Memoirs of a Fallen God

Chapter 20

I won’t dwell overlong on the specifics of my life at the fort. I believe my experiences were, for the most part, rather ordinary where training was concerned. We learned what we could learn as fast as we could learn it. It did become clear right from the outset, though, that our squad was different. Separate.

Every squad was unique, sure, but ours was downright strange. Where other squads followed handbooks, and drilled, and practiced marching in lockstep, we sparred. And sparred. And sparred some more. Jeer had precious little respect for the pageantry of warfare; that was one lesson I learned very well indeed.

I will say, though, that life as a soldier was not at all in keeping with my youthful fantasies. There were no wise and noble knights in proud livery eager to take new recruits under their wings.  The truth was a thing utterly devoid of romance. Just a lot of people scrambling to learn the rudiments of martial combat in hopes of staying alive when things turned ugly.  The result turned out to be a bit like life in the fields, really: someone was always barking orders and the work was hard from sun up to sun down. With my background in menial labor, I took to it like a bird to sky.

In fact, I was rather smug about just how quickly I picked up sword training. Within a week I was keeping pace with Tore; a week after I was winning more often than not. Add to that Jeer’s approval when I suggested the whole squad learn Tore’s finger language so we could communicate without speaking, should the need arise. I strutted for about a week after that, right up until it came time to start learning hand to hand combat. It turns out I have two left hands, and neither one of them could land a punch. Archery was even worse—it seemed as soon as the arrow left my bow it took on a life of its own. A brief, downward life.

Rove, our resident archery expert, had no explanation, but after the tenth time my arrow hit the ground only a few paces in front of me, he shrugged, peeled the bow from my hand, and said, “Stick to throwing rocks.”

Still, despite my failure to bring all things martial under my dominion, I took some solace in the simple fact that there were few times I wouldn’t have my blade near to hand, and, if I found myself in such a situation…well, I was still a very fast runner.

We managed a month of training before we had our first assignment. As a newly formed squad we weren’t given a particularly difficult task. All we had to do was check in on a missing patrol…which was far less dramatic than it sounds: late patrols were something of a daily occurrence at the fort. Travel time was very hard to predict in the ever-changing jungle.  

The other recruits were excited to be out of the barracks, after a few months (or in Tore’s case, nearly half a year) waiting around for the squad to round out. I, on the other hand, felt barely qualified to march around in the slightly-too-large boots in which I was outfitted. Truth was, if we ran into a troop of Bleeders, I didn’t really have any idea what to do. They’d given me a sword and a uniform but I felt a long way from the soldier I was supposed to be.

“Don’t worry, lad,” Jeer told me, when I confessed my fears around the campfire the first night out. “If we do run into any trouble, which we shouldn’t, just you stick near Galore and me. We’ve been through the fire a time or two, we’ll see you through, too.” The big man’s confidence did more to allay my fears than an extra month or two of training, I think.

The jungle itself was the first enemy we engaged. How anyone found their way through that quagmire I’ll never know, but Rove lead us without so much as pausing. There were no roads, nor even any paths I could make out. Travel came down to knowing the jungle, knowing the various landmarks and where they lie in relation to one another, and paying very careful attention. I’m glad it was someone else’s responsibility.