zenosyne (n.) the sense that time is moving faster as it speeds towards an inevitable conclusion; the feeling that the universe is rushing to get something over with.
Each night, he dreamed of dreaming. It was a particularly caged manner of spending his sleep, so tightly circular that his mind at times felt like a labyrinth that his conscious mind spent the whole of the night trying to escape. He was sure there was some meaning there, if he cared to search more fervently for it, but Zoran Czarnecki had too little time to probe too deeply into the machinations of his own mind. Life in the Warriors Programme allowed so little time for introspection; if the ache in your muscles and the tasks in front of you weren't taking up all of your focus, then you weren't working hard enough.
The only reprieve from the drudgery of their daily regime was, occasionally, their mornings sheltered in the barracks, preparing quietly for inspection, but even that peace was occasionally fragmented. So it was this morning; the whole training corps had become inured to waking with the sun, sensing its rise as a dog senses a thunderstorm on the horizon, but today, before dawn, their sleep was broken by a piercing scream from the other side of the barracks. For Zoran, it was a clumsy wakening from the dreams-that-were-not-dreams; it was a sudden rising to consciousness, reeled back to reality in an abrupt rush of sound.
Shit. Ina.
Beside him, Ilja Shovajsa was stirring, bleary-eyed; on the other side of the room, Ragnar Kaasik had turned over and pulled his pillow over his head as the noise pierced the air; and even as Zoran threw back the thin blanket that had been accorded to them as new cadets, he became aware that Pekka Hämäläinen was moving quietly past the rows of empty beds that made up the southern side of the boys' barracks. The girls' dormitories were on the other side of the building, divided from their section by a thin wooden wall; Pekka moved through the narrow doorway that joined them, and Zoran hastened to pull on his uniform shirt and follow.
The girls' barrack were arranged like its male counterpart, with long rows of beds lining the walls, thick pine boxes lying beneath them for storage of what few personal items they had been permitted to retain during training. Kinga Szymańska had taken the space nearest to the door; the bed next to hers belonged to Inanna Nirari. The beautiful girl from Opona was awake now; perhaps her own screaming had woken her. She lay with her head in Pekka's lap, breathing shallowly and eyes closed, as their teammate gently stroked her long dark hair and murmured something quietly to her. Zoran paused in the doorway, feeling abruptly quite redundant; when a languid Kinga turned her eyes upon him, he said, quite lamely, "is she okay?"
"She's fine." Kinga was methodical as she finished making her bed: crisp hospital corners and sheets folded at precise right angles. Commandant would be so disappointed to have nothing to criticise. It was hard to estimate the time, but it could not be long before roll-call; Kinga looked as though she had been awake for an hour or more. "I'm sorry if she woke you, Czarnecki."
"Not at all, I was just..."
Inanna opened her doe eyes, blearily, and smiled. It was like a portable star, that smile. There were tears pooling on her eyelashes, clinging to them like so much silver dust. Her shirt was gaping open, just slightly, to bare the long scar she wore across her neck; it reached down to twine around her collarbone. Zoran tried not to look. "I'm sorry. I was hoping you guys might have slept through it this time. Nerezza did."
Zoran forced a smile. "What doesn't she sleep through?" He could not help but watch Ina. Was she truly fine? He did not usually find her difficult to read, but on this particular morning, she seemed to almost be avoiding his eye. Well, he wouldn't push the matter; he dropped his gaze in favour of observing Kinga as she briskly buffed her boots to a lustre. Zoran thought he could have seen himself reflected in the sheen of the leather and thought, rather guiltily, of his own scuffed shoes. "Nez is a law unto herself."
Kinga glanced in the direction of the girl mentioned. "Her torso is pointing west," she said. It was an old habit of the Warrior candidates to try and predict the prescient weather by whatever strangely contorted shape Nerezza Astaroth had assumed in her sleep; it rarely played true, but it was some fragment of levity in what was usually a monotonous retread of the same drills each day. "I think it's going to snow today."
Ina eased herself up into a sitting position, and shook her head. She was looking better now – colour was returning, slowly, to her face. Her breathing was steady. "But her legs are suggesting rain."
"Call it hail and get moving," Pekka said, "or we'll all be late for muster."
He rose from the bed, and placed a calloused hand very gently on Ina's cheek. She smiled, and nodded; there was a silent communication between them that had Kinga rolling her eyes and turning aside, looking bored. Pekka turned to Zoran and jerked his head in the direction of their dormitory. He had not paused to dress, even partially, as Zoran had; he was still in only the cotton pants they wore to bed, his chest bare. The occupants of the girls' barracks looked utterly blasé about this fact – it wasn't anything they hadn't seen before, after all. "Reckon we shouldn't be late for our last day."
Zoran gestured towards the sleeping Nerezza. She was utterly still; she might as well have been a corpse beneath the sheets. He wasn't even totally certain that she was breathing. Did a creature like Nerezza need to breathe? "Do you want me to…?"
"Leave her," Kinga said bluntly. Kinga said most things bluntly. "You want to contend with that in the field?"
Zoran grimaced dramatically. "I certainly don't want anyone else to bear the brunt of her wrath if we don't."
Ina shook her head. Her voice was sweet, though strained with the phantom of tears unshed that she seemed to be keeping back by sheer willpower, as she said, "that isn't your job, Zor. I'll get her before inspection."
Kinga flung her bunkmate a look, but her voice was utterly without malice. "That heart of yours will get you into trouble, Nirari."
"I'll live." This time, Ina returned Zoran's gaze, very levelly. "I'll see you guys out there."
Zoran stepped back. "I'll kick your ass, Nirari."
She grinned. Zoran had always been told he had a soothing smile; he couldn't imagine that it could compete with hers in any world. "I can't wait to see you try, Czarnecki."
The dormitories were alive with noise now, the to-and-fro sounds of teenagers hastening to readiness. Pekka was finally putting his shirt on. As Zoran returned to his bed, he noted that the bed next to his was empty, where it had been occupied by Eifion Rhydderch only the evening before. It was not unexpected at this late hour – if you were sixteenth out of sixteen, there was little hope of advancement in time for the final assessment – but it still struck Zoran as a little tragic. So many nights he had stayed up with Eifion, listening to the younger boy talk about his sick mother and the father that had left them before he had been born. They had murmured softly to avoid the impeccable hearing of Commandant; Eifion's position in the class had been such that he could not afford the demerit accompanying a curfew infraction. Zoran could only hope that Eifion found a purpose out there in the world, beyond the training grounds. Opportunities to visit home were so few in number for the Warrior candidates; the longer training stretched on, the more drastically altered the child who arrived on his family's threshold.
Zoran had a sister he barely knew. She had been born two and a half years after his recruitment. When they met, she treated him politely, as she would a strange soldier. They shared only blood, and this path transcended blood. It had to.
He quickly dressed, rebuttoning his shirt as he did so, and made his bed again. There were certain shortcuts one learnt, after nine years living this life – like the fact that Commandant rarely checked the evenness of the sheet-fold on the second layer. There were certain aspects of military life in which the Warrior candidates were held to a lower standard than their infantry brethren; personal grooming was one such arena. The other Kur, enlisted and conscripted alike, had their head shaved on their first day in camp. With one striking exception, when Pekka had been pinned down and forcibly sheared for illicitly assisting other candidates in assessments, the Warrior candidates were just ordered to keep it out of their faces.
Right now, Zoran was too exhausted from the previous day's training for anything other than running a hand quickly through his hair; he presumed it would be fine, as it had been fine for ninety percent of inspections before now.
Last day, he thought. It did not feel like the end. It felt like just another day. It had begun as so many did.
They assembled, as they had assembled so often before, on the green in front of the barracks, lining up as evenly as they could with only fifteen cadets remaining. Zoran tucked himself, as he so frequently did, into the rear line, beside Ragnar Kaasik – third row, four across – and Kinga took up her habitual position beside him. They held their hands by their side, loosely, and maintained their unwavering gaze, straight ahead, despite the sun rising slowly directly in front of them. Commandant left them there as he entered the barracks for inspection, and Zoran allowed himself a quick glance across the candidates, wondering if Ina had kept her word.
No – he did not wonder about that – but he did wonder whether Nez had heeded her comrade. But Nerezza Astaroth was in the second row, looking as languid as she usually did. The tiny Azula was positively dwarfed beside the tall girl.
Commandant seemed like he was in a bad mood when he emerged once more. Perhaps he had not found anything to criticise. After a perfunctory roll-call, he threw a loaded pack to the person nearest to him – Ilja Shovajsa caught it with a low grunt – and dismissed them for the morning's death march. So far, Zoran thought, so normal. Was this really their last day? The whole day seemed so shot through with mundaneity.
As they made their way over to the gates of the compound to begin, Zoran's gaze strayed to the rankings pinned to Commandant's office door. He updated it regularly; when there had been more of them, each new iteration of the list had been treated like a rarefied ritual, with cadets crowding clandestinely around the porch to see if they had progressed even a single place with all of their fervent efforts. As more candidates had dropped out, the rankings had slowly calcified as the cadets made their true aptitudes known. Checking the list had slowly deteriorated into a weekly habit, with a small group dispatched from the mess hall to bring back the news to the others. The top two places were frequently in contention, as were the bottom two; the middle rankings rarely moved much.
Nonetheless, change of place was still a cause for celebration – or despair – for many. As they passed the office, Zoran could not help but feel some inch of fatigue budge and give way for a modicum of pride. There he was: fourth place. Strength or speed had not won him that place; he had paid for it with many years of blood and sweat, training in the dead of night while the others took what little sleep they could snatch from the jaws of exhaustion. Zoran had spent several long months feeling as though he were more blister than skin – though, he thought, he wasn't sure if anyone would have noticed a difference if that was the case. Soon, he thought, he would be paid the dividends of all of his hard work. He would be a Warrior. He would bring honour to the Kur. And theirs would be a noble cause. To be entrusted to bear the burden of a Schreave Curse – that was special, indeed.
He would not allow this opportunity, this dream, to slip from beneath his fingertips.
The weight of the packs was a familiar pain. He pushed through it. The death marches became easier, little by little, the longer you performed them, though Commandant was known to be a little sadistic by adding laps if he thought the candidates were finding it too easy. Zoran remembered trying to explain the run pattern to Achille D'Amboise, only a few days before the older boy had dropped out of the programme for good: if you pushed through the first few laps at a steady pace, ignoring the fact that your feet felt like concrete, heavier each time you lifted them, by the time you hit the fourth mile, you were so enmeshed within your own thoughts that you barely noticed your surroundings melt away around you. If you ran tucked in alongside the wall that encircled most of the camp-ground, then you wouldn't have as much wind resistance to contend with either; you'd still be reasonably fresh after the first hour. On the eighth mile, you'd start to feel that fatigue again; that was usually when those who had been leading the pack began to drop back from sheer exhaustion, and when Zoran poured on a little more speed to strive for a few extra places ahead. During his fifth month in the programme, the laid-back Decebal Nicolescu had clued him in to the fact that your placement didn't matter so much as your time did – it didn't matter if thirty people were ahead of you as long as you were faster than you had been last time.
That's what Zoran strove for: just a second or time beyond his last finish. Each time, just a tiny bit better than he had been before.
This morning, in particular, it seemed like it came easily to him; he jogged a few lengths behind Ina for much of the first few miles. The effort was just the wrong side of exertion to allow for conversation; they ran in silence for the most part. At the front, Kinga led the group at a steady pace, her motions as rigid as an automation. At the tail, Nerezza moved at a pace barely faster than her normal walking speed, just behind Meilikki Zorrico.
He didn't need to strain himself too much; the finishing places were much as he had expected them to be, with Pekka sprinting past Kinga to secure first place, leaving Zoran himself vying with Ilja Shovajsa for third and fourth. He crossed the threshold a few metres behind Ilja, but still three minutes faster than the day before. That was enough, he thought, that was enough. As he leaned over and set his hands on his knees, straining not to throw up, he caught sight of Commandant and in his three visitors.
It was them. It was them – three of them, at any rate. Decebal Nicolescu. Avrova Vovk. Jaga Szymańska. The Warriors. The cursed. The xrafstars.
It was hard to tear his eyes away from them. They were not a particularly tall or visually impressive bunch – Pekka was a foot taller than Decebal; Ina was much prettier than Avrova, with a kinder face; Nerezza had a far stronger build than Jaga – but they held themselves with a particular quiet confidence. It was utterly intangible; Zoran could not have said what, in particular, drew the eye. They took up space in the world; they seemed to demand that the universe made space to accommodate them, they who were impossible, they who went against every law of nature and reality. They seemed tired, and smaller than they had the last time Zoran had seen them – or maybe it was he who seemed bigger.
He did not dare to approach them without being invited to speak with them, though he caught Decebal's eye as it roved across them and grinned in reply. Instead, he fished out two water bottles from within his loaded pack and, as Ina crossed the threshold, passed one to her. The second was for tiny Azula as she staggered across the line, her face pale and drawn. As she gulped down water, Zoran carefully helped her to drop her pack in such a way that she would not injure herself further. It was lighter than he had expected it to be – maybe Commandant had taken pity for once.
"Thanks, Zo."
Zoran shook his head. "Don't mention it, Zula. How's the leg?"
"I'll live." Taking advantage of Commandant's distraction, Azula slipped down to the ground for a brief moment of rest. "We never have to do one of those ever again. Isn't life great?"
Pekka clearly did not have the same reticence as Zoran; the blond fellow had gone to stand beside Kinga, and speak quietly to the Warriors, who smiled and laughed to see him. Zoran envied him – god, he envied him – that ease, that confidence, that simple likeability. He wasn't sure how much that could simply be chalked up to physicality: it was surely much easier to exist in this world, well-liked and well-regarded, when you looked like Pekka.
Ina was drawing in those half-shallow breaths that suggested her lungs were scorching slightly with every inhale. She had outdone her usual best, arriving in sixth place some dozen minutes after Zoran. She said, "you must be happy with that."
Zoran nodded. "Yeah. One of my better times."
She raised an eyebrow. "Not satisfied with fourth place, Czarnecki?"
"You can improve on everything except perfection, Nirari."
They were moving slowly in the direction of the green for second muster. Zoran took advantage of the relative privacy to say, softly, "all okay?"
She bit her lip, and nodded. "Of course. You know what I'm like." She waved her hand, and rolled her eyes. "It's just… stress. Last day jitters."
"Okay."
She patted his elbow distractedly. "Focus on getting into third place, okay?"
He clasped his hands over his heart in mock heartbreak. "You don't think I could make first?"
"I think," Ina said ruefully. "You know your competition better than to ask me that."
Zoran smiled. He did not feel like smiling.
Commandant was returning for correctives. Ina turned quickly to call – "Pekka! Muster!" – and Zoran quickly assumed his place as he watched the Warriors depart slowly. They seemed to leave hollows in the air where they had been; their absence was in itself a vacuum that the world did not rush to fill. There was a peculiar quality to the air where they had stood.
Magic, Zoran thought, magic running from their pores and their eyes and their mouth, and staining the world around them, perhaps indelibly. Was this what it was to be a Warrior? Would that be him, ten years hence, watching his own successors train? Watching with – was that pride? Maybe they had been disappointed. Maybe they had come to pass their blessings on to Kinga and Pekka, and Kinga and Pekka only.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
Commandant wasn't even standing in front of him before he began tearing into Azula for her poor time. She was struggling to stand, but bowed her head under the onslaught. Zoran ached to put a hand on her shoulder, and tell her not to worry. It wasn't personal – it was the last day. It would have been totally unlike Commandant not to get a few last tirades in while he could.
After Azula, it was Nerezza's turn. Quite unusually, Commandant did not lay into her; he merely gestured that she should step out of line, and square off against her immediate competitor. Nerezza was number eleven, one place below Ragnar Kaasik, and at perpetual risk of failing to make qualification as Warrior. Having arrived last in that day's death march, she would have to make a quick recovery to make sure her position was not so low that final assessment could not redeem her. Commandant indicated that Ragnar should step out of rank also.
They squared. Zoran could see clearly the way that Nerezza furrowed her brow that even she had recognised this as a sink-or-swim moment. Across from her, narrow Ragnar was looking a little more uneasy. Nerezza worked as little as she was able; the fact that they all knew that to be true, and the fact that she had nonetheless survived nine years in the Programme, were uneasy bedmates. Ragnar was too intelligent a man not to be concerned.
Commandant said, "two rounds. Tap out. Let's see."
They circled each other on the grass. They usually did combat training out back, where the ground was slightly softer, and drills were usually tightly choreographed to teach some skill or another – extricating yourself from a hold, disarming your opponent of knives, flipping someone larger than you were. Sparring concluded each session, and each candidate gave as good as they got.
Even so, Zoran doubted they had ever seen Nerezza at her best.
Ragnar moved first. He made a few exploratory jabs, seemingly testing her defences as they moved, and then brought up a left hook that glanced off her chin and left her stumbling back a step or two. She was pursued by another two, similar blows, that had her reeling slightly. That wasn't like Nerezza – Zoran didn't like the look of this. He could tell that Ragnar did not either. He feinted left, and jabbed right. Nerezza's block was immediate, and firm; she snapped up one elbow to take his blow on her forearm, and jabbed with her other, catching the narrow fellow on the cheekbone with a nasty sounding crack. He faltered; she moved in again, unrelenting – she punched him, hard, in the throat, and then again in the face. Her fist landed in his right eye-socket, and there was the unmistakeable sound of splitting bone.
The next time she moved in, Ragnar grabbed her, grappled for a grip on her shirt, and tapped on her shoulder for the end to the first, brutal round. Whether Nerezza did not hear him, or did not care, was not clear – she planted her foot, pinioned his arm tightly against her chest, and swept his leg out from under him just as she twisted her hip to hurl him over her shoulder. It was just as they had been taught– but they had always been instructed to drop low with their opponent, to avoid twisting their arm unduly. Nerezza did not do this. Nerezza stayed standing, and there was the sicking sound, something which could not be adequately summed up as a snap, as Ragnar's elbow bent in a way it ought not to have bent.
He dropped, and Nerezza dropped after him, a second later, elbow-first. Her face was stained with blood. Zoran could hardly believe his eyes, and he knew he was not alone. Her comrades, watching her, strained to intervene – the lines in which they stood seemed to swell with a certain distressed outrage – but Commandant had made no motion to end the round despite Ragnar's clear attempt to surrender.
What was he waiting for?
Nerezza was going to kill him.
She cocked back her hand now, and laid into him again; she wound up again, and found her arm abruptly arrested in motion – Pekka had broken rank to seize her by the wrist, and haul her off the bloodied Ragnar. "That's enough." His voice was low, and gruff, and somehow dangerous; he seemed utterly heedless to the way Commandant was watching him now. "He told you to stop."
Nerezza was gazing at him from behind those lazy lids of hers. "Did he? I didn't hear him."
"So I'm telling you."
Commandant said, slowly, "I said two rounds, Hämäläinen."
"Sir." Pekka set his jaw, and dropped Nerezza's arm. Realizing Commandant's attention had been diverted, Zoran caught Ina's eye; the two understood each other without needing to speak, as they stepped forward softly. Ragnar was barely conscious, trying to stand but apparently struggling to recognise that he was unable to prop himself up on his broken arm as he did so. Ina pulled his intact arm around her shoulders, and Zoran put his arm around their comrade's waist, as they pulled him off the green and onto the sidelines. Nerezza watched them, her mouth set in a thin red line; Pekka glanced, very briefly, in their direction, his brow furrowed.
"I'm owed a round, Hämäläinen."
"If you want me to fight, sir, say so."
"Seems a bit unfair, don't you think? A big man like yourself..."
"I'll do it." Kinga stepped out languidly, with a hand raised. "Sir."
"Szymańska." Commandant raised an eyebrow. "Risking your precious ranking?"
"No," Kinga said softly. "I don't think I am."
Ina had run for the first aid kit; as Pekka cleared the green to allow for Kinga and Nerezza to take their places, she returned with bandages to splint Ragnar's arm. Pausing at the sight of the older candidate, Zoran saw an unmistakeable look of concern flit across Ina's face. "Bleeding, Pekka?" She reached up to gently rub it from his cheek, her thumb drifting across his lip as she did so. It felt like intruding on a private moment to watch them; Zoran looked away, and began to set Ragnar's arm.
Were they to be the next Warriors? Really? They weren't near ready. They couldn't be. Look at what Nerezza had just done to Ragnar...
"Not mine. It's okay, Ina. You guys did great." Pekka glanced down at Ragnar. "Is he alright?"
"He will be," Zoran said softly. "Nez..."
"Nez gets carried away," Ina said, her voice tight. "But even so..."
Kinga had a bounce in her step as she moved into the position Ragnar had just vacated. Nerezza seemed minutely less passionate about defending her status, now that she was satisfied that she had proven to Commandant that her position in the programme was not to be questioned. Nonetheless, even Nerezza Astaroth seemed unwilling to outright defy a man as imposing as Commandant Konrad Sauer, and so the two girls faced one another: Nerezza held herself tightly with an expression that suggested she wished she was still in bed; Kinga had a relaxed posture. Zoran wasn't sure if he was imagining it, or if Kinga seemed to be savouring this moment.
"Let's see," Commandant said.
Kinga did not even wait to size Nerezza up. She lunged forward, so quick that Zoran thought at first that she had made a fatal error of judgment. But no: she struck true. She hit Nerezza, very firmly, so hard that the other girl's head snapped to the side; she stumbled back; Kinga pursued her with a round-house kick, which Nerezza evaded narrowly; then Kinga struck her, hard, with a hook-kick that caught Nerezza, hard, in the throat.
Kinga had brought her leg back to chamber, clearly preparing for another blow, when the other girl stepped back and held up her hands and said, simply, "I surrender."
Kinga faltered in her step, recovered her balance, and rolled her eyes. "Right."
Nerezza blinked. She had never looked more innocent in all her life. "I don't make the rules, Kinga. I surrender."
Kinga was clearly about to retort when Commandant said, sharply, "you're like damned rats, eatin' one another. I want another death march – six miles, full packs. Anyone who makes it back before lunch can earn their meal on the obstacle course." He jerked his head. Zoran stumbled back to his feet; it looked like Ragnar had a concussion, for which Zoran could provide little first aid. Even so, leaving him for another run seemed like wanton negligence. He was about to say as much, when Commandant continued. "Get going. And make sure you all think hard about why you're here – and why you deserve to stay."