Students of the Order

by Edward W. Robertson

  "There." Faddak wiped his hands on his hips. "The next time I correct you, perhaps you should listen."

  The entire room was staring at Joti. Half of them looked entertained. The other half looked observant, like wolves watching two of their pack fight. No one looked remotely sympathetic.

  Joti stood, sucking the blood from his skinned palm. "What are you so angry about, Faddak? That your fellow Artuskers discarded you? That instead of being the prince you try to talk like, you're stuck in the clouds with the rest of us rejects no one else wanted?"

  The blotches on Faddak's face spread and deepened until he was nearly as dark green as a Kran. Before he could speak, he was interrupted by a shout near the door, where another large boy was evicting a smaller one from his bunk.

  The scene repeated up and down the room. The only difference between the bunks was their location; otherwise, the mattresses and bedding were all the same. But it had nothing to do with the beds' quality.

  One boy, a white-haired Gru named Erst, kicked the side of a bunk occupied by a hefty boy who was somehow already asleep. "You! I said get up!"

  The sleeping boy made a snorking noise, opened his eyes, and lumbered to his feet. His name was Gogg, and though he wasn't as tall as Erst, he was built as solid as a dwarven column.

  "You want the bunk?" Gogg bent his knees and curled his fists. "Come and get the bunk."

  Erst shuffled to the right, then to the left. Gogg turned his neck to keep an eye on the other boy, but otherwise didn't move.

  After a minute of this, Erst stepped back and rolled his eyes. "That bed's no good now anyway. You've already slept in it." He turned, chin lifted as he scanned for an easier target. He settled on Kata and smiled. "You. Off my bunk."

  She spat, the wad landing on Erst's right foot. He clenched his jaw and advanced on her. Fast as a minnow, she skipped forward, landing three quick punches to his body. He grunted, drew back, and smashed her in the jaw.

  She groaned and landed on the floor. Blood trickled from her lower lip. She bounced to her feet and charged, wailing. Erst tried to block her strikes, but she was too fast to follow. The final blow of her flurry rocked back his head. He snarled and knocked her back to the ground.

  It took her a moment before she stood back up for the second time. Ferocious as she was, she was hardly half Erst's size, and all it took to put her down was one good punch. Erst knocked her down a third time. Then a fourth. Her lip was bleeding heavily; her eye was swelling shut. She swayed toward Erst and took a swing that lurched her off-kilter. Erst easily slipped her punch and socked her in the nose.

  She fell to the floor, lolling on her back and pawing weakly at the boards. Erst stood over her.

  Joti jumped over a bed, landing across from them. "That's enough!"

  Erst turned toward him, bloody-knuckled. "She still wants to fight. I'm only defending myself." He tipped back his head. "Unless you're offering to be her champion."

  Erst was bigger. From what he'd shown against Kata, he knew how to brawl. Joti wasn't going to win anything from fighting him besides a black eye and a bruised ego.

  He clenched his fists and tensed his legs.

  "Everyone shut up!" Gogg trundled over to them and scooped Kata up from the ground like she weighed no more than a kitten. He leaned close to Erst. "I sleep now. You stop me from sleeping, I stop you from breathing."

  He set Kata in an empty bed. Tull brought a wet cloth to wipe away the worst of the blood. As they settled into their bunks, Almak came in and extinguished their lanterns.

  Joti lay in the darkness, wishing he could see the summer stars of the grassland, smell the waft of the wozzits. Shain had talked about the No-Clan like its purpose united it against the petty squabbling of clans, tribes, and families. But the orcs he'd found at the Peak of Tears were just as jockeying and brutal as anywhere else. Had Shain lied to him to get him to sign on with them? Or was she too busy roaming the borders to know how life in the Peak really was?

  The next few days were copies of the first. To start, they climbed the trees for their eggfruit breakfast—Almak called this challenge "Who Got the Strength"—then did a few chores. After that, they hiked around the mountain with Nod and returned for brawling lessons with Borz. Chief Loton had claimed the road toward becoming Marshals would be punishing, but so far, Joti's training as a Half Soldier had been much more rigorous.

  Over the first few days of Who Got the Strength, Joti had been bringing back eight to ten eggfruit per meal. Along with his small portions of fish and mushrooms, it was barely enough. As he neared the end of his first week, however, he found fewer and fewer fruit tucked away in the branches. His stomach was growling for most of the day. Early in the second week, after yet another paltry breakfast, he approached Almak.

  "We're eating fruit faster than the trees can grow it," Joti said. "People are getting hungry."

  Almak shrugged. "So climb higher."

  "Shouldn't we move to different trees? Or get more time to search? With an extra five minutes—"

  "When you're out in the wilds, and you're being tracked down by dragar lizards, you don't get the luxury of spending hours going from tree to tree for perfect fruits. These trees here are the only ones you've got. And five minutes is the only time you get to search them." The boss turned his gaze on the others. "Don't think to try cheating, neither. You only eat what you bring back to the ground. Anyone caught eating up in the trees will regret it. Who got the strength? Is it you? Then prove it!"

  The others grumbled, then went to the falls to find Nod, who brought them around the west slope of the mountain to a network of caves. In the clouds and rain, the worst smell you were likely to encounter was a little mustiness, but the caverns breathed a stench worse than shit and death.

  "Wyverns," Nod said. "Don't hunt here often. Too many clouds. But on sunny days, watch the skies."

  The next morning, Joti climbed the trees as fast as he could. When Almak called for them to descend, Joti had only gathered two fruit. As soon as his feet touched the platform, he gulped them down, licking the insides of the skins. Faddak reached the ground with seconds to spare.

  "Faddak!" Almak yelled. "Deliver yourself."

  Looking spooked, Faddak walked over to the recruit boss. "What'd I do?"

  "Open your mouth." Almak waited for Faddak to comply, then poked inside his mouth. "Pulp. Juice. What do you think you're doing?"

  "I didn't have time to find these and get back down. Do you want us to starve?"

  "Know what hurts worse than an empty belly? Three lashes. Up against the tree."

  Faddak's face went taut. Almak pointed to a tree and instructed him to remove his shirt. Faddak braced his palms against the trunk. Almak worked in silence, landing three strokes across his back, the stick crackling against Faddak's flesh. None of the blows were hard enough to break the skin, but the welts they left were as vivid as blood.

  On Nod's hike that day, Joti came back without being able to remember a single one of the roots she'd pointed out. During Borz' lessons, he found the punches and blocks unusually hard to follow. The other trainees were short-tempered, talking back at Borz' corrections until the man threatened to assign them all to bin-mucking duty.

  The following morning, rather than eating his fruits in the trees or trying to climb back down with them, Tull dropped them to the ground instead. It was a clever ploy—not having to worry about returning in time, he'd managed to climb much higher than the others—but Almak swept the smashed eggfruit off the platform and into the river. That day, Tull went hungry.

  Joti wasn't doing much better. And the hungrier he got, the less energy he had to hoist himself up through the branches. The morning after Tull's failed attempt, Joti watched dully as a boy named Poyat, who was two years younger than Joti and much smaller, scrambled up through the branches as energetically as they had on their first day of training.

  It was the first time Joti had felt resentful toward people smaller than himself. They didn't have as much weigh
t to lug up into the trees. And they could climb out onto thinner branches where the bigger kids couldn't venture. Unless the rules changed soon, they'd finish picking the lower branches clean in a matter of days. When that happened, only the small would be able to climb high enough to keep eating.

  Overhead, Poyat scooted out on a branch so thin Joti wouldn't have even tried to test its weight. Twelve feet from the trunk, a bundle of six eggfruit awaited. Joti's mouth dampened with saliva. With no other prospects anywhere nearby, he made his way toward a branch below Poyat, hoping the younger boy would fumble something Joti could catch on its way down.

  A branch cracked above him. Joti snapped up his head. Poyat was already falling, eyes round with surprise. He whisked past, screaming, voice dampened by the fog. He crashed into one branch, cutting the scream short, and then into another, body pinwheeling through the leaves. He landed with a moist thud.

  Joti peered through the tunnel Poyat had ripped through the foliage. Down on the platform, Poyat sprawled on his back. He wasn't moving. On his bloody chest, he clung tight to his prize of eggfruit.

  ~

  He wished he could sleep, if only to escape the hunger for a few hours, but he kept hearing the wail and the thud, kept seeing the limp figure and the bone poking from the thigh. Poyat would live, or so they said, but his leg was smashed. He'd never be a soldier, let alone a Marshal.

  Joti could see Poyat flashing past, the surprise and dismay in his eyes, as if he'd already known his dreams were about to shatter along with his thigh. Why hadn't Joti reached out? If he'd flung himself forward, maybe he could have grabbed Poyat's arm, swung him back to a sturdy branch. Seeing it over and over in his mind, guilt suffused through his veins like a bowl of fermented milk.

  He opened his eyes to the darkness of the bunk. If he'd been a little quicker, a little more observant, maybe he could have caught Poyat. But he wasn't the reason Poyat had trusted his weight to a branch that wasn't much thicker than a thumb. That was Almak's doing. And Chief Loton's. And whoever's idea it was to starve children in the name of making them tougher.

  Maybe it would work for some of them. But it had already broken Poyat beyond repair.

  It made Joti want to climb down the wooden staircase at the falls, descend through Dolloc Castle, and never return. But he had to stay. Had to see his training through and become a Marshal. If the raiders had caught up to the Yatto despite Joti's efforts at the ford, and Drez had been taken, this was the only way he'd find her.

  And if they'd killed her, this was the only way he could grow strong enough to take his revenge.

  He woke as calm as the air before a heavy rain. Stomach yowling, he intercepted Kata on her way back from the latrine at the end of the platform.

  She bared her fangs. "Get out of my way, rat boy."

  "So you can risk your neck to bring back a couple of eggfruit? Three, if you're lucky?"

  "Like you'll do any better? I can hear your belly bitching from here."

  Joti smiled. "How high can you climb?"

  "You think I can just climb to the branches that are too big for you fat lumps? Won't work. I can get high enough to where there's fruit. But then I don't have enough time to get back down."

  "You climb up to the fruit and drop them down to me. I catch them and deliver them to the platform before time's up. We split everything half and half."

  The young girl's eye flicked between his. "You'll take them for yourself. Fill your belly before I get down."

  "If I did that, my full belly would only last until you climb down and stab it open."

  "Would they even allow us to work together?"

  "They're trying to kill us out there," Joti said. "I'm not worried about 'allowed' anymore."

  Kata pursed her lips and smiled tightly. "That's the right answer."

  They gathered with the others beneath the trees. Despite the constant rain and the effort of a man with a scrub brush, they still hadn't gotten all of Poyat's blood out of the boards.

  Almak stood in front of them like nothing had happened. "Your five minutes start now. Up you go!"

  They sprinted for the nearest trees. Kata started up a thick trunk, Joti right behind her. The lower branches had been picked clean days ago. Joti stopped climbing once the limbs began to bend under his weight. Kata scampered higher, so light on her feet she hardly ruffled the leaves.

  She stopped to harvest a cluster of off-white fruit. Once she had them in hand, the two of them maneuvered around the trunk to where she could drop the eggfruit straight down. Her aim wasn't perfect and neither were Joti's hands. For every one that fell past him, though, he caught two others. And with Kata freed from worrying about getting down in time, she could reach fruit that had been out of reach from anyone else.

  "That's five!" Almak yelled from below. "And one more to get down!"

  Joti was already on his way down. Back on the platform, he counted his haul. Fifteen. He was so hungry he wanted to stuff them in his mouth on the spot, but he made himself wait until Kata climbed down, then handed her eight.

  She scrunched her brow, moving her mouth as she counted them out. "You said we each got half. But eight and seven make fifteen. That means eight's more than half."

  "Shut up and eat." Joti tore open an eggfruit. "This was just our first try. We can do even better tomorrow."

  It was the first time he'd felt full in days. On Nod's hike, he found himself paying attention to every plant she named. During Borz' lessons, he won both his sparring matches.

  The next morning, as they gathered on the platform beneath the eggfruit trees, Tull and a younger boy named Mart walked up to Joti and Kata.

  "Um." Tull gazed pointedly at the boards. "We were wondering."

  Mart socked him on the shoulder. "Ask them!"

  "If we could help you guys. If you need it."

  Joti glanced at Kata. "You saw us?"

  "You guys were the only ones who snagged more than three," Mart said. "Come on. The more of us there are, the more we can grab."

  "What do you think, Kata?"

  "I think they look scrawny." She jutted her chin. "But maybe that will make them work harder."

  Almak bellowed into the lightly falling rain. Kata and Mart were both small enough to test the upper branches. They lobbed fruit down to Joti, who caught them and dropped them down to Tull. After missing two of the first three, Tull stretched out the lower hem of his shirt, making a basket to catch the fruit with.

  When it came time to climb down, Tull tucked his shirt into his breeches and stuffed it full. Their count came in at 34. Joti gave himself and Tull eight apiece and both of the climbers nine. Halfway through devouring his share, Joti looked up to find the other students glaring at him and his makeshift team.

  A vein pulsed in Faddak's forehead. "Almak! Don't you see what they're doing?"

  Almak strolled down the boardwalk, eyeing the mounting pile of husks around their feet. "Whose idea was this?"

  The four of them glanced at each other. Kata's face darkened with anger. Before she could say anything, Joti stepped forward. "It was mine. I asked Kata to help me."

  "Why would you do that? She's so tiny I could pick my teeth with her."

  "Which means she can stand on branches I can't. But when she climbed that high, she didn't have enough time to get back down. That's where I came in."

  "He admits it!" Faddak's expression was more fang than grin. "Go on, lash him! That deserves at least five!"

  Almak snorted. "You want me to lash the ones what can finally feed themselves?"

  "But they cheated!"

  "Who got the strength? Guess it ain't you."

  Almak turned and walked away. Joti finished eating, but with Faddak and the others watching his every bite, the eggfruit tasted as bland as boiled potatoes.

  Later in the day, a boy named Harkun and a girl named Indi asked if they could help out the next morning. After consulting with the others, Joti gave them the nod.

  "Faddak's been talking with Erst and
some of the other boys," Kata reported after brawling practice. "It's about the eggfruit."

  "They probably want to work together, too," Joti said. "Who cares?"

  "It's only the older boys. You should hear the way they're laughing. I don't like it."

  When morning came, Joti tried to keep an eye on Faddak and the three others in his company, but as soon as Almak hollered out, Joti was too busy finding handholds, catching fruit, and dropping them to Tull to focus on anything else. At Almak's call to climb down, Tull descended to the platform, shirt bulging with fruit.

  Faddak and two other boys dropped from the lower branches and loped toward him. Tull put up his hands like they'd been taught in Borz' classes, but he didn't stand a chance against Faddak's heavy fists. With a high-pitched moan, Tull went down. The two others held him down while Faddak robbed him of his fruit.

  Joti slid down the trunk, landing with a rattle of boards. He ran toward Tull. Erst popped out from behind a tree and tripped him. Joti caught himself on his hands and knees, but Erst was already on him, punching his ribs, planting his knee in Joti's back. Joti knew Almak was watching—and that he'd do nothing to stop the older boys.

  "Too late, runt," Faddak sunk his fangs into the skin of a fruit, sucked it dry, and threw the rind in Joti's face. "Who got the strength now?"

  His gang finished the fruit and walked away. When Kata hit the ground, Joti had to hold her back to stop her from charging them.

  "I'm sorry, Tull," Joti said. "We should have seen this coming. They're bigger than us. Stronger. It's easier for them to take what we work for than to work for it themselves."

  "It's okay," Tull said softly, touching the rips in his shirt. "At least we ate yesterday."

  Kata stood with her feet wide, fists clenched next to her hips. "Then we need someone strong. Like Gogg. He stood up to them before. You have to ask him now, Joti. Before they get to him."

  Joti gave her an irritated look. "Why me?"

  "Because you started this, you idiot. If not for you, we'd just be hungry. Now, we're hungry and we're getting our heads bashed in."