We weren't taught how to swing a sword. We weren't taught how to deflect blows. We were taught how to stab. We were taught how to dodge. All of the men around us seemed to be the same. Simple, three pint-effectice maneuvers, stabbing straight into the skin, and then dodging backwards That was what we did. Stab, dodge, sidestep, stab. Constant, over and over. If you missed a step? You were take away. If you stepped out of the lines placed against the ground? You were taken away. In the two weeks that we had left, they were culling us, taking the ones that were weaker and murdering them. If you questioned the legality of this kind of process? Murder.

The Prince didn't complain about it. It was quite possible that it was his parents that had signed off on it. I didn't complain about it either, mostly because I didn't have a choice. If I complained, I would be hanged. So I fought. i fought with desperation and ferocity. I swung my sword as hard as I could, levelling it with the only weights that I had, slamming it as hard as my muscles could allow me. Each time that I got things right, I was rewarded. Rewards were small, but they were the incentives, the opposites of the ultimate punishment. If you did things the way they wanted you to, you’d get just a little bit more food maybe, or even longer shower times than the rest. You were rewarded even higher if you didn’t take advantage of these rewards. If you didn’t take the longest shower, and went out with everyone else? They got you a nice little bed to sleep on.

It was the last week now, and I even had a thin blanket to throw over myself on during the night. We were about to start being taught commands. They were hand gestures, we’d been told beforehand. Had gestures that Generals used to communicate certain situations when speaking wasn’t an option. Something the General called espionage, or infiltration. It wasn’t something that you’d have to do often, but they still expected common Knights to know the procedure.

I’d never been told to study too many things in my life. The only things I’d had to study were the slight cues. Things that people did when they were angry. There were these subtle hints on a person’s face that you needed to know to react accordingly. It had gotten me out of some fights, and it had allowed me to start others. So I was sitting up in bed, not for the first time, trying to figure things out with the Prince. He was giving me studying tips.

“You need to figure out how to learn what they’re teaching you, that’s the first thing. Back when I had tutors, they tried multiple different ways to get me to hang onto the things that I learned. Almost all of them included repetition. Repeating the lesson back to the tutor, writing down the lesson multiple times. I think...If we do the gestures, and maybe even practice them at night, like, teaching each other outside a bit, we might be able to hold onto them,”

I nodded, it made logical sense, and fit together in my head; I looked to the third boy, who was staring towards the ceiling of our small little alcove, “You with us?”

In all earnesty, I was surprised that he’d made it. He hadn’t gone over the bar like I had, or even stayed on the mark like the Prince had. Each moment had seen him almost consistently slipping towards the below range. Yet he’d still managed to keep himself just above the minimum requirement. It made a part of my mind suspicious.

“Huh?” His eyes seemed to physically dilate, “Oh, sure. If it helps us learn. I’ll get through,”

“Well,” The prince stretched, “I think we ought to go to sleep. Have a lot of fighting and studying to do in the morning,”

That was another thing. We weren’t just practicing on dolls. There was a surplus of Knights, and we had been fighting almost every single day. Not every single fight ended with people being killed, of course, but there were some particularly vicious older men, and nobody had been told to hold back…

I laid my head down on the board that suited as a mattress, and grabbed the ragged and itchy thing that they’d given me for a blanket. It was comfortable. Or, as comfortable as something at home would’ve been. I pulled it up, and rolled around, before closing my eyes.

-7

‘The Clock’ was the first thing we had to learn. It consisted of a full circle, with directions mapped to specific areas upon a standardized wooden clock. If someone called out ‘Six o’clock’ it meant enemies were behind you. Likewise, if they called out at ‘One o’clock’, it meant enemies were just to the slightest bit right from the area you were standing. It was something Knights used to gain directional standpoints amongst themselves.

It was a day’s worth of similar things. A pointing finger from a General or a superior meant you were supposed to go in that direction. A ‘V’ made with the fingers was meant for splitting the party into a flank, whereas three fingers with a general triangle-shape, meant a flank with one force going in from the front.

Everything that they showed was surprisingly easy to understand. Just directional rotations and simple hand-work for orders. It was really only meant for if you didn’t get a briefing to the plan beforehand. Last minute planning and stratagem from your superiors.

The middle of the day quickly rose up, and we were all forced onto the Archer’s Range. From there, we were given our bows, with a different set of arrows. Normally, we worked with something proper and sharp. Today, however, we were given dulled arrows. A couple of the Generals were amongst us, and they quickly separated us into five teams. From there, we were each given different colored helmets. Ours was that of red, and the four other teams were purple, blue, yellow, and green. From there, we were each handed long rods in the shape of a sword, with a guard and everything fashioned from a sickly looking material.

Our concept was simple. Take down the opposing teams as quickly as possible. We wouldn’t be given any orders as was expected from a proper battle, instead, we were expected to make it alive on our own wits.

One of the generals took our team, and dragged us deep into the surrounding forest. They took our backpacks (Or took the backpacks from those who had brought them), and then left us alone. There was no hint towards where our enemy might be, and neither was there even the slightest bit of help. We had no compasses, and we were lost in a forest.

My first thought, was to attempt to use my magic. Perhaps if I could figure out how to manipulate it, than I could give us a directional coordination. But the memory of what had happened to that boy flashed through my head. I realized, then, that I hardly had an understanding as to how my magic worked. I didn’t know what it could do, and neither did I know how I could manipulate it. Through a logical lens, it was something I should only use in an absolutely desperate scenario. It wasn’t something I should use if I was trying to find navigation, if I didn’t even know how to activate Navigational Magic.

“So what should we do?” One of the men was asking.

I fell out of my thoughts, and into my proper surroundings. What should we do? We didn’t know where the enemy was, and neither did we have any hint as to where they would be. Which likely meant we only had one plausible scenario.

“We survive,” I replied, “What else can we do? We’re lost in a forest, so we keep our eyes out for the enemy, and we march,”

“And how are you any measure of authority, you’re just a kid,” One of the older men snarled.

“Yeah, I’ve killed three other people my age, you’re point? We’re Knights for fuck’s sake, it shouldn’t matter what our age is,”

“Even if he isn’t a General, the Kid’s still right,” Someone else spoke up, “There’s nothing else we can do, unless you suggest we use these blunted arrows to hunt?”

The older man sighed, pinching his nose bridge, “Alright, so what are we supposed to do while we’re surviving? We’re in a forest, there’s likely to be animals, and not the kind you see on the outskirts of the city,”

At that, a couple of the men shuddered. I looked at the man in bewilderment. He eyed me with the slightest of glares.

“I don’t understand,” I said, making my cluelessness obvious.

“Ah! So the boy doesn’t know everything? What a shocker. Did you enjoy city life?” The old man snarled at me.

Somewhere in the back of my lungs came the shiver of cold. I stared towards the man for a long moment, before breathing in, and then out. He had a gleam in his eyes, and I knew what he wanted. What he wanted was for me to swing my sword, or to shoot an arrow. If I did that, he could retaliate. Given the size difference, there was absolutely no chance that I’d be able to do something. So what I needed to do was attack verbally.

“My parents were drug addicts,” I said, putting as much bite into the words as I could manage, “So no, I didn’t get to go out of the city, because they didn’t have the money for the clearance. They were too busy paying attention to the drugs,”

Some of the men flinched at that, but the man didn’t, “What, did you expect to garner my sympathy from that? Half of the damn city is filled with the rot of drugs. It’s nothing new, and it doesn’t make your circumstance special,”

I almost recoiled from the pure amount of apathy in his words, “You’re right, it isn’t anything special, but I’m sure you’ll understand that I had to learn how to do things on my own, and as such, am predisposed to figuring out the links in a situation without any help. And, if I’m feeling generous, I enjoy sharing those observations with others so that we can actively link the situation together. So, if you have no use in helping others, than I’d kindly advise you to shut the fuck up and die,”

A silence stretched along our band for a long moment. The man stared towards me with cold eyes before snorting, and then looking down towards his bow. He didn’t say another word. Neither did most of the other folks within the circle. I looked around before nodding, and then sat myself against a tree.

“Does anyone care to tell me about the monsters? It’s more profitable to spread information so that we all have a proper understanding of what we might be dealing with,”

One of the men with gray in his hair coughed, he had a scratchy voice, as if he’d been smoking for a couple of years, “The monsters, that may or may not be in this here forest, they’re creatures corrupted by magic. Some call them Goblins, from the old tongue. They used to be Goblins, you understand? Small little green creatures. They used to be as sentient as humans, before they got their hands on magic, than something changed. They became ravaging creatures who destroyed without a thought, and with that destruction, their bodies changed. There are others, but those are far more rare, and best to hope to never see in the first place,”

I nodded, “Thank you. Now, do we want to move, or stay in the same place?”

After a long moment, the Old Man answered, “If you’re taking advice, I’d like to move. There might be something to find. It is entirely possible that the Generals have left hints,”

I considered that for a moment, “Movement sounds fine. So long as it’s after something credible. We’ll look for hints, but not just from the Generals. We’ll try to find any hints of tracks from the other groups,”