Continued from here
Tantos kept it dark in the training room. Half the torches stood unlit on the walls, keeping the shadows long and visibility short. Looking around, the cadets could make each other out as they stood in a circle, the two instructors in the middle of it, but not make out features. They had to squint to make out limbs and poses, and when it came to sparring... well, a chunk of it was just luck and intuition.
Tantos kept it heavy down there, too. They didn't wear the cadet chainmail but the half-plate that fully-commissioned Black Guard officers were on their rounds. Strong enough to ward off a sword or an ax... and heavy enough to make you feel like you had a child hanging around your neck while you were sparring. After a break or two it was a miracle just to keep your hands up in a guard.
Cadet Kasoria had thought it was cruelty at first, just more of the aristo bastards enjoying fucking with the street rats with stupid, vicious, unfair training tortures. Then, for their first arc review, Kasoria understood the meaning behind it all. The brightness of the open Testing Yard, making all his opponent's moves seem obvious, compared to the sneaking semi-blindness of the dungeon. The lightness of the chain links they were, lending them such speed and finesse now their limbs and torsos were freed from the clanking plates.
Tantos watched them all pass with a shit-eating smirk on his face, and Kasoria knew why.
"You train hard, harder than the testing, harder than most of the shite you face in the streets... and when you're actually there, it's easier. Not easy, but easier."
His grey eyes flashed around the circle like steel, seeming to catch every recruit's gaze for a fraction of a trill.
"What do we call "easy", cadets?"
They answered as one, twenty young, fit, dedicated and trained throats barking out the works so loud they were deafened by them in the low, tight room.
"Easy ain't for the Blackjack, save that shit for the Army!"
"Fucking right it is, boys. Corporal Drix, let's go over last season's key lessons. Pull a couple of them from the ranks..."
Kasoria's jaw worked back and forth. His hands rubbed and fidgeted in the grip of each other as the short, stocky, shaven-headed assistant to the Sergeant scowled at them. Not a hair on his head, nor eyebrows or stubble. Just sharp cheekbones and blazing eyes, like a tamed hawk Kasoria had seen once. Piercing and predatory and more than a little unhinged in their focus. The man walked around, staring at each young face, pausing for a trill. No sound save for his footsteps. Not a cough or a grunt. No flicker of emotion on any face.
They all had so much to prove. They were so young. Fates and Void, had he ever really been so young?
"You... and you!"
The second finger jab was at him, and Kasoria's heart jumped into his throat. But two arcs in the Hallowed Hall (as Tantos half-sarcastically called it) had rammed enough discipline into him that he just clicked his heels together and nodded, like a good cadet. He strolled forward and lowered his gaze for a moment-
-enough to sweep a look around his fellows. Most of them taller, broader than him. They had more mass and thus more potential power when they turned to violence, and he'd borne many a hammering down here on the stones.
Not the sands. Not like with the swords training. Tantos had apparently ordered the sand cleaned out of the stony room they stood in now. "They ain't training to fight in a fucking desert," had been his justification, "And when they fall out there, it won't be on a nice, soft, sodding sand dune. So, let's prepare them for what they will be falling on."
Kasoria preferred the stones. Almost like cobbles. He'd been scrapping and grappling and brawling across them for going on ten arcs. His hands had grown new calluses. His muscles were larger, stronger. He looked over the short expanse of cut stone and saw Tantos standing across from him. Some fingers on his right hand tingled; remembering the damage the man had done to him years before.
Young Kasoria smiled, and not at the memory, or even the potential for getting even. He smiled because he knew what they were here to learn, what mysteries and tomes wrought in flesh and blood and bruises they were to absorb.
Every week for two years. This was as close as his soul came to worship.
Ki'Enaq. Merchant of Death.
"A'right, boy. Time to-"
Kasoria lunged.
108th Trial, Ashan, Arc 691
The Hall of Rule and Reprimand
14th break
The Hall of Rule and Reprimand
14th break
Tantos kept it dark in the training room. Half the torches stood unlit on the walls, keeping the shadows long and visibility short. Looking around, the cadets could make each other out as they stood in a circle, the two instructors in the middle of it, but not make out features. They had to squint to make out limbs and poses, and when it came to sparring... well, a chunk of it was just luck and intuition.
Tantos kept it heavy down there, too. They didn't wear the cadet chainmail but the half-plate that fully-commissioned Black Guard officers were on their rounds. Strong enough to ward off a sword or an ax... and heavy enough to make you feel like you had a child hanging around your neck while you were sparring. After a break or two it was a miracle just to keep your hands up in a guard.
Cadet Kasoria had thought it was cruelty at first, just more of the aristo bastards enjoying fucking with the street rats with stupid, vicious, unfair training tortures. Then, for their first arc review, Kasoria understood the meaning behind it all. The brightness of the open Testing Yard, making all his opponent's moves seem obvious, compared to the sneaking semi-blindness of the dungeon. The lightness of the chain links they were, lending them such speed and finesse now their limbs and torsos were freed from the clanking plates.
Tantos watched them all pass with a shit-eating smirk on his face, and Kasoria knew why.
"You train hard, harder than the testing, harder than most of the shite you face in the streets... and when you're actually there, it's easier. Not easy, but easier."
His grey eyes flashed around the circle like steel, seeming to catch every recruit's gaze for a fraction of a trill.
"What do we call "easy", cadets?"
They answered as one, twenty young, fit, dedicated and trained throats barking out the works so loud they were deafened by them in the low, tight room.
"Easy ain't for the Blackjack, save that shit for the Army!"
"Fucking right it is, boys. Corporal Drix, let's go over last season's key lessons. Pull a couple of them from the ranks..."
Kasoria's jaw worked back and forth. His hands rubbed and fidgeted in the grip of each other as the short, stocky, shaven-headed assistant to the Sergeant scowled at them. Not a hair on his head, nor eyebrows or stubble. Just sharp cheekbones and blazing eyes, like a tamed hawk Kasoria had seen once. Piercing and predatory and more than a little unhinged in their focus. The man walked around, staring at each young face, pausing for a trill. No sound save for his footsteps. Not a cough or a grunt. No flicker of emotion on any face.
They all had so much to prove. They were so young. Fates and Void, had he ever really been so young?
"You... and you!"
The second finger jab was at him, and Kasoria's heart jumped into his throat. But two arcs in the Hallowed Hall (as Tantos half-sarcastically called it) had rammed enough discipline into him that he just clicked his heels together and nodded, like a good cadet. He strolled forward and lowered his gaze for a moment-
-enough to sweep a look around his fellows. Most of them taller, broader than him. They had more mass and thus more potential power when they turned to violence, and he'd borne many a hammering down here on the stones.
Not the sands. Not like with the swords training. Tantos had apparently ordered the sand cleaned out of the stony room they stood in now. "They ain't training to fight in a fucking desert," had been his justification, "And when they fall out there, it won't be on a nice, soft, sodding sand dune. So, let's prepare them for what they will be falling on."
Kasoria preferred the stones. Almost like cobbles. He'd been scrapping and grappling and brawling across them for going on ten arcs. His hands had grown new calluses. His muscles were larger, stronger. He looked over the short expanse of cut stone and saw Tantos standing across from him. Some fingers on his right hand tingled; remembering the damage the man had done to him years before.
Young Kasoria smiled, and not at the memory, or even the potential for getting even. He smiled because he knew what they were here to learn, what mysteries and tomes wrought in flesh and blood and bruises they were to absorb.
Every week for two years. This was as close as his soul came to worship.
Ki'Enaq. Merchant of Death.
"A'right, boy. Time to-"
Kasoria lunged.
