Chương 16

The peace cord was still knotted through Cal's sword guard when he crossed into the first practice yard. Three men beside the water trough stopped talking. One had his mouth open around the beginning of a word. He closed it, and all three watched Cal pass. … Well, that's an encouraging start. The martial annex occupied the eastern angle of the Academy walls, where the noise of steel would trouble classrooms less. Its outer yard was broad enough for formation drill, paved in scored stone and divided by white lines.

Beyond it stood two roofed halls, several enclosed courts, an archery ground, and a row of smaller yards with gates that could be barred for private instruction. No sign forbade Cal entry. None was actually required. Cal walked the outer yard. Household knights worked beneath striped awnings while servants carried water and clean cloths. Their armour bore minor scratches in the approved places and shone everywhere else.

In the nearest enclosed court, a swordmaster in black gloves corrected the stance of two young retainers wearing the same iron hawk across their breasts. Farther down, Academy-certified guards drilled in pairs. Good leather. Serviceable steel. Fewer attendants. The remaining fighters occupied whatever space had survived those arrangements. Hired blades worked against posts near the drains or waited for a strip of open ground.

The noon heat lay over the paving stones, and the smell of oiled leather mixed badly with old sweat. Cal understood the division at once. Asterhall had made every yard available to every recognised retainer. Money and reputation, however, still decided who got shade and enough space to practice. He walked along the boundary line, looking for room. Another sentence cut short as he passed. The other man's mouth formed a word and abandoned it. A man in green livery lowered his practice sword.

Another touched two fingers to the scar below his ear, then murmured something to his partner. Cal's name had arrived ahead of him. The inquiry had ensured that much. He had compromised an Academy contract, confessed to accepting payment for an abduction, killed the other men involved, and emerged with the intended victim as his patron. Perhaps the registry should have issued him a second badge. It could have read: COMPLICATED. The thought improved nothing. The stares and glares continued.

Near the rear wall, he found a narrow practice square between a rain cistern and an empty equipment shed. The paving there had sunk at one corner. Moss darkened the joints, and the shed roof denied him shade without providing shelter from the heat. No one objected when he entered it. Cal set down the longsword and checked the peace cord. Untying it for ordinary yard practice would have been legal, but doing so right now would not have been worth the hassle.

He had come to "reacquaint" himself with this body before attempting anything ambitious, and paperwork, not steel, was the likelier danger. Across the yard, steel struck steel in controlled intervals. Boots scraped. An instructor called for a guard position to be repeated. Cal removed his sash, folded it beside the cistern, and lowered himself to the paving with the sheathed sword across his lap, and calves curved in the lotus position. The lean, flexible body ensured the posture came easily.

That was Cal's contribution. John's contribution was the plan, which consisted of imitating half-remembered cultivation novels and hoping the laws of this world respected genre convention. He shut his eyes. The original Cal's instruction survived in fragments of use rather than language. Weight settled over the hips. Shoulders released. Breath entered through the nose and left in a slow count.

When John searched for a formal lesson, he found repetition: sword cuts performed until the wrists failed, footwork traced until the legs shook, Martial Aura expended until the body refused further exertion. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Essentially, muscle damage with a dose of mystical branding. Very educational.

Somewhere online, years ago and a world away, John had a vague memory of reading that the author of The Hollow Crown had modelled martial warriors on cultivators from other serials in a bid to differentiate it from regular magecraft. He remembered the explanation appearing beneath an argument about whether Aren could defeat forty iron-rank swordsmen if deprived of magic, clothing, and narrative favour. John was not sure how true this was, but the idea did have some merits.

Martial Aura filled the role of qi; martial warriors the cultivators. Still, cultivation protagonists meditated. They sought insight. They compressed power into cores, seas, wheels, furnaces, pearls, and assorted internal organs that ought to have prompted urgent medical attention. Cal's own training had favoured exhaustion and blunt force. Trying both approaches gave him two opportunities to fail. He drew on the Aura. Warmth spread from the centre of his body into his shoulders and thighs.

The response was immediate enough to feel involuntary. His back straightened. Pressure built behind his hands, and the small noises of the yard acquired hard edges: a heel turning on grit, a blade sliding across a leather guard, water spilling into the trough. Too broad. He let the enhancement subside. The warmth withdrew slowly, leaving a mild tremor in his fingers. His scar remained quiet beneath his shirt, but the weakness from blood loss had not entirely vanished.

Sera Venn would probably disapprove of the experiment. Fortunately, Sera Venn appeared capable of disapproving from several buildings away. Cal waited until his pulse settled. On the second attempt, he prevented the Aura from reaching his limbs. Containment produced an unpleasant pressure below his ribs. He reduced it, shifted his attention lower, and tried to gather the energy in his abdomen. It felt like holding a tightened muscle, the only caveat being he didn't possess said muscle. He adjusted his breathing.

Pressure dispersed. He started again. The yard continued beyond his closed eyes. Sword strikes established a count, then lost it. Men called for water. A gate opened and shut. Cal followed the Aura each time it spread, locating the first divergence, drawing it inward again. The procedure became simpler after several repetitions, though simplicity did not make it easy. Gather. Contain. Release. Sweat ran from his temple into the collar of his shirt. His legs grew numb against the stone.

He registered both conditions and left them unattended. The gathered Aura contracted further. At first it occupied the breadth of his abdomen. Then a handspan. Then less. Its warmth remained diffuse around the edges, but the centre acquired density, a distinct point his attention could return to after every breath. Interesting. Cal held it there. For several minutes, concentration required continuous correction. A noise from the adjoining yard pulled at him; the Aura loosened. An itch near his jaw did the same.

He recovered the point, held it through another breath, and narrowed his attention until the surrounding yard became a list of irrelevant signals. The stone was hot beneath his ankles. A hammer struck somewhere inside the annex. Someone laughed. Then those details ceased to require notice. His breathing continued without count. The pressure in his abdomen remained stable.

Cal's awareness reduced to the gathered warmth, each boundary plain and close, as if he had set the edge of a blade against it and trimmed away everything outside the cut. He sought whatever came next. Nothing announced itself. No revelation arrived. The Aura stayed where he had placed it. That was enough to keep him there. When Cal opened his eyes, the paving stones had turned blue with evening. For a moment, his body failed to provide useful information. His feet had disappeared.

His hands rested on the scabbard but might have belonged to a corpse arranged for burial. The point of warmth in his abdomen remained present, compact and oddly easy to find. He released it. Sensation returned in painful stages. Cal unfolded one leg. Pins and needles drove through his calf, and he stopped moving until the worst passed. The outer yard had emptied. Practice swords stood in racks beside the wall, and someone had covered the water trough. Lamps burned beneath the eaves of the training halls.

Several hours. Gone. He had come to practise longsword cuts. He had completed none. On the other hand, he had sat very still with exceptional commitment and possibly established a new method of Aura control. Cal braced one hand against the cistern and rose. His knees objected. The scar pulled faintly when he straightened, so he waited, testing the sensation until it eased, before bending at the hips to reach for his sash. A silhouette was standing motionless beneath the eaves. Cal turned.

His right hand closed around the longsword's grip before the rest of him caught up, the inherited movement direct and economical. The peace cord stopped his thumb from clearing the guard. A man stood beside the empty weapon racks, partly within the shadow of the roof. He had positioned himself where he could observe the narrow square without entering it. Cal could not tell how long he had been there. Although the face was unfamiliar to the body he wore, John knew it at once. Salt-and-pepper hair.

Startling blue eyes. A scar crossing the face diagonally from left to right. Armsmaster Bors Kilhane watched him in silence.