WW Chapter 64: Worse Introductions (Patreon)

sorry. This is Friday's chapter. Been a bit sick.

The lunch with Telemachus was a good one. Though Ezra got along well with Chloe, and could go so far as to say that he respected her quite a bit, he wouldn’t call her a friend. She was immediately his superior in the command structure, and she due to her origins as a noble and position as a Pseudo-Knight, he felt awkward in considering her a friend. This Telemachus guy, though, was only Ezra’s senior in being here in the garrison and wasn’t much older than Ezra.

As they exchanged stories about where they were from and how they’d gotten here, it turned out that they had pretty similar histories. Telemachus had come from farther north, closer to the desert of Al Jibahia. He wasn’t from the deserts themselves, but still farther north even than Brayton, where the mountains were closer to hills, and the harsh winter blizzards were replaced with cool rains. He, similar to Ezra, had found himself signing up as a soldier when he lost his position as a tanner’s apprentice after he was falsely accused of stealing.

“To this day,” Telemachus said, his tone casual, “I’m pretty sure that it was Master Obed’s son who did it. He was a pretty lazy sack of shit, and I was working hard. Supposedly, Obed was thinking of giving me the shop and his daughter’s hand if I kept performing as well as I had been.”

“Shit,” Ezra commiserated. He’d already shared his story of how he had been betrayed by two would-be muggers. “Have you ever gone back?”

“It’s only been six months,” Telemachus shrugged. “There hasn’t been any opportunity, and even if I went back, I basically have only changed one apprenticeship for another. Maybe once I become a Pseudo-Knight.”

“Oh, I get it,” Ezra nodded. “Once you can show off that you didn’t need them anyway, then you’ll go back.”

“Exactly. I’ve tried to cross the boundary to Adept twice, and I’m just about ready for my third time. I’m pretty sure that this time I know what I’ve been missing, so, in the next day or two, I should be an Adept. Oh, do you know what that means?” As the olive-skinned man spoke, he looked at Ezra with an open face.

“Yeah, I know what that is,” Ezra answered. Then, leaning forward over the table as they both mopped up the last of the juices from the stewed beef, he said in a voice barely above a whisper, “I’m actually already an Adept.”

Telemachus blinked twice at Ezra before shaking his head in disbelief. “Here I am acting like I’m a big shot. How long has it been for you?”

Ezra mentally tallied up the days, realizing he wasn’t exactly sure before answering with a bit of hesitation, “A month and a half?”

“Then I’ll catch up to you before too long,” his new friend laughed, putting a fist out to Ezra. With a smile, Ezra bumped their fists together and followed Telemachus forward.

His companion very carefully walked in the center of the aisles between benches, and Ezra only then realized that, while he’d been occupied with talking and eating, the mess hall had filled. At least a hundred people were actively eating in here with another dozen staff making sure that the line for the food remained available, and Ezra was sure that the garrison was full enough that even with this massive room, the inhabitants here would have to eat in shifts.

He tried to step forward to walk at Telemachus’s side as they walked to drop off their dishes. The other man started to speak to Ezra, perhaps to explain something, but he was cut off. It was only because Ezra had spent weeks now constantly drawing on his inner world that he was able to catch himself as a foot snaked out from under the bench beside him and caught his foot.

The pulse of a tempest filled him, and, with a flash of malicious glee, Ezra purposefully allowed himself to stumble just enough to then raise his foot and stomp down on the tripping foot’s ankle.

Half a year ago, before Jormun had first appeared in his dream, Ezra had weighed about 10 stone. By the time he enlisted in the army, he’d gained another stone. Then, over the course of a month and a half of training, marching, fighting, and then marching some more, he’d been fed heartily and exercised hard, and had continued gaining weight. Now, what Ezra estimated to be about three months from when he’d joined Villy’s army, he weighed, he guessed, a bit over 13 stone, or about 84 kilos.

Almost all of that weight smashed down onto the tripping bastard’s ankle, driven down through the sole of Ezra’s heavy boot. No sound of cracking bone snapped out, but the little arsehole’s scream of pain did fill the air. With his foot in an awkward position, a boy with carefully coiffed golden-blond hair fell against and then under the table. His food fell down with him, dumping meat, bread, and stew all over his uniform as he whimpered in pain.

All around, people’s conversations went quiet as everybody turned to look at what was happening. Ezra immediately noticed that, though he, Telemachus, and the jackass that tried to trip him were all twenty years old or younger, there were plenty of career soldiers nearby, men with gray in their beards and women with wary looks in their eyes.

He had no more time to look around as the threat of retribution was immediate, three stocky boys nearby shoving to their feet as one of their number was dropped, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Anders!” the one nearest to the writhing boy shouted. “What’d he do?”

Ezra recovered from his stumble, standing and stepping a pace back from the four angry instigators. To his credit, Telemachus also stayed nearby, though he quickly took Ezra’s plate from his hand and turned to the side to deposit it on the nearby table.

“The lowborn bastard broke my ankle!” Anders shouted. “I haven’t even seen this little prick before today, and he tries to cripple me.”

Ezra started to try to say something back, but before he did, the closest, stoutest one of Anders’s three cronies whirled on him.

“You’ve got a fucking problem with Anders, you got a problem with me!”

He didn’t hesitate to throw a massive haymaker at Ezra’s head, which he ducked before sending a rabbit punch at the heavyset man’s exposed ribs. He bent over himself, groaning as he re-gathered himself into his stance.

“How could I have purposefully hit somebody’s ankle when it was under the table?” Ezra demanded, not pressing the attack, but keeping his eyes out on everybody nearby. “I was walking past, accidentally stepped on his foot. My bad for stepping on you. Try to keep your feet under the table.”

“You call that an apology, peasant?” Anders demanded, getting himself back into a sitting position on the bench, but wincing. Involuntary tears had sprung to his eyes in response to the pain.

“Sorry for stepping on you,” Ezra nodded his head once in an approximation of a bow. He refused to actually take his eyes off the four people who obviously wanted to hurt him as he continued, “Next time, it’ll probably be better for you to make sure that your feet are under the table. I can’t step on you there. I’ll try to keep an eye out, though, for the future.”

What Ezra said seemed to have gotten the majority of the people paying attention on his side, and though anybody could see the smoldering hatred in Anders’s eyes and body language, no further threat of violence was enough to keep everybody in their seats. The three chubby-faced would-be enforcers for the arse that had gotten his comeuppance looked at Anders. Instead of pressing for immediate vengeance, he satisfied himself with a single question.

“What’s your name?”

“Ezra Soldier,” he answered back, giving a broad smile. “I look forward to seeing you.”

Then, keeping his eye on the four enemies he’d just made, Ezra grabbed his dishes from the nearby table and resumed following Telemachus toward the place to drop them off. They walked in silence, and Ezra wondered if, somehow, he had ruined the fledgling friendship that he was developing with his slightly darker doppelgänger. Even if he had, he wasn’t about to take a massive face-plant in the middle of the mess hall because some prick got the bright idea to start something.

When they dropped off the plates, Ezra made sure to find the nearest worker and give his thanks for the food and the service. The young woman, her uniform a plain brown dress wet from the splashing of washing dishes, met his gaze and smiled at him.

“No need to thank me,” she said, her tone a little breathy. “It’s just my job.”

“Well, I’m glad that I’m not eating off lots of dirty dishes because you are good at your job,” he joked back.

She giggled as he nodded and walked away, still following after Telemachus.

“Are you a womanizer?” Ezra’s senior soldier asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“More of a flatterer, if I’m honest,” Ezra laughed a little at himself. “It’s easier for me to get on people’s good sides if I butter them up a little bit. Costs me nothing, so I always try to do it.”

“And you’re not gonna sleep with her?” Telemachus pressed.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Ezra shook his head. “Going that far’s just a good way to get yourself into trouble. Instead, I don’t mind if people think of me as a flirt who doesn’t do anything with it. Makes people think I’m harmless.”

At that, Telemachus raised a curious eyebrow and shrugged as they walked out of the crowded mess hall.

“If it works for you. Also, good on you for refusing to take it. Anders is one of those people I was talking about, one of the mediocre people who hate to see the genuinely talented.”

Ezra smiled. “I had a sneaking suspicion that he was. Now, what are we up to today? What comes after lunch?”

***

After lunch came dueling training for the potential Knights cohort. It started off fine and quickly went downhill from there.

“Introduce yourself,” the instructor barked. He was unfamiliar to Ezra, like most people around here, but the way he carried himself screamed competence. There were faint traces of gray at his temples and though he wasn’t wearing armor, Ezra had no doubt that he was the most dangerous person in the training pit. Ezra stepped forward and did as he was told, the instructor not giving him even enough time to ask his name or what they would be doing.

That was about the end of where he was comfortable with what he was doing.

In warmups, the instructor shouted for them to find a partner, which, once Ezra was done pairing up with Telemachus, they began warming up. Telemachus explained certain movements he was making with the sword, as although Ezra had gotten a two week crash course from Chloe on how to use a sword on his travels towards Brayton, he still was far from comfortable with the weapon.

While they were doing that, though, something caught his attention as a slightly familiar, heavyset boy walked towards the instructor.

“Mikhail,” the piggy-eyed boy said, glancing towards Ezra with a face that promised violence, “since Telemachus is new as well as Ezra here, I wonder if it would be better for somebody like myself, who’s been practicing and learning for much longer, should be paired with him.”

The name Mikhail was familiar to Ezra. The name of the singular Pseudo-Knight who was giving the “antis” his full attention. Even before Ezra could begin to curse his luck, the instructor he’d only looked at for a moment stared at him. Obviously, Mikhail was more than intelligent enough to know that the offering from the other prospective Knight, who, Ezra was only just realizing, was apparently numbered among the same number as he was. Mikhail glanced at the boy who asked for his complicit permission, and then nodded once.

Ezra greeted his teeth, but stepped back, making sure his shield was tight on his arm and his practice sword in a solid grip. He wasn’t trained, but he did have an ace up his sleeve—

“Remember,” Mikhail shouted, staring specifically at Ezra, “if I sense any use of aura, purposeful or otherwise, you’re getting extra conditioning instead of dinner on time.”

Fuck.