Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (20 page)

Something zipped through the crowd and Aedan felt
another stinging bite behind his ear. The impressive accuracy only made him
angrier.

Clerks made their voices heard. They divided the
assembly of boys into fifteen groups of twenty and directed them to bunks in
the army barracks. Only those who made it through the selections would see the
inside of the academy and the marshals’ training grounds.

Aedan gritted his teeth as he spied the red-headed
pea-shooting tormentor at the back of his group. Peashot – that would be an
appropriate name. Debtors had to have names and there was a debt to settle. It
was appropriate that this heckler had the same red hair as Emroy.

An army sergeant was assigned to their group and led
the way through the heavy iron gates of the barracks, across a large courtyard,
down an airy corridor and past many doors with numbered brass plates above them
– sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. They stopped outside number nineteen. Inside
was a long room lined with beds, upper and lower. The boys waited while two
clerks conferred. Aedan drifted to the back of the line where Peashot idled and
looked about with cocky self-assurance. His arrogant slouch and mean little eyes
were enough to light Aedan’s fires. The rage stored away from fantasies he had cradled
of revenge on his father, on Emroy, on the Anvil, surged up in him until he
almost choked.

It was time to change things. He had been weak
under his father, but today was the beginning of a new part of his life. He
would no longer sit passively and be a soft target for every malicious boot. If
scores were not settled, who would ever learn to respect him? They needed to
know that he was not afraid to take revenge, and it would begin now.

With no introduction, he grabbed the smaller boy’s
ear and twisted it until he saw the look of pain.

“If you want to keep your ear, midget, then aim
elsewhere. Understand?”

The little boy tried to grab for Aedan’s face and
kick at his shins, but the pain Aedan was causing took the strength from those
efforts. The little foxy eyes, though, were defiant, even mocking.

Aedan’s anger leapt in him and he made no attempt
to tame it. He hit the boy in the stomach and shoved him against the wall,
thumping his head hard against the bricks. The defiance fell away like a
shattered screen and revealed someone very young and small. Aedan saw his
advantage and twisted the ear further. “Understand?” he repeated.

“Yes,” the boy said, coughing and gasping.

Aedan was filled with a strange elation. Power,
control. At last he was taking charge of matters. Instead of cowering in
corners, he was dealing with those who needed to be put in their place.

He grinned to himself as he walked away. He felt
good. At least he expected to feel good.

Instead he became aware of a strange creeping discomfort.
He tried the smirk again, but it reminded him of the way the Anvil had leered.
He straightened his face out and began explaining to some inner judge why it
had been necessary, how the debt was now settled.

But he knew he had done more than settle a debt.
It had not been about justice at all. He had let his anger out to satisfy
itself. And the aftertaste was not sweet. He tried to pass it off as a small thing,
but small as it was, it carried the odour of his father’s “lessons” as if
poured out from the same jar.

And then he imagined what he would see in Kalry’s
face if she had been watching – and perhaps she had. He felt a deep revulsion
with himself that drowned out the next set of instructions.

Boys were rushing into the room, leaping onto the
hard boards. Aedan was left with the bed at the entrance. He noticed that
Peashot had no choice but the one above his. The boy tried to hide his face. Aedan
guessed the reason when he saw a sleeve dabbing downturned eyes, and he could
not smirk now.

The soldier was speaking, “Your first assignment
is to collect bedding hay from the army farm on the south road. You are all
injured. Five of you have a useless leg, five a useless arm, and the rest are
blind.” He handed out white bandages and allocated afflictions to the
disappointed boys. “If we see anyone using an injured limb or a blindfolded boy
using his sight, he will be going home before supper.”

On that first day there was a lot of laughter and
names were learned quickly. Nobody from Aedan’s group went home, but it was
rumoured that three from another group had cheated and been sent away in
disgrace.

Though he joined in as was required, the day was
poisoned for Aedan. He could not help but notice that Peashot neither laughed
nor smiled all day. He resolved to make amends as soon as possible, so that
evening he took his dinner plate and sat opposite the small boy who had found
an empty table.

“Listen, Peashot, I’m sorry for being an ass
earlier. I was just angry. If I can help you …”

The boy stood up and left the table without a
word.

Aedan felt as foolish as he looked, sitting alone.

The next day they ran around the city twice, seven
miles that had them gasping for breath. Aedan managed the first lap easily, but
during the second his leg began to weaken. Since recovering the ability to walk
he had not attempted such sustained exercise. He was one of the last ones back.
On his return he was directed to the stables where he found the rest of the
boys. The first job was to take out the old straw, which had them trying not to
breathe, and the next was to empty the barrack latrines, during which, ten of
the better-dressed boys staggered out and simply went home.

At the evening meal – an uninviting colourless
stew that tasted vaguely of lentils and smelled, like everything else, of
latrines – Aedan tried again to apologise and met with the same result. It was
no less embarrassing.

He realised that he was feeling constantly
awkward. When there were activities under way, he, like everyone, was slotted
into some kind of social grouping by duties or by the officials. He belonged. But
in the idle time, little clusters or pairs of friends drew together and he was
left standing alone. Peashot had joined in with another group.

As a small-town boy, Aedan had never really made
friends; he had simply grown up with them. He wasn’t sure what to do or how to
do it, and began to feel increasingly out of place. At times, when he took his
bowl to a table by himself, too uncertain to impose on anyone, the loneliness
and embarrassment of his isolation became so strong he started to consider just
walking out on the whole thing.

One evening, approaching his empty table again, he
decided it was time to put timidity aside, time to cross some barriers. He
recognised a rowdy group from his dorm and sat at the end of one of their benches.
Since leaving the Mistyvales he had still to share a decent conversation with
anyone his age, so he was more than a little uneasy. As he sat, the talk died.
All eyes turned on him.

“You’re the northerner, aren’t you?” asked a
strong, dark-haired boy with handsome features and the most unusually bold,
piercing eyes. Aedan had seen him often. Malik was his name. He was popular,
definitely someone who would be good to have as a friend.

Aedan smiled. “Yes, I got here before the winter.”

Malik frowned. “Why would I care when you got here?”

There was a ripple of partly withheld laughter. Aedan
felt a sudden prick of doubt. Had he aimed too high with this group? They
seemed to be speaking a language of their own to which he was not privy. Their
eyes were full of it.

“Tell us something interesting about where you’re
from, North-boy,” Malik said.

“What do you mean?”

“Anything – something that we wouldn’t know.”

The boys gave him their full attention, but not in
a considerate way. Their fascination reminded him of how jackals or vultures
behave around a stumbling fawn. He tried to string his thoughts together, stumbling.

“Well, uh, something, that maybe, I don’t know if
you’ve heard, but the snow there can easy get to three feet on the fields. In a
bad winter, that is, sometimes.”

Blank eyes regarded him.

“Sorry, North-boy, but was that it? The interesting
thing. Deep snow?”

“Well, it was always very exciting, uh, that is
for us at least.” Aedan was thrashing about in his memory for anything that
could rescue the situation. “Once we lost a sheep and we had to burrow around
for half a day to find it. Thomas actually – Thomas was my friend there – he got
lost himself even though he was only twenty yards from the pen.” Aedan laughed
to cover his discomfort. He laughed alone.

Their eyes were lances. Then, when he fell silent,
the whole table erupted in hard, barking hilarity. He had never known laughter
could be so unfriendly. His appetite was gone, but he dropped his eyes and ate
simply to disguise his humiliation and confusion.

He did not belong here. They did not want him.

“Hey North-boy, sing us a song. They say that you
northern lads have voices like milkmaids.” The laughter broke out again. This
time the table alongside had caught on. More than one reference was made to his
pretty bonnet bandage that covered most of his head. “Silence everyone! A song,
a song!” They stared at him, hungry.

Though nothing showed on his face, Aedan was
drowning in a maelstrom of anger and tears. He dropped his spoon in the bowl,
stood, turned, and headed for the gate. A wave of boos and jeering rose up and
struck him from behind. It only helped to carry him forward.

When he reached the gate, it was shut. The guard
had slipped away. There was another boy waiting, tall and skinny as a winter
tree.

“You also wanting to leave?” the other asked.

Aedan nodded. Then he looked up. “Your accent is
different,” he said.

“I’m from Verma.”

“Don’t fit in?”

“Not with this crowd,” the tall boy said. “Anyone from
outside Castath gets treated like gutter scum. Not all of them are bad, if I’m
honest, but there’s enough of the bad ones to turn everyone else rotten.”

“Oi!”

Both boys looked out through the gate and Aedan
took two rapid steps back. The Anvil stood just within the light cast by the
barrack torches, his gang assembling around him. He strode forward, dipping and
hoisting his shoulders, thrusting his chin, jerking from side to side. This
time there was no mistaking it. The half-dancing gait was a studied and
perfected expression of raw hostility – threat, challenge, defiance all combined
and embodied. It was almost as if belligerence had been turned to art and then
made to walk.

For the first time, Aedan got a proper look at the
Anvil. He was not the biggest member of his gang by height or breadth, but he
was certainly the biggest by presence. He swaggered and jinked with an expansiveness
and intrusiveness that dominated the space around him. Quick hands twitched and
quicker eyes constantly thrust here and there like accusing fingers. He did not
wear rags. His clothes looked surprisingly good, but nobody would have taken
him for a young man of class. The way he carried himself bespoke his character
all too clearly.

“Look at the little army men! Nice and safe behind
their little gate,” he shouted. With a sudden lunge, he reached through the
bars and swung a thick club, catching the tall boy on the cheek and knocking
him to the ground. There was a roar of applause from the gang.

“Oi, would you be looking at that one,” said the
Anvil, pointing his club at Aedan. “I think we remember you, and I think we
know your name. What’s his name, lads?”

“Ooze-head!” they roared.

“Come out here Ooze-head. I think you’ll be
needing some attentions from us. Last time you left early. But I heard you
stayed to watch your friend. Isn’t that so?”

The boy from Verma was on his feet again,
tottering slightly. “What does he mean?” he asked Aedan, his voice shaking.

“Don’t know. Never seen him before,” Aedan lied,
immediately wishing he hadn’t when he saw that the boy believed him without question.
It felt like the time he had tricked a lamb into taking a mouthful of feathers
and glue. At first Aedan had thought it would be funny, but by the end he was
laughing only to conceal a growing misery at betraying the simple animal’s
trust.

And this open-faced boy had not deserved a lie,
even a little one.

Aedan’s thoughts were interrupted as something
struck his shoulder hard. He saw the club skittering past into the shadows. He
turned and walked away from the gate.

“Thief! Thief!” he heard from behind him. “You
stole my club! You’ll be coming out here and handing it back from your knees or
I’ll hunt you down, you duck-livered coward!”

Aedan kept walking. He saw the guard hurry back to
his post and heard him shout at the gang, but the Anvil was not to be put out
by a soldier behind a fence. He shouted right back and the jeers rose from the
rest of the gang too.

“Come into our world, soldier man. Let’s see how
long you last. We’ve marked you now. We’ll know you. We’ll learn where you live,
who your family is. You fetch us that little thieving coward and toss him out
here or you’ll be sorry.”

It was the last Aedan heard. He hurried out of
sight, behind the buildings and found an empty fire pit. By the time he was
able to think clearly, the surge of self-pity that had almost borne him out the
gate had passed. The boy from Verma settled on the other side of the fire pit.
There was blood on his cheek, and it looked like he was trying not to cry.

“What’s your name?” Aedan asked.

“Lorrimer.”

Lorrimer was as awkward as he looked, but there
didn’t seem to be a mean bone in his gangly frame. And Aedan discovered that it
only takes a single friend to put loneliness to flight. He would be able to
face the next day. They both would.

The rest of the month continued in a medley of exercise –
running, hauling, climbing, even icy swimming, and a good deal more menial
labour. Aedan and Lorrimer remained, but some boys found, as Balfore put it,
that other callings sang more sweetly in their ears.