by Gunhus, Jeff
Aquinas arched an eyebrow. “A Ratling? This is for hunters who cannot complete their training, either because of an injury or because they lack the courage.”
“Oh yes, that’s perfect,” T-Rex said eagerly.
“It means not being a hunter and not going out to fight the monsters,” Aquinas said.
“That sounds great!” T-Rex exclaimed before catching himself. He looked at Will and me. “Not that I don’t want to fight…it’s just…you know…”
“You’d just rather be around the food,” Will said.
“Exactly,” T-Rex said.
Aquinas broke out into a wide smile and placed a hand on T-Rex’s shoulder. “Then so you shall. There is a bell in the central courtyard. In the morning, you will go to it and ring it three times. Only three times, mind you. Any hunter who wishes to stop his or her training may ring the bell at any time. Afterward, you will see Bacho and he will train you.”
“Three times. Got it,” T-Rex said.
“Only three,” Aquinas said, her voice laced with warning. “Make certain of it.”
“What happens if he rings it more than three times?” Will asked.
“The Trial of the Cave,” Eva said. “It is…”
“…quite a long story,” Aquinas interjected. “And the hour is late, Eva. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Eva nodded and fell silent. If she was trying to stop us from wanting to find out what the Trial of the Cave was, she had just done the opposite. I made a mental note to ask Eva at the first chance.
Master Aquinas turned to me and I felt a small burst of adrenaline. While I was happy that both Will and T-Rex were being allowed to stay, I found myself battling a rising anger as I stood waiting for Aquinas to address me. I reminded myself that Aquinas had used me as bait for Ren Lucre. A dangerous game that resulted in the death of both my Aunt Sophie and Hester.
“This is all well and good,” I said, unable to hide the anger in my voice, “but I came here to get answers.”
Aquinas turned toward me slowly, sizing me up with those crystal-clear blue eyes. “Everyone wants answers, young Templar. Unfortunately, there’s a shortage of them in this world,” she said.
“Where is my father?” I asked. “Is Ren Lucre still alive? What are the Jerusalem Stones?”
Aquinas shuffled close to me until we were standing face-to-face. She reached up with a shaking, gnarled hand and placed it carefully on my cheek. “You look so very much like him,” she whispered. “Is it too much to hope that your heart is like his as well? Tell me, what do you stand for?”
The directness of the question took me aback. Her hand cradled my face, holding it so that I couldn’t look away from her piercing eyes.
“What do you mean?” I muttered.
“What do you stand for!” she said, her voice deep and powerful. This was no longer a question, it was a command.
I searched for an answer but nothing came to me. I froze, suddenly terrified of this frail, old woman who seemed able to see right through me. She searched my face, then finally exhaled, smiled and patted my cheek. “The day you can answer that question is the day you will find your true power. Sleep, young one. Tomorrow your training begins.”
She took her hand away, turned her back and slowly walked toward the stone staircase in the back of the room. I stood there, stupidly, shocked by the sudden end to the conversation. Even though my hands trembled, I couldn’t believe that she was walking away from me. “That’s it?” I asked. “You’re not going to answer any of my questions?”
Aquinas hummed quietly to herself as she walked, clearly meaning to ignore me.
“But I came halfway around the world looking for answers.”
“Then, by all means, you must find them,” Aquinas said.
“I don’t understand. I came because Eva told me you had answers.”
She slowly climbed the stairs, whistling a tune as she did, her cane thumping heavily on each step. Finally, she disappeared into the room above.
I felt an overwhelming urge to follow her and demand that she tell me what she knew. But I felt Eva grab my elbow and pull me toward her. “Come on,” she whispered. “There will be time for answers later.”
Frustrated, I pulled my arm from her and marched out of the room and onto the balcony. The courtyard below was now empty except for the guards at the gate. Above, the winter storm had blown past and revealed a brilliant sky of bright stars. I pulled my cloak around me to ward off the chill and looked out of over the wall into the forest. A wolf’s howl rose up from the trees, haunting and beautiful.
Eva, Will and T-Rex came up and stood beside me, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Finally, it was Eva who broke the silence. “Aquinas practically raised me after Ren Lucre killed my family. Without her…” she held up her left arm with the missing hand, “I would have been a Ratling. She means the best.”
“Sorry, but it’s hard to see that right now,” I said. “I’m here to find out where my father is being held. Once I find that out, or if Aquinas can’t help me, I need to go look on my own.”
“Come on, I’ll show you to your room. You need to get a good night’s sleep. Even with the excitement tonight, the Academy is open for business at first light. You boys are going to need to be at the top of your game.”
We let her lead us down into the courtyard and into one of the wide barracks built into the side of the wall. Rows of bunk beds lined the room and the soft sounds of breathing filled the air. Eva pointed to two empty beds at the end of the room. “It’s not much, but it’ll be warm in here.”
“There are only two beds,” I said.
“Ratlings don’t sleep in the hunters’ dorm. I’ll show T-Rex to his bed,” she said.
“Where are you sleeping?” Will asked.
“Instructor’s lodging. Two buildings down,” she whispered. “I might not see you at first. Just follow the others. You’ll figure it out.”
Eva turned to leave but I grabbed her arm. She looked at me, puzzled. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for coming back for me. You saved my life.”
“I like it better when you owe me one,” she said. “Now get to sleep.”
We waved at T-Rex as he left with Eva. Will and I climbed into our beds. After the craziness of the last day, lying down in an actual bed felt amazing.
I closed my eyes and felt my aching bones settle into the mattress. I then took a deep breath, and let sleep wash over me.
What felt like a second later, a great crashing sound filled the air. I leapt out of bed, ready to battle whatever monster was making such an outlandish noise. But instead of a monster, I saw three older boys walking down the middle aisle of the beds, banging swords on metal shields and making a racket. Pale strands of first light filtered in through the windows.
“Come on! Up and at ‘em,” one of the boys cried.
“Bunch ‘a pansies. Sleep is for the weak. Let’s go!” said another.
I swung my legs out of bed and was rewarded with Will’s feet smacking the top of my head as he crawled out of the upper bunk.
“Sorry,” Will mumbled. “Hey, did you get one of these?” He held out a folded set of black clothes. The same style Eva and Daniel had worn.
I searched my bed and found my own set underneath my blanket. “Yeah, I’ve got a pair.”
“So cool,” Will said. “So freaking cool!”
I smiled at Will’s enthusiasm, thinking for the hundredth time how thankful I was to have him on this journey with me. I wondered how T-Rex was doing in the Ratling’s dorm.
As if on cue, a deep bell sounded outside. Everyone stopped in mid-activity, then made a mad dash to the windows and doors to look outside.
“Who is it?” mumbled a dozen different voices. “Who’s missing?”
“Strange; it’s first thing in the morning,” someone else said.
Will and I followed along and went outside just as the second chime reached our ears. Of course, we already knew who it was. In the distance, perched awkw
ardly on a boulder in the center of the training field, T-Rex struck a large bell for the third time with a heavy-looking, two-handed hammer. Bacho stood next to him and helped him down.
“Just what we need—another Ratling,” a thin hunter with red hair mumbled.
“What’d ya think?” asked a squat, muscular boy with terrible acne. “That he was goin’ for tha Cave ‘a Trials? That’s a lark.”
“Makes sense,” a hunter said nearby. “The fat one never would have made it.”
“I doubt any of them will make it,” said someone else in the crowd. The hunters nearest us looked embarrassed by the comment. Will stepped forward but I held him back by the arm. The last thing we needed was to get into a fight on our first day of school.
Within seconds of the last bell, the room was back to being a flurry of activity. Soon, there wasn’t a single person left in their bed; everyone was busy putting on their clothes and stretching the sheets tight on their mattresses. Will jumped down to the floor beside me. “You’ve got to make your bed,” he said. “Hurry up.”
I made the bed quickly. It was easy enough because I had slept so hard that I don’t think I actually moved once during the night. Will had found out from one of the boys that the bathroom was in the back, so we went there and waited in line. No one spoke to us, but there was no shortage of curious looks and sidelong glances. After we had our turn in the bathroom, we followed the migration of boys out of the barracks and into the courtyard.
The Academy looked completely different by day. While the flicker of campfires and torches the night before had made the courtyard seem mysterious and foreboding, the bright morning light made it look more like a working farm than a secret hideout for monster hunters. Well, a working farm with extensive fortifications and battlements, that is.
The layout of the fort was fairly basic and entirely built for defense. I could see the main wall better in the daylight. It looked like something out of a history textbook about the Middle Ages. Black boulders stacked high into the air with slits for shooting arrows. The wall was rugged and looked like sections of it had been repaired over the centuries. I wondered whether it had been time and the elements that had made the repairs necessary, or if those sections were the scars from long-ago battles.
The Academy’s main wall curved in an arc from left to right, both ends terminating into the side of a mountain of black rock. In the dark, I hadn’t noticed that the entire Academy actually rested on top of a small plateau with a massive, sheer mountain face behind it. I looked up to the top and felt dizzy from the height of it. It was a perfect defense, as it seemed climbing the face was impossible. I suspected that the opposite side of the mountain was just as steep, giving an attacking army no option other than an uphill assault on the wall.
And that was just the first line of defense. A second wall rose up on the opposite side of the wide courtyard, covering the mouth of a giant cave. I noticed there were two towers built into the wall on either side of the gate that I hadn’t noticed the night before. This wall looked even older than the outer defenses.
At least twenty feet tall, it was covered with nasty spikes, blades and wires, making climbing nearly impossible. The roof of the cave towered over it and went back deep into the mountain.
I took a few steps backward to get a better angle and see how far back the cave went. The rock ceiling continued to rise, but the shadows were too dark; it was impossible to tell how big it was.
I was no expert in medieval fortifications, but this set-up seemed perfect. Any attack would first have to come uphill to the first wall, where the enemy would be completely exposed to the archers and defenders. An almost impossible task. But, if they were to succeed, the defenders had to simply pull back to the second wall and renew the defense. Again, the attackers would be totally in the open in the wide crescent-shaped space of the courtyard, an area that was about the length of a football field in the center and that tapered to a point at each end.
Meanwhile, the defenders would be holed up in the cave system protected by a thick, seemingly impenetrable wall. I imagined that there would have been food and water supplies in the cave that could last through any siege. Whoever had built this fortress must have known they would eventually be attacked. I wondered if the Black Guard had been the original builders and, if not, then who? I added it to my growing list of questions to ask Eva when I saw her next.
“Jack!” Will called out to me. “Come on, breakfast is over this way.”
Just the mention of breakfast sent my stomach rumbling. I jogged to catch up with him. Boys and girls ranging in age from eight to sixteen poured out of the barracks and converged on a grassy open area near the top end of the crescent. Nearly everyone wore the same simple uniform—all black—including a heavy black cloak to ward off the cold. The only exceptions were the instructors, who wore blood-red cloaks, and the Ratlings.
The Ratlings stood behind the serving tables, hefting mounds of steaming food onto the hunter’s trays. They wore stiff grey coats that went three-fourths of the way to the floor and covered their heads with knit caps. But their clothes weren’t the only thing that separated them.
I remembered Aquinas saying that hunters became Ratlings if they were injured or couldn’t handle the training. I noticed quite a few of them walked with a limp, or even had an arm, leg or foot missing. They ran the gamut from being so thin that a soft breeze could knock them down to someone like Bacho, who looked like he just might have eaten a couple of the skinny Ratlings for breakfast. Right next to Bacho, grinning like he had won the lottery, was T-Rex dressed in the grey Ratling uniform.
I waved at him and he waved back.
The distinctive smell of bacon wafted over the air and I realized how hungry I was. I grabbed a plate and watched as it filled with bacon, scrambled eggs, baked tomatoes and chunks of a white cheese. I reached Bacho and T-Rex’s place in line and they gave me wide grin.
“Isn’t this awesome!” T-Rex said. “We got to eat before you guys. All the bacon I wanted!”
Bacho smiled, happy with his new charge. “Don’t ya worry, M’ster Jack,” Bacho said. “I’ll take care a’ T-Rex ‘ere. Come on, you can ‘ave a lil extra. On the ‘ouse.” Bacho heaped a massive serving of thick porridge onto my plate.
It sloshed over all my other food and dribbled off the edge of my plate. Bacho looked so proud to have helped me out that I tried not to show my dismay that my entire breakfast was now going to taste like porridge.
“Thanks, Bacho,” I said. “I appreciate it. See you later, T-Rex.”
I followed Will through the rows of tables, trying to ignore the people staring at us. We took a seat at an empty table and sat across from another. No one had started eating yet, so we followed their example and waited.
I craned my neck to find Eva in the crowd. I spotted her sitting at a table filled with older hunters, all of them instructors, as noted by the ribbons tied around their arms. Someone blocking my view moved to the side and I saw that Daniel sat next to her. He was telling a story and the entire table was hanging onto every word. He must have told the punch line as the table erupted in laughter and the instructors closest to Daniel slapped him on the back.
“What a putz,” I whispered.
As if sensing my stare, Daniel turned and looked directly at me.
I spun back around in my chair and pretended to play with my breakfast, forcing myself not to look over in that direction again. Even as more people filtered in and got their food, no one sat at the table with us. They just passed right by like we didn’t exist and sat at the next table over. Soon, everyone had been served and every table in the room was crowded to over-capacity, but the ten open spots at our table remained empty.
“Geez,” Will whispered to me. “I know we didn’t take a shower this morning, but I didn’t think we smelled this bad.” He leaned toward me and took a good sniff. “It might be you.”
I was about to comment that he didn’t exactly smell like a flower either, when Aquin
as walked into the room. Everyone stood up from their chairs and fell silent.
“Hunters and trainees of the Black Guard. May honor guide you, may truth comfort you, and may justice always be your goal,” Aquinas intoned.
In unison, everyone put their right fist to their chest, then extended their arm forward. It was the same hunter salute I had learned from Eva. “Do your duty, come what may,” replied the group.
“Enjoy your meal,” Aquinas said.
The room exploded in loud conversation as students dug into their food. Famished, I hardly noticed the soggy porridge that covered all my food. Will and I barely said a word as we devoured our plates in a matter of minutes.
Good thing too, because no sooner had we finished than a high-pitched bell rang, very different from the deep tones of the one T-Rex had rung earlier. In an instant, all the hunters were on their feet and hustling out of the room, leaving their dirty plates behind.
Will and I followed along and jogged to catch up. A quick look back confirmed what I thought. The Ratlings were clearing the tables and cleaning up the mess left by the hunters.
The crowd jogged to the main courtyard and quickly assembled itself in organized rows with military-like precision, ten men across and fifteen deep. At the head of each row, facing the column of fifteen, was an instructor.
Everyone seemed to have an assigned spot. Everyone except Will and me, that is. Thinking it was first-come, first serve, we tried to stand in a column only to shortly have a hunter run up and claim the spot as their own. The bell kept ringing, adding a sense of urgency to find a place. We worked our way to the back of the formation and took our place there, making two columns an uneven length. A glance down the line confirmed I was in Eva’s column.
“Get behind me,” I whispered to Will. “We want to stick together.”
But Will had a different plan. He spotted Daniel and jogged down the back of the formation to join his column.
The bell finally stopped ringing. Everyone snapped to attention and fell silent.