Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (27 page)

 While Dun’s execution was smooth and powerful,
the results on the floor were a motley misery. Knuckles and elbows bled owing
to poorly aimed, skidding impacts. Every now and then, a boy holding a bag
would totter and drop to the ground clutching an arm after his partner had showed
more enthusiasm than accuracy. Some demonstrated surprising skill. Hadley and Warton
were in equal possession of sturdy limbs, though Hadley’s fluid grace and easy
confidence were not to be matched. But even he was breathing hard by the end
and showed more than one pink knuckle.

“Enough. Bags down.”

The exhausted boys dropped the bags with trembling
hands, only too happy to be sent to the safety of their books. “Three laps of
the blue course: balance beams, ropes, jump, sandbag-haul, climbing wall, crawl
and sprint.”

They groaned.

Dun smiled and picked up a short whip. “Anyone
need encouragement?”

The first lap was enough to make them realise that
this was a different world to the army course. The beam was round, the ropes
smooth, the drop from the platform high and the hay shallow, the wall had grips
that all sloped the wrong way, and the sandbags were heavy. Aedan was the last
to finish. Resting his leg over the past weeks had eaten away at his fitness.
It was obvious he was the weakest in the class.

As they collapsed onto chairs in the first
classroom, they wore a general expression of shock.

“Ah,” said Giddard, walking in. “I see you’ve had
your opening class with Dun. Enjoy the introductory pace while it lasts. In a
few weeks you’ll be laughing over these easy days.”

He seemed unaware of the mute, staring disbelief.

“You have each been issued with books that you
will find in your shelves when you return to your dorms,” he continued. “During
the classes, I expect you to take notes. The seven of you who are not yet
literate will attend an additional class every night in order to catch up. You
will need to work very hard indeed if you wish to progress to second year with
your companions. For now, I recommend that you listen and file things away in
your minds as best you can.”

The lesson covered the discovery of gold in the
north and the founding of the first village, later to grow into the great city
of Tullenroe. Giddard explored the formation of society, how the freedom from
homeland administration was reined in by the need for a perceived cultural
stability. Several interesting questions were put to the class, but apart from
some soft whimpering, they had little to say.

Law followed. Rodwell gave a second introduction
to the subject, stressing that the detail would never reach that of the
full-time legal administrators on the far side of the campus, and recommending
deference to them in any legal matter – local, regional or foreign. He then
launched into the lesson with passion, spit flying and pelting the first two
rows. But neither his shrill voice nor dancing chins were able to draw much
response.

In navigation and cartography the boys were given a
demonstration of perspective error when the class was split in half, taken to
the tops of two opposing buildings and told to map the ground ahead of them.
When they returned to the class, the crude maps were lined up in two rows. In
almost every case, the drawings from opposite sides disagreed significantly.
Understanding the problem was crucial to the reading of potentially faulty
maps, and the drawing of accurate ones.

Kollis’s love of foreign relations stood in bold
contrast to his feelings for domestic ones. He spent a good deal of the lecture
glaring at Aedan, challenging him to just open his mouth and provide cause for
a whipping. Aedan ignored him. With his skinless knuckles and elbows, he was
simply too uncomfortable to bother with the silly man.

They broke for lunch and this time Peashot came
very close to finishing his bowl – a beef-and-lentil stew. He even made it more
than halfway through his small barley loaf. Lorrimer was on hand to assist.
Little was said at the table as hunger towered supreme. It resulted in unrestrained,
squelchy chewing and desperate gulping. Aedan noticed the matron looking
around, writing down a few names, no doubt for some remedial classes in table
manners. Marshals, as ambassadors, were apparently not permitted to eat like
farmyard animals.

They were given an hour to relax on the central lawns where
hundreds of students stretched themselves out in the sun or pursued games
across the broad space. They found a shady spot, and before Aedan knew it,
someone was kicking him awake. “You’ll be late if you don’t stir.” It was
Peashot. The others had already gone. Aedan wobbled to his feet and was barely
able to walk. His mind was awake, mostly, but his limbs were still drifting in
some gentle dream and wouldn’t respond properly.

The next class was war strategy. It proved the most
interesting of the day and woke him up quickly. Skeet explored the details of
the sea attack on Stonehill, the abandoned coastal fortress. The fortress was
one that was soaked to its spires in mystery; there were aspects of the defences
that still eluded understanding. Speculation, of course, held far more interest
than fact, so the boys were altogether caught up in the wondrous strangeness of
it all.

Woodcraft was a new topic for some, but Aedan had
to keep from rolling his eyes at the simplicity of the information. His father
had taught him well and had him building shelters and rigging snares by age
four, tracking by five, and able to navigate and fend for himself comfortably
by six. Nevertheless, he found Wildemar to be one of the more fascinating of
the masters. He looked rather like a mongoose or a squirrel with his bristling
hair, sharp eyes, and movements so fast and unexpected that conversation behind
his back was discovered every time.

Languages surprised them with a re-appearance of Giddard.

“In this class we will cover the introductions to
six new languages that you will all learn with fluency acceptable to ambassadorial
conversation. I see by your faces that you consider this to be a lot, and
indeed it is far too much for a single class, which is why, after a few months,
many classes will be presented in foreign languages. Every master can speak all
six proficiently and at least three with native fluency. There is one at the
academy – though you are not likely to meet him – who speaks thirty-seven with
proficiency and fifteen with native fluency.”

Mouths gaped.

“In time you will be allocated days of the week on
which only a certain language may be used. Breaching this will result in punishment.
We will arrange for you to begin spending dinners with foreign families who are
connected to our headquarters. There you will learn not just the language but
the manners and finer points of behaviour. As marshals you are to look and
sound at home in the courts of any of the six major peoples connected to us by
trade or threat.

“Understand,” said Giddard, clasping his hands before
him and leaning back against his desk, “this is not like archery where a slight
drift from the centre of the target is expected and compensated for on the
second attempt. On foreign soil you cannot afford or correct a slip like ‘I
would like to eet your family’. Only one letter is missing, yet an ambassador
who makes errors like that is likely to go missing himself.”

The class was beginning to like Giddard. He had
the look of a peach that had spent winter on the tree, but there was a young and
ready humour that ran just under the aged surface.

“Unfortunately, it gets more complicated than just
being correct. There are different levels of society and while doing any, shall
we say, infiltration work, you will need to understand those levels in order to
get the language wrong in the right way.”

The faces that had lit up at the mention of
infiltration now grew puzzled.

“Let me explain. Think of our own city. Compare ‘Might
I trouble you for a draft of water?’ with ‘Could you be swingin’ a chug maybe o’
tha’ there wa’er for us?’ We recognise immediately the different classes. The
second request is full of errors from structure to unpronounced consonants, but
they are the right kinds of errors, errors a native speaker of that class would
make. No native speaker, regardless of class, would have made that first
mistake I gave you. That is the kind of error – and there are limitless
possibilities of them – to betray a foreigner. Understand?”

The puzzled expressions faded.

“Just like a weapon, a language is used in many
ways, and you must be comfortable with the basic forms. So pay attention during
the social outings. They could one day save your life.

“Culture, too, is treacherous from subtle
tell-tales like approaching someone across a class divide in Lekrau to the
mortal offense of moving a hand behind your back during a conversation in Vinterus.
In Orunea, people greet with a kiss on the cheek. Try that in Sulea and you’ll
have your lips removed. Look one of their married women in the eye and you’ll
have your eyes removed too. I’m sure you can understand how diplomatic
overtures between those two nations have never met with great success. Neither
nation cares much for the ways of the other so negotiations are normally doomed
from the outset.

“The academy exists in part to prevent such
disasters. Castath’s walls are not the highest, but we have used knowledge to
secure many years of peace. So, with that in mind, let us begin with your first
additional language.”

Giddard launched into the basics of Orunean, the
language Aedan’s mother had taught him, the most common second language in
Thirna. There were three others who knew the language in the class. Kian, as Aedan
had earlier discovered, was a native speaker, having lived most of his life in Rasmun.
For them it was like being taught how to crawl.

The final class of the day was field surgery. The
boys’ eyes opened wide as they trickled into a large room filled with medical
diagrams, weird models that looked like they belonged inside bodies, strange
tools that made the young apprentices uncomfortable, and girls wearing hooded
expressions that made them even more so.

Mistress Gilda, a short, plump woman with a lively,
dimpled face bounced to the front of the class and called for attention.

“Ah, boys, we are so pleased to have you here! Rumours
of the dashing new apprentices have been drifting through our section,
distracting us horribly. It is so nice to finally meet you. Seeing as you will
be spending a lot of time here, I suggest that you all introduce yourselves
while I prepare the specimen.”

The boys’ discomfort soared to alarming levels. They
had individually encountered girls before this, but never twenty of them at
once; and those strange, amused looks did not help. Aedan eyed them with open
suspicion. Something was afoot. He could feel it.

Hadley was the first to break ranks and approach
the enemy. He bowed with polished gallantry as he gave his name and asked
theirs, even managing to say a few idle nothings that produced tinkling
laughter.

Other boys began to shove and show off and laugh
loudly to demonstrate they were not insecure or self-conscious, and that they
didn’t care what anyone thought of them. They glanced repeatedly at the girls
just to make sure that the message was being received.

Aedan kept very quiet. He was suddenly ashamed. Even
though none of the boys had made any more comments about his melted ear and singed
temple, he dreaded the attention of the girls. He knew their eyes would wander
across to that side of his face with morbid fascination; he knew that many of
the other boys would be forgotten by the end of the day, but he would be remembered
by all as the burned lizard. He drifted behind his classmates to the back wall
where he found Lorrimer trying to shrink away, his great ears burning.

“Hope they leave us alone,” the tall boy
whispered.

Aedan nodded.

Many of the others appeared to be having a jolly
enough time, some of them drawing together into talkative groups, Hadley’s being
the largest. Aedan and Lorrimer looked as uncomfortable as they felt.

“You two at the back there!” It was Mistress Gilda.
Aedan’s gut turned. “I’ll have no one hiding. Oh, oh, you must be Aedan.”

She bustled forward, caught Aedan by the elbow and
dragged him to the front of the crowd.

“Here girls, this is the one I was telling you
about, the one that Sister Edith treated.”

She turned Aedan so his bad side faced them and
lifted the hair. There were a few sharp intakes of breath among the girls.

“Now do you remember how we discussed the scarring
process and how the skin that forms is different to what was there before? This
is an excellent example. Can you see how the new skin has a thin and shiny
appearance and how there’s been no hair regrowth in this area?”

She carried on talking about the merits of the
right burn ointments and how the results might have been better had he come to
them earlier. It was all Aedan could do to hold back the scream of
mortification.

“Relax, my boy,” Gilda chided, shaking his tense
shoulders. “Nobody here is going to think less of you.”

Aedan wondered, as he saw the girls whispering to
each other, how a grown woman could be such a wool-head. He was somewhat
comforted, though, to notice that some of his friends looked angry enough to have
lost interest in the girls.

The mistress drifted back to her preparations, and
the murmur of conversation resumed. Aedan slunk away to the back where Lorrimer
and Peashot joined him.

“My father keeps pigs with better manners,” Lorrimer
grumbled.

“If it weren’t for all the girls standing around
us, I would have tenderised her,” the little boy said, twirling his peashooter.
“Before our classes with her are over I’m going to give her a few scars of her
own. She seems to like them enough on other people.”