The Talented Page 2

  “Of course not,” Adrienne said. “Kyrog has produced some of the finest soldiers in Samaro, and it should continue to do so.”

  Captain Garrett smiled. “You are worried that recruits such as this latest one will hurt Kyrog’s reputation. That our standards will be lowered if we allow soldiers such as Jeral Rosch to train here.”

  Adrienne struggled with that truth, then sighed. “Yes,” she said, her tone taking on a distinctly defensive note. “I am not an elitist, but if we continue to accept soldiers such as this one, how can Kyrog maintain its reputation?”

  “Rydaeg, I have no intention of letting Rosch become an instructor here,” Captain Garrett told her, his lips twitching slightly. “He, like others before him, will receive a year or two of intensive training at Kyrog before returning to Roua.” Adrienne looked about to say something more, but the captain held up a finger to stop her. “Kyrog breeds elite soldiers, but not everyone can train here. To help the larger war effort, we train some soldiers for a short time before they leave to share their increased knowledge and skills with others.”

  Enough of Adrienne’s mad had worn off for the captain’s words to sink in. “Is it enough?” Adrienne asked.

  There was no hint of a smile on Captain Garrett’s lips now. His dark face looked even more tired, his scar more apparent as his mouth hardened. “Every year, men from Kyrog go to the borders of Almet to support the soldiers already stationed there. They fight and die despite their superior skills, and we send more in their place. Almet is large and prosperous; it can summon vast armies. I don’t know if our efforts are enough.”

  It was not what Adrienne had wanted to hear. She had hoped to have her doubts dispelled, not to hear them from her commanding officer. “Do we keep doing what we’re doing?” Adrienne asked when the tight feeling in her chest was too much to bear. What they were doing seemed too small, the task too enormous, to make a difference.

  “Highly skilled soldiers like yourself are important, but numbers matter. A hundred Jeral Roschs would make a bigger difference on the border than one Adrienne Rydaeg, if your task was to fight. You have spent your life training and learning to be the best. Do you wish to simply leave Samaro to its fate?”

  “No.” Adrienne didn’t need to think about it. “I will fight to my last breath to defend our country.”

  Captain Garrett looked as though he had expected no less from her. Following her mother’s death, Adrienne had been enlisted into one of the private armies by her father, who hadn’t been able to afford four children. Soldiers had become her new family, and Samaro was the cornerstone of that family. Losing one meant losing the other, and Garrett would know that giving up soldiering was not an option for her.

  “Then we continue on and hope that something turns the tide in our favor.” He looked down at the stack of papers on his desk. Adrienne saw that the paper on top of the stack was a page from an old manuscript, the age revealed as much by the language it was written in as by the yellow, cracking paper. The text was Old Samaroan, a rare sight outside of a library.

  “Do you have a translation?” Adrienne gestured toward the page. She moved subtly closer so that she could better see it without being obvious. It was hard to read Old Samaroan upside down, and she was unsure of one of the words she saw. Necromancer? That didn’t seem right.

  “I do,” the captain said with a nod, snapping her back to attention, though her curiosity about the old text was nearly overwhelming “I won’t need you to translate for me this time. You’re dismissed, soldier.”

  Despite her frustration at not being able to read the text, Adrienne straightened, saluted, and left. She did not head immediately to her barracks, nor to the grounds where the experienced soldiers drilled. Instead she headed back to the Pen.

  For the most part, Adrienne had always regarded the Yearlings as a nuisance: a waste of space, resources, and the time experienced Kyrogean soldiers spent training them when they should be sharpening their own skills. But after talking to Captain Garrett, she felt she now understood the Yearlings’ purpose in the larger efforts to keep Samaro a country free from Almetian rule. Kyrog could elevate those inexperienced soldiers in a way few other camps could.

  “Jeral Rosch!” she shouted in a loud, commanding voice that filled the training yard.

  All movement—all sound—in the Pen stopped. Most of those present had already fought Adrienne during their short stay at Kyrog and knew that she had a reputation even amongst the veteran soldiers for being hard and having a temper that could flare at the least provocation. After the demonstration she had given just that morning, no one wanted to call attention to himself and risk her wrath.

  Adrienne caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned and very nearly smirked as she saw three soldiers putting distance between themselves and the newest Yearling.

  Rosch’s swallow was nearly audible across the intervening yards, but he stepped forward and presented himself gamely. “Yes, uh, sir?” he asked with polite caution.

  Adrienne nodded her approval. “Come with me,” she said. Men all but leapt out of the way to clear a path for her as they left the yard. She stalked through the crowd of young soldiers, plans coalescing in her mind. When they reached a nearly empty area of the shaded courtyard, Adrienne turned to face Rosch and knew that he was working to control his nerves.

  She respected that.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “You told me to follow you, sir,” Rosch said, looking confused.

  Adrienne held back a sigh, reminding herself that he was young and hopefully more nervous than stupid. “Why are you here in Kyrog, Rosch?”

  “My lieutenant in Roua recommended me to come here and receive more training. He said I was quite talented.” He flushed, no doubt remembering their earlier sparring match and his humiliatingly easy defeat.

  “Roua is not Kyrog,” Adrienne said. “Do you know why we call recruits like you Yearlings?”

  “Uh, no, sir. Not really.”

  Adrienne smiled. “Because you’re young and stupid, like yearling stallions.” His face fell. “But you’re also strong, and able to learn a lot in the short time you are here. If you are serious about wanting to learn, I will teach you.” Lieutenant Mylig was in charge of training soldiers in Kyrog, but she doubted he would be opposed to her taking over the training of one Yearling.

  Rosch’s look of shock did not surprise Adrienne overmuch. Although she made a point to ignore the Yearlings when possible, she still knew what they said about her. She participated in testing the recruits, but she never trained them, and it was well known that she preferred it that way. She was a good soldier, and could contribute positively to a group when necessary, but she was not a sociable sort, and she did not seek out relationships with the recruits.

  “What?” Jeral asked. “Why?”

  “If you want to be the best, you have to train with the best,” Adrienne told him.

  “I will not be an easy teacher,” she warned. “I have spent years learning what you must learn in months. I will push you hard, every day, and I will expect you to give me everything you have to give.” Her eyes narrowed. “I will know if you hold back.”

  Rosch nodded, his golden-brown eyes dazed by the unexpected turn of events.

  “If you train under me, I will see to it that you too become one of the best,” Adrienne promised, her eyes locked on his, looking to see the resolve that would be necessary to make her promise come true.

  Rosch licked lips gone suddenly dry. This was why he had left Roua: to train at Kyrog under the best soldiers Samaro had to offer. And he was being given a chance no one else ever had. “When do we start?”

  ••••••

  For the third morning in a row, Adrienne had Jeral up before dawn. She led the Yearling through her meditative morning routine: a series of slow, controlled movements that flowed from one position to another like a dance. It stretched the muscles, elongated the limbs and spine, and—most important
ly—it improved the practitioner’s balance.

  Adrienne called out the name of the next move in Old Samaroan and Rosch grumbled that he couldn’t understand her. An old soldier named Karse had first taught her the moves, and the names that went with them, when she was barely four-years-old, and he had never bothered to translate them for her. She would let Rosch learn as she had—by doing.

  Adrienne owed much to Karse, who had taken her under his wing when all the other soldiers were trying to figure out what to do with a little girl who was too young to understand why she was away from her family, too young to help with camp chores or begin any meaningful training.

  “Why are we doing this?” Rosch asked, as he had asked the last two days.

  Adrienne gave up on the usual explanations and took a new track. “To teach you discipline, which you obviously lack. If you ask again, you won’t like the other way I teach discipline.”

  Rosch fell silent and copied her moves. Adrienne called out another name.

  Practicing those moves, teaching them to Rosch, brought back memories of the soldier who had been like a father to her after her own father had given her up. Karse had been a talented soldier, but he’d had the heart of a historian. She knew that without him, she would not have been the person she was. Without him, she might not have made it through those first rocky years after her mother’s death. She would have been just another orphan shoved into a world that had no place for her.

  She thought Karse would have approved of her decision to train the Yearling, though he would have probably been baffled by it as well. Even as a child she had preferred her own company over the company of others.

  Adrienne was amused by Jeral’s somewhat pained expression as he tried to copy her moves. The stretches were not easy for him, nor were the five mile runs that followed. But the slow moves would teach Jeral balance and flexibility, and running would give him speed as well as endurance. Both were essential skills if a soldier was hoping for a long life.

  Adrienne’s arms came down by her sides on her final exhalation, and she opened her eyes as the sun broke over the horizon in a brilliant show of lights and colors.

  She was amused somewhat by Rosch’s pained expression, and knew that it would not improve during the run that followed.

  Though her legs were shorter than Rosch’s, she moved in an economical way, using minimal effort to match his pace. Adrienne would have liked to pick up the pace or go on a longer run, but Rosch’s body was not ready for that. Adrienne was well aware of the capabilities of the human body, and though she had regularly pushed Rosch to his limits in the past three days, she had been careful to never cross the line that would lead to injury. An injury would only slow his progress and shake his confidence.

  When they arrived back at the camp Rosch was breathing heavily, his face dripping and shirt soaked with sweat.

  “Go get breakfast and drink some water,” Adrienne told him. “Meet me back in the Pen in one hour.”

  Rosch nodded. “Okay.” His breath was strained from the morning workout, and Adrienne wondered how long it would be before an easy run did not deplete Rosch’s reserves so considerably.

  After sending Rosch away, Adrienne decided she had best follow her own advice. She went to the mess hall usually frequented by the more senior soldiers, and was pleased to find Ricco eating at one of the long wooden tables.

  Adrienne sat beside her friend and grabbed a piece of fruit from his plate. She bit into the sweet, pink flesh of the fruit, chewing and swallowing before smiling at Ricco’s disgruntled look. “This is good.”

  “I know.” He chuckled and slid a piece of sausage her way. “Have this; you’ll just steal it otherwise. How’s the kid?”

  Ricco had been amused to find that Adrienne had decided to train one of the Yearlings herself, and liked to ask how “the kid” was progressing. Adrienne had decided to take his comments as a challenge rather than an insult to her training abilities.

  “He tires quickly, and doesn’t know how to control his body,” Adrienne informed her friend, biting into the sausage and contemplating getting a plate of her own.

  “Tires quickly compared to other people, or compared to you?” Ricco asked. “We don’t all start our days the way you do.”

  Adrienne frowned. “You can keep up with me, though.”

  “Sometimes. There’s a reason I don’t go running with you in the morning.” Ricco picked up a piece of sausage, took a bite, and then gestured with it. “And don’t get me started on that dancing thing you do every morning. No man should be flitting and twirling about like that.”

  “You’re just unhappy because my moves make me hard to pin in the ring.” She grabbed another piece of fruit off of her friend’s plate. “Anyway, I think Rosch has promise.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s eager to learn and prove himself.”

  Ricco nodded. “Long as that eagerness doesn’t get in the way of him actually learning, the two of you might accomplish something.”

  Adrienne frowned and reached for another sausage. Ricco slapped her hand away.

  “Do I need to get another plate?” he asked, pulling his food farther away from Adrienne and hunching his shoulders over it protectively.

  “No, I’ll get my own,” Adrienne said. “Stay here.” Adrienne walked through the line and got a dish of fruit and some oatmeal sweetened with honey. When she returned to Ricco, two other men were just leaving the table.

  Ricco turned back to Adrienne after the two men had gone. “Ade, a few of us are getting together for cards tonight,” he said. “Want to join?”

  Adrienne didn’t typically join Ricco and his friends for drinking and games, but she had been so busy with Rosch that she knew she was neglecting Ricco. And she missed him. “Why not?”

  “Good. Meet us at Nils’ Tavern?”

  Adrienne agreed, thinking it had been too long since she had unwound at the tavern with a few pints of ale and a group of friends. “See you there.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The noonday sun shone down bright and hot on the small sparring ring adjacent to the Yearling training ground. Adrienne had already spent three hours at her own training before meeting up with Rosch to continue his.

  And now he was questioning her methods. “I don’t understand why we can’t use weapons,” Rosch grumbled under his breath as he headed back to his side of the ring.

  Adrienne heard him anyway. “Your hands and feet, your body, are weapons in their own right. They are the only weapons that cannot be taken away from you. It would be foolish for me to train you with other weapons before you master the ones you were born with.”

  Rosch felt his face grow hot in embarrassment, but he squared his shoulders and turned to face her. “I know being able to fight without weapons is important,” he said. “But I have training with weapons, so I don’t see why I can’t practice with both. Variation is good, isn’t it?”

  The young man might have had a point, Adrienne thought, had she not known that he was still participating in practice fights—with weapons—against the other Yearlings. She had no reason to worry that whatever skills he might have obtained in Roua would grow dull through lack of practice. “You will master the tasks I give you before moving on to the next,” she said firmly. “In time, we will use weapons other than our bodies. For now, we use what we were born with and nothing else.”

  Rosch looked unhappy, but he nodded and settled into a fighting stance. The position looked awkward to Adrienne’s trained eye. She took her own stance a pace from him, settling into it with the ease of long experience.

  “You have to be comfortable,” she reminded him impatiently. “Balanced. This is your base, the position you will always come back to. Do you understand?” Rosch nodded and shifted into a slightly more natural position.

  “Good.” Adrienne took a step forward and shoved him hard in the chest.

  He stepped back, groping for balance.

  “No, keep your stance. Shift your bal
ance lower and push against me. Never give up ground if your new position will not be a better one.”

  Rosch resumed his position and Adrienne pushed against him again. She pushed harder, putting her weight behind it, and Rosch pushed back, digging in his feet. Adrienne shifted quickly, grabbed his arm, and pulled hard.

  He tripped over the leg she shot out and wound up sprawled on the ground.

  “Very good,” Adrienne said with the slightest smile for the recruit.

  “I still ended up on the ground,” Rosch said as he picked himself up off the dusty ground. Dust mixed with sweat and ran in muddy runnels down his dark face and caked his hands.

  “I did,” Adrienne agreed. “But how?”

  Rosch’s brow furrowed in a look she had come to recognize well since starting his training. It was the look he wore when he was running over a past event and analyzing it. “You changed your move. You couldn’t push me over, so you pulled me down instead,” he said as he replayed the incident in his mind.

  “Yes. I’m smaller than you, and you outweigh me significantly, but size is only a hindrance if you don’t know how to use it.”

  “I guess you’d know,” Rosch said with a grin that revealed straight white teeth.

  Adrienne smiled back, pleased with the changes she was seeing. “I’ve learned to use my size, rather than let it be used against me.” She looked over the tall youth from head to toe. “I have a lot of experience, and you can learn from me, but you have to trust what I am doing. Body now, weapons later. Resume your stance.”

  Rosch sank down and Adrienne began instructing him on how to avoid having his feet kicked out from under him. After a few unsuccessful attempts, which resulted in Rosch falling to the ground repeatedly, Adrienne had him do the kicking.

  The Yearling completely lost his base, and his balance, on the first kick, and Adrienne easily sidestepped him as he concentrated on not falling after the unfamiliar move.

  “Sink further into your fighting stance,” Adrienne instructed. “I didn’t tell you that was your base for nothing. Kicking someone’s feet out from under them doesn’t help if you both end up on the ground.”