Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (34 page)

The days were growing warmer. Changing seasons did nothing to
dim the memory of the storm, but as the weeks passed, Aedan began to wonder if
he had truly heard a voice or if his imagination, awakened by the impossible
sights, had lent a hand. Yet, when he drifted towards scepticism, there was a
strange discomfort, a whisper at the back of his thoughts that he could not
entirely hush. It insisted that not only had the voice been real, but that he
would hear it again – and it caused his chest to hammer out the rhythm of
emotions he couldn’t even begin to understand.

Aedan went as often as he could to see his mother
who was looking more settled and had begun assisting at a nearby scrivener’s
office. She was always delighted and proud to see her growing son. Harriet
compensated for that by being even more bull-headed and domineering than before.
She had given birth, and her young child did not seem to have tired her or diminished
her enthusiasm for interfering in Aedan’s life.

There was still no news of Clauman. Aedan’s doubts
about his father’s character refused to wane. It was those doubts that held him
fast whenever he considered making enquiries. He decided it would be safest to
wait for news, though he hoped it would not be too long a wait.

On his free days, he would often find himself
wandering alone in a forest or sitting atop a windy hill. Sometimes he waited on
a plain while heavy clouds drove in from the west and the old familiar song of
the rainbird filled the air with anticipation and his heart with memories of
the Mistyvales.

First, the wind would rumble in the distance like
an approaching river, then he would see grass bend, pressed by a great
invisible hand. The dull rumble would rise in pitch to a swishing, lashing
exultation, causing stalks to lie flat against the ground while the tougher
branches of shrubs held themselves up and shrieked their defiance in the gusts.
Then the first drops, cold and heavy, would plummet from the sky and burst on
the ground. Aedan could not have held the smile in if he’d tried. He would pull
his oilskin over his head and let the deluge press down and wash over him until
the drops spent themselves, thinned, resolved into a fine haze and painted a
rainbow across a dripping sky.

On these solitary outings, he always carried the
leather case with the design of the oak sapling and the toadstool, and though
he often took it out and stared at it, he couldn’t muster the courage to look
inside.

Often, he turned towards the west, towards Lekrau,
and reminded himself of his purpose. Yet there were moments when he considered
the enormity of what opposed him, when he wondered if he was not being
completely unrealistic, and he wondered – even if he could bring justice to Lekrau,
would it truly bring him peace?

But he dreaded that lost feeling of purposeless
existence. Any purpose, he thought, was better than none, and what better, more
noble purpose could he possibly find than – as Osric had put it – felling the
oppressor? To this end, Aedan trained harder than any of them. When the others
moaned about a particularly strenuous challenge, he saw it as an opportunity to
increase his strength. And increase it he did. His injuries, while they still
gave him a little stiffness after a heavy day, no longer held him back. Often
he would be the first to complete the courses Dun and Wildemar set. If any kind
of woodsmanship was involved, none of the others were even close.

The boys now jogged regularly to the tree-mantled
hills and exercised the various ranging skills they were learning. Using ropes
for safety, they climbed many of the rocky faces, scaled the city walls, and
traversed sections of forest without touching the ground. In good weather they swam
across the dam once a week, in bad weather twice. The daily routine had grown
more demanding, but they now managed it, if not quite effortlessly, at least without
that cloying exhaustion. Even those who had additional literacy classes were
beginning to get a hold on things.

The sessions with Dun always included duels as
individuals, in pairs, and in groups. Sometimes they fought with weapons but
often without. Dun taught them many ways to defeat opponents using crafty,
sudden movements, and always using whatever the environment offered. At first
he made them fight at half speed to nurture the habit of thinking. Repeatedly,
he would stop a fight and ask why someone had not swung the rope lying at his
feet, kicked the sand in which he stood, or pushed over the line of barrels
instead of treating them with timid respect. “Think boys, think! I cannot do it
for you.”

They began to move more quickly, to hit harder and
with fluid ease, and above all, to think. Aedan’s imaginative love of strategy
was finding an interesting outlet. Since his humiliation during the first
challenge, he had never again engaged in any form of combat without thinking it
through, and he was finding that he could not only match the others, but better
them. He came up with the strangest ideas and seemed to draw them from some
inexhaustible supply.

Once, when facing Warton with blunted training
spear and shield, he slipped off his boots, drawing odd looks, then lobbed his
spear high into the air so that it arced just beneath the ceiling and fell
towards his opponent. Warton followed the trajectory, along with everyone else,
snorted at the stupidity of the decision and stepped forward, allowing the
spear to drop behind him. He watched it clatter to the floor and looked around
just in time to catch Aedan’s shoulder full in the chest. Bare feet had enabled
a soundless charge while everyone was looking at the ceiling. Warton was rammed
and borne to ground.

The tricks were never repeated, and they worked
more often than not.

Hadley was the strongest and best balanced, Peashot
the slipperiest. Second to Aedan, Peashot was the one everyone most dreaded
fighting. Malik often fought dirty, ignoring the limits that had been imposed.
Many of the boys let it pass, too intimidated to object, but nobody in Aedan’s
dorm cared a whit for Malik’s high standing. They took great pleasure repaying each
dirty blow with another until he reined himself in.

One morning, Dun told them of a regiment that had escaped
an enemy prison without tools or weapons, and been unable to survive the
journey home. He vowed he would allow no such incompetence within the ranks of
marshals, so the boys began learning how to make tools and weapons from what
their garments and nature provided. They began with a class in which they used
sharp rocks to cut slings from the material of their shirts, though for the
exercise they didn’t actually use their own shirts – scrap cloth was provided.

They practiced with their slings and with better-made
leather versions until they were able to hit a rabbit-sized target at twenty
paces with reasonable consistency. Some who had not used slings before, proved
dangerous at first. Mistiming their releases, they launched stones in any and
every direction, even backwards. There was more than one injury before the
skill was mastered.

From there they moved on to batons, clubs, and
quarterstaves. Wildemar took them through the forests where they found and
prepared their own quarterstaves from the trees – oak, blackthorn or hawthorn
being preferable to softer woods like pine or fir. In Castath, the
quarterstaves were normally harvested by coppicing – cutting a tree low to its
base, resulting in straight or slightly curved shoots. But this resource was
denied the apprentices, and the subsequent hunt for straight branches did much
to develop their eyes.

Wildemar showed them how to heat-bend wood
directly over a fire. By wedging one end of the heated staff in a forked tree
and leaning against the other, they were able to straighten even a very crooked
branch.

Spears were next, but when it came to bows, it was
time for the specialists. Everyone knew how to find a hopeful-looking branch
and string it, but as Dun had stressed, in some terrains a man could wait a
week for a long shot at a buck, and a poor bow could mean his own starvation.

“It’s time for you to see a true bowyer at work –”

Peashot raised his hand. “A what?”

“A bowyer is a bow-maker. For the first time, I
have managed to convince Torval, the most sought-after bowyer in Castath –
perhaps in all of Thirna – to give you a demonstration. It will be … difficult
for him.” He sounded hesitant, like someone struggling with delicate
information. Aedan wondered what Dun was not telling them.

“I will not be there,” Dun resumed, “Master
Wildemar will take you – so I’m warning you now. Don’t give Torval cause to
grieve his decision.”

–––

Streets were still dark and empty but for a few carts –
farmers trundling goods in to market, store-owners setting up for the morning’s
business and travellers stealing a march on the day. Wildemar, with the
apprentices surging behind him, crossed the city to a large workshop alongside
the main timber yard. The workshop was airy and quiet. Dozens of workbenches
cluttered with tools awaited the bowyers who were just beginning to drift in
and take their places. Peashot kept to the front, eager eyes consuming every
detail.

The smells of sap, resin and wood shavings were
alluring; some of the sweet woods like maple were almost appetising. For Aedan
it brought back memories of forts and tree houses, and of one unforgettable
autumn when everyone at Badgerfields got involved building the new hay barn in
the west field. With a sigh he drew himself back into the present.

Wildemar led them to a work bench at the end of
the building, where a man was seated, waiting. This would have to be the
legendary Torval. He was an elderly man who Aedan decided was unmarried, for no
wife would have allowed him out in such mismatched, tatty clothes. He had a
narrow rim of grey hair, a heavy bulging brow, huge gorilla arms, and a
surprisingly meek expression. Aedan was at first surprised, then shocked.
Archery’s great Torval actually looked afraid. The boys recognised his kind immediately
– the kind that would be eaten alive if put in charge of a classroom – and
their confidence surged forward to dominate the space vacated by his.
Fortunately, Wildemar remained with the group.

Cayde asked in his biggest voice if Torval had
been a military archer. Torval’s eyes dropped and he shook his head. Wildemar
stuttered and mumbled and wasn’t sure where to look. The response left everyone
puzzled.

After a lengthy and awkward silence, in which
Wildemar waited for Torval to assume command and Torval quietly studied a spot
between his mismatched shoes, Wildemar coughed and proceeded to rush through an
unprepared introduction. He presented the two most commonly used bows in Castath
– longbows that were plain, tall and sturdy; and flatbows with powerful broad
limbs that were thinned along the belly. He then fetched something from a rack
that did not look like a bow at all. The short limbs were curled in on each
other like the legs of a dead spider.

“This is one our bowyers have been experimenting
with,” he explained. “Lekrau was the first nation to start it. A small
composite of different woods. See the belly? Strips of deer horn, stronger in
compression. On the back – sinew, stronger in tension.”

He surprised everyone when he strung it – a tricky
business that required half sitting on the bow – by bending the limbs what
looked to be the wrong way, against the original arc. The result was a tight
little bow that vaguely resembled some of the recurved flatbows, though the
curves were far deeper.

“Impressive power, these little weapons, but they
tend to break easily, too easily. Crack, snap, gone. Don’t think we have the
glue right yet. Helped us improve our other bows though.” He pulled down a
strongly arched wooden bow from a long rack. “Sinew-backed,” he said, pointing
to the semi-transparent layer. “Increases draw weight and makes the recoil
faster, much faster. Improves the lifespan too. Someone want to try it?”

Peashot sprang from the group before the question was
out. The length and weight of draw were too much for him, but he succeeded in
plugging an arrow very near the centre of the target.

Torval’s face lit up with surprise and pleasure.

“Screaming fine shot!” said Wildemar. “Didn’t
expect someone your size to manage it. Here, try the composite. Might suit you
better.”

Peashot’s eyes were glowing as he took the little
bow. He sighted before drawing, pulled the string and pushed forward into the
handle.

Crack!

The bow split and the arrow spun away and clattered
to ground.

“Oh,” said Wildemar. “Uh, sorry Torval. Very
sorry.”

Torval retrieved the bow gently from Peashot,
holding it as someone might cradle a child. Some of the boys laughed. Torval winced
at the sound and turned away to hide his broken creation behind a rack of saws
and files.