felt miserable, just to keep his spirits up, wouldn't she? He could have checked directly, but she was his wife and leaving her that extra bit of internal privacy seemed important. Instead he just did his best and tried to balance out his school work with the rest of his life.
The new classes amazed him to no end, so at least he didn’t have to contend with boredom on that score.
Music especially, since he hadn't even known what went into it before. Reading sheet music was like learning a new language, if a simple one, and the instruments were varied and each had to be treated differently. In the beginners class he was in they got to try them all out, to see what they liked best. Tor ended up with the violin, because the guitars were all a bit too big for his hands and the woodwinds all sounded off to him. He wasn't very good yet, he knew, so tried to work in an extra hours worth of practice each night, using one of the sound canceling devices so that poor Rolph wouldn't have to listen as he screeched and scratched away.
Economics was fascinating, even if it was taught by Wensa, the Royal Guard Captain in charge of protecting the Prince. She didn't advertise the fact and was simply “Instructor Wensa” at the school. She was probably the second hardest teacher Tor had ever worked with, Kolb being the first. He was a weapons and fighting Instructor, but since he left and took everyone else with him, that section of the afternoon was pretty much left empty. With a war on it was too hard to find anyone that could fight well that wasn't off getting ready for the Austrans.
It was on the second day that Tor had an idea. Again one of those stupid and probably overbearing ones that made him feel embarrassed for having thought about it in the first place, but a real enough one. When he got to the practice area to begin his personal run and stones work out, he took a deep breath and called everyone over. His face felt full of blood, but he made himself say the words and tried to sound confident.
“The weapons instructors are slightly delayed, due to the war, so we're going to break up into three groups and the senior students will act as instructors until the real ones get here. I'll let you decide who does what, but we want armed, unarmed and magical device sections. Everyone is going to be learning to fly, so that needs to be set up too. Can anyone fly yet?” He looked around but even the older students didn't raise their hands.
“OK, starting tomorrow I'll start teaching that part, after my own work out.” It was more to do, but he'd been flying as long as anyone. Longer than anyone, literally, if only by a few days. The beauty of having made the device for it, Tor was the first moron to go up. It was safe enough, but he hadn't really known it at the time.
The others fell into line as if he knew what he was doing, and set the younger students to working at pells and learning basic techniques. No one was as good at teaching as Kolb or even his top instructors, but then they hadn't had the time to learn yet. The younger kids were getting something at least, and if they weren't good, at least everyone was getting exercise out of it. It took even more work to set up the early section, and he had to get Rolph to teach flying for them, that being when he was supposed to train anyway.
Advanced build theory was his favorite class by far, a lot of little things he'd never thought of were introduced that made him want to kick himself for not figuring them out sooner, like letting fields grow to greater strength by mimicking biological processes. No one in the class could do it, not yet, but the theory was actually an old one. Worse, he'd had the idea before on his own, but hadn't pursued it, not even on paper. That class was taught by Instructor Fines, his old novel build teacher. If that class had been about coming up with new ideas on your own, this one was very different, it required a lot of reading and thinking, discussion and conjecture instead.
Still, it gave him an idea to use, so Tor decided to try a build based on the magical carriage device. The idea would have normally taken a week to make strong enough to do what was needed, even if he stressed and pushed himself horribly. This time the work would be slower, but if he did it right the power level of the field should end up being incredible. If he messed up, well, that could happen doing new things. He didn't have a lot of time for mistakes though. Not with his upcoming trip to Austra.
During the third week everything changed suddenly. It came during the time when he was teaching a group of ten students how to fly. They were all brand new to it, this being the first day for the third group. He'd tried a larger bunch the first time, but that hadn't worked too well, because it was too hard to pay attention to what they were all doing. Ten was about his personal limit. Well, twelve worked too, but ten just felt right. Rather interestingly, they’d all dressed in what looked like plain school browns for it. Even a couple of kids he knew to be fairly high nobles.
They all matched.
“Flying this way is easy, safe and fun!” He started with that each time, since making it a little exciting seemed to help some of the more reticent students.
“Remember to wear your shield though! Really, you should wear them all the time for now, and make certain that your friends have one and are wearing it too. Having a shield and not using it, especially while flying, is moronic, and all of you are way too smart for that.”
Inside fifteen minutes they we're all up and flying, it wasn't that hard to do after all. They flew standing upright, which was comfortable and made landing a breeze. For a while they just went up and hovered, about a hundred feet from the ground, then made a safe landing. It wasn't the most interesting part of things, but once you had the landing down the rest was almost just play. That's what he told them at least.
They made the traditional first flight, heading to the nearby town of Lenders, hovering over it for a while practicing turns and then flying back to the weapons square. It was when they came in for a landing that Tor first noticed the change. There were suddenly a lot more people than there should be, and of the new ones, most were clad in leathers. Combat leathers. Tan and black, dusty and worn looking.
And they were watching the students practice like hawks ready to swoop on mice.
He came in carefully, smiling when he realized who it had to be. Kolb and his people. The man himself walked over, scar on the right side of his face from corner of the eye to just about even with the edge of his mouth, fairly large and filled with lean power, bald head shining in the sun.
“Tor! So are you responsible for this mess?” He said, his voice slightly dark.
“I'm afraid so. I know it's not much, but-”
“Ha! Don't worry, you all did fine. Better than fine. We half expected to come in and find the students resting in the shade and eating sweets. The other half was that we'd come in and not find any students at all and have to beat them for skipping. They actually look decent for week three. The older students need more work, but that's not their fault.”
The look he gave Tor was serious then. He dropped his chin a bit, like a person getting ready to fight.
“No, the fault there is yours. You may not be the mightiest warrior in the kingdom, but you can see to it that their doing better than that. You have the skills, and are a Knight of the realm. I expect you to do that for the next week. Use the other instructors, but you're in charge of it. Also, I want to increase the flight training numbers. Dean Hardgrove tells me you've outfitted the whole school with shields and flight gear?” The question had an edge to it, like the weapons instructor wasn’t certain it was a good idea.
Tor nodded anyway, since it was simply the truth. That got a rough sound from Kolb that was a little more pleasant than he’d expected. Somewhat impressed. Possibly.
“Then we need to make sure everyone has proper training fast. Kids will use those things you know, trained or not. They probably already have been.”
Hanging his head slightly Tor realized he should have been doing that all along, taking the better kids he taught and getting them to teach the others. How stupid could he be? It really would speed things up, he simply hadn’t even thought of it. Probably why Kolb was an expert instructor and Tor was just a student. This got him a pat on the back when he mumbled it.
“There you go, learning already. See to it. They're your students, so you should have a decent judge of capabilities already.”
It meant that he had to work twice as hard to get everything done and the work he was supposed to be doing in the evenings slipped badly, going down to two hundred units a day most of the time. He struggled to make up for it on his off days, but if he wanted to spend time with his wife, which was, he realized, a more important duty than schoolwork, something had to give. Slowly over the course of weeks that became sleep. His personal field stayed strong and the more organic build was growing well enough, he thought. It kept getting stronger each day at least. Tor was just exhausted though. Something he was kind of used to, but really, some extra sleep would be nice.
Sure, he could just sleep anyway, but people were counting on him. Really, he decided, he needed to just toughen the heck up. Other people went a long time on short sleep, didn’t they? Why some of the rich kids at the school hardly slept for days on end, so they could drink and party. It was exactly the same thing.
