Chapter 81: Bring Water, Expect Bruises

Chapter 81: Bring Water, Expect Bruises

Nim had claimed the patch of sunlight on the end of the bed and showed no sign of giving it up.

"You’re going to the stone building," he said, without opening his eyes.

"Carrow Hall." Silas buckled the dart’s case across his chest and checked the catch with his thumb. Bracers next, then the live shortblade on his hip. Two water flasks, because Ferrow had told them to bring water, and Ferrow did not strike Silas as a man who said things for decoration. "Constructs, partitions, getting hit a lot. You’d hate it."

"I would." Nim stretched until his toes spread, then curled up tighter. "Bring back something shiny."

"It’s a training hall," Silas said.

"Training halls have screws," Nim replied.

Silas rubbed the spirit’s ears on his way past, and Nim purred without moving any other part of himself. At the threshold, the room’s warmth slid off Silas like a coat, and the corridor felt as ordinary as it always did.

His reserve was full. Two days of real sleep in his own bed had seen to that. His body had stopped surprising him every time he took the stairs, and had started, quietly, to feel like his.

Alden was waiting on the steps of Carrow Hall with his longsword across his back and a folded slip of paper in his hand. He held it up as Silas approached.

"Cleared," he said. "She said if she hears I limped out of here, she’ll un-clear me."

"Can she do that?" Silas asked.

"She seemed very confident she could," Alden said.

The hall looked the same as it had in the photograph: gray stone, tall narrow windows, a broad roof patched with newer slate. The door was unlocked this time. Inside, the long pale floor ran away under dusty skylights, crossed by recessed iron tracks. Overhead, a grid of guide rails held the tops of the tall partitions in place.

Instructor Ferrow stood on a raised platform at the far end, beside a waist-high panel of levers. He lifted a hand.

"Come here first," he called. "Don’t walk the floor until I say."

They went round the edge. Up close, the panel was older than Silas had expected, the brass handles worn pale by decades of grips.

"Course," Ferrow said, and pulled a lever.

The floor rumbled. Along the rails, the partitions began to move: stone slabs nearly twice a man’s height, each mounted on an iron carriage that ran in its track like a tram. They slid, turned at junctions, and locked into new positions with a deep, solid clunk, one after another, until the open floor had become a walled route that bent twice before it reached a painted gate at the far end.

"I can change the layout between attempts," Ferrow said. "You stand in the yellow lane by the east wall while it resets. Stay off the tracks while the carriages are moving. Watch the grooves at the junctions even when they’re stopped." He pointed. "Charges."

Two squat, rounded constructs stood in their racks at the start line, each about the height of a child, with a pale blue light glowing in the middle of their chests.

"They walk the route at their own pace. They don’t stop for you. If one falls over or takes a solid hit to the core, its light goes out and it’s lost. Lose either one and the attempt’s failed." He pointed at a row of dark openings along both walls. "Strikers come out of those bays. They don’t care about you. They go for the charges."

"So we just protect them," Alden said.

"That’s all," Ferrow said. "Rooke, left charge. Cross, right. Go and stand by them."

The first attempt lasted less than two minutes.

The charges lurched out of their racks and began to walk, slow and steady, their little feet clacking on the stone. Silas fell in at his one’s shoulder. The first bend came. Then the first bay opened with a grinding sound and a striker came out.

It was lean and long-armed, built of iron joints and padded wood, and it moved faster than its shape suggested. It came straight at Silas’s charge. He thumbed the case open, lifted the dart, and sent it into the striker’s knee joint. The construct staggered sideways into the partition, and a second one came out of the bay behind it.

Silas turned to meet it, recalling the dart in a tight loop while keeping his charge between himself and the wall. A shout from Alden drew his attention sideways.

Alden seemed to have beaten his first striker. Silas caught the end of it in the corner of his eye: a clean parry, a hard cut across the construct’s chest plate that sent it reeling backward. The striker retreated toward its bay. Alden went after it, following three steps, then several more, driving it back into the mouth of the bay with a solid, satisfying strike that made the whole construct shudder and fold.

Behind him, a third striker slipped round the end of a partition, took two quick steps, and shoved Alden’s charge in the back.

It went over onto its side with a clatter. Its blue light went out.

A bell rang somewhere above them. All the strikers stopped at once and began to walk back to their bays.

Alden turned round, flushed and breathing hard, sword still raised. "I got it," he said. "Did you see? It went down."

"I saw," Ferrow called from the platform. "Where was your charge when you hit it?"

Alden opened his mouth to answer, and then he looked past Silas.

His charge lay on its side twelve paces behind him, dark and still, little feet sticking out like an overturned beetle’s.

"Behind me," he said quietly.

"Twelve paces behind you," Ferrow said. "That striker didn’t retreat because it was beaten. It retreated because you’d follow it. The second one was waiting for you to leave."

Alden didn’t say anything. He walked back, crouched, and set the charge upright again. Its light stayed dark. He stood there with one hand on its rounded head.

Silas recalled the dart and put it away. His own charge had reached the second bend and was still walking, cheerfully unaware that the attempt was over.

He looked at Alden’s back and felt something he hadn’t quite expected.

He’d come here with half his mind on a loading screen from another life, on Battle Evolution and the shape of a future he wanted to fix. He was still thinking about that. But this was also simply a good exercise. It had found Alden’s habit inside two minutes. It had found his own, too: he’d stood flat-footed for that first throw, and if the striker had been faster, his charge would have walked straight past him into trouble.

Even if nothing else happens here, he thought, this is worth the afternoon.

"I always chase," Alden said. He hadn’t turned round. "I always go after the one I’m winning against. I thought that was the point."

"Not here," Silas said.

"No." Alden straightened up and looked at the charge, then at the bay his striker had retreated into. Silas could see him measuring the distance between them. "Three steps," Alden said. "I can go three steps past my charge’s line, and then I come back whether I’ve finished it or not."

"And you call it when you go," Silas said. "Say ’off’ or something. So I know to look at your side."

"’Off.’" Alden nodded slowly. "And you call it if you’re leaving yours."

"Deal," Silas said.

They turned toward the platform together.

Ferrow had been watching them with his arms folded. He didn’t say anything about their plan, which Silas suspected was its own kind of approval.

"Yellow lane," Ferrow said, and put his hand on the lever.