Eden-South (13 page)

Logan looked at him curiously. Slowly
turning, he walked over to a wooden wall that lined the open arena,
and picked up the axe from one of the pegs. The training camp
reminded Aiden of the Coliseum. It was huge, round, and looked like
a place where people would come to fight and die. There weren’t any
seats around it, but the sand on the floor was darker in some
places, and he knew it was probably dried blood. He felt a little
sick. Along one of the walls were all the weapons they kept here
for training, but he was sure most of the men had their own weapons
to practice with.

“Here,” Logan said, handing him the axe.
Aiden’s arms dropped a bit when he took it, forgetting how heavy
the damn things were. Logan’s eyebrows rose questioningly. “Tell
me, how does a small boy from out of nowhere, get accepted into the
elite King’s army and not have any expertise in a specific
weapon?”

Aiden’s cheeks heated. He shrugged his
shoulders. “Luck?”

“Luck,” Logan repeated. His eyes narrowed as
he looked Aiden up and down. “Well, how about we see just how lucky
you are then.” Gesturing toward the middle of the area, Aiden
walked slowly holding the axe feebly in his hands. He watched as
Logan pulled out an axe as well from the leather pack he wore on
his back. Walking back over to the side, he grabbed two shields and
carried them over to Aiden.

“You … You use the axe too?” Aiden
gulped.

“You’re looking at the best in the city.”
Logan smiled confidently. “Let’s see how good
you
are.” He
handed Aiden a shield, and walked back so there was a bit of room
between the two. Aiden couldn’t believe how heavy the shield was.
There would be no energy left in him to fight, after having to
carry around these things. “Ready?” Logan yelled. Aiden gulped.
No,
he thought.

CHAPTER SIX

“Where have you been?” Wolf asked as Logan
entered their room.

Smiling, Logan threw down his pack and
flopped onto his bed. “Training with Aiden,” he said, laughing.

“Who?”

Sighing, he replied, “Newbie.”

“Oh! How was he?” Wolf sat up,
interested.

Turning onto his side, Logan held his head
up on his hand and looked at Wolf. “He wasn’t too bad, but he
wasn’t very good either. His talents are raw, and clearly
untrained,” he replied, replaying the last hour in his head.

“Surprising. Why is he in the King’s army
then?” Wolf said, voicing what they were both clearly thinking.

“I’m not sure,” Logan answered honestly. “I
was suspicious as well, but who are we to question the Captain’s
decisions? I gave him a nice black eye, though. He snickered. Wolf
laughed. “You should have seen him,” he cackled. “He was flailing
all over the place—no control at all. He’ll get better, though. I
can tell.”

“The Captain doesn’t normally take in boys
that need that much work. You don’t think he brought him here for
Elisa, do you?”

Logan sat up and looked at his best friend.
“Would that bother you?” he asked.

Wolf laughed, shrugging off the implications
as usual. “Not at all; it would be a relief to me. He can have that
woman. She is too difficult for me.” Logan looked at him,
unconvinced, but he didn’t respond. He was used to Wolf’s constant
denials. “I can’t wait to see his welcoming present.” Wolf chuckled
about Aiden’s black eye. Logan smiled too, remembering the look on
Aiden’s face when his elbow smashed into his eye.

“It’s a good one.”

The meat was only slightly salted, and the
potato was boiled, with nothing else on it. Aiden looked down at
his plate and sighed. The meat looked like something that you would
find on the side of the road. The food in this world definitely
wasn’t anything like back home, he thought sadly. What he wouldn’t
give for some Taco Bell, or Wendy’s right then. The other piece of
meat he held to his eye was frozen, and from the black freezer burn
on it, he guessed that it was from five years ago. It did the job,
though.

“What’s with the meat?” Elisa asked from
behind him. He took the meat away to look up at her with both eyes.
“Wow! What happened to your eye?”

“That pleasant fat man over there gave me
this meat to help,” Aiden answered her first question. “As well as
this delicious dinner,” he continued, looking down with a sigh at
the plate in front of him.

Elisa chuckled. “That’s Tiny. He’s been the
chef here for years,” she explained.

“Tiny, eh. That’s fitting …”

“He’s not the best cook, as I’m sure you can
tell.” She smiled, looking down at the menu for the night.
“Unfortunately, however, he is the only person around here that can
actually handle cooking for this many people three times a day.
Now, do you want to explain to me what exactly happened to you, to
make you need a frozen piece of meat on your face?”

“I was training, sort of,” he started.
“Logan thought it would be fun if we went to the training grounds
and practiced a bit before I officially started my training
tomorrow. Needless to say, I’m not as fast as he is.”

Elisa held his chin in her hand, tilting his
face in different directions. “Elbow?”

“Yeah, how did you know?” She shrugged her
shoulders, letting him go and sitting down across from him. “I’m
going to be the laughing stock of the whole place—I hope you know
that. I’m not prepared for this.”

“Don’t worry, Aiden. You have the best of
the best teaching you, and you have the rest of us to help you out
if you need any extra help after training. Despite my feelings
toward Wolf, he is one of the best fighters we have, and would be a
great asset to you if he tried to teach you a thing or two. Logan
is also very good, as I’m sure you had the chance to see. With
people like us around, there is no way you can fail.”

“You sure do think highly of yourself.”
Aiden laughed. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

“Just being honest—why lie about it if it is
true?”

“It’s called modesty. You might want to try
it once in a while.”

The bench he sat on shook as a body plopped
down beside him. “Wow!” Wolf smiled, his face only inches away from
Aiden’s. “That
is
a good one!”

Logan sat down beside Elisa on the opposite
side. “Why, thank you.” He smiled, bowing mockingly.

“Shut up.” Aiden sighed, placing the frozen
meat back over his swollen black eye. It was already so bad, he
could only imagine how it would look tomorrow. The King and the
Captain would see him and realize right away their mistake. He let
out another sigh, and tried to cut the dried-out piece of meat that
lay on his plate.

The training earlier that day had gone
pretty much as horribly as he expected. Logan had been extremely
fast in his movements, whereas his were slow and clumsy. The
weapons were extremely heavy, and the heat of the afternoon had
made it hard for him to catch his breath. Logan had gotten a few
good blows on his sides in before he actually started to make use
of his shield. Logan had complimented him on that, saying he was
already showing improvement by using the shield to its advantage.
The problem was, once he put his focus on blocking the hits coming
from his opponent, the other hand that held his weapon just hung
there. He couldn’t do both at the same time, so he got no attacks
in from his side. Logan told him he had to use both weapons as if
they were extensions of his own body. Both movements had to be
graceful and fluid, each working with the other, each complementing
the other. It was, however, easier said than done. Thankfully, the
others around him couldn’t see the bruises that were already
forming on his body as well. Logan probably knew they would be
there, but he wasn’t saying anything. The black eye was mortifying
enough for him.

“Captain Turk is going to have a field day
with this.” Wolf smirked.

“There is nothing wrong with a black eye,”
Elisa said, defending him. “It just shows that you’re in the
process of learning, which is good. Everyone will take a hit once
in a while; you just have to take that hit and learn from it. Now
you know better than to ignore the rest of someone’s arm, even if
there’s a weapon on the end of it. Warriors will use every possible
bone in their bodies to attack an opponent.”

All three boys listened to her in awe. When
she spoke about fighting, it was like she was just one of the guys,
but she wasn’t. She was a girl, and that made her exponentially
different from everyone else there.

“Why are there no other girls?” Aiden
blurted out. Elisa looked at him in surprise.

“Um, I don’t know?” she answered wearily. “I
guess none of the other girls want to be in the King’s army, and if
they do then they must not have the skill to do so? I was born into
it. I didn’t really have a choice. My father didn’t have a son, so
I had to pick up that responsibility.” She shrugged indifferently.
“Every Captain has had his child enter into the army after him, but
my father never had a son to do so, so he made sure I did. It was
unconventional, but everyone accepted it after some time. I had to
prove myself,” she continued, looking down at her plate. Aiden
could only imagine how hard it would have been for her, being the
only girl to probably ever have entered the King’s army, and to
have to go up against the sexist minds of all the men here. “We
can’t all be lucky enough to come here and instantly be a star,”
she said, casting a hard smile across the table at Wolf.

“Ouch,” he responded, laughing. “Bitter
much, Elisa? Are you jealous of my natural skills and
charisma?”

She laughed mockingly. “Jealous of you? No,
why would I be? You have taken up the lovely task of entertaining
every last female in the city, leaving me to perfect my craft even
more so than yours. Although you do play the whore, oh, so well.”
She smiled sweetly.

“That is below the belt,” he shot back
warningly.

“Well, you’d know all about that area,” she
bit back.

Logan held up his hand just as Wolf sucked
in the breath to rebut. “Now, children,” he said, interrupting the
two. “Let us not fight at dinnertime. We’re all on the same team
here—must I remind you of that? I think we have enough enemies out
there. We don’t need to be making more here.”

Wolf sat back, looking away angrily. Aiden
almost felt bad for him.

“I think I’m going to go to bed,” Aiden
said, feeling the exhaustion from the afternoon finally hitting
him. “Not that this wasn’t a lovely evening, but I need a lot of
rest before tomorrow.” He got up, pushing his half-eaten food into
the middle of the table. Logan grabbed it and started to eat what
was left. Saying goodnight, he turned and started to walk back up
to his room. It was only the second day, and he already knew how to
get around the dormitory by himself. It was a simple building.
There was only the main hall where they ate, on the first floor,
and the other floors were separated into rooms. His was on the
fourth floor. Each floor consisted of a single hallway, so it was
pretty impossible to get lost. Outside was a different story, but
he’d give himself more time to memorize that. Back at home he
hadn’t been very good with his sense of direction, but hopefully it
would be better here.

As he crawled into bed, his thoughts started
to turn to his family. He missed them, and wondered what would be
happening now in his world, while he was here. Diana had said it
would still be the same night, which shocked him. How could he be
doing all that he was doing, days be going by here, and yet only
minutes passed there? It was such a weird concept that he couldn’t
quite wrap his head around it. Forcing his mind to settle down, he
started to fall asleep, his last thoughts of Eddie and her smiling
face.

“Time to wake up!” Wolf yelled in his ear.
Aiden shot up in bed, blinking against the sun that filled his
room. “Holy crap!” Wolf yelled, stepping back as he looked at
Aiden’s face. The previous day and its events flooded back into
Aiden’s mind, and he remembered the shiner Logan had been so
generous to give him.

Aiden looked over at Logan, who stood there
with his mouth hanging open. He knew it would be worse that
morning; how was he supposed to go to training looking like he did?
“That bad, huh?” He sighed, getting up to go into the bathroom. A
small mirror hung on the wall above the basin that was used as
their sink. The only other thing was a small toilet, which was
basically a seat with a hole in the ground, since they didn’t
appear to have indoor plumbing. The showers were in the basement
apparently, a large room where everyone went to shower. Aiden
hadn’t been there yet, but he could only imagine what their version
of a shower would be. He took a whiff of his shirt, and thought he
had better go find out after training, or he’d start repelling
people by his scent alone. Looking into the mirror, he prepared
himself for the worst.

“What the hell?” he yelled. Wolf and Logan
were silent in the next room. Aiden stared at his reflection.

“Good morning,” he heard Elisa’s voice in
the main room. “What is the matter with you two?” she asked
curiously. Aiden walked out in a daze, looking to her for an
answer. “What is wrong with all of you?” She looked from one to
another. Slowly, Aiden raised his finger and pointed to where the
black eye should have been. What was left there now was a perfectly
healed eye. He quickly lifted his shirt to look at the bruises that
had been on his ribs, to see his skin unblemished again. His skin
had healed completely overnight.

“I don’t understand,” Wolf breathed.

“He’s a fast healer,” Elisa stuttered,
looking at Aiden for backup. “Right?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling weakly. “I heal
fast?” It sounded like a question as it came out. Wolf and Logan
looked at one another.
There’s no way they’re buying this,
thought Aiden.