we had arrived late. Only Hew's announcement that it was time to go had given me a clue that this was on our schedule.

We did the usual sorts of things, stretching, sit ups, push ups, running in place. This was followed by marching, in our respective units all the way down the cliff road, past the gates and all the way to the bridge across the Coro.

Here, under the bridge and beside the river was a sort of obstacle course that I hadn't even noticed when we'd run past it the day before. There were towers to climb, rope bridges, barriers to scale, rope swings, and at one stop, a chin up bar where we had to do three chin ups before proceeding. I just followed along the line, passing some who faltered, but otherwise not trying to outdo anyone. Nothing here was too different than the stuff the Rangers and the Guard had back in the valley, and I had spent plenty of time on that equipment.

Once everyone had gathered at the far end of the course, we were simply set off to run back to the exercise yard.

"Any prize for finishing first?" I asked Instructor Attar, who I found myself beside on the road.

"Just bragging rights and a few extra minutes of leisure time."He answered.

Bragging rights were nothing, but I suspected that leisure minutes this time of day were hard to come by, and I stepped up my pace. I was almost stunned to see Hew Blegget suddenly looming in front of me. I looked up just in time to see him taking a swing at me. I took my next stride to my left, and ducked, feeling the wind of his swings passing over my back. I straightened back up as I took my next step and regained my new stride. I never even looked back.

I began passing runners, quickly at first, then more slowly as the merely average runners were left behind and only the truly good runners were left ahead of me. I finally saw a single figure ahead of me by several hundred yards. I ran for a little while before I realized I wasn't gaining any ground on him at all. I considered tapping the strength of the stone underfoot, but decided against it. Better to play it fairly for now, and save those sort of things for when it counted.

The figure I chased all the way to the exercise yard was sitting on the low barrier wall where the yard skirted the cliff edge. I walked over and sat a few feet away from him. I could appreciate his choice of locations. A cool breeze came of the cliff wall, a pleasant change from the heat of the run.

"Nice run." He commented.

"You too." I answered. "I might have been able to find another gear and catch you on a flat run."

"I might have found another gear and held you off, on a flat run."

We both laughed briefly over that.

"Foxfoot Aligos." He said, holding out his hand. "Mostly they call me Fox."

"Obsidian Caldwell." I answered, shaking hands. "Call me Sid."

Fox introduced me to the next three runners as they arrived, Elm Cayne, Rut Malcross, and Tank Reinard,

"These three and us two are the decent runners. There are probably a couple others who could be at the front of the pack with us if they had any love of running, but they show up in the middle of the pack because they don't want to set themselves apart."

"Right now I'm trying very hard to set myself apart." I said with a snort.

"Ahh, another refugee from the Hew Blegget school of hard knocks?" Tank asked.

"He hasn't laid a finger on me so far, but last night might've been it if I hadn't spun my staff around a few times and suggested he might be wiser waiting until he saw whether I had any skill with it before he tried anything."

"So do you?" Rut asked. "Have any skill I mean."

"With the staff? Yeah. I've been taking lessons since I was three."

"Hmm. I heard that you were an absolute beginner with the sword."

"That's true. Yesterday was only the second time in my life I ever even held one."

"Can you ride?" Fox asked.

"Sure. Though I wouldn't say my horsemanship has ever had any military focus."

"With Hew running things in the unsorted crew, I'm guessing no one there has filled you in on anything. How much do you know about how things are organized here?"

"Not a thing. Other than knowing that there are the unsorted and then the rest of you, and a headmaster and instructors, I don't know anything."

"That's a bit of a test everyone goes through." Tank said. "Usually there are no long term unsorteds like with Hew and his crew, so it normally works that the entire unsorted class comes in equally ignorant and have to work out the details on their own."

"Blegget's family is too important somewhere, either politics or money or both." Fox said. "They're letting him change the rules, which would scare me if he ever decided to get out of the unsorteds."

The main pack of runners were starting to show up in larger numbers now, making it difficult to continue our conversation.

Instructor Neldin came jogging over, through the growing crowd.

"Caldwell, if you want to save yourself some time later, you might want to run and get whatever weapons you brought with you." He said. "They'll do a sorting for you as soon as the last of the stragglers makes it onto the yard."

I made a quick run back to the unsorted barracks, cheating a little on the upper stretch, knowing there wouldn't be any other students around to see it. I grabbed my quiver and slid the strap over my head, letting it come to rest in its familiar spot just inside the ridge formed by my right shoulder blade. I grabbed the rib straps and cinched them tightly together after running them around my torso a couple times. This left the loops for my Moonstone staff perfectly positioned and I slid it through them so that it was carried over the other shoulder. I hadn't worn my gear as it was meant to be worn since we had boarded the ship to come here. It felt good. I allowed myself a wicked smile and headed down to the yard.

I made my way through the crowd to find Fox, Elm and Tank. Rut was nowhere to be seen. I was about to ask when I caught him out of the corner of my eye running our way from the vicinity of the main gate.

"Last guy should be through the gate in a minute." Rut said. "Hew Blegget is being carried up by a couple of the Instructors. The headmaster is with them!"

I had been envisioning a sprained ankle or some other sort of injury. The truth was much stranger. Hew's attempted blow at me in passing had been seen by instructor Attar. When Attar stopped and tapped him on the shoulder, Blegget had lashed out blindly, striking him. Confronted with the realization of what he had just done, he dropped to the ground and refused to get up, let alone run the hill. Of course Rut hadn't heard about the attempt to hit me, only the part about striking an Instructor.

"That means punishment detail, but not until you've been sorted out, that is always the first order of business." Fox said.

So Hew Blegget got to watch me get paraded up in front of the rest of the cadets, as I was suddenly reminded we were called when the crowd in the yard was brought to order.

An archery range was probably not a normal part of the yard's activities, but it was obviously used as such during the sorting out process, as a pair of hay stuffed targets and some quilted burlap curtains to hang behind them were quickly set up. Instructor Belim stood at a spot halfway across the yard from the targets and gave me the sign to shoot. I stood next to him and gaged the targets and the wind. Here, away from the cliff edge and the wall where I had been earlier, there was no wind. I let my senses soak up the information I needed while I strung the bow. Feeling the loops and the taught strength of the draw I decided the bow was well strung and pulled an arrow from the quiver, drew and fired in one smooth motion. The targets were silhouettes in the shape of a human body, and my arrow struck the first one square over the heart. I drew and fired again and the second arrow struck the other target in almost the same place.

"Well, I'd say that qualifies you right through the bow classes." Instructor Belim said. "Lets see how you do with the staff."

The Instructor began to spin his staff in lazy figure eights in front of him while I pulled my staff off its resting place on my shoulder.

"Did you study with a master?" He asked.

"Yes. Master Jo." I answered.

"Show me the first form he taught you." He asked.

I thought about it for a second and decided to treat the question literally. I dropped to my knees in the dirt in front of me, with my staff across my thighs and my head and eyes down.

"What form is this?" Belim asked with humor in his voice. The question drew a laugh from the observing cadets.

"The form called 'ready for instruction'." I answered.

"This was the first thing you learned from your stick instructor?" He asked more seriously.

"Yes." I answered. "I was only three years old at the time, though."

"Very well." He said at last. "Spar with me."

I hopped to my feet and attacked in one motion. He was ready for me, and his defense was solid. I ran through the entire series of basic attacks I knew, and then moved into basic combinations. I kept all the tricky stuff safely tucked away for now. He let me attack for several long minutes before shifting his stance slightly, forcing my final attack slightly wider than before, and using the space he had gained to go on the offensive.

I kept myself centered and let my training take over. I read his shifting weight and feet and paid attention to his waist and shoulders, as I had been taught. After a while he increased both the speed and the strength of the attack, and I continued to maintain a solid defense while I gave ground. When I sensed he had come to a pause in his attack rhythm, I counterattacked, and for several long minutes it was a true mixture of give and take, attack and counterattack. When a momentary series of moves caused us to pull back from each other slightly, he brought his staff down, striking the ground with the butt end.

"Good enough!" Instructor Belim said. He followed it with a slight bow, which I answered in kind. "Your master is to be commended, he taught you well."

"Thank you." I said.

That moment should stand out in my recollections, but sadly it is forever tied to the disciplining of Hew Blegget in my memories. Striking an Instructor was cause for dismissal. Refusing to walk to his punishment was what got him the ten lashes. He was still strapped to the pillory where they had bound him when we were dismissed for morning mess. He hadn't uttered a word or sound during the entire proceeding.

The mess itself was a riot of confusion and good cheer. Fox, Rut and Tank found me immediately, offering to act as guide to the main mess hall. It was only a short jog down a short corridor. All the way through the food line, where there were an amazing assortment of choices, by the way, I got slaps on the back and shouted greetings of 'good job Caldwell'. Elm, it turned out had gone ahead of us and had a spot reserved for us all to sit.

With a plate full of bacon, eggs and fresh melon slices, chilled slices at that, I dug in. It gave me an opportunity to avoid too many prying questions. I noticed it wasn't Fox, Elm, Tank or Rut asking them. They seemed content.

"What, no questions from you guys?" I asked Fox.

"Oh, we'll save the questions in favor of being friends, if you see that as an option." Fox answered.

"We need all the running partners we can get, for one thing." Elm added.

"And we're all third year cadets." Tank added. "Three years is the minimum time it can take you to get through the course here."

"Fox at least has a shot of finishing in the minimum." Rut added. "The rest of us are probably all going to be at least five years getting through.

All this was said while shoveling breakfast in as quickly as possible. That seemed to be the operative method. I wondered if they didn't get pulled away from meals on short notice on occasion. If I was training soldiers, I'd get mine used to short or missed meals. It seemed like the Rangers back home always complained that thieves and intruders never respected meal times.

I was still working on some of the bacon — having gone back for seconds, when Instructor Tawl found me.

"Headmaster Feldspar requests your presence in his office immediately."

I shoved the remaining bacon towards Tank.

"Finish that for me, would you? No sense letting good bacon go to waste."

Day two of my stay at the Academy and I already knew one thing for certain, if we were going somewhere, we would be doing it at a run. I had been to the Headmaster's office once already, so knew the way, but Instructor Tawl wasn't waiting to see if I wanted to run alone, so I just shadowed him on the run upstairs.

I was stunned to find the Headmaster's office already occupied by Hew Blegget.

"As you can see Cadet Caldwell, we have not managed quite yet to rid ourselves of Mister Blegget. He has asked to speak to you before he is taken to the ship that is waiting for him at the harbor."

No need to turn my attention to him. My eyes hadn't left him since I entered the room.

"These men known me, and they know my family, Caldwell, and if you ain't figured it out yet, it can be hard refusing my family when we make a request. My real name is Hew Damacine."

The way he said it, I knew he expected me to recognize it, but I had no clue. I turned slightly towards the Headmaster and raised an eyebrow.

"His father is King of the Green Coast Kingdom, Clay Damacine. The Green Coast is a very powerful southern kingdom, with lots of influence. In this region."

I laughed. Out loud.

"You are to blame for me getting kicked out of here, Caldwell, so I'll be finding out who your family is, don't think I wont, and when I do, they'll pay for your attitude. That laugh is going to cost you."

I looked at the headmaster again. He was the very picture of non-committal neutrality.

"Very well Blegget." I said, using his fake name intentionally. "But be advised. You are not the only one who is here with a fake name. My real last name is McKesson. Does that ring any bells for you?"

He of course drew a blank, as I expected he would.

"I wouldn't expect you would. My parents don't much go by that name in public. In public my mother goes by her title, The Wind of Arbor. My father is just known as Weaver, the High Wizard of Arbor."

That had him speechless for a moment at least, but before he could reply, Headmaster Feldspar added his own last comment.

"As High Wizard, Obsidian's father could have requested entrance for his son under his own authority, rather than the usual royal petition from a ruler of one of the recognized kingdoms. However, he did not make the request himself. Instead we received separate Royal petitions from the kingdoms of Glest, Lamin, Norhal, Midhal, Westhal and even Princess Redstone of Beletara."