Chapter 4 First Patrol

  The Guild did not wait long to change the rules.

  At dawn, the bell rang and the forty eight recruits were marched past the old long dormitories and into a part of the compound they had never been allowed to enter. A squat stone building waited there, narrow windows barred, its roof line sagging under years of snow and smoke. The scarred instructor paced before it, arms folded.

  “You’ve lived through two years,” he said. “That makes you stubborn, not soldiers. From this day, you don’t train as individuals. You train as squads.”

  A ripple went through the line.

  He jabbed his staff toward the building’s heavy doors. “Six to a room. The same six you march beside. You’ll eat, bleed, and sleep in one another’s stink. If one of you fails, all six pay the price. That is how soldiers are made.”

  The doors creaked open. A list was nailed to the frame. The recruits surged forward, muttering, jostling, craning to find their names.

  Freyda’s finger traced down the parchment. She froze. “All of us. Same room.”

  Bruni leaned over her shoulder. “Well, bugger me with a barrel tap. They’ve stuck us together.”

  Garrick’s eyes flicked down the list, then across to the rival recruits already laughing and slapping shoulders—the same six the instructors never shouted at.

  His stomach sink. “It wasn’t chance.”

  Vaelen spat. “So we’re the joke room.”

  Thane adjusted his robe nervously. “Or the ones they want gone fastest.”

  Tylane grinned anyway, shouldering his pack. “Then we’ll just stink worse than the rest and see who’s laughing.”

  The new bunk room was smaller than the long dorms, just six cots crammed against the walls, a single narrow window, and a table scarred with old knife cuts. The six filed in, dumped their gear, and looked at each other.

  “This is home now,” Garrick said quietly.

  Freyda dropped her shield by the cot with a clang. “Home reeks of piss.”

  Bruni threw her pack onto the last bed and sat on it hard enough to make the frame creak. “Then let’s drink to it later. Saints know I’ll need one.”

  They laughed — not much, but enough. For the first time, the sound filled only their room, not the whole hall.

  They were deep into their fourteenth year now, faces leaner, arms wirier, the softness of childhood giving way to harder lines. Yet even so, the weight of steel and the miles of marching still dragged their shoulders low.

  Training changed the same day. No more lines of sixty. Now the yard was divided into squads. Twelve instructors barked orders at once, the air filled with clashing voices.

  “Shield wall! Hold it!”

  “Archers, cover your line!”

  “Clerics, blessings faster!”

  The six stumbled through the drills, awkward at first, shields banging, blades slipping, spells fizzling. Instructors prowled between the squads, rapping shields with staves, shoving shoulders, testing every weak point. Each blow made the line buckle.

  Across the yard, the favored six moved like dancers, their formation tight, their instructor nodding with pride.

  The scarred instructor glared at Garrick’s squad. “You call that a wall? I’ve seen goats hold tighter ranks!” He stalked off, muttering about sheep and cattle.

  Maelor Thorn watched from the far side of the yard, half in shadow, staff resting lightly in his palm. He didn’t shout. He didn’t correct. His eyes simply followed the six, every slip, every hesitation, every moment they failed to move as one.

  Vaelen cursed under his breath. Garrick set his jaw and raised his claymore again. “Again,” he told the others.

  They shuffled into place. Shields lifted. Bruni whispered a blessing. Tylane’s arrows thudded wide. Thane’s sparks fizzled. Freyda braced beside Garrick’s bulk.

  The line held a little longer this time. Not much. But long enough to take the hit without collapsing. Garrick felt the weight shift, felt them brace together instead of alone.

  That night, back in their bunk room, bruised and sore, they collapsed on their cots. Silence lingered.

  Finally, Bruni groaned. “If this is soldiering, someone fetch me a barrel.”

  Freyda smirked in the dark. “Better make it two.”

  Tylane snorted. “Careful, she’ll drink the lot herself.”

  Through the thin wall, a rival voice jeered back, loud enough for everyone to hear: “Drinks-a-Lot!” Laughter followed, muffled but sharp.

  Bruni rolled her eyes, but a grin tugged at her mouth. “Saints help me, I’ve heard worse.”

  The nickname stuck.

  Tylane chuckled, then hissed when Vaelen kicked his shin. Garrick lay back, listening to them. Their room smelled of sweat and smoke and iron. The space was foul and close, but it was theirs.

  He let out a long breath. For better or worse, they were no longer just recruits in two halls of twenty four. They were six in a room, bound together by walls and drills and the simple fact that no one else wanted them.

  And that, Garrick thought, might be enough.

  Bruises faded and returned, hands blistered, dreams haunted. But slowly, painfully, they began to move more as one than as six.

  The orders came at dawn, when breath still smoked in the yard and the stones held last night’s cold.

  Forty-eight recruits stood in their new six-man squads, packs at their feet, helmets under arms. An instructor shadowed each group because they had been issued real steel, not training blades. The instructors had tired eyes that had seen many storms and wars.

  The scarred instructor paced in front of them, staff ticking against the stone. “You’ve bled in halls,” he said. “Now you bleed in the wild. Six to a squad, one instructor on your back to keep you from dying stupidly. Sweep, make camp, return alive.” A pause. “That is all that matters.”

  A sweep meant walking the forest’s edge and learning to see what didn’t belong , tracks, scat, broken brush, the quiet signs of things that killed recruits who weren’t paying attention. The instructors never explained more than that. They didn’t need to.

  No one cheered. The favored six across the yard smirked like they wanted to, eager for a chance to prove what everyone already whispered about them. Everyone else swallowed.

  Garrick checked his straps again, palms slick, claymore heavy across his back. Freyda rolled her shoulder under leather, round shield snugged close. Bruni touched the head of her hammer to her breastbone, a prayer too soft to catch. Thane re-tied his robe belt for the third time. Vaelen bounced on his toes, half-shield biting his forearm. Tylane’s eyes were already on the tree line, the way a feline scans for the movement of potential prey.

  “Move,” the scarred man said, and the yard emptied onto the gate road.

  Tylane felt like the forest ate the world by mid morning.

  The path knifed through pine and oak, the canopy stitched tight overhead. Light came down in shifting columns. Damp earth sucked at boots; gnats pestered eyes and ears. Somewhere far off, a woodpecker hammered the dead heart of a tree.

  They walked in a file: Garrick and Freyda up front, instructor at the rear like a shadow that didn’t quite belong to them. Bruni muttered along under her breath, not for show. Vaelen gripped and re-gripped his sword hilt, footwork too eager. Thane caught his hem on a bramble and swore; Tylane cut him free with a flick of his knife and didn’t slow down.

  “Hold breath in your nose,” Tylane said without turning. “Forest stinks of old wet if you gulp it.”

  Bruni snorted. “Forest stinks of old wet even if you don’t.”

  They smiled. They still could, then.

  At noon they crossed a narrow stream, water cold enough to burn. Freyda filled a skin; Bruni took it, murmured, and the surface calmed to a clear mirror. Thane watched the way her lips shaped the word “mercy” like it was a hinge everything turned on.

  They moved again. The birds went quiet, all at once. The instructor’s head tilted. “Keep your pace,” he said, voice flat. “Don’t stare at shadows; they stare back.” No attack came. Not that day.

  They camped the first night in a low hollow, canvas stretched between saplings, fire small as a held breath. Tylane chose it—stream a bow shot away, wind from the north to carry their smoke.

  “Perimeter,” Tylane said, and showed them how to hang tiny bells salvaged from the hall on lines a foot off the ground. Freyda rolled a bell between finger and thumb, remembering the month of silence that had nearly killed them. She set the line with careful hands and made no sound.

  Garrick assigned watches. Vaelen grumbled when he drew the deepest night; Garrick said, “You wanted to be a soldier,” and Vaelen, after a beat, shut up.

  They ate in the orange light—cheese, hard bread, a stew Bruni made from water and dried root that somehow tasted like comfort. “Drink,” she said, passing it around, and they did. No one called her Drinks-a-Lot here; the walls were trees, and the only ears were their own.

  They slept lightly.

  The second day stretched and snapped. Hills, scrub, a meadow gone to seed where grass combed their legs. Tylane found tracks by a game trail—hooves, small and sharp. “Deer,” he said, and swallowed the way a cat swallows a purr. Garrick steered them on. “We’re not here to hunt,” he said. Tylane nodded, but his eyes lingered a heartbeat on the softness of the prints.

  That night they camped near the edge of a ravine, fire banked to coals. The instructor said nothing, but slept with one hand on his knife.

  By the third day, boots rubbed raw patches into feet and armor straps bit ever deeper into ribs. The trees changed—older here, trunks wide as four boys standing arm to arm. Moss swallowed stones. The air held a cold that never quite left. They made camp in the lee of a fallen giant of a tree, its roots splayed like ribs and its trunk thick enough to hide a squad behind, the whole mass half buried in moss and shadow.

  “Keep the fire low,” the instructor said. “Light draws eyes.”

  “We have bells,” Freyda said, glancing at the silver hoops strung like spiderwebs between bush and trunk.

  “Bells knock when things move like men.” He scraped a spark into tinder. “Not everything does.”

  They ate in near dark. Bruni’s stew again, thin but hot. Thane kept nodding off, his head bobbing like a cork on the sea. Vaelen muttered about warm beds and hot meat until Freyda threatened him with her spoon. Garrick checked the straps of his armor one more time, then let himself lie on his back, claymore within reach, shield propped against his leg. Above, through a tear in the canopy, a scrap of sky bled to stars.

  Tylane had first watch. He stood beyond the firelight at the edge of the fallen tree’s shadow, bow low, eyes searching the black. The forest’s noises had a rhythm he almost recognized. Almost. Something was wrong, but it evaded him when he tried to grasp it.

  Half the night passed that way. Tylane woke Vaelen, whispering the words you say out of habit,“Nothing yet” and lay down on his bedroll without believing them. He was asleep when a howl tore the night in half.

  Vaelen was on watch. He didn’t shout; the sound strangled in his throat and came out a harsh whisper that carried anyway. “Up! Up!”

  Garrick rolled to his knees, hand closing on the claymore’s grip before his eyes found focus. Freyda was a breath behind him, shield up, sword bare. Bruni was already moving toward Thane, whose blanket was tangled around his legs. Tylane came up in a crouch at the edge of the dead fall, bow low, eyes trying to penetrate the darkness.

  The forest had a rhythm until it didn’t. The bells they’d strung between bush and trunk lay quiet. The instructor had warned them: bells knocked when things moved like men. Not everything did.

  A second howl came from their left, closer, and a third answered behind them, thinner and hungry. The coals in the fire breathed once and went dull as if the night itself had leaned down to blow them out.

  “Line,” Garrick said, voice low. “Here.” He planted his back heel in the leaf mold and lifted the blade. “Shields bite forward. No one turns.”

  Freyda slid to his left, round shield snug to her body. Vaelen took Garrick’s right without being told, half-shield angled tight to center line. Thane got his feet under him, quarterstaff awkward in both hands, breath already too fast. Bruni put a palm in the small of his back and pushed him a step behind the line, hammer brought up one-handed.

  Tylane stayed out in the fringe of shadow, bow rising. “Eyes,” he whispered to himself, feeling for glint or motion that didn’t fit the black, trying to hear the wrongness that had kept slipping from him earlier.

  A snarl broke the dark. Garrick heard his mother’s voice: “A noble’s shield is his duty, not a slab of iron. You stand so others don’t fall.” He planted his feet, unyielding.

  Freyda clenched her sword, whispering in her head: “A Valkyrie wouldn’t flinch at teeth. Neither will I.” Her mother’s frost-bitten warnings from childhood rang in her ears.

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  Vaelen guarded Garrick’s side, his father’s lesson echoing: “Stand with your own kind. Guard those of noble blood. The rest are dust.”

  Bruni swung Saint Malty and muttered: “Bless first, strike second.” She remembered her mother guiding her hands at the forge, teaching her that each swing was a prayer.

  Thane tried to steady sparks in his palms, remembering his father’s dry warning: “Control is worth more than fire, boy.”

  Tylane’s bow was fully drawn as his thought sharpened: “A predator never blinks. If you blink, you’re prey.” His father’s hunting lesson echoed through him as he met the wolves’ eyes.

  A shape peeled out of the dark between roots: not the size of a dog, the size of a deer, shoulders thick, jaws long. Its feet were ghost quiet. Others slid with it, the circle tightening. The first wolf’s lips gave the barest tremor and Tylane loosed. The arrow whispered past Garrick’s shoulder and hissed into fur and muscle. The wolf snarled, staggered, but kept coming.

  “Left!” Tylane snapped. “Behind the log!”

  Freyda didn’t look. She set her feet exactly where they were and drove her shield edge forward as the first wolf lunged. Teeth met leather with a dull thud. The impact rattled her shoulder to her spine, but the curve held; she rolled the rim and shoved, hard, and the animal’s head slid aside. Her sword struck down into the exposed neck and stuck there, half-through gristle, the weight of the body trying to wrench it from her hand.

  “Keep the line,” Garrick said, not looking at her.

  Something flashed at knee height. Thane jerked backward, tripped over a root, and went down hard. Pain shot up his leg as teeth latched to his calf and pulled. He yelped, blind with it, and his staff spun away into the brush.

  “Up,” Bruni said, and hit the wolf in the temple with the heel of her hammer. It released Thane and reeled, not dead, just stunned, eyes white in the thin starlight. Bruni bent once, hauled Thane’s robe free of the root, and shoved him with the same hand. “Up!”

  Another wolf slid under the dead log Tylane had pointed out—silent, low, belly brushing earth—and came for Garrick’s ankle. Vaelen stepped in, shield tight to his ribs, and cut at a slant that took the animal across the muzzle. Blood darkened its snout. It whipped its head and hit the shield instead of Garrick’s leg, teeth scraping leather, then darted back, angling for hamstrings.

  “Right holds,” Garrick said. He didn’t say thank you. There wasn’t time.

  Three more shapes emerged from the dark at once. Tylane’s second arrow took the lead in the chest; it stumbled and crashed through a bell line, which tinkled late and thin, useless. The second slammed Freyda’s shield with a thud that numbed her fingers. The third came straight at Garrick, a gray streak of muscle and stink. Garrick met it with steel, a two-handed cut that should have split it clean, but the blade bit bone and skittered aside. The wolf was too close now, the claymore too long. Garrick did the ugly thing the masters drilled and drove the cross guard forward like a bar, smashing it into the wolf’s muzzle. Hot breath bathed his knuckles. He heaved, turned, and kicked. The animal went sideways, hit earth, rolled, and came up limping—and still it came.

  Thane’s hands scrabbled for his staff and found only leaves. He dragged himself to a knee, head swimming, and felt the world tilt to a tunnel. His chest kept forgetting to pull air. In the tunnel, he saw the largest wolf at the edge of everything—bigger by a head, hanging back, eyes on Garrick, patient and cold, choosing its moment the way a knife chooses where to cut.”

  Thane felt the old practice drills in his fingers, the blindfolded sparks, the whispered numbers, the nights he practiced until his palms burned. All of it rose at once, unbidden.

  Thane lifted his shaking hand and hissed a word he’d practiced blindfolded until it blistered his tongue. Light snapped into being, not wide, not beautiful, a hard white coin that punched straight into the big wolf’s eyes. It shrieked, a sound like steel filed on iron, and flinched, turning its head away. Thane held the light on it with everything he had, arm shaking, vision sparking at the edges. He forgot to breathe again. The world narrowed to light and held breath and the ache in his bitten leg.

  “Now,” Garrick said.

  Freyda yanked her sword free with a sound like tearing cloth and pivoted, shield leading, eyes on the edge of her circle. She felt the next impact in her bones and let it roll, exactly as they’d drilled, then chopped down again. Her cut hit shoulder instead of neck, but it made the animal scream and fall back.

  Vaelen stayed where he was, right at Garrick’s flank, half-shield a sliver of dark against darkness, blade point just forward of Garrick’s thigh. He didn’t chase when one wolf darted away. He didn’t step out when another feinted wide. He guarded Garrick’s right. Freyda held his left. The line was ugly, but it held.

  Tylane fired until his arm burned and the quiver felt light. One wolf came in so low the arrow skidded off its skull; he dropped the bow without thinking and drew steel, two short blades that flashed once, twice, close to Garrick’s hip and then away, carving space, driving the animal into Freyda’s shield instead of into the gap between them.

  Behind them, the instructor moved like a shadow with a knife. He did not call orders. He did not praise or curse. Once, when a wolf slid past Thane as the boy swayed on one knee, the instructor’s hand flicked, and the wolf’s ear vanished with a wet sound. It yelped, veered, and vanished into brush. The instructor’s eyes never left the six in front of him.

  The big wolf, Thane’s light fixed to its face—kept trying to angle out of the beam, backing, circling, testing. Thane’s arm trembled. He wanted to drop his hand and vomit. Bruni’s palm found his shoulder and pressed down, steadying him without a word.

  Another body hit Freyda’s shield. She felt the leather creak and thought, absurdly, of candles on the rim in the hall, wax running, the way she had learned to hold perfectly still. She set her feet. The next bite slid on the rim instead of catching it. She cut, missed the spine, cut again, and the wolf toppled into Garrick’s range. He finished it with a short, brutal thrust, muscle’s aching with the exertion.

  Something hit Garrick low from the front, a blur of fur and stink; his heel slid on damp leaves. The claymore was wrong for this distance, the length working against him again. Vaelen’s shield slammed into the wolf’s ribs and shoved it to Garrick’s blade. Garrick twisted—pain bit his forearms where the grip chewed his skin under the wrap and drove the steel up under the breastbone. The wolf went limp on the blade, heavy as a sack of wet grain.

  “Two,” Tylane said hoarsely. “Three.”

  “Don’t count,” Garrick said. “Stand.”

  Thane’s head tipped. The light wavered. The big wolf took its chance and came in low, blind to everything but the opening. Garrick tried to pivot but the dead weight on his sword dragged a heartbeat too long. Freyda saw it and threw her shield like a door, getting the rim between jaws and thigh. Teeth sank to leather and stuck. The wolf wrenched, furious, and Freyda went with it rather than let her arm rip out of socket, turning the trapped bite into a lever. Garrick’s boot found the wolf’s foreleg. He stamped. Bone snapped under heel. The animal shrieked and lost purchase; Freyda tore the shield back and slammed its edge into the muzzle for good measure.

  “Breathe,” Bruni said, and Thane sucked air like it was a commandment. The light steadied again, a vicious little sun hammered into the darkness.

  They were winning through slow attrition. The wolves felt that and began to peel away, not in retreat, wolves didn’t retreat, but to press in different angles, looking for the weakness that would turn the whole shape to meat. Two vanished into the black and reappeared to the rear where the instructor had stood moments ago. His blade whispered twice. One fled, bleeding; the other decided the line wasn’t worth the price.

  “Left!” Tylane snapped again.

  Garrick didn’t turn his head. He trusted the voice and shifted his weight instead, opening an inch of space that let Freyda swing without clipping his guard. Her cut took the next wolf across the face and it scrabbled away, claws throwing leaves.

  Another came straight for Thane, who was still on one knee because his bitten calf wouldn’t hold. He lifted his staff with his free hand and jabbed, clumsily, more prayer than weapon. The wolf darted past the wood and went for his throat. Bruni’s hammer struck it in the ribs with a hollow thunk that broke something inside. The wolf spun sideways, yelped, and tried to get up. Bruni hit it again, short and savage, her face set like a smith’s at an anvil. The second blow ended the wolf.

  Silence fell gradually. Six pairs of lungs breathed raggedly, while six hearts pounded away. The leaves settled after heavy footfalls receded through them. Far off, the forest noises resumed, one by one, carefully, as if checking each against teeth.

  The big wolf had backed into the dark and vanished. The rest of the pack melted with it. When the last pair of eyes faded out, the instructor finally spoke. “You’re done here. You don’t hunt them. You don’t prove anything. You live.”

  No one argued.

  Freyda’s shield shook when she tried to lower it. She kept it up until her hands were steady. Garrick worked the claymore free of the dead weight with a wet sound and didn’t look at the blade. Thane pressed both palms to his own chest, as if to keep it from bursting, then remembered his calf when he tried to stand. Pain burned like someone had poured fire into the muscle.

  Bruni knelt and peeled the cloth back to look. The bite was ragged, more bruise and tear than clean puncture. “It’ll bleed again if you move wrong.” She tore a strip from her undershirt, soaked it from the skin she had blessed earlier, and bound the calf tight. “Walk anyway.”

  Tylane went to his knees next to the nearest carcass and ran a hand along its pelt once, not like a caress, like a measure. He looked at the instructor.

  The instructor jerked his chin. “Two pelts,” he said. “Proof so the Guild understands the lesson wasn’t wasted.”

  Bruni crouched beside one of the wolves, frowning. “This one’s been marked.”

  Vaelen stepped closer. The fur at the shoulder was burned away, skin puckered and blackened where a hot iron had been pressed deep. A sun with jagged, broken spear rays. A crooked crown leaning in claim. A sword beneath them, the burn scar trailing downward like dried, darkened blood.

  Tylane swallowed. “Who brands wolves?”

  “No one sane,” Freyda muttered.

  Vaelen said nothing. He stared at the mark a moment too long, something cold and half remembered stirring in his ribs, then shoved it down and moved on.

  They worked without talking. Tylane showed Freyda where to cut with the point of her knife; Garrick held a leg braced when her hands shook; Vaelen watched their right while they worked, half-shield still up, sweat running cold down his spine under the leather. Bruni stood over Thane until the color came back to his face, then made him hold the lamp while she forced herself to rinse the blood off her hands. The light shook in his fingers and sent strange shadows crawling across the roots.

  When the pelts were folded rough and tied to a spear haft, the instructor stamped out the last of the coals with his boot. “Line,” he said again, and his voice sounded like it had before, like one stone slammed into another.

  They moved in a loose line through trees that now seemed older than they had in daylight. The bells chimed softly once as Garrick brushed a line with his thigh; the sound was so human it made Thane’s eyes sting without warning. No one spoke. Boots scraped earth. The scent of wet fur and iron clung to their noses the way the dark clung to their backs.

  By the time the gate road came into sight, the stars were paling. The instructor didn’t look back at them, only at the doors when the watchman cracked them enough for a squad to slip through. The pelts swung on the spear over Tylane’s shoulder as proof of something none of them wanted to say. They had gone into the wild as recruits who knew drills. They came back as recruits who knew that drills were merely the beginning. They came back in a sloppy line, wet to the knees and spattered with blood that wasn’t all wolf.

  No one spoke at first. Boots scraped stone. Cloaks dripped on the guildhall threshold. The great doors swung in and the warmth of the interior hit their faces—smoke, iron, herbs—so different from the raw stink of the woods that a few of them swallowed hard just from the change.

  Garrick held the door with his shoulder until the last of them limped through. His knuckles were split and his claymore’s tip left a thin scratch across the floor until he remembered to lift it. He looked taller than he had this morning, and older.

  A handful of instructors waited in a loose half-circle. Their eyes tracked cuts and limps, counting. Master-at-arms Caldur flicked his gaze over the group, then to the wolves’ pelts slung across a spear. He grunted once, not approval so much as acknowledgment that they had returned.

  “Mess first,” he said. “Then infirmary. Then you’ll clean your gear and yourselves. Sleep comes last.”

  Bruni didn’t wait for permission. She was already easing Thane onto a bench at the nearest trestle and untying the binding at his calf. He hissed as she peeled it back. The bite was raw but clean. “Keep still,” she said, voice steadier than her hands. Her hammer hung at her hip, a different kind of weight than it had been in the forest.

  Thane nodded too fast. His eyes were wide and too bright. “I thought it would run,” he whispered. “I thought if I shouted ...”

  “It didn’t,” Tylane said, dropping onto the bench opposite next to his brother. There was dirt in his hair and blood dried in a spray across his cheek that wasn’t his. His bow lay beside him, string slack, feathers matted with rain. “They don’t run if they think you’re food.”

  “Enough,” Garrick said, not harsh, just enough to postpone the conversation. He set the claymore on the table, point down, and the wood creaked. “Eat. Drink. Then we talk.”

  Freyda stood, unfastening her cloak with stiff fingers, and stared at the cut on her forearm like it belonged to a stranger. It wasn’t deep, but the skin around it was swollen and angry. She pinched it once, testing. “It’ll scar,” she said, trying to make it a joke and failing.

  “Good,” Vaelen said. He tried on a grin and it fit badly. “First real one. Means we’re not children anymore.”

  Bruni didn’t look up. She dipped a cloth in the steaming bowl the kitchen girl had set down and pressed it to Thane’s leg. The smell of marigold and something bitter rose with the steam. “We were children this morning,” she said, quiet. “We woke up thinking about drills. Not teeth.”

  Caldur heard that. He moved closer, hands behind his back, the leather of his cuffs dark with old oil. “You thought drills were pretend,” he said. “They’re not. They’re the part that keeps you breathing when something tries to open you. Today you learned that, and you didn’t break. That’s the lesson.”

  Thane stared at the table. “I ran,” he said.

  “You moved,” the instructor who had been with them corrected. “You moved to where you could stand. There’s a difference. Next time you’ll choose that place faster.”

  Freyda found her seat and only then realized she was still holding her shield. She set it down carefully, as if it might crack. When Bruni finished with Thane, Freyda held out her arm without asking. The cloth burned and she kept her teeth together.

  Across the hall, other teams filtered in, heads turning, whispers threading. The cooks slid bowls their way, stew thick with barley, a heel of bread each, water in chipped mugs. The heat of the food hit empty stomachs like a blow. No one tasted the first few bites; they were just putting back what the fear had taken.

  Garrick waited until he saw jaws working and shoulders drop a fraction. Then, “Roll call,” he said, out of habit more than need. Names came back in order, all present.

  Tylane’s eyes kept going to the doorway. “There were more,” he said finally. “We only saw the ones that came at us.”

  “There were more,” Caldur agreed. “You were in their ground. They pressed. You cut your way out. You did not hunt them. That would have been stupidity. This was survival, and you managed it.”

  Vaelen wiped at the blood on his sleeve as if annoyed by the mess more than anything else. “If Thane hadn’t tripped, we would’ve finished it.”

  “If Thane hadn’t tripped,” Garrick said, “you’d have overreached, and they’d have taken your hamstrings.” He kept his tone flat. “We won because we didn’t get greedy.”

  Vaelen opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at Thane, really looked, and his pose shifted. “You kept casting,” he said. “Even when you were on your ass.”

  Thane blinked. “The light spell,” he said. “I just…kept it on the big one’s eyes.”

  “It mattered,” Garrick said. “It gave me the opening.”

  Bruni finished binding Freyda’s arm and leaned back, exhaling. She didn’t reach for any of her stronger draughts; those were locked away and wrong for children, and besides, this wasn’t about easing pain. “Let me see your hands,” she said to Garrick.

  He held them out. The knuckles were a mess; one nail was split down the center. Bruni cleaned them with the same steady motions, murmuring under her breath, the words not quite a prayer and not quite habit, something learned at a forge where cuts were part of the work. “You can’t swing that thing if your fingers swell,” she said. “Don’t make me tape the hilt to your palm.”

  He almost smiled. “Noted.”

  Freyda watched them, the knot in her throat loosening in the ordinariness of it. She had expected the hall to cheer or the masters to clap their backs. Instead there was steam and cloth and the sting of herbs, and she realized this was what victory looked like most of the time: not banners, just the chance to sit down alive.

  Caldur let the quiet work a while, then tapped the table beside Garrick’s blade. “Lessons,” he said. “Speak.”

  Tylane went first. “Don’t trust a clear left,” he said. “One came from behind the dead log.”

  “Good,” Caldur said. “Why?”

  “Because I was staring at the one in front of me,” Tylane said, grimacing.

  “Next.”

  “Shields don’t stop everything,” Freyda said. “But they stop enough to make the next hit count. I kept the edge in front of the teeth.”

  “Next.”

  Thane swallowed. “Light on the eyes. And…breathing. I forgot to breathe until I thought I would pass out.”

  “Remember that.” Caldur’s mouth twitched, not a smile. “Air keeps the hands from shaking.”

  Vaelen rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t get pulled out of the line. It’s what they want.”

  “And if you do?” Caldur asked.

  “Turn it into a trap,” Garrick answered before Vaelen could. “Make them follow you into someone else’s swing.”

  Caldur’s gaze flicked to him. “You’ll make a captain or a corpse,” he said, not unkindly. “Try for the first.”

  He straightened. “You’ll sleep in your own blood if you collapse on these benches. Up. Infirmary, then wash. You go back out in two days.”

  A ripple went through them, fatigue fighting with the knowledge that there would be a “next time” and sooner than they’d hoped. No one argued.

  The next morning, the yard rang with drills, but the Second Circle was absent. Their place was the infirmary, where the smell of boiled cloth and bitter herbs overpowered steel and sweat.

  Bruni stayed on her feet longer than the rest, shadowing the guild healers as they cleaned and stitched. She repeated their instructions under her breath until they scowled her away. When she returned to the bunks that night, her hands smelled of marigold and copper.

  Thane walked with a limp for a week, the bite in his calf wrapped so tightly that it left a groove in the skin. Garrick’s knuckles swelled until he could barely hold a quill, but he forced them around a wooden practice sword and endured the pain until the swelling went down. Freyda’s arm pulled when she turned her wrist; she made herself lift a shield anyway, teeth set.

  They weren’t sent out again. Not yet.

  Instead, the masters dragged them back to the yard and rebuilt the fight piece by piece. Caldur planted them in the mud where the wolves had circled and barked, “Show me how you broke.” They had to reenact the clash against other trainees wielding padded clubs. Every mistake was punished: hesitation, poor footing, wandering eyes.

  “Shields first!” Freyda bellowed in one drill, her voice cracking but carrying. She caught Vaelen’s smirk and didn’t care, she’d learned what it meant to have teeth come at her in the dark.

  Thane was forced to cast light again and again while sprinting across the yard, Caldur cuffing him whenever his breathing faltered. He cursed until his throat gave out, then cast in silence, lips moving without sound.

  Bruni was ordered to the front line during sparring bouts. “Heal last,” the master told her. “You stand until there’s no one left standing. Then you bind.” She nodded, jaw set.

  Garrick was made to call formations aloud during exercises, his voice carrying over clashing wood and stamping boots. He resisted at first, until Caldur stopped the entire yard, stared at him, and said, “You’ll be captain or you’ll be carrion. Choose.” After that, Garrick shouted the lines until his throat was raw.

  Vaelen wore his bravado like armor, cracking jokes through bruises, but the others began to see the way his hands curled tight at night when he thought no one was watching. Tylane became sharper, quieter, his arrows flew truer when the masters shoved him mid-shot, simulating chaos.

  They ate together in silence more often than not. Sometimes, late in the mess hall, one of them would mutter about the wolves, the teeth, the eyes, the smell, and another would snap, “Enough.” But no one left the table. They endured the memories together.

  By the second week, their wounds had scabbed, their bruises had gone yellow, and the trainers began to look at them not with pity but with expectation. The drills grew harder. Buckets of water on the beams, longer marches up Bucket Hill, sparring with weighted sticks.

  The Guild made sure the lesson sank in: pain would not wait for permission. You trained through it or you died with it.

  And slowly, beneath the weight of the training and the memory of blood, the Circle found a rhythm. They were still, but less so than before. Their scars marked them, their bond deepened, and when the masters finally told them to ready themselves for the next outing, no one laughed, no one bragged. They just checked their blades, tightened their wrappings, and looked at each other.

  They knew now: the world had teeth. So must they.