Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [101]
Truly the gods toyed with the lives of men.
In the first days he was inept and slow. He kept dropping the fake weapons. His footwork stumbled. The trainers swore at him and whipped him. Every time Orlo walked by, Caelan made a stupid mistake.
And Orlo would look both disgusted and satisfied at the same time. “Extra drills for the Traulander,” he would say and walk on.
Increasingly frustrated, Caelan could not understand why he did not improve. Even as a boy in his father’s hold he had never been clumsy. Any physical activity was easy for him. He wouldn’t have longed to be a soldier in the first place if he hadn’t felt himself capable of it. But now it seemed as though all his natural abilities had deserted him.
His rib healed quickly, whether through the mercy of the gods or through his limited efforts to speed its recovery. And although no one made any effort to treat him, Caelannoticed he wasn’t assigned to any practice bouts until he was sound.
Already fit, with a deep chest and powerful shoulders, he found the tough conditioning work honed his body even more. He grew another inch, and his muscles hardened to the kind of definition the trainers called deeply cut. The drills gave him flexibility and a new awareness of his body’s strength. Long hours under the merciless sun bronzed his skin to a dark honey color and bleached his hair nearly white. His muscles rippled powerfully beneath his skin when he moved. He was perhaps the tallest man in training, and the other fighters called him Giant. The trainers all agreed that in looks alone, he would make an intimidating presence in the ring, but they had already laid bets that he would die in the first round.
Caelan knew about the bet, of course, and it did nothing for his morale.
Although he hadn’t prayed in years, now in the privacy of nighttime he lifted his heart to Gault, asking why this was denied him. He had sworn he would do everything in his power to excel, yet here he was at the bottom of the group. The humiliation of his failure gnawed at him constantly.
Training separately in their own advanced drills, the veterans paused to laugh and jeer every time Caelan walked by. Sooner or later all the trainers came by to watch him performing drills. Shaking their heads, they discussed him as though he couldn’t understand what they were saying.
“Orlo said he bested one of Lord Vymaltin’s champions at the auction.”
“Never! Look at the clumsy oaf.”
“I swear it’s what everyone says. It’s why Prince Tirhin bought him in the first place.”
“The prince must have been too drunk to see.”
Laughing, the trainers walked on.
Seething, Caelan focused everything he had on the lunge-and-feint drill he was practicing. He could focus his mind. He had once been able to direct a warding key, after all. He could do this.
Fresh sweat broke out on his face with the effort he expended, but all he accomplished was a sudden cramp in his leg that pitched him down, gasping hard while the other trainees stopped their drills and laughed.
“Silence!” Orlo shouted, swinging his club indiscriminately among them. “Get back to work.”
Pushing his way through the chastened trainees, he came and stood over Caelan, who lay sprawled in the sand, gritting his teeth while he worked the spasm from his leg muscles.
“Get up,” Orlo said.
“Yes,” Caelan gasped out, trying. Hut the cramp wouldn’t release.
A whistle of the knotted ropes through the air warned him. Caelan tried to dodge, but the cattails cracked across his shoulders. The fresh pain drove away all awareness of the cramp.
“Get up!” Orlo repeated.
Caelan scrambled to his feet and stood there, drenched with sweat and shame until he was almost shaking.
Pursing his lips, Orlo stared up at Caelan a long while without saying anything. Finally he beckoned