by Robin Hobb
There were a dozen of us from Carneston House. There were only eight first-years in Bringham House, but when their second-years saw that we were getting the better of them, enough of them waded in to more than even the odds. Even so, the triumph came to us. Most of us were frontier-lean and leathery while the Bringham House first-years were town boys. Gord, for all his tubbiness, was in the thick of it, red-faced and shouting and flailing away. I saw three Bringham House cadets try to bring him down, but he just hunched his head into his shoulders and ploughed on toward the flagpole. Trist was ever the best of us, for he fought as if he were in a ring, throwing punches and ducking and gracefully sidestepping his opponent’s wild swings. There were perhaps twenty-five of us battling at the base of the flagpole, but at the time, it seemed like hundreds. I fought with none of Trist’s refinement or economy of motion. I brawled, shoving men aside, kicking the feet out from under one who came at me, rolling another off my shoulders as he jumped on me. He landed badly and I didn’t care. I stepped over him, shoving my way closer to their flag.
I don’t even know who finally reached the lines and pulled our flag down within our reach. Theirs came down as well, and we seized it gleefully. We were falling back across the parade ground, in possession of both flags and heading toward our own house when third-years on horseback led by the house sergeants from all four houses on foot clattered onto the parade ground. The sergeants waded into us, tossing cadets aside as if we were children. Once they had roughly separated us, the third-years rode their horses in between us. We were standing apart, breathing hard and caught between shock and triumph at what we had done when Colonel Stiet himself was suddenly there, bellowing at us to form up in ranks.
The elation we had felt at winning Bringham’s colours evaporated. We came to order in two ragged lines, facing one another. My nose was bleeding, my knuckles were raw and one sleeve was half-torn from my shirt. Trent was holding his arm across his chest. Jared’s features were hidden by a mask of blood flowing down his face from a scalp wound. My only satisfaction was that the Bringham House cadets facing us were in far worse condition. One of them was being held up by two of his comrades. His eyes-were dazed, his jaw hanging slack. One had lost his entire shirt in the battle, and the red blossoms of what would be bruises were all over his chest and upper arms. In the middle of the parade ground, the Bringham House flag stirred in the dust as a slight wind picked up one of its corners.
I had no time to see more than that. A corps of third-years was coming down the rank on foot, roughly hustling us into a straighter line. Sergeant Rufet came behind them, quickly checking to see which of his charges were severely injured. Trent and Jared were hustled off to the infirmary, each escorted by two third-years, as if they were criminals under arrested. Despite the anger and buried fear we saw in the eyes of those evaluating us, Rory was unabashed. His battle lust was clearly unabated, regardless of a bloody abrasion high on his cheek. He elbowed me joyously in my sore ribs and pointed to five cadets from Bringham House being escorted to the infirmary, one of whom was being carried. The rest of us were judged fit to stand and take our punishment.
Stiet spared none of us. He held us all responsible, not just the brawling cadets, but also the second-years who had incited us, the third-years who had not stopped the second-years, and the house sergeants who had ignored the brewing mischief. He promised us severe repercussions before dismissing us to our houses, with the stern order that we were all confined to barracks until further notice.
We did not break our ranks to return to our rooms, but were marched all the way up to our quarters, where a furious Corporal Dent ordered us into our respective rooms. As soon as his footfalls were no longer audible, we all crowded to the doors of our bunkrooms, to talk quietly across the short hallway that separated us.
“We done ’em good!” Rory exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.
“Think we’ll get kicked out?” Oron asked in a far more subdued tone.
“Nar!” Rory was certain of it. “It’s like a tradition. Every year, the new cadets mix it up a bit down there on the parade ground. I’m just surprised it was only two of the houses instead of all four. We’ll march a lot of demerits, and have a lot of extra duties. Prepare to man those manure forks, men! But then it will all settle down and we’ll be in our regular harness the rest of the year.” He patted his cheek cautiously, winced, and looked philosophically at the blood on his fingertips. “You’ll see.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Trist said quietly. “One of theirs looked badly hurt. If he is, then someone is going to have to pay. No old noble family is going to send their boy off to Academy, and then be bland about it when he’s sent home an invalid. We may be in for some hard times.”
“Count on it,” Gord said quietly. “Count on it. What got into us? I’ve never even been in a real fight before in my life. I should have known better, I should have known we were being set up.”
“So should we all,” Spink said solemnly. I hadn’t seen him in the battle, but one of his eyes was starting to blacken and blood crusted his nostrils.
Trist rolled his eyes at them. “Yes, little saints all, that is what the cavalla wants us to be. Come on. It happens every year. Don’t you think it was a test of our mettle? If we’d all said, ‘oh, sorry, fighting won’t solve anything, let them keep our flag, it’s only a rag’ do you think we’d have had any respect from anyone the rest of the year?”
“What happened to our flag, anyway?” Natred asked with a smile. There was a sheen of blood on his teeth.
We looked at one another for an answer. But it was Nate himself who pulled our brown horse out from under his shirt. He grinned as he showed it to us. “You don’t think I’d leave our colours in the dirt, do you?” he asked.
Rory crossed the hall to pound him on the back, and then lift our flag and proudly wave it for all of us. Despite my desperate fear of what punishment might befall us, I could not help but grin. In our first engagement, our patrol had won, we had saved our colours, and seen only two of our men wounded. It seemed to me that it boded well for the future. And yet, in the next instance, I wondered how harshly we would be judged for the five fellow cadets we had injured. We talked for a time longer in our hallway, and then retreated to our rooms again.
There, we sat on our bunks or did small chores. I rinsed some blood from my shirt with cold water, and then sat down to mend the sleeve. Natred dozed. I stared at the ceiling. Spink and Kort talked quietly about their families, and how they would react if bad reports on them were sent home. I didn’t want even to speculate on what my father would say about such a thing.
The dinner hour came and went, and the light faded outside our window. Trent and Jared were returned to us. Both were so dosed with laudanum that they could not complete a sentence. The neat row of black stitches on Jared’s brow and the splint on Trent’s arm spoke for them. They went to their cots and closed their eyes. The long evening dragged on. I made a brief foray to the study table and brought back my books. We sat on the floor and dispiritedly completed the lessons we had abandoned when we went to battle. A gloom settled over us. We had been told nothing, and I think that brooding silence was more threatening than any pronouncement could have been. When Sergeant Rufet bellowed ‘Lights out!’ up the stairwell, we obeyed promptly, and then sought our beds without a word to one another.
I didn’t sleep well. I doubt that any of us did. I bounced from one vivid, incomprehensible dream to the next. All were disturbing. In one, I was a woman, wandering the Academy grounds by night and crying out, “But where are the trees? What has become of the ancient forest of the West? Is all wisdom lost to these people and that is why they have gone mad? What can be done for such a folk? What can stand against their madness, if they have done this to their own forest?”
I woke myself tossing restlessly in my bed, and then lay there with that question wedged in my mind. It made no sense to me but some part of me urgently desired an answer. Why was the city better than the for
est that had once stood there? That was what I wanted to know, and yet the question itself seemed to make no sense.
I sank back into sleep as if I were sinking into a tar hole. I dreamed I walked on the logged off hill above the river, and that a presence walked at my side. Every time I tried to turn and look at him, he was always just a few steps behind me, always at the corner of my vision. I glimpsed his shadow on the ground. His shoulders were wide and above his head, I saw the shadows of antlers. We walked up the burned and scarred hillside. Everywhere, men in rough work clothes plied their axes and saws, oblivious of our passing. They shouted genially to one another, and sweated as they hacked and chopped all through the chill day. When a horn sounded, they all hiked down the hill to a noon meal of soup and bread. Finally, I turned to my companion and answered his unspoken question.
“You will find no answer here. They don’t know why they do it. They are told to do this by others who give them money for their work. They have never lived here or hunted here. They only came here to do this task. And when it is done, they will leave and not look back. It never belonged to them, and so what they destroy is no loss to them.”
I saw the shadow of the antlered head nod slowly. He did not speak, but I heard a woman’s voice say heavily, “As they do here, so will they do in every place that they go. It is worse than I feared. You see that I am right. We must turn them back.”
And again I woke, sweating as if I had just broken a fever. Bleakness settled over me as I recalled the pale stumps like broken teeth, and the old scar on the top of my head pounded. I felt sick with someone else’s sorrow. It was a moment before I could find my own foreboding over the melee on the parade ground. My own concerns seemed foreign and petty. When I tried I tried to refocus my mind on them, I drifted into a restless sleep.
I stood before a tribunal, at attention, in my uniform. I was not allowed to speak. Light from a high window fell on me, right into my eyes, dazzling me. The rest of the room was in shadow. I felt cold stone under my feet. I could do nothing save stand in cold dread while voices from above discussed my fate. The voices echoed so much that I could not distinguish the words, but I knew they judged me. A cold fear filled me.
Suddenly a voice came clear. “Soldier’s boy.”
The voice had sounded feminine. I was confused. “Yes, ma’am.”
The voice was gravid with solemnity. “Soldier’s boy. It was given to you to turn them back. Did you?”
I lifted my eyes to my judges and tried to pierce the dimness. I could see nothing of them. “I got caught up in the moment, sir. When they called us, I ran out with the others and joined in the fight. I am sorry, sir. I failed to think for myself. I showed no leadership.” A deep shame flooded me.
As I stood there, desperately trying to defend my actions, I heard a drum beating in the distance. I turned my head to see where it was coming from and fell, to awaken on the cold floorboards of my room. The morning assembly drum was sounding. I got up off the floor, feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all. Every bruise on my body ached, a grim reminder of my foolishness the day before.
My head was still filled with foreboding from my dream. The others were rising from their beds as slowly as I was. Uncertainty filled me. Were we still confined to barracks? My stomach betrayed me with a loud rumble. Disgraced or not, my body wanted food. I dressed and shaved despite the swollen places on my face. Spink finally voiced our question aloud. “Do you think we just go down to breakfast like nothing happened, or wait up here until we’re called?”
We had not long to wait for an answer. A rumpled-looking Corporal Dent came pounding up the stairs to demand that we immediately assemble in the square. It was earlier than usual, but we managed to be fairly presentable, even Jared and Oron. Oron had to button his coat around his splint, and Jared still seemed half-dazed, but we worked together to get our entire patrol out onto parade ground.
It was a chill, dark morning. We stood in the pre-dawn blackness and waited. We heard the horn sound and still we stood in our ranks. I was cold, hungry and above all else, frightened. When Colonel Stiet finally appeared, I did not know whether to be relieved or even more frightened. For an hour or more, he lashed us with a lecture on the traditions of the cavalla, the honour of the Academy, and the responsibility of each soldier to uphold the honour of his regiment and how badly all of us had failed. He promised again that there would be serious repercussions of our riot yesterday, and that the ringleaders responsible for it would be leaving the Academy forever in shame. When he finally dismissed us, all hope and appetite were dead in me.
We marched soddenly to our breakfast, and filed into an uncharacteristically quiet mess. We served ourselves a breakfast that was typical of every breakfast we had eaten there. It seemed more tasteless than usual, and despite my night’s fast, I had quickly had enough. We spoke little at the table, but exchanged many sidelong glances. Which ones of us would be judged ringleaders and dismissed?
When we returned to our dormitory to gather our morning texts, we had the answer. Three trunks, already packed, waited in our study room. Mine was not among them, and the relief I felt shamed me. Jared stared at his dully; I think they had overdosed him with the sedative, and he could not quite comprehend the full depth of his misfortune. Trent went over and sat down on his and buried his face silently in his hands. Lofert, a gangly, dim lad who seldom spoke did now. “It’s not fair,” he said hopelessly. He looked round at all of us for confirmation. “It’s not fair!” he said more loudly. “What did I do that was any more than any of you did? Why me?”
We had no answer. Rory looked stricken, and I think we all secretly wondered why he had not been sent packing. Corporal Dent came up the stairs angrily to roust us out. He callously told Jared, Trent and Lofert that they’d be moved to a rooming house in the city. Messages had already been sent to their fathers detailing their disgrace. It felt horrible for the nine of us to form up where there had previously been twelve. He marched us double-time to our first class and left us at the door. Trist spoke quietly as we entered the classroom. “Well. That was our first culling, I suppose.”
“Yah,” Rory agreed stoically. “And all I can say is, damn glad it wasn’t me.”
I felt the same, and it shamed me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Letters from Home
Life at the Academy went on. Our routine closed up around us like a healing wound and after a time, the empty bunks in our quarters and our smaller formation when we marched did not seem so foreign. Outwardly, little changed, but inwardly, all my feelings about the Academy and even the cavalla had subtly altered. Nothing seemed certain; no future could be taken for granted, no honour or fellowship assumed. In the space of a day, I had seen three boys have all their dreams dashed. I now had to believe that it could just as easily befall me.
If that culling had been intended to build a fire in my belly, it succeeded. With single-minded concentration, I poured myself into my academics. I pushed homesickness aside. I even buried my outrage at how the old nobles’ sons were treated in comparison to us. We soon learned that none of the latter had been sent home in disgrace. On even flimsier excuses, four of the first-years from Skeltzin Hall had been culled. The first-years from Bringham House received demerits to march off, as did a number of the second-years. Our own Corporal Dent had dark circles under his eyes for a month, for he had to rise an hour early each day to discharge his punishment. But that was the worst that befell any of them. In time I came to believe, as Rory heavily observed one evening, “We were set up for that culling. We were chumps, friends. Chumps.”
The strange part was that once the culling faded in our minds, I truly began to enjoy my days at the Academy. Life was both busy and demanding, and yet uncomplicated. All elements of my day were predetermined; I rose when told to do so, marched to my classes, did my work, ate what was put before me, and slept when the lights were extinguished. As my father had foretold, my friendships deepened. I still felt a divide between Spink and Tri
st. I liked them both, Spink for his ethics and earnestness and Trist for his elegance and sophistication. If I could have, I would be friends with both of them, yet neither seemed inclined to allow that to happen.
I think the differences between the two showed most in how they treated Caulder, for the commander’s son became very much a part of our lives. I recall the first time that he showed up in our common room, uninvited and unannounced. It was at the end of our second month in the Academy, and on that Sevday evening, the proctor had left our study room early to take himself off to an evening in town. It was the first time we had been left unsupervised for a full evening, and a welcome respite from the grindstone. Ostensibly, we were applying ourselves to our lessons to be ready when classes resumed on the morrow. Certainly Spink was, with faithful Gord at his elbow as he laboured through page upon page of maths drills, for that remained his most challenging class. I had finished my written work, but had my Varnian grammar book open before me, going over some irregular verb forms. As my father had intended, I was ahead of the column in most of my classes and fully intended to retain that lead.
