Clattering of blades, the ring of steel.
The smell of ozone, and occasionally coal-fires.
Sweat, sour and filthy. The sight of blood. Many rows of men, some Shadrim, some clean of scalp, exercising with wooden sheaths over their swords. In the distance, archery targets and rows of shooters practicing. Units of men running in formation around the great field.
Tents everywhere, fires among them tended by halfling and other servants.
Officers striding among the groups, barking orders.
Far off, from another training field, sounds of explosions and thunderclaps as the battlemage training grounds saw use.
This was the first view of the training grounds Azrael saw as his group was marched around the bend in the road. The exhaustion he felt was tremendous, he’d never walked so far in his entire life. They had started the morning before, and marched all night to the grounds. His boots, new last spring, were quite literally falling apart at the seams.
“Unit – HALT.” The lead Shadrim said, emphasizing with a crack of the spined bullwhip he carried. The entire group came to a stop at roughly the same time. The leader squinted his eyes shut and shook his head.
“My lord, recruits await your leisure.” He called out with a salute to a figure across the field at a command tent. The man, who bore no horns to identify him as a Shadrim, turned and walked over.
“Mahar, what have you brought me? I asked for recruits, you bring me raw meat!” Balenor – for Azrael could see it was Balenor now – looked up and down the ranks. “These pathetic bags of gut and fat couldn’t fight if you set fire to their clothes. This is almost an insult, Lieutenant. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Sir, I think at least some of them are salvageable. May I have your indulgence of three months’ time with them?” The two of them were walking down the line, side-by-side. As they approached, a human two rows ahead of Azrael leaned on his knees, breathing hard and mumbling to the man next to him.
Without so much as a glance away from the devil walking beside him, Mahar’s whip slithered out and reached clear across the man’s back. With a snapshot *crack*, the man’s clothing was ripped from his left buttock to his right shoulder, blood already welling freely to the surface. The man went down like a sack of wheat, screaming and rolling, reaching around to try to cover the fresh wound.
Mahar stopped with Balenor next to the man. Balenor watched, impassive, as Mahar stepped over to him. “On your FEET!” Mahar screamed the last out as he kicked the man mercilessly in the ribs. “You WILL” another kick “rise to your FEET” another kick “in the presence of ME” a third “and you WILL NOT” another “speak unless SPOKEN TO” still another “in the presence of HIS LORDSHIP.” The man had stopped rolling, and was somewhere near or just past unconscious. Blood drooled from his nose and mouth.
Mahar looked around. Pointed to Azrael. “You.” Pointed to another recruit. “And you. Take this bag of **** to the medics – over there” pointing with the whip “and return here. DORIAL!”
Another Shadrim from the rear of the party came forward. Not one of the other forty-odd members of the troupe looked away from Mahar as Azrael and the other man picked up the unconscious body and dragged him away. Dorial jogged forward. “Sir?”
“Get these filthy maggots billeted and fed. They have work to do in two hours. And make sure those two don’t get overlooked.” He waved after the retreating backs of the two men and their burden. “See to it that the other is repaired and punished.”
“Yes sir.”
“The rest of you. Listen UP.” Some form of magical augmentation must have been used, Azrael thought, since he could hear the man from across the field even as he receded. “This is Lord Balenor. He is my commander. You will NOT speak to him unless spoken to. When you do, you will call him My Lord or Sir, as you do me.” He turned to the calm aspect of hell beside him. “My Lord, may I proceed?”
The devil looked around again, and his only response was to nod.
Weeks passed, then months, and Azrael’s sense of time faded in and out. The beatings, trench-digging, running EVERYWHERE, and the occasional meal just punctuated the torturous dragging of the moments. Despite this, and seemingly without realizing it, his hands began to understand the blades, the string of the bow, the chant of the march. After the second month he was ushered into studies of military history – reprieves from the endless physical training that were almost utopian in their stillness.
At the end of the third month, when the original troupe had been reduced to thirty-two individuals, finally the review came. All the troopers were sharp. Their formations were crisp. Tactically superb. They were ready to fight and knew it. For the first time since their first day, Balenor took to the field to give his approval.
Walking up from the back of the rows of men, he stopped before each squad, walked up and down the row, and finally gave a short order to the squad leader ordering him to his destination. The squad leaders then took their men, and marched to the determined site.
He halted where Azrael had led his squad to formation. Looking at the men down the line, he didn’t even pause or look in Azrael’s direction. The Shadrim’s gaze followed him down the line, concern and irritation at being passed over slitting his eyes. His focus on Balenor was so intent that he did not even hear Mahar stepping up behind him. As Balenor moved back up along the row ahead of Azrael’s, the young officer could hold back no longer.
“Balenor?”
The devil did not change stride, did not even change the angle of his head. His eyes merely glanced in the Shadrim’s direction, and locked upon him. After a moment, he almost seemed to coast to a stop.
“Balenor.” Azrael would have stepped forward, if Mahar hadn’t at that very moment reached out and locked his arms around his neck, almost cutting off his breath. The surprise was so thorough that it was all Azrael could do just to keep his feet, as Mahar had held him up to just the point where he could barely keep his toes in contact with the ground. His tail thrashed to maintain balance and a croaking gasp echoed out.
Mahar whispered in his ear. “Perhaps you weren’t told on that first day?” Mahar’s eyes gleamed as he held Azrael’s head cocked to the right. “Did you not hear me?”
Balenor had quietly moved around to face the Shadrim directly. “Mahar, what have we here?”
“A promising cadet, my Lord, who has chosen a most inopportune time for insubordination.”
“Your assessment of him, Mahar?”
“Aside from the last few moments, he has been the best of the crop, sir.”
Azrael began to understand then. Without a moment’s break, he lowered his hands and stood fast, choking on the grasp around his neck. Mahar slowly released him. After a few stifled coughs, Azrael bowed, then stood at attention.
“My Lord, I have spoken out of turn.”
“Indeed. Why?”
“I thought you…”
“Stop. I know why. Do you understand now why not?”
“Sir, yes sir – I…” he paused a moment “…made the misjudgment that our conversation before my enlistment granted me special permission, My Lord.”
“Did it?”
“No sir.”
“Your blade.”
Azrael’s knees almost buckled at the request. His hand shook – proudly, he noticed only a little – as he drew the serrated dagger from his bandolier and presented the hilt to the devil.
Azrael didn’t even see the strike, he only felt a sudden jarring pressure above his left eye. Heat rushing down his face. When he re-oriented himself, he saw the haft of the dagger hovering above him. The blade, embedded in his left horn, had laid open his face from his nose all the way up, narrowly missing his eye.
“Mahar, do you approve?” Balenor didn’t even blink. Perhaps that was the most disconcerting thing about the surreal experience.
“My lord, yes. Thank you. Finding a replacement of his quality, in spite of his flaws, would have been a difficulty.” Azrael fought to keep his feet, dizziness was shaking him.
“You wished to ask a question, Azrael?” The green irises floated across to him, serene in their dominance.
A moment of staggered thought. “My lord, yes. My…my squad. I had hoped you would tell me where we would be going.”
“I had intended to wait until last for you.”
“I see, sir. Please accept my apologies, sir.”
“I do. Would you still like to know?”
“Only if it pleases you to say, sir.”
“It does. Report to the command area. Your squad is to join my guard today.”
It took what felt like ages for the thoughts to traverse from Azrael’s ears to his mind. The General’s personal guard. The finest troops formed the core of the battalion – and the General was not shy about seeing action. In spite of the blood and dizziness, Azrael recognized it for the honor it was.
“Thank you, sir. I will not let you down again.”
“See that you don’t, or next time it might cost you a bit more.”
He barely realized, halfway there, that the smiling man carrying him on the right, Joerrg, was the same man whom he’d helped carry on the first day of training.
