Blade Archer ~ Thirty-Five

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Kael watched the steady sway of his camel’s head as they rode through the heat of the morning. It had been more than three years since he had been thrown from his camel and broken his arm, and he found them only marginally more endearing now. This one, at least, mostly did what he asked of it.

Earlier that morning, he had still been in two minds about whether or not he would go. He wanted to get away from everything wrong in his life, but immersing himself in the wilds of the Raykinian desert was a little too far. At least in training, he could focus on just hitting his training partner with whatever weapon he was using at the time, or ignoring them while the master was giving them instruction. On this trek, he would be stranded with his training partners with nowhere to escape but the desert.

And yet, the thought of staying in the city a day longer sickened him. As unpleasant as his company would undoubtedly be, he knew he needed the time away. The bullying from the other boys was little more than a nuisance now. Two years ago it had been the biggest worry in his life. He shook his head to think of it.

So far, one of the more prejudiced boys had tried to shove him off his camel after only an hour of riding, with a laugh as though it was the worst he could come up with. Master Banok, the weapon master for the seven blade archers, had taken to riding at the rear of their small procession after the incident. Still, he was glad hadn’t been in a group with Niloren. He had felt a small surge of relief upon learning that they would be travelling in their weapons groups.

Banok gave a short whistle from the back of the group. ‘Stop here for the afternoon, boys. Being on camp doesn’t get you out of training.’

Kael’s glare set in at the thought, but he said nothing. With a sharp kick to his camel’s flanks, the animal knelt down in the sand and began chewing its cud. He climbed out of the saddle and stood a little unsteadily beside the camel. He had never ridden for longer than their hour-long lessons once a week, and the extended time in the saddle in full blade archer regalia had grown uncomfortable early on. Blades kept poking him in the back and in his legs, and the leather straps of all his blade belts had begun to chafe badly.

Banok showed no such pains. ‘Come on, lads. I want to see tents up, fire pit dug and wood chopped in ten minutes. Go!’

The boys raced to obey the weapon master, while Banok himself began unlacing his tent roll from his own camel with the methodical ease of one who had set up camp a hundred times before. More, Kael realised. Much as Banok might disdain Kael’s home now, the former Own rider had had his fair share of rough living.

Kael flung his meagre tent on the ground and began threading the steel supports through the loops that would keep it upright. After a few minutes of struggling with the contraption, he looked up to see that most of the boys were having similar difficulties.

Banok stood with arms folded beside his already erected and well-worn tent, watching the proceedings critically. He raised his eyebrows when he noticed Kael watching him. ‘Forgotten something?’ he asked. He nodded at Kael’s half-erected tent, then tapped his boot against the protective oiled sheet he had spread under his own.

‘Can’t afford one,’ Kael muttered, shoving a tent peg into the sand. ‘Little rain never hurt.’

Banok only shrugged and passed his gaze onto the next tent-builder.

It took a good deal longer than Banok’s prescribed ten minutes to set up their camp. Kael took up a spade as soon as his tent was up and began digging the hole for the fire while the other boys piled rocks around it or began collecting kindling and hacking at the saltbush and stunted desert trees that grew around their camp.

It shouldn’t have been much different to living in Ni-Yana, but the relative shade there provided by the buildings made more of a difference than Kael had recognised. The sun burned, making the horizon shimmer in all directions. He could no longer see the city, and was only half-certain of where it lay. Only how did he realise how sheltered Ni-Yana had been, nestled between the great cliffs to the east and the looming walls of the palace to the west. Standing on a roof top he could see to what he imagined to be the edge of the world in every direction. Out here, the rusted red desert went on forever.

Once Banok was finally satisfied that they had enough wood for the night, he announced what their training schedule would be for the trip.

‘Hunting,’ he said with a grin. ‘Nothing better than live target practice. Every night I’ll take one of you out, and we’ll eat whatever we kill. The rest of you will continue whatever we start on. Next year is when things get really serious with your blade archery, so this is the beginning of your preparation for that.’

He continued on for long minutes about the brotherhood of blade archers, about how some of them would graduate into the same Company together, and they would all be in the same army. Kael tuned out. He didn’t plan to have anything to do with his training partners once he had graduated.

Finally, speech over, he took each boy aside to give them something specific to focus on while he was out hunting. It would be a test of their ability to work without supervision, Banok said.

‘Know what I’m going to tell you?’ he asked Kael when it came to his turn.

Kael slumped his shoulders impetuously and held up the two weakest fingers of his right hand. ‘Them ones,’ he guessed with no question in his voice.

Banok nodded. ‘Today, work on accuracy. You don’t have to whip them out fast, just do them right. Master your weakest fingers and the rest will be easy. That’s your tree,’ he said, pointing at one that had lost three branches to the fire pit. ‘I want those fingers raw when I get back.’

Kael hitched his blade belts into more accessible positions, then set about his training. He drew his blades with his weak and his little finger of his non-dominant right hand and flung them at the tree. Only half of them hit. After ten minutes the edge of his hand was began cramping, and he massaged the base of his fingers with his opposite thumb, then shook them out and flexed them as he went to retrieve the missed blades. He replaced each of them in their sheathes and returned to his mark, but with his hand cramping as it was, the blades trembled between his fingers.

‘Master them,’ he muttered at himself, shaking his fingers out again. Those few that did hit had barely enough force behind them to wedge them into the bark. He swore between his teeth as he retrieved them, then stood glaring at the tree as he massaged his aching hand. He drew one of the triangular blades, and growled in frustration as it flicked from his fingers and dropped in the sand.

Fed up, he grabbed with his left hand at three blades at once and hurled them at the tree. Two landed on their mark while the third grazed by the bark and rebounded off it with a sharp ting.

‘Better,’ he muttered. He would return to his weak fingers shortly, he silently promised the absent blade archery master, when he could hold a blade in them again.

When Banok and the afternoon’s trainee hunter returned at around sunset, Kael was sitting by the fire pit stretching his fingers back to try and stop them from throbbing. Two of the other boys were in similar positions while the other three strove doggedly on. It was the longest single training session Kael had ever spent with the short blades, and he felt strangely proud of himself for having made it through as far as he had. At least, he reasoned, he hadn’t been the first to give up.

‘Hold them up,’ Banok said as he dumped a canvas bag by the wood pile.

Kael did as asked, and Banok roughly took his hand and inspected the ruby red skin between Kael’s fingers then poked at the tender flesh of his palm before he moved onto the next trainee. ‘Good. Tomorrow, see if you can last the whole day.’

Kael gritted his teeth but said nothing. He knew just what the weapon master was doing, toughening them as their sheltered archery range training never would, so he knew there was no use in complaining. The other boys apparently had figured this out, too, and offered no more than a resigned groan at Banok’s words.

The hunting expedition had brought back three small mammals and a bird, easily enough for the eight of them to eat that night. Banok demonstrated how to prepare the animals for eating, pulling their skin off as easily as if it was a coat, then using his dagger to slice them open and rip out the innards.

‘Cooking is more important than knowing how to throw a knife,’ he said as he stripped the flesh from the bird’s leg. ‘If you can’t cook, you won’t even make it to the border, let alone to the people you’ll be wanting to throw your knives at.’

Kael sat back with his arms folded and eyebrows raised as the boys all took note of how to peel and cut up vegetables and make a stew. Had these boys never had to prepare anything for themselves? The meat preparation had been new to him, if only because he had never been able to afford meat, but he had been helping at meal times since he could hold a spoon.

The stew, when it came, was good. The boys complained of a lack of flavour, but for Kael the meat was all the flavour he needed. The meals the palace served to its staff often had meat in them, but never so much as the game in this stew, and never so rich.

‘This is how you ate with the King’s Own?’ Qinen asked.

Kael bit back a groan as he massaged his palm. It was only a matter of time before they started asking questions about Own life. He had hoped that, after more than four years of having Own riders as training masters, the novelty might have worn off. Apparently not.

Banok shrugged. ‘More or less. Some were better cooks than others, but there was never anything particularly special.’

Kael lay back against the sand with his hands behind his head, half listening to the master’s old war stories interspersed with lessons and half to the tinkling and crackling of the fire. It might be nice to take some wood home with him, he thought, and make use of his fireplace. He could keep it there until there was a particularly cold night, then light the fire and watch the sparks dance up the chimney.

He closed his eyes and scorned himself. As if his life would ever be that simple.