“Sing!”
Selbin d’Courte was no military expert, to be
sure, but all the same he wasn’t able to work past the blatant absurdity of the
command. He stared at his new mentor, blue eyes wide and thoroughly confused,
and he almost stopped moving.
Loki gave him a look that said if he dared stop
running before the drill was complete, there would be six separate hells to
pay. The young prince redoubled his effort to keep his feet moving. “I don’t …
understand! Why … would I … sing?!”
“I don’t recall the part where this is a
dialogue!” Somehow, even though he tended to limp rather prominently when he walked,
Junior Sentinel Loki Heiler — prized prodigy of the Third Guard — could run
without anything even close to trouble. “Sing!”
Why was it so cold all of a sudden?
Selbin tried to think of something he could use to fulfill this ridiculous order. A lullaby, a skipping song, a nonsense rhyme, something.
As soon as he started to sing, Loki thwacked
him with his quarterstaff, hard, against the left arm. Selbin
yelped and stumbled to a stop, nearly tumbling flat onto his face. “Hey!” he
almost wailed. “What was that for?!”
Loki stopped like a specter, as smooth as
imported silk. “What did I tell you before this drill started, Your Highness?”
Selbin blinked, struggling to catch his breath.
“… Y-You said … if I can’t … if I can’t … talk … then I’m running too
hard. That I should … ease up.”
Loki nodded. He looked almost proud for a
moment, and Selbin was more than a little surprised at how buoyant he felt,
considering he barely knew this boy. Then the young officer’s face hardened.
“If you can hold a tune, you’re not running hard enough. Come on! Up you get! Did
you think this was a break? Get going!”
Selbin managed to hold his tongue as he brushed
off his pants and started moving again, but it was a near thing. He rubbed his
arm where Loki had struck him, licking at his lips and wondering if he could
get a new trainer.
He didn’t see Loki’s supervisors anywhere in the
training yard, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. And even though it was
hard to keep a thought straight in his head with his lungs burning and his
heart hammering the way it was, Selbin d’Courte knew that if he complained
about his current teacher, they would be the ones to pick up
the slack.
He thought about the hulking hammers hanging
from Olrec Stoutfeather’s belt, stamped with the ivory tower crest of the Tenth
Guard; he thought of the infinitude of knives hidden in Naya Belmont’s leather
armor, and the curved swords she kept at her hips, and the longbow she tended
to have strapped to her back, and the armor-backed gloves she wore even while
sleeping.
Selbin decided he’d try his luck with Loki’s
stick.
