1218 A.B.
The day came when all those who would turn eighteen the next year were required to report to the marshalling yard outside the barbican of Stonekeep castle. It was New Year’s Day, Oneday of Onemonth, and it was a nice, clear, sunny day as Onedays always were. Bran, Elle, Mira and I had all met up at our house beforehand, so we all arrived together. Bandit was around somewhere, probably stealing one of Johala Baker’s honey buns, if I had to guess. Each of us was armed, armored and carried a backpack that contained our meager belongings. We would be living inside Stonekeep for the next two years, and we were required to bring only the things we needed for soldiering with us.
Stonekeep Castle towered above us. It was a truly massive place. The keep was in the shape of two stacked octagonal sections, one of which was slightly rotated, and was made of one single rock, it seemed. There was no mortar anywhere in the keep except in the barbican, which had been added sometime after the keep’s construction near the time of the Breaking. I knew from Nora’s history lessons that the original keep had adamantine gates, and that those gates had been left open after the Mordonians had been deposed by Mithram’s ruling family. No one could close the gates or even move them, so the new rulers had to build a barbican to keep invaders out.
Stonekeep had eight strange, adamantine, frameworks in the shape of icosahedrons atop small turrets at its peak. From a distance, they looked a lot like candles, further adding to the illusion of a giant birthday cake. It also had aqueducts which were built centuries after the Mordonians left that carried water into the city from eternal fountains in the gardens situated where the two octagons met. It was a place of ancient secrets, and I was intensely curious to see for myself what was inside.
We waited around for a while in the marshalling yard before the gates, and I took that time to get a measure of the other youths. They wore a gamut of armor, from simple gambesons with nothing else to chainmail shirts with or without the matching chainmail pants. A couple of guys even had plate armor like us. They didn’t wear it well, maybe because it had been sized for someone bigger. It was normal that the youths here would have armor passed down from father to son, and I couldn’t fault them for that. I felt bad for them when the time inevitably came when they were blistered or bruised in places where the armor didn’t fit correctly, which I knew from experience would be coming, and soon. Observing their cocksure attitudes, though, I thought they could use a little humility the same way I learned it at the hands of the Terrans. Painfully.
Eventually a group of men came out of the keep. They were wearing plate armor, and they each had a gold chevron with a griffin gilded above it on their right pauldron, indicating they were sergeants in Mithram’s army. They stopped in front of the crowd of youths and sized them up for a long moment. The young men and women making up our year’s class of draftees shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny.
“All right! Listen up!” one of the sergeants bellowed. “Form a line starting at the kid with the circular shield over there and ending over there.” He certainly had a battlefield voice. I was pretty sure the entire city could hear him, so we had no excuse for not following his commands.
We did as we were ordered, and knowing we were about to be sorted, Bran, Elle, Mira and I made sure we were side by side in the line. It took a while, but the sergeants recorded the first and last names of everyone present on a scroll. Then they started counting from one to ten down the line and broke each ten-person group apart from the others. Fortunately, the four of us were in the same ten-man group, and we followed our sergeant to the place he indicated. As the last people were sorted out, they ended up with a six-man group. The sergeants didn’t look concerned.
One of the men was actually a captain, now that I looked closer. As I inspected him, he shouted in the same sort of monotone you would expect from a wagon wheel. “The men and women next to you are your talon. They are the soldiers who will be fighting alongside you should the city need to be defended. Your sergeants will see to it that you are made into proper warriors worthy of the name. Disobedience will be punished by flogging. Your sergeants will tell you what is expected of you when you get to your barracks. Sergeants! To quarters!” This guy clearly had a sparkling personality. What a pep talk.
The first four sergeants called out a rhythm, then started marching into the keep side by side. The youths behind them followed in four disorganized lines, completely out of step. I certainly hoped we got better at this. Terran children could march better than this fresh from the crib. We were in the seventh talon, and when the previous four talons had marched a certain distance, our sergeants called out a rhythm and started forward. Bran and I had no trouble knowing when to step, but the others hadn’t had the experience in the Terran army that we had. Not that I could see it at the time, but the others seemed to watch what Bran and I were doing, so our talon was slightly less disorganized when we marched into the keep.
I had never been inside the keep, of course. The barbican had strong timbers bound with iron making up the gates, each side of the double door being ten feet wide. There was a portcullis that could be lowered to brace the double door directly behind them and another portcullis about ten feet behind that. There were a couple doors on the left and right beyond the inner portcullis that must have gone to the guard chambers and archers’ stations. After that, there was a noticeable shift in architecture. The stone blocks ended at a solid stone wall with no joints and a massive pair of shiny silvery double doors with a bluish tint to them each ten feet wide and forty feet tall. These must be the original gates, made from adamantium, an extremely rare and practically indestructible metal. The gates wound be worth an entire kingdom if they could ever be removed, and believe me, the Kings of Mithram had tried. Two wagons could have easily been pulled side by side in here. As castle entries went, these doors were enormous. Everyone knows the smaller the gates are, the easier a castle is to defend, so having gates this large is only practical if you have what you know to be an indestructible gate. Eighty feet further into the keep we passed another, identical, set of adamantine doors. The corridor and the room beyond were lit with a comfortable yellow light that didn’t seem to have a source.
Beyond those doors was a gigantic octagonal room. The castle was situated so that we were marching straight north when we entered. The room was well over a hundred feet in each direction, including up. There was a balcony about halfway up that had crenellations in the stone. I remember thinking how odd this was. The crenellations were supposed to be outside the castle. There was a large design of different colored stones inlaid into the center of the floor in the shape of a star with eight points, and each of the points corresponded to a cardinal direction. In the center of the design was pictured one of those weird twenty-sided shapes that were on top of the towers above us and in the turrets on the upper city wall. Icosahedrons again, but I didn’t know what to call them at the time. There were hallways going off in each direction that the design on the floor did not point. The tips of the pattern in the floor pointed at blank walls except in the south where we entered, and in the north, where there was a closed set of adamantine doors. Each of the blank walls in this room was adorned with a decorative archway. The arches were the same size as the passageway and gates, about twenty feet wide and forty feet tall.
The double doors to the north were guarded by a pair of thirty-foot-tall statues that looked like warriors in adamantine plate armor. We all knew that they weren’t statues at all, but golems made by whoever created this place. The warriors each had a greataxe clutched in its hands, and strangely, each golem had two short tubes on its cuirass that stuck out straight ahead. The golems didn’t move, and indeed hadn’t moved in centuries. That was the last time anyone was foolish enough to try to open those doors. The golems always killed anyone who tried. Each one had a foot that was planted directly against the door behind it, and as heavy as those golems were, they would never budge an inch unless they moved themselves.
Our sergeant led us through the room and to the west by northwest corridor, which was also twenty feet wide. There were two doors on the left wall and two doors on the right wall. The fifth and sixth talons went into the far door to the left, and our talon and the eighth talon went into the near door on the left. Before we went in, I noticed that the corridor ended in a circular room with two of those archways on blank walls. The barracks that we entered was mostly, but not perfectly, rectangular. There was a chamber built into the northernmost corner on the right with a closed door. The barracks was lined with bunk beds on both sides with plenty of room to walk around all sides of each bed. There was a footlocker on each side of the bottom bunk and two armor stands next to the wall by each set of bunks.
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“This row of bunks is for talon seven and that row is for talon eight. Choose your bunks and stow your gear,” the sergeant said.
The other talon was marching in right behind us, so Bran, Elle, Mira and I headed deeper into the room on the left, farther from the room in the right corner. Mira and Elle chose the bunk on the far wall, with Elle getting the top bunk. Bran and I chose the bunk next to theirs. I looked at Bran, giving him the choice, and he chose the top bunk. No big surprise there. It had a clear line of sight to Elle four feet over. We each put our pack on the bed we wanted, effectively staking our claim, then turned to watch how the others fared.
Talon eight got the same instructions we did, and there was a mad scramble for the choicest bunks among them. The sergeants were watching us all, measuring us, it seemed. Our sergeant got out a small whistle and blew a shrill tone. It had the desired effect of immediately gaining the attention of everyone present.
“Line up in front of your bunks!” The sergeant shouted. We hurriedly followed the order. “I’m Sergeant Doornail, and this is Sergeant Cooper.” One of the closest two boys elbowed each other for some reason, and Sergeant Doornail noticed immediately. He turned to the closest youth and shouted, “You will stand at attention when an officer addresses you, you odious little worm! Stand up straight! Hands clasped behind your back! Look straight ahead, not at me!”
The rest of us took our cue from that and straightened up immediately.
“Much better,” Sergeant Doornail said. “That room over there’s the privy. As I am sure you’ve noticed, there are both young men and women in this talon, and we do not have the luxury of separate facilities. Yes, we have the luxury of fresh water in the showers and toilets, if you even know what those are. The stalls for the showers and toilets are divided. Anyone caught peeking over a door or otherwise violating the trust of another will be flogged. We’re not running a peepshow here.” He paused for a moment for that to sink in.
“For the next two years, you will first learn to be a soldier, then you will act as one. I’ve not yet had to flog a recruit to death. Don’t let there be a first time.” Another pause. “The first thing you’ll learn is how to march properly as a unit, something that has an obvious use in battle.”
Sergeant Doornail strode down the double line of recruits until he stopped before me and Bran.
“You two. You’ve had military training before, haven’t you?” Sergeant Doornail asked.
“Yes, sir!” Bran and I said loudly in unison.
“From where?”
“Kurgh Rhamot, sir!” Bran and I said in unison. This was a rare situation, as Terrans only very rarely took on recruits from outside their mountain on account of the relative weakness of humans compared to Terrans, and most everyone present showed some varying degrees of surprise.
“Well, thank God. Two fewer fools to have to worry about. You’re going to make this a lot easier on me. If I’m not around, you are second” he pointed at Bran, then at me, “and third in command of talon seven. March to the first bunk, double line,” Sergeant Doornail ordered. It kind of irked me that Bran was chosen to be second and me third, but after eighteen years of that kind of dismissal, I was used to it enough that I didn’t let it show.
Bran called out “One! And two!” In step, as we learned in Kurgh Rhamot, Bran and I executed the turns and marched up to where we were told to go, stopping in unison at the front bunk without having to call a halt.
“You see how they did that?” Sergeant Cooper shouted. “You will each in turn march to follow, starting with talon seven. Talon eight will form up beside those two. You, there! Ready! March!”
The first two by the first bunk didn’t know where to start, but they did their best. Two by two, the recruits of talon seven formed a double line behind Bran and me, and then talon eight formed up beside us. The sergeants went up and down the lines making sure the spacing was right and uniform, then they marched up to the front of each talon. Sergeant Doornail, directly in front of Bran and me, paused for a moment, then called out the cadence. Bran and I began stepping in place in unison with the sergeant, then stayed behind him at the proper distance when he began to move forward. Our talon marched out into the hallway back toward the marshalling yard with talon eight following Sergeant Cooper. We marched in circles in the marshalling yard until the other recruits got it right, then he started getting us familiar with other commands. We were out there all day, and we had a long way to geo to be perfect, but eventually we started showing improvement.
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In time we learned how to march as a unit, then we marched in coordination with other units. From there, we learned how to array for battle quickly as a fist, which was a group of ten talons, or one hundred and eleven men when you counted the sergeants and the captain. By this time, we had been marching every day for three months, rain or shine. It was only on Sevendays that we could go home to visit and get a decent meal. It was tedious at times, and boring most of the time, but we had to learn it well. In the case of an attack, every citizen needed to have the ability to defend the town, and that meant fighting as a unit. In a world as dangerous as Aldon, this was taken very seriously, indeed.
Mira and Elle had a very tough time doing all that marching with their heavy armor, but they got stronger. At the time, Bran and I were villains to them because of the weight of the armor, despite how balanced and distributed the weight was, and they would hardly speak to us after practice drills. Maybe it was resentment about the ease with which Bran and I did these things. Considering the two years we had spent with the Terrans and the practice and instruction from Dortham we had during the years following, I thought it was the other talon members that had it easy, though. They sure didn’t warm up to Bran or me very quickly, and it took weeks for me to learn their names. I knew that soon we’d be doing more strenuous things, and I hoped they were ready for it. The Terrans used to train with heavier shields and weapons than they would normally wield in battle, and it made battle easier as a result. Mithram’s soldiers did the same thing, and I had the feeling that we’d be doing it in the town militia also.
I learned a little bit about the command hierarchy, too. The army was led by the Warleader, who at this time was Councilman Fellick Goodman. He was a recent widower and lived in the castle. Sometimes he would watch us march, but mostly he didn’t even seem interested in the military. At the time I thought this was a bit odd, but I was glad that he wasn’t on the other extreme, aggressively commanding his soldiers, or doing pointless parades and inspections or some garbage like that. Down the command chain from the Warleader, there was supposed to be a general, but for some reason Councilor Goodman had not appointed one after the last one had fallen ill and passed away a couple of months ago. Each fist had ten sergeants with a single captain, and ours was Captain Safarac. He seemed like a decent guy at first glance. He was strict, but fair.
After those three months of marching about, we started to learn how to handle various weapons. Bran and I already knew a lot about battleaxes, warhammers, maces, swords, greataxes and great mauls, so some of our training was redundant. It was all new for Elle and Mira, though, and they really didn’t have the arm strength to chop at targets for hours each day. Neither of them complained when this was required of them, though. When Sergeant Doornail started teaching us about using pikes and spears with shield walls, all four of us learned a lot. It was the same with bows and crossbows, as the Terrans didn’t use bows. Mira was way ahead of us with regards to a crossbow, as she had been practicing with one for a few years now. At a distance where Bran, Elle and I could barely hit the target, Mira could hit a coin almost every time.
To further prepare us, we used heavy wooden weapons in talon versus talon skirmishes. That was when Mira and Elle were very glad to have the plate armor we made for them. It saved them a lot of bruises. Suddenly Bran and I were heroes again instead of being the villains we were when we were marching, and believe me, we were glad for the change.
Once we obtained a reasonable proficiency with our weapons, we learned tactics. There were proven ways to fight off renders and the other large predators that we were likely to face when defending the fields outside Stonekeep. We had to know how to take down ogres and goblins, too. Goblins were known to swarm over defenders with their greater numbers, and stab at everything they could see when they got close. They did that while their ogre masters charged in and started smashing everything in sight with their great mauls and greataxes, and they were big enough that you could smack one with a warhammer even in an unarmored spot, and it would barely feel the blow. An ogre was savage enough that it could take out an entire talon by itself, and they were a real threat that we would almost certainly have to face one day. War parties of ogres and goblins were known to range a long way from Grunbar to take slaves and steal everything that wasn’t nailed down and they relished the violence they brought us.
A year after we became recruits, we were deemed ready for real soldiering. We were sent to defend the fields around Stonekeep, mostly. It’s too bad that the fields were too big to build a wall around them. Field guard duty was deceitfully dull punctuated by occasional moments of terror as something from the outside attacked. No matter how peaceful things appeared, that peace could be shattered in an instant, but so far only a few people had been killed on our watch. Guarding the gates of the city itself was far preferable, but that duty was given mostly to the regular soldiers from Mithram. They saw us as a worthless peasant militia, and that opinion wasn’t always far from the truth. Considering their ranks were made up of the best soldiers of Stonekeep’s militia, they were entitled to think the way they did.
In my circumstances in those days, I just kept my head down and performed a little less well than Bran so as to not draw suspicion. Keeping my special gifts hidden was a matter of life and death for me, and I was in constant fear of accidentally doing something of a magical nature. It wasn’t just dangerous for me, but for my adoptive family as well. I could have drawn more on the power from the source to help strengthen me physically, but that was too risky, too painful, and I didn’t need anyone’s accolades to boost my pride anyway. So, time went on, and I did things the hard way.
