Straight after breakfast, it was off to whatever lesson was scheduled first for that morning, the young men's faces brightening along with the early light of dawn. For Nico, the rest of the day would comprise a confusing jumble of instructions quickly forgotten and lessons barely understood in terms of what purpose they might serve.
The evening meal, when it finally came round, was a relief like no other. He would sit and eat in numb exhaustion, thinking of nothing but his bunk.
The apprentices hailed from various corners of the Empire, though there was a surprising lack of tension for all the cultural differences between them. Still, Nico prepared himself for the worst, having never been overly sociable as a child. As a boy he had attended the local schoolhouse, and knew how his peers looked upon his solitary nature and his quick tongue when provoked.
But not so here, it seemed. Those few most likely to pick on him – big Sanse with strength on his side, fierce little Arados with the most to prove to the others – hung back for some reason. At first, Nico thought it was simply the strictness of monastery discipline. After a week or so, he realized it was something more than that. He realized they were somewhat in awe of Ash, and in return a portion of that respect rubbed off on to Nico himself, as the first apprentice Ash had ever taken on.
Those first early weeks of training were to be the most difficult. In a way the glamour that seemed to surround Ash, and therefore in a lesser form Nico, began to work against him. Nico felt as though he had a reputation to uphold, one that he had done nothing to gain – save for this assumption by the other apprentices that he must have something special about him for Ash to have chosen him in the first place. Yet he did not feel very special. He did not know why Ash had chosen him, though he suspected it had little to do with his abilities.
Nico would have told them as much, the truth of it, but each time he tried to, he found some inner resistance stopping him. He had begun to enjoy his minor celebrity. The others treated him with a respect he was barely familiar with after living rough on the streets of Bar-Khos and, before that, sharing a cottage with his mother's succession of indifferent lovers. He had found that he was standing up straighter than ever before in the presence of others. He would now meet their eyes and not so readily look away.
And so, in those early days, he tried too hard to impress, and because of this eagerness only made himself more inept in the trying.
He fumbled during his cali lessons – the style of sword-fighting practised by the Rshun, and designed for confronting multiple opponents while always advancing, never moving backwards. He would wheeze to a dead halt during his fell running, vomiting from the sheer exertion of it; broke two fingers in unarmed combat and cried from the shock of seeing them bent out of shape; lost his temper with the frustrations of oni-oni, a test of the reflexes that involved the contenders trying to slap each other across the face every time a gong was struck. He even fell off while riding a zel, not once but twice – nearly snapping his neck in the process.
However, Nico distinguished himself in other activities, enough at least to preserve his reputation with the others. He flipped and jumped and climbed like a natural during the acrobatics classes; performed especially well in acting, requiring the use of subterfuge and disguise; grasped quickly the basics of breaching, in other words breaking and entry; remained undiscovered for hours in tests of stealth and concealment; excelled at archery, in which he did in fact have much ability, having both a natural eye and a great deal of experience from shooting birds for his mother back home. And, most especially, he shone in ali, the combined arts of evasion – otherwise known as running away – in which Nico found himself particularly talented.
Under different circumstances Nico might have expected to suffer from homesickness, longing for the familiar streets of Bar-Khos, or even for his mother's cottage. But for an apprenticing Rshun there was, simply too much to learn and practise for his mind to dwell on such distracting thoughts. Only at night would a sense of isolation oppress his spirits, but even then not for long, since he was usually so weary that he fell asleep in minutes.
He saw very little of Ash during this time. It seemed the old man did not get involved in training the disciples. Neither did he offer personal instruction to his own apprentice, perhaps intending instead to train Nico only in the field, where it was said that the learning ceased and the knowing began.
Overall, the old farlander kept himself to himself, rarely seeking out his young protege at all. It seemed almost as though he had discarded Nico at the first opportunity to present itself.
Nico was stung more than he would ever admit by this apparent desertion.
*
'Whet your knives!' Holt bawled over the heads of the ten apprentices gathered in the courtyard on a sunny day filled with wind. Instantly they bent their heads to the task.
Nico did not move, today. Instead he watched what the others were doing. Particularly he kept his eye on Aleas who he had already noticed tended to get things right first time. After a while, grasping a wooden practice knife in one hand and a steel carving knife in the other, he began to shave a fresh edge into the curved piece of wood that had been left blunt from its last usage. A guppy, they called this type of practice knife, perhaps because of the fish it resembled. The weapon lacked a point and was made from a piece of wintervine, a rare hardwood that normally grew on the sheerest of wind-exposed cliffs and, for some reason, only flowered in the depths of winter.
Suddenly Ash arrived by Nico's side, clasping a leather cup of chee in his hand. Haggard-faced, the old man stood and watched him work, one eye squinting against the stiff breeze snapping his robe around his ankles.
This was the day of the scenarios, mock situations intended to replicate, to some degree, the possible conditions in the actual field. The presence of their masters was compulsory at these fortnightly sessions, so today they were uncharacteristically tense and serious.
Nico had not spoken to Ash in six days. The old man had almost become a ghost to him, glimpsed only through windows, or occasionally in his sleep. Even the other youths had begun to notice this lack of attention, shown towards his apprentice. They had begun to mutter about it, fascinated by such behaviour from the order's most famous Rshun, and they increasingly gave Nico strange looks whenever he chanced to walk in on them.
'Quickly, now, we haven't all week for this.' Holt, stood eyeballing them, with his chin held high.
Nico tested the edge of his wooden blade and found it sharp enough to draw blood. He sucked his thumb as he waited, and did not look at Ash.
Holt strode amongst them, testing the blades and retrieving the steel knives as he went. 'Now, my young squires,' said the blond-headed Pathian. 'The scenario today shall be cat and rat. Yes, Pantush, I know how much you adore this one. All of you now, choose a partner so we can begin.'
A partner? Nico mused, and cast a forlorn glance about him as the other youths quickly paired up with their friends. Within moments the press had parted to either side into pairs. Facing Nico, across a dozen feet of settling dust, Aleas stood alone, too skilled for anyone else to choose as his competitor on this of all days.
Nico's heart sank as the young man grinned at him. Towering behind Aleas, Baracha gave Ash a questioning glance.
'Cat, rat, west wing, first floor…' Holt was saying, tapping one boy on the head and then the other, 'Cat, rat, west wing, second floor…'
He came to Nico and Aleas, and smiled. Everyone was smiling except for the two pairs facing each other. 'Cat,' he said, with emphasis, as he lay his palm on Nico's head. 'Rat,' he gestured to Aleas.
To their two masters he announced: 'West wing, attic. But be careful not to break anything up there, gentlemen.'
He then clapped his hands and marched onwards, hollering once more. 'You have until the next bell. One must hide, one must find. The first to draw blood wins. If you stay hidden until the bell sounds, you also win. That's it. Rats may go!'
Aleas was off, loping towards the door into the west wing. He ran like an athlete on the track, supremely confident in his own physicality.
First blood, reflected Nico, his hand already clammy around the hilt of his wooden knife. His mouth had gone dry. How much of a wound could this thing inflict? How bad was one allowed to make it? Typical of these Rshun to tell you the bare minimum, then throw you in head first.
Baracha remained behind with arms folded, disdain in his eyes, confident of an easy victory.
'Better your boy had been the rat, eh? He hides well, I hear.'
Ash stiffened up at that, as if too world-weary to hold back what he would say next. 'Perhaps if you yourself were a little better at hiding, we might have spared ourselves much trouble in the past.'
A hoot from those of the Rshun who stood close enough to hear him. Baracha hawked loudly and spat in the dirt.
