She shook her head, her gaze uncompromising. “Whether you pass or fail will be your choice, that much is true. I cannot do it for you. But when you are training with me, make no mistake, I am in charge. You will listen to me and train the way I tell you to. If you will not listen, then I will leave and you will not be allowed to enter the Academy. I have the final say in this. Do you understand?”
Justan‘s face grew red with anger, but she was right. There was nothing he could do about it. His back stiffened. That didn’t mean he was going to make it easy for her.
“Yes I do understand.” He bowed to her with a flourish. “When do you want me to start, your highness?”
“You will not refer to me in that manner,” she grunted. “But since you sound so eager, we will start now. Select your weapon of choice. Let us see what you can do.”
She watched as Justan crossed to the nearby training closet. He rummaged through it, pulled two wooden practice swords out and turned to her.
“You fight with two swords?” she asked. “That seems a little advanced for a trainee.”
“That’s my style.” Justan twirled them in his hands. “I have always fought with two. I am nearly as good with my left hand as with my right.”
“Nearly as good is not nearly good enough,” she replied with a half-grin and hefted her strange gray staff. “Come, let us see how bad you really are.”
She twirled the staff over her head twice and started toward him. Justan could see that she was good just by the way she moved. She attacked, moving on the balls of her feet with lithe graceful movements that were more catlike than human. Her whole body flowed in perfect balance, whipping her staff about in a whirring blur.
Justan’s arms could not keep up with her graceful motions. Before he registered the first hit, he had already been tapped on the arm, knee and wrist, knocking the sword out of his left hand. He bent to pick up his sword, only to get whopped twice on the back of the head.
Justan came at her with quick slicing attacks using both swords. He poured all of his concentration into the task, but she was too good. He could see the small openings she left, but his arms couldn’t keep up with her parries.
Justan’s last clumsy attack came with both swords up high. She batted his weapons aside, spun around, extended the staff, and swung low. The staff caught Justan behind the knees, launching him into the air. He landed on his back in the dirt.
She leaned over him, her face expressionless. She wasn’t even breathing heavy.
“For now, you will work with one sword. Once you have mastered that, you can try two.” She reached a hand out to help Justan up, but he ignored her and got to his feet.
Justan groaned. His body ached all over and the blows to his head had re-ignited the headache that had started with the alley fight. However, he was not about to be cowed. He cast one of the practice swords aside and stood facing her.
“Okay, but before we start again, my lady, what is your name?” he asked
She snorted. “When you have earned the right to know my name, I will tell you. In fact, you have not even earned the right to be called by your own name. Until you have, I will call you by whatever name I wish.”
She twirled her quarterstaff back and forth, her staff making a whirring noise. Justan gritted his teeth and went into defensive posture.
“Fine, but if you don’t tell me your name, what am I supposed to call you? Staff lady?”
“You will call me Ma'am,” she replied and came at him.
Chapter Three
The next morning, Justan was awakened by a sharp pain in his side.
“Wake up, boy. It's time for your run,” the warrior woman said, poking him with the staff again.
“Run?” Justan opened his eyes to find that it was still dark outside the barrack windows. He tried to sit up, but his body cried out in painful protest. He collapsed back on his cot. “Not now. Come back later.”
“You. Will. Get. Up. Now!” she commanded, punctuating each syllable with a kick at the legs of his cot.
With her last word the cot collapsed, spilling Justan onto the cold floor. Thankfully, his blankets came down with him, strategically covering his nakedness. He vowed to sleep in his clothes from that time forward.
“If you are not outside and running in five minutes, you will be getting up an hour earlier tomorrow.” With that, she spun on her heels and walked out of the barracks.
Justan cursed under his breath and forced his aching body to stand. He was glad that the other trainees had not been there to see this. They were due to arrive in a few days, and he wasn't looking forward to their jeers as they watched this woman order him around.
The chill fall air had Justan shivering as he left the barracks and joined her outside. She raised one eyebrow at his discomfort.
“The first lap around the training grounds should warm you up. You will run four this morning.”
“Four laps? That's over five miles!” His usual routine was two. Justan toned down his voice. “Look, Miss, I am still aching from yesterday. Besides, don't I get breakfast first?”
“Once again, you will call me Ma'am,” she said. “Five laps, then. Shall we go for six?”
Justan shook his head and tried to hide his frustration. “No, Ma'am.”
“You can eat after you run. Now go!”
Justan forced a smile and bowed. “Yes Ma'am.”
He trotted off despite his body's protests. The first lap was agony, but once he got going, the aches and pains faded. He breathed in the crisp morning air. Surprisingly, he felt pretty good. That is, he felt good until the end of the second lap. His lungs burned and his legs wobbled, but he kept going. Justan nearly collapsed halfway through the fourth. The mystery woman must have known, because she started running beside him. She barked at him every time he thought of slowing.
By the time he started the fifth lap, Justan hated her. He was determined to prove that he was stronger than she thought he was, but that determination was hard to keep up. When he reached the end of the lap, he collapsed at her feet, no longer caring what she thought.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon when Ma'am dragged an exhausted Justan to the mess hall, located next to the barracks. He wondered if any of the cooking staff would be in that morning since the rest of the trainees hadn't arrived yet. From the way the sleepy-eyed cook glared at Ma'am as he ladled a heap of porridge into their bowls, Justan suspected that she had dragged the man down to the kitchens herself.
“Eggs, Mark!” she snapped. “I told you to make the boy three eggs!”
“Alright, Ma'am, alright. I'll make 'em right away,” the cook said, then mumbled something about double pay. It irritated Justan that she had no problem calling the cook by his first name.
Justan spent the rest of the day at the mystery woman's beck and call, performing various tasks and exercises while her hawk-like green eyes watched him. She worked him long into the night and he collapsed on to his cot as tired as he had been the night before.
The next day, Justan awakened to yet another grueling five lap run. Afterwards, while he devoured his breakfast, she set forth some rules.
“Training classes start soon,” Ma'am said. “However, I have spoken with your teachers and canceled most of them.”
Justan winced. He had been looking forward to classes starting again, if only to have some time away from this woman. Where did she get the time to speak with his teachers anyway? She was with him all day and into the night. Did she ever sleep?
“There is no need for you to take hand-to-hand combat or swordplay, for I will be taking over your training in those areas. Also, with the extensive conditioning routines I will be teaching you, there will be no need to exercise with the other trainees.”
“What about strategy class?”
“I spoke with Oz the Dagger and he informed me that he didn't want you in the class.”
“What? Why? That’s my favorite class!”
“He feels you have learned everythi
ng he could possible teach you. He also said that other trainees should have the opportunity to win once in a while.” A rare smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “You will, however, continue to take archery.”
“Why archery?” It was his least favorite class, mostly because of the teacher, Mad Jon.
“I use a sling. It is better for you to learn the bow from an archer.”
Justan wanted to argue that she was trying to teach him swords with her staff, but their conversation was interrupted as a steady stream of early arrived trainees entered the mess hall to eat. When Kenn and Benjo reached the food line, Justan dropped his fork. The Training Council must have granted Kenn a second year. Justan groaned. This was the last thing he needed.
The days flew by and Justan’s new taskmaster remained a mystery. She was with him from the moment he awoke to the moment he fell asleep, yet he never learned anything new about her. He called her Ma’am and she called him Boy. To his dismay, he caught himself thinking of her as if Ma’am was her real name.
Kenn teased Justan relentlessly about her, saying things like, “Look, everyone. Here comes Justan the Great, home from a long day of being beat up by that wild woman!”
Justan was usually so tired by the time he entered the barracks, it was easy to ignore Kenn and fall to sleep. Everyone else left Justan alone for the most part. But Ma’am would drag him out of bed so early and send him to sleep so late that the other trainees began complaining to the teachers. Justan was soon assigned his own room in a separate outbuilding. It wasn’t anything special, just a single room with a cot, a chest, and a door. But the solitude was welcome.
His least favorite part of the day was the morning run. He had never enjoyed running. When he was a child, Justan had developed an awkward gait. The other kids always teased him about it. Ma’am tried to force him to run correctly, but in this area her efforts were fruitless. When Justan concentrated on running properly, it only slowed him down. Eventually she just let it go, mumbling something about how running like that might be helpful if he needed to dodge arrows.
Over the past two years at the training school, Justan had forced himself to endure the run so that he would be prepared for the stamina test, but no matter how much he pushed himself, it never seemed to get any easier. It was as if his body refused to improve.
Ma'am however, took things to a new level. She pushed him and pushed him until he wondered if she was trying to kill him. For the first few weeks he gasped and sputtered when his run was over. Then, to his surprise, it got easier. His running improved until he could finish four laps around the training grounds without keeling over. As soon as she saw that improvement, Ma'am increased his laps.
Ma'am employed a stringent conditioning program to put some muscle on Justan's narrow frame. For breakfast each morning, she hounded the cooks into serving him more and more meat and less grain. She then worked him through countless exercises, many of them quite strange.
Some days, she would find a large gnarled tree on the grounds and force him to climb it over and over again. On other days, she would tie one end of a rope to a post and twirl the other end, making Justan jump over and over every time the rope neared his feet. She even spent one morning a week having him carry large rocks around from place to place.
Most of the time Justan didn't understand the point of these exercises, but they seemed to be effective. Every time she taught him a new one, he awoke the next morning with soreness in muscles he never knew he had.
His afternoons were spent in the practice arena. Ma’am sparred with him constantly, teaching him in both armed and hand-to-hand combat. Despite her lithe frame, she was a strong woman. With her quick, graceful movements, she pummeled him back and forth across the field without mercy.
Her training style was all action. She didn’t waste time lecturing. Often, she started hand-to-hand combat by using the same throw on him over and over until he figured out how to counter it. The only encouragement she would give was the occasional, “Come on, Boy, figure this out.”
Ma'am sparred against him using every implement in the training closet for variety, but her favorite weapon was her staff. How he hated the staff. It looked unimpressive upon first glance but Justan soon learned it had amazing qualities.
Ma'am could change the shape and texture of the staff with but a thought. She could make the wood soft as if padded, or as hard as cold steel. Sometimes the tip of the staff would flatten out and become pointed like a spear or form a razor sharp edge like a halberd. But it didn’t matter how she used it. With that staff in her hands, she was undefeatable.
With dogged determination, Justan analyzed the way she moved and tried to anticipate her parries and attacks. To his amazement, though his movements still seemed clumsy, he began to move faster and more accurately. By the time she finally let him use two swords again, he had to admit that he was better. This was something he had not been able to say in the course of his personal training throughout the years.
Just as he was gaining confidence, the lessons grew even harsher.
One day, when sparring, Ma’am introduced a new technique.
“Today I will disarm you,” she stated.
Justan gripped his sword hilts and went into his defensive stance. With a whir of her staff, both of his swords flew through the air and he found himself staring stupidly at the empty hands in front of him. “How did you do that?”
“Again.”
Justan picked up his swords and turned to face her. She was already on the attack. With two quick taps, the swords fell to the dirt.
“Again.”
Justan’s face reddened. He kept an eye on her as he picked up the swords this time. She moved suddenly. Two quick taps.
“Again.”
Justan’s thumbs throbbed, but he did as she asked. He willed his hands to an iron grip. Fully prepared, he watched her come. The swords flew away just as before, but this time it hurt much worse. He yelped and shook his hands in pain.
“Gah! Would you stop it, Ma’am? Let me get ready!”
“Again,” she replied.
The pattern continued until his wrists and hands became so bruised and swollen that he found it hard to grip the sword at all. Then she moved on to something else. She didn’t say anything about it again until the following day, when she announced her intention to disarm him again.
Justan tried to shrug off the multitude of minor humiliations he endured each day, but they piled up on him. Countless times, he felt like throwing his practice sword in her face and leaving, but every time he felt despair overwhelming him, he looked into Ma’am’s piercing green eyes and refused to give in. Her tactics would have defeated the spirits of most men, but Justan refused to be like other men. He could not allow her to make him throw his dreams away.
Soon winter arrived, bringing harsh winds and stinging snow. Training continued at an even harsher pace. Justan’s lungs burned in the cold air and at times his fingers grew so numb that he couldn’t even tell when he had dropped his sword. Ma’am looked uncomfortable wearing winter leathers, but she never let up.
One cold morning after breakfast, Ma’am skipped the normal workout regimen and dragged him through calf-deep snow to the archery range. It was located on one of the few wooded areas on the grounds. Just enough trees had been cleared to make room for the long practice lanes that were marked off with colored rocks. Targets were placed at various distances, some of them barely visible in the snow.
She handed him a bow and a quiver of arrows from the training closet. Wisps of steam fled from her lips as she spoke.
“Your archery teacher has informed me that you have not shown improvement.” She pointed him towards a target. “Shoot.” Justan focused, pulled back, and let an arrow fly just to watch it land in the snow in front of the target.
“Again.”
His next arrow flew to the side.
She grasped his shoulder and turned him to face her. Her green eyes bored into his. “Why is there no improvement?
”
“I don’t know,” Justan replied. He kept his voice calm and didn’t avert his gaze, though his frustration was building.
“That is not a satisfactory answer. Mad Jon is considered to be the best teacher in the Training School. Can you explain to me why, when you have studied under him for years and the other trainees have only been here a few months, you are still his worst student?”
“He is a horrible teacher! All he does is spout philosophical garbage. That does not make the arrow hit the target.”
“Are you not willing to try?”
“I am, Ma’am. I mean, I do!” Justan’s bottom lip quivered and he turned away. “It’s no use.”
Eye of the Moonrat (The Bowl of Souls: Book One) Page 4