The Orb of Wrath
Page 24
After spending two days in the woods and on the roads, everyone enjoyed the comfort of sleeping in a good bed. Erion and Mithir slept in a cozy guest room on the ground floor. The others had their own rooms on the top floor. They all appreciated not having to take turns guarding. Having to interrupt their sleep and stay vigilant, and then having to go back to sleep, was something that almost no one could get used to. Although the property was old, Thost's mansion was an excellent house, big enough for a group of five people.
A cock from the stables, which was next to the house, woke them up at dawn. After a hearty breakfast that the jovial Dreshpho made for them, they divided into groups to accomplish the tasks, as they had agreed the previous day. Mithir and Ithelas left first. They would go to visit Beromort, the wisest man in Ekunon. Erion and Samar departed next. They would visit shops and stores in the city in order to be equipped for the mission. Finally, Thost stayed in the mansion to prepare the training ground where they would practice together that afternoon.
Thost went to the field which was located down the hill. He used to go there with Ithelas to practice using different weapons: sword, mace, shield, etc. They also had a couple of targets at the end of the field, with which Samar trained often. He took some time to think about what exercises they could do. Thost understood that the best way for a group to survive was to exploit the different abilities of each member, combining them intelligently. A magician, a knight, a cleric, an archer and ... Thost was not sure how to classify Erion. He found him to be the most enigmatic character of the whole group. Maybe explorer was the best term, though he wasn't sure.
He decided they should start with individual exercises. That would allow them to see what the others could do. He thought it best to start with ranged attacks. So he went to a shed near the training ground and took out three bulky targets, one by one. And, with a lot of work and effort, he moved them to bring them closer to the other two, which were already placed in the shooting range. But he placed these three at a slightly shorter distance. Most of the weapons were not as far-reaching as Samar's bow. Then he picked up a weapon rack and set it in the shooting range. There was a bit of everything: spears, a few bows and many crossbows, arrows and even a blowpipe with several darts.
He returned to the shed and picked up five straw dummies, one by one. The dummies were protected with steel armor, and had small targets drawn at strategic points: the center of the chest, sides and neck. He aligned them in another area of the training ground next to the shooting range.
“Exercises of close combat, to finish the warm-up,” Thost thought.
He returned again to the shed and, this time, took another rack and placed it near the dummies. After several trips, he collected various weapons like swords, maces, daggers, short swords and axes, and placed them in the rack, sorted by size. This left the second part of the training ground prepared.
Thost was sweating. He had carried a lot of very heavy objects. Although he still had a strong arm, he didn't have the same endurance as when he was twenty-five. He sat down to take a short break as he thought about the most important exercises, the teamwork exercises. In the Army, he had learned various trainings and had been able to prove their effectiveness when he himself had to start commanding troops. The Army exercises work primarily with three elements: artillery, infantry and cavalry. It was very important to wisely train and combine the archers and the soldiers. The cavalry usually worked in a complementary way. For example, you could open a breach in an enemy formation on a defensive position; or you could use it to pursue, instigate and exterminate an inferior enemy or use it in a getaway. There were other uses but they were generally complementary to the main force. The key to the cavalry was knowing when and how to use it.
In this case, the situation was different. It was a small group, which limited the tactics they could employ. But on the other hand, there were other different skills that usually don't exist in an army, especially Mithir and Ithelas' magic.
He decided they could start with a simple combination of archers’ and soldiers’ exercise. For this, he picked up two other dummies from inside the shed and placed them in a third area of the field. Then he made a start line a hundred steps from the dummies and additional marks every twenty steps. He thought about what formations they should practice. He returned to the mansion, took a scroll and a pen and began to write down the exercises that he had already thought of. He included a table to record the results.
In the central area of the training camp, he painted a circle on the floor with lime, of about twenty steps across, and then placed four more dummies at different distances. They would practice a defensive team position there. He wrote the various distance attacks that they would practice in turns, as well as the proximity ones, subsequently. In that exercise, they could start practicing the most effective ways of combining physical attacks with offensive and defensive spells. He defined the various scenarios that occurred to him and wrote them down as well.
When he finished, he reviewed everything that he had prepared, as well as his notes. He felt satisfied. It would take them several hours to complete all the exercises. He just hoped for everyone to be back in the early afternoon or, otherwise, they wouldn't have enough time.
It was practically lunchtime. Almost without realizing it, he had spent the whole morning preparing the camp. He went to see the horses at the stables. He fed them, stroked them and then returned to the mansion. He could smell the delicious aroma of roast coming from the kitchen.