CHAPTER 4: Training

Alanna felt a shiver of excitement ripple down her spine as she and Rowanna slid through the side door of the stone wall separating the convent's courtyard from the training yard. Usually only the women studying to work for a Temple of the Great Mother Goddess or a Moon of Truth Temple could use this particular passage, but Daughter Marinstha had directed them through it the afternoon before to reach the combat ring nearest to the convent. At the same time, she had given them the proper outfits for warriors-in-training, which they had donned that morning: breeches, shirts, boots and—in Rowanna's case, as Alanna didn't need one yet—a breastband, since corsets didn't allow enough flexibility. So here they were, stealing along the wet grass like thieves at work, with Alanna's Gift offering the only light in the cold darkness of the Grimhold Mountains' early July morning, as the town clock struck the morning's fifth hour.

"It's about time you two made it," a clear, light voice remarked cheerily from somewhere to their right.

Rowanna and Alanna froze, and Alanna raised her hand and illuminated more of their surroundings. Just yards away, a young blond sat casually on the fence of the combat ring. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, his long hair pulled back into a ponytail and lanky body making him almost attractive. He nimbly hopped off the fence and sauntered towards them.

"Hey. Name's Kev. Kevin Lark," he greeted congenially, offering them his balled fist.

Alanna stared at the hand, baffled. He held it out as if it made sense, but she had no idea what to do with it. Was he physically impaired so he couldn't open his hand all of the way, or was he just being stupid so he could see what their reactions would be? She glanced at Rowanna for help, but her friend was as lost as she was.

"Oh. You guys don't...," his voice trailed off as he motioned to his outstretched arm. Clearing his throat, he grabbed Alanna's free hand and closed her fingers towards her palm, forming a ball. Then he tapped it lightly first on the top of his fist, then on the bottom, and last straight on its front. "Top, bottom—or bottom, top, whichever—and face-to-face, we say. It's the way we commoners shake hands. We call it chucking. This way we don't need to feel the other person's sweaty hand, it's faster, you can do two people at a time, and it doesn't run the risk of having rings or bracelets stolen. Cool, right?"

The two girls blinked blankly, and then, as if just realizing he had finished speaking that weird language of his, nodded hurriedly. "Oh, yes—exactly. Very cool. Of course."

He smiled and stepped back to look the two of them over. "I see Jarinth got you reasonably clothed and everything—good, very good. You must be Alanna—she mentioned you having the Gift. Why don't you light the torches around the ring here? They're hooked to the fence. Great—thanks. And you must be Rowanna—the third-year. We'll have to hurry if you're going to learn anything, because I heard your governess's coming for you as soon as the snow allows this spring, right? Right. Alright then—into the ring. We're going to start with exercises, and I'll let you in on what I'm thinking at the same time."

Alanna and Rowanna obeyed quickly. Now that they had traded Alanna's Gift for torchlight, they could make out two rather large piles of rocks on the far side of the ring. Before the girls could so much as imagine their use, though, Kevin had dropped down to the ground and motioned for them to follow suit.

Bending his right knee back so his foot was behind him, he stretched his left leg forward and then easily reached down to grab it with both of his hands. "Alright. If you don't get that, it's okay. Just keep trying and it'll come sooner or later. Try not to kill yourself at the same time, though, Alanna—I'll get blamed."

For the next quarter of an hour, leading them through all sorts of stretches the whole time, Kevin went on to explain his plans. They would spend the first couple of months building up their muscles, each week dedicated to a new lesson. This particular week they'd spend on their arms. Once he felt them ready, they would move on to more difficult things. They'd work until they dropped, and longer. Any complaints, and their work would be doubled.

"Now," he said, hopping back onto the fence. "I'm going to tell you a story—no, don't look at me like that, Alanna. You'll like this story." He clasped his hands daintily in his lap and began, "Once upon a time. There lived an ogre. This ogre was a mean, old ogre who nobody and nothing loved and loved nobody and only one thing: his rocks." Alanna stole a suspicious glance at the twin piles of rocks behind her. "Now, there were these two boys, Rowan and Alan. They were two city lads who fancied becoming great and almighty heroes and who would stare Uusoae, the Queen of Chaos, in the eye if only to fulfill their dream. Well, they knew this ogre, who terrorized their village and ate their sheep, was a heartless, nasty creature as awful as Uusoae herself, and decided to take him on.

"There was a number of things they had to do to weaken this ogre so they could kill him. The first was to steal his beloved rocks. These rocks were kept in his private chamber and the only time it was possibly possible to get them was when he was fast asleep. But this ogre only slept fifteen minutes at a time! Rowan and Alan had to drag each and every pebble out of that room and down to their village in a quarter of an hour. And they couldn't use any magic, or the ogre would wake up and see them, which meant they would have to move all the rocks back and be punished, if not eaten." He paused, and bit his lip. "Oh, but this isn't any fun without actors. I'm terrible at visualizing things. Rowanna, Alanna—show me how Rowan and Alan worked. The village is right behind me, and there is a wall right in front of me that you can't pass. You'll have to go around."

The girls gaped at him, and then at the piles of rocks behind them, and then back at their teacher.

"You must be crazy!" Alanna gasped.

"Must I be?" he asked pleasantly.

"But those rocks are huge!"

"Only five pounds each."

"And there's, like, a million of them!"

"Actually, only twenty-five per pile."

"But it's impossible!"

"Hardly. Oh yes, and—the ogre just went to sleep."

When the ogre awoke fifteen minutes later, he was most enraged to find his rocks gone and two harassed lads about to drop dead right outside his door. Furious at their attempt to snitch his precious stones, he ordered them to be returned and sentenced the boys to ten pumps—a torturous exercise where they had to lie flat on their stomachs and push themselves up on their arms and then lower themselves back down until their noses touched the dirt and arms formed right angles at the elbows. Giving orders was such hard work, though, that he was suddenly very sleepy. Using his ogre-magic, he forced them to run around the outer edge of the combat ring five times and settled down on his bed so he could watch them in comfort. By the time they finished, he was fast asleep, and they were about to begin sneaking his rocks out again when the town bell struck the sixth hour.

Only just remembering to thank Kevin, the girls stumbled wearily back to the convent where a maid, to their delight, had warm baths waiting for them both. They felt they had never experienced anything as beautiful as slumber as they collapsed into their beds later that night, though it was as if their maids had barely allowed them a moment of rest before shaking them gently awake the next morning.

The following couple of months passed quickly enough. After developing their arms, they ran for a week, then concentrated on working with their flexibility, and finished by establishing an awareness of their every surrounding. Then they returned to their arms. Their only assignments were to squeeze the stress balls they received from Kevin and to stretch at each available moment. It was not very long before they could feel their bodies begin to strengthen. They came to find themselves capable of performing feats that other students couldn't, like achieving perfect balance on a frisky horse (an extremely difficult task when riding sidesaddle) and knowing exactly when one of the boys was about to pull off one of their usual dirty tricks on them. They got used to waking up early and, with profound thanks, dismissed the maids' help. Though they ached considerably day in and day out, they were generally pleased with the work they accomplished.

Autumn arrived, and, with it, mountain blizzards. It was when they moved to the indoor training yards that their routine changed.

"Okay, are we all here?" Kevin demanded obnoxiously—boisterousness seemed to be one of his key characteristics—over the howl of the wind outside. "One, two—yes, we all made it. Good. Now, today we're going to start something new. It's called murdering pride." Both he and Rowanna glanced at Alanna, who looked innocently in the other direction. "It has to do with learning that you will always be the one that gets butchered by the big bullies, you will always be the one that falls off the cliff, you will always be the one that has the bit-resistant horse, you will always be the one that's the stupidest, laziest, most idiotic in your group—which will always be made of people you detest, because you're friendless, and nobody cares—and there is nothing you can do about it." He glanced down at his students, who had both fixed him with contemptuous expressions complete with raised eyebrows, and grinned. It seemed only yesterday that they were those two gullible kittens who would have clung to his every word. "Until now. Because now, we are going to learn how to whip the blockheads who really do believe such things into a place where they can learn better. We're going to add bruises to those straining muscles of yours." He strode over to a nearby door, which opened to a closet, and pulled out two sticks. He handed one to Rowanna, and then one to Alanna. They were staffs. "We're going to start fighting."

Two weeks later, Kevin opened the closet door and pulled out two sticks. He gave one to Rowanna, and then one to Alanna. They were not staffs. "Ah, the glory of fencing. It's a couple hundred steps up from staffing, but you guys are good enough with the big, fat sticks that you can go on to these." They were swords.

Winter came. The convent ladies were allowed to go down to town for their holiday shopping and then spent the week of Midwinter celebrating as it would be done at Court. Rowanna got word from one of the few letters Raoul managed to send her of a small epidemic that hit Corus in March. It would not have been worthy of mention had Raoul himself not caught a slight whiff of it, laying him in bed for a good two weeks. Winter went.

The snow, though, stayed, much to Alanna's relief. Although she loathed the cold like a cat did water, she would hate it even more when Rowanna left with her governess that spring, a time that grew nearer with every passing minute. It was hard to imagine, but once she moved out, they would probably not see each other again until the Disart part of Rowanna's name had disappeared. They hadn't spoken of her betrothal since that afternoon at least six months back, but that didn't keep it from hanging over them like a stormcloud laden with apprehension.

Kevin also seemed rather strained with their time constraint. His attempts to rush them through a great number of lessons in very little time were obviously failing. He spent a whole month on fencing and then introduced them to wrestling, which took longer than he truly wanted because they—Alanna, especially—didn't seem to possess the required spark for hand-to-hand combat. Because of this, he ushered them on to archery as soon as they mastered the basics, and then circled back to fencing, just to find they had forgotten half of what they had learned about that. And they only had one month until the pass was expected to clear.

"We're all going to die!" he finally wailed after a rather deplorable match between Alanna and Rowanna, which mainly consisted of them swishing their practice swords around in the air at each other and then, the one time their sticks did come in contact, they yelped at the sudden collision and dropped their weapons.

"Sorry," Rowanna groaned. "I'm just not getting this. What are we doing again?"

Alanna patted their new friend on the back consolingly. "Rowa's right. This just isn't sticking like the other lessons. I guess the memory comes with the pain."

"I'm hurt," Kevin pointed out. "I feel just plain crummy that I can't pound this into your thick heads."

Alanna shook her head. "No good, sorry. We need real pain. Bruises, you know?"

"Alanna!" Rowanna hissed through clenched teeth. "Shut up! You'll give him ideas! And this is bad enough as it is!"

Suddenly, Kevin grinned wickedly at them. "Pain? I can give you pain. Let's go back to wrestling, and I'll have plenty of pain ready for you tomorrow." Ignoring the glare Rowanna drilled into his back, he snatched Alanna's arms and pinned them behind her. "But those bruises can come right now."

Alanna slammed her heel into his foot in response.

The next morning, the girls arrived early to their lesson, eager to see what Kevin had planned for them. Innocently—too innocently—he handed them their usual practice swords. They accepted them enthusiastically—and dropped them.

"Weighted," he announced proudly, pretending not to notice their glowers. "I thought of it all by myself."

"Really," Alanna gasped, hefting her sword back up; sweat was already forming above her brow. "I congratulate you on your creativity, you son of a—"

"Now, now, my dearest Alanna, that's not very appropriate. You should be nicer to men or you'll never survive in life."

With an amazing burst of strength, Alanna swung her stick up at her friend. He stepped back, and the metal clanged back to the ground.

He laughed. "Alright then, ladies, who remembers the first form I taught you?"

"Me!" Alanna cried, lunging forward to strike out at her new target.

Kevin hopped effortlessly to the side. "Exactly. What's the second move?"