Chapter 36: HOW BLACKHARROW TRAINS

DIANA’S POV

Diana had spent enough time comparing herself to a woman who understood how Blackharrow worked.

The Winter Muster’s training review gave her something more useful to study.

It proved considerably less entertaining than watching dragons steal one another’s food.

It was also louder.

Diana stood with Alma on a protected gallery above the eastern training court while infantry companies assembled below.

The soldiers wore practical training gear rather than ceremonial armor. Their shields carried old dents, training spears had blunted heads, and archers waited behind low stone platforms while engineers arranged movable barriers, weighted frames, ropes, and wooden shapes meant to represent corrupted creatures.

Captain Arven stood near the center.

Diana knew him before she remembered his name. During the winter gathering, he had followed the direction of her pointing hand and pulled the child clear before the brazier came down.

Today he stood in front of the line companies instead of a burning hall.

He was older than most of the officers around him, with gray beginning at his temples and the patient expression of a man accustomed to explaining the same mistake more than once.

Raigoro stood beside Arven, while Daric worked near the signal table with three runners and a collection of sealed message tubes.

She wrote:

WHY IS DARIC NOT WITH THE SOLDIERS?

Alma looked down.

"I have no idea."

A voice behind them answered.

"Because I would interfere."

Daric had climbed the gallery stairs without either of them noticing.

Diana looked at him.

Daric indicated Captain Arven below.

"Arven has the line companies. Captain Veyr handles Dragon Host operations."

Diana looked toward the runners and sealed message tubes, then back at him.

AND YOU?

"Intelligence. Command information. Internal security."

Daric looked toward Raigoro below.

"And whatever authority he leaves with me when he goes somewhere else."

That sounded inconveniently broad.

Below, Arven raised one hand.

The drill began.

A line of infantry moved behind three timber barriers while runners carried flags between officers.

The wooden targets started forward on wheeled frames.

The first were low and narrow, built with painted jaws.

Diana pointed toward the first targets.

"Ash hounds," Daric said.

Diana recognized them from the attack on the road. Daric offered no further explanation.

Arven called an order.

The shield line tightened.

The wooden ash hounds were pulled toward the gaps in the barriers.

"Individually, they are among the easier corrupted predators to kill," Daric said. "A pack is different. They attack low, move quickly, and exploit openings."

Diana remembered Eren beneath her.

She watched the shields.

The next training frame was larger and heavily weighted.

Its wooden shoulders had been reinforced with iron.

"Stoneback," Alma said.

Daric nodded.

"They break things."

That description seemed inadequate until six soldiers hauled the weighted frame downhill.

It struck the first barrier hard enough to move the timber almost a foot. Daric’s description made sense then.

Below them, Arven shouted, "Do not crowd the break!"

Infantry moved away from the center while spearmen took positions beside the opening.

The weighted frame came through.

Spears struck painted marks at its joints and throat.

Diana wrote:

WHY NOT STOP IT BEFORE THE BARRIER?

Daric read the slate.

"Because stopping a stoneback in open ground requires men to stand in front of it."

Reasonable.

"Barriers decide where it reaches them."

Above the far end of the training court, Meris launched from the lower perch.

Captain Veyr rode Meris low over the court as three narrow, long-winged wooden shapes moved along overhead cables.

"Carrion drakes," Daric said.

Diana looked at him.

"They are not dragons?"

"No. They’re smaller and less intelligent. They attack exposed members of the Dragon Host, wounded animals, messengers, anything isolated enough to look easy."

Diana was glad to know the difference.

Meris struck the first suspended target with a padded training claw.

The wooden drake spun hard enough to make Alma move backward from the gallery rail.

Diana did not.

Veyr brought Meris around for another pass.

"What about the larger things?" Alma asked.

Daric looked toward the stoneback frame.

"Corruption does not always stop at the ordinary size or behavior of the animal."

Diana thought of the darkened tissue around the wounded patrol dragon.

Daric continued.

"That is why they train the principle instead of memorizing one creature. Hounds are fast. Stonebacks carry weight. Drakes attack from above. If corruption changes the animal, the officers still need to recognize what the creature can do to the formation."

Below them, Arven ordered a withdrawal.

The front line began moving backward even though it was still holding. Thirty soldiers gave twenty paces, stopped, turned, and formed again before another group followed. The formation stayed controlled throughout the withdrawal.

Diana wrote:

WHY ARE THEY LEAVING?

This time Captain Arven answered.

The training had paused, and he had climbed close enough to read the slate.

"Because the first position has stopped helping them."

The barrier below was still intact.

"Today the barrier still works," Arven said. "We practice the withdrawal before anyone is trying to kill them."

He pointed toward the second line farther back.

"If the ground becomes worse, or the formation cannot be supplied safely, they move while they still can."

Diana thought of Raigoro abandoning the failed ward station during his first trip north.

Appearances had not mattered then either.

A soldier below removed his helmet and sat hard against one of the training barriers. Another threw him a water skin, which he missed badly enough to send it rolling across the ground.

"Sergeant Noll," he said. "Second Company. He believes catching water is beneath his rank."

Noll heard him.

"Only after noon, sir."

Several soldiers laughed while Arven barely kept his expression straight.

Diana remembered the name.

The Muster was beginning to make more sense.

Arven knew the infantry, Veyr knew the Dragon Host, and Daric managed the information moving between them. Raigoro’s responsibility was where all three met.

The training horn sounded again.

Arven looked toward Diana.

"Second run."

Diana wrote:

THE SAME?

"No."

He looked down toward the officers moving the barriers.

"This time something goes wrong."

Diana stayed.

The second run had barely begun when a dragon horn sounded from the northern tower.

Three short blasts were followed by one long.

Every officer in the training court stopped.

Raigoro was already moving before a second tower repeated the signal.

A runner came up from the lower military court carrying a red-marked dispatch case just taken from a mounted scout at the northern gate.

Raigoro opened it.

By the time he finished reading, the training review was over.