A few minutes later, they saw the youth from the warriors' table come sprinting out of the infirmary towards a building Liam thought was probably the stables. It took him ten seconds before he'd saddled a horse and rode out of the camp at a breakneck pace. Luckily, Martin did not notice anything, and by the time Wolf took them in for breakfast he'd calmed down a lot.

Both the Rat and Sarlie were conspicuous in their absence. Liam choked down the nourishing but lumpy porridge and ate a few slices of the tasty bread. When he and most of the others in the hall had obviously finished, one of the warriors stood up and rang a bell hanging in the corner. Immediately, the chatter stopped, and the Shang students ran off, or remained behind, bustling to get the hall clean. A group of five boys came up to their table, where they were sitting uncertainly. They all looked about thirteen and appeared to be among the oldest of the students there.
"We do chores now," one explained, seeing their puzzled looks. "We're put into groups, we call 'em sections. We're your group leaders. I take section one, I'm Stefan, and two of you are with me - Liam and Martin. The rest of you are split two each into the other sections. Come on boys, we're helping in the laundry today, and that's always hard work. Can you sew, either of you?"
"My grandmama taught me when I was little," Martin said proudly. Liam grinned - little?
"I can't," he admitted.
"Don't worry," their section leader said. "You'll learn soon. Martin, go over and see what Marek wants you to do. Liam, check the clothes in this tub."

In another half-hour, all of the clothes were pronounced 'clean enough' and hung out to dry just as the next bell sounded. One good thing about brown was that it didn't show dirt badly. Then Wolf shepherded their entire barracks to one of the stables that Liam had noticed earlier. Most of the animals here were quiet, placid ponies, meant to teach the small children the rudiments of riding before their moved on to riding larger horses.
"How many of you kids have ridden before?" he asked. Liam cautiously put up his hand, thinking that he though he rode well by his standards, he wasn't sure what the Shang standards would be. So did Gary.
"My father's a messenger for milord of Eagle's Reach," he explained.
"Good, you two go through to the next stable, and saddle up any two horses you find there. I'll come and see you in a minute.

Liam and Gary left and went through the next door along. The stable they now found themselves in had proper, full-grown horses in it rather than ponies. A group of older children were just leaving leading horses as they arrived.
"Are there any spare horses we could use?" Gary asked one of them.
"End two stalls ought to be free." They found the correct tack hanging on the wall and prepared for the Wolf's arrival.

When he did finally arrive, he checked over every inch of their work before sending them out to join the group that they had just see depart. Liam had never actually ridden a horse before - an excitable pony had been quite enough of a challenge for him - but Gary seemed perfectly at ease.

The lesson they now had was quite boring - just endless repetitions of drills. They trotted around this pole, in and out of these - kid's stuff really. At the end of the session, they were finally allowed to gallop. Liam found that this was much faster than anything he'd managed to achieve on his pony had been. As the horse swerved desperately to miss a tree, Liam went flying. He was luckily already facing downwards, so he managed to land properly. He then brushed himself down and went to catch his horse. Some of the others, nine and ten year olds by the look of them, were grinning. Liam didn't care - he'd fallen of millions of times before, and he'd no doubt fall of again in the future.

When the session ended and the horses had all been carefully groomed, Stefan came running up to fetch Liam again. Didn't look anywhere near as tired as Liam already was.
"We have fieldwork now, come one!"

Liam stared at him in amazement - more chores? He had thought that they were here to learn to fight, not to learn to do every sort of work but that! The older boy caught his outraged look and smiled condescendingly at him.
"It's easy enough. Would you rather do exercises or work to build up your muscles?" Liam thought back to his agonisingly difficult and exhausting session of the day.
"Well, work I guess."
"Exactly my point. It's also more useful - it teaches us how to look after ourselves properly, do stuff like mending our clothes and that sort of thing."
"Oh." They'd just reached where the others were gathered waiting for them on the edge of a field
"Now, today we've been asked to start digging up a patch of land that's been lying fallow for the past year. We'd better start with forks, fetch them from the shed over there. Any weeds you find remember to chuck them on the compost heap, which is over there at the moment. No excuses."
"Okay."

In reality, all that Liam had understood out of all that was that he had to dig up land with a fork, which he could get from the shed over there. He just hoped that they were bigger forks than the ones he'd used at dinner, because otherwise it was going to take a very long time. Luckily, he found a good, solid farmer's fork and began to churn up the earth, achieving very little for the amount effort that he thought he was putting in. The section leader ran up, looking totally exasperated with his new subordinate.
"No Liam! The idea is to break up the earth, see? You're missing weeds as well." Liam decided it was probably better to ask, however embarrassing it would be.
"What is a weed, exactly?"
"You don't know what a weed is?" the boy asked incredulously "Oh, I guess if your people were fishermen or something you wouldn't. Well, it's any sort of plant that you don't want. In this case, chuck anything in there. Do you understand me properly now? Don't be afraid to ask if there's anything else you don't understand. Its far better to ask than for me to have to come over and explain once you've wasted a lot of time and effort."
"Yes, I think I get it now. Break up the earth. All of the plants there are weeds. They go to the compost heap. Uh, what is a compost heap?"
"It's a pile where you put stuff you don't want, then it rots and makes compost, which helps things grow."
"Thanks."
"Well, you get going again now. I'll check up on you again later, okay?"

By watching the others' technique and copying it as best he could, Liam managed to dig a reasonable amount of land. He was embarrassed that he didn't seem to know many things that the others considered basic knowledge. By the time the next bell rang, his arms and shoulders ached, and he was all too happy to tidy away his fork and go to wash his hands before eating lunch.