Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (32 page)

Aedan kept to his seat, but his breath came fast
and his eyes were hot. None of the boys in his group were smiling. Peashot dug
through his sleeves in vain – he had not yet replaced his favourite weapon.

Hadley stood with an abruptness that caused his
chair to skid backwards and fall over. “Coming?” he asked. Without waiting for
an answer, he turned and headed for the back of the room.

Peashot kicked his chair aside and ran to catch
up. Lacking a projectile, he launched himself past Hadley and over the table at
a very surprised Malik, hitting him square in the chest and knocking him to the
ground. Cayde aimed a kick at Peashot’s side, and while poised on one leg, he
made a soft target for Hadley’s shoulder and went down easily, crashing into
desks and chairs.

Lorrimer swung at Warton, missed, and hit Kian
instead. While Lorrimer was apologising, Warton replied with a punch to the
stomach that almost broke the tall boy in half. Warton proceeded to kick
Lorrimer on the ground and that was more than Kian could take. He grabbed Warton’s
foot, hoisted it in the air and held it until the bigger boy slipped and fell
to the ground with a thud.

Vayle stood at the edge with an air of philosophical
abstraction as Malik and Peashot scuffled around on the floor trading blows,
and Hadley and Cayde wrestled for supremacy, knocking down chairs, tables and
careless boys in their struggle.”

“Order!” Skeet shouted, bringing his cane down on
a desk with a crack that brought all activity to a quivering stop.

“Explain yourselves!”

Peashot scrambled to his feet, snatched the
drawing from Malik’s desk and handed it to Skeet. The war-master studied it.
“Your work, Malik?”

“No, sir.”

“And yet the handwriting is clearly yours. All you
brawlers line up outside. Every one of you. Now!”

The shrieks of wind and the meaty smacks of the
cane made the boys in the class wince. Each combatant received two. Malik got
another two for lying and two more for attempting to undermine a fellow
student. His face wore a mixture of shock and rage as he hobbled back with
small steps, his eyes stabbing in all directions. Aedan looked away.

Skeet marched back inside. “Marshals fighting
amongst themselves is something this city cannot afford,” he said. “Next time
it will be more than a caning. Am I clear?”

The class mumbled that he was.

“Good. You are dismissed. Group three, stay
behind.”

Aedan’s group remained on their chairs – at least Aedan
and Vayle did. The others were half on and half off, looking none too
comfortable.

Skeet’s voice was firm. “Loyalty I like. I am glad
to find it among you. That is why you were given only two. The stupidity of rage-inspired
fighting I do not like. That is why you were given two. Now that’s enough of
this. I have arranged for you to meet with the academy’s resource group this
afternoon during the lunch break. I want you to explain your ideas to them.
This is a privilege no junior students have ever been given, so do not
embarrass me.”

During field surgery the boys were subdued. The girls
soon learned about the brawl. Aedan saw Malik busy sketching again, and as the
class ended, he heard giggles. Malik left a group of girls crowding over the
sheet of paper he had given them. As he walked by, he angled towards Aedan,
glaring down into his face and brushing his shoulder as he passed. Aedan wanted
to hit him. He wanted to run and hide from everyone who knew him.

He noticed Liru walking up to the group. She took
the page from a tall girl called Ilona whose long hair fell to her shoulders in
soft, golden curls, and whose eyes caused most boys’ voices to falter. Liru glanced
at the page, looked at the girls, and tore it up.

“Savage!” Ilona snapped.

“Yet you are the ones causing injury.”

“Oh you always have an answer for everything,
don’t you?” Ilona swirled around and strode away, golden curls flowing out
behind and fawners swarming around her.

Liru grinned as she approached Aedan.

“Never mind them,” she said. “There’s not a good
wife among them. If you heard the way that Ilona talks when there’s nobody to
impress, you would rub manure in your hair just to make sure she would not take
an interest in you.”

“Look at me Liru. Do you really think I need the
manure?”

“Yes.”

Dejected as he was feeling, Aedan couldn’t help
but smile at Liru’s directness.

“I was thinking of making a drawing of Malik,” she
said. “He will be standing on a field of battle, taking off his helm and
showing his pale skin. The soldiers around will be dropping their weapons and
offering him medicine.”

Aedan laughed.

“Sit with me,” she said, leading him to a bench in
the sun. “There are a lot of rumours surrounding you. Some of the girls enjoy rumours
but I prefer straight questions and answers. So I want to know what led you to
marshals’ training.”

Aedan pulled off his shoes, sat back and closed
his eyes, remembering his childhood ambitions and the tragedy that had led him
to where he was. He began to tell her of his early interest in ranging through
a forest that was meant to be forbidden, his love of reading, especially
stories of war, valour, sacrifice and heroism, and then of the Lekran raid that
had cut through his beloved hometown and taken his closest friend.

“At first I wanted to be a great soldier and
commander only for the adventure of it all. I thought I would be good with
strategy, and that felt like enough of a reason. But when … when they took her,
it became different. I want to bring justice to them like they have never
known. I’m going to bring the sky down on that filthy island.”

“I hope you make them suffer.”

“I don’t really want to bring pain,” he said. “I
want to bring justice and stop the slave trade.”

“I think you will succeed. There is fire in your
heart. But maybe you should not try to deny your anger. I would happily bring
them as much pain as they brought me. I would cover those islands with Lekran
blood.”

Aedan was struck by Liru’s comfort with such
violent sentiments – how different she was to Kalry. “How have they hurt you?”
he asked.

“They took my sister.” Her face betrayed no
emotion, but her voice clinked with daggers.

“Oh, I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

“The Lekran raids are why we left Narralaz. My
father is wealthy. He knew many important families in Castath, and he was able
to purchase citizenship here.”

“So then, you are at the academy for a similar
reason to me?”

“To answer that, I would have to reveal what we
are being trained for.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean –”

“I know,” she said with a soft smile. Aedan
wondered how such a small and delicate creature with such mild eyes could
conceal such edged thoughts.

A jolt passed through him and he flinched as a
look of horror crossed his face. “I’m meant to be at that meeting. I’m dead!” Without
another word he bolted from the bench and flew down the corridors towards the
central hall.

“Ah, here he is.”

About a hundred pairs of eyes were directed at Aedan
as he stumbled, panting, through the back doors of the auditorium. His first
glimpse of the roomy interior was enough to tell him that this was unlike any
of the classrooms or lecture halls. From the carpeted floor, plush yellowwood
panelling swept up the high walls and blended into a wide vaulted ceiling. Around
the perimeter of the auditorium, hundreds of brass lamps shone against the
portraits of fierce-looking past masters, probably now all dead. On the stage
stood Master Skeet, looking very much alive and far fiercer than any of the portraits.
Aedan trotted down an aisle between rows of tiered velvet seats to the carpeted
stage. He took his place beside the other four boys who were giving him
less-than-friendly looks.

“We have already covered the general defence
structure,” Skeet said. “You have arrived just in time to explain the idea
behind your catapult.”

Skeet’s words were loud enough for everyone to
hear.

The message in his eyes was for Aedan only. It
read, “You impudent gnat! When this is over I’m going to put
you
in a
catapult and fire it down a mineshaft!” He smiled as he stepped aside.

Aedan was still breathing hard, so his explanation
was less than persuasive, but after a while he saw interest sparking in a few
eyes. And then the objections began, and they were not voiced gently.

“It is not a practical idea,” rumbled a big man in
the front who spilled over his chair like a lounging bullfrog. “The labour
required to build suitable wheels would be excessive.”

“That is why he used the word disc and not wheel,”
Skeet replied in a tone that made Aedan wonder if there was bad blood between
these two. “Sections of giant pines would be simple enough to cut if we rig a
water-driven saw. They would cost us little and we could build up a large
supply very quickly.”

The big man said nothing. Aedan took it as a rude
form of assent and looked away. There was something about the man’s eyes he did
not like.

“Would this require the building of new
catapults?” a smaller voice called from the back. “Do we have the manpower for
that?”

Skeet replied again. “Modifications to existing
catapults might allow them to cast either discs or traditional projectiles. But
this would need to be tested.”

A few more questions were put and answered. The
chief war councillors gathered at the front to confer, and after much discussion,
the large boorish man spoke up. “Generally we find that catapults are of
minimal use against the smaller mobile targets of the attacking force, but this
is an idea that might change things. We would like to see if it works in
practice – though I doubt it – so we will commission a team to consult with you
and construct a prototype, a modification of existing weapons if possible. Some
have shown an interest in the unconventional ideas that emerged earlier and
would like these boys to sit in at the next defence council. As we will be in
the presence of the prince and other royalty, I recommend some tightening up of
manners.” He swung his bulbous head towards Aedan. “And formal attire.”

All stares converged on Aedan’s bare feet. If toes
could blush, his would have lit the hall.

“We meet tonight at the palace. The royal guard
will collect you at the academy entrance in four hours. If you do not know how
to behave among royalty, you have four hours to learn.”

“The palace – woohoo! My family will never believe this!”

Lorrimer was hopping along the corridor in some
wild, gangling parody of a victory dance. The others laughed as they followed.

“Are you going to get dressed this time, Aedan,” Vayle
asked, “or are you considering going naked?”

“What is it with you and shoes anyway?” said
Hadley. “It’s like you actually enjoy the feeling of sand and soil between your
toes.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. It’s not civilised. How can you like it?”

“Back in the Mistyvales I had a friend who
explained it with a poem. ‘
The hug of grass and the kiss of dew are
greetings spoiled by the shoe.’
I changed her girly section about kissing
to ‘
the squish of worms’
which made the rhyme not work, but definitely
improved the poem. Anyway, the point we agreed on was that walking barefoot is
like letting the ground hug your feet, and shoes should only be worn when absolutely
necessary.”

“Sounds like a nice girl,” said Lorrimer. “Did you
ever get kissed by her?”

Aedan’s throat clenched and he couldn’t answer.
Behind him a furious whispering broke out in which he heard the words “stupid
clod”, “dead”, and “forgot”. He wondered how long the wound would take to close
over. He sank onto his chair as he entered the dorm. A hand placed on his
shoulder in passing was almost enough to make him cry, but he breathed,
gathered himself, and pulled out his books. It would be best to lose himself while
memorising a few more details on defensive strategies. He could not afford to
indulge misery, to live in the past and stumble through life facing backwards.

During the afternoon, they washed thoroughly and
dressed in their best, cleanest clothes, then strolled across the lawns and waited
at the main gate for the guards that would escort them to the keep.

“They say the princess is a stunner,” said
Peashot.

“They also say she’s eighteen and twice as tall as
you,” Vayle replied.

“I meant the younger one.”

“The younger one is a boy.”

“Oh. Well then I meant the older one. Five years
is not so much, and anyway, I’ll grow.”

“Yes, I’m sure she thinks daily of a delinquent
midget apprentice growing up to claim her hand ahead of all the nobles and
princes of the realm. What could any of them possibly give that you don’t have,
except titles, land, wealth and all that. You don’t have any of those things lying
around, do you?”

“You’re an idiot, Vayle. What does delinquent
mean?”

“It means you. If anybody asks you to describe
yourself, that’s the word you want.”

“Thanks. Idiot.”

“My pleasure. Allisian
is
pretty though,
but I’ve heard that the prince chops off the heads of men who stare at his
sister.”

Peashot snorted.

“Here comes the guard,” said Hadley. “I think you’d
better drop the princess talk.”

The prince’s guard was a group of seven tall soldiers wearing
full parade armour. Plumed helms waved and red capes billowed as they marched
down the road, each step ringing out with a clash of steel.

They drew up at the heavy iron gate outside the
academy where the captain of the guard summoned the five boys by name and
scrutinised them. His eyes indicated just the right amount of professional disapproval.

“You are to be escorted to the keep. Remain
between the head and the rearguard.” With that, he and two flanking soldiers
turned and began to march back towards the keep. The boys scuttled after them,
not so much in fear of being left behind as of being stamped on by the rearguard
crashing at their heels.

The procession drew more than a few curious faces
as it marched between groups of gossips and idlers, strolling parties and
couples – all enjoying the lingering afternoon rays that streamed down the
west-facing roads.

The walls of the keep rose before the boys, dark
and stern. As they approached, the gates swung open and heavily armed sentries
stood aside to allow the procession through.

The courtyard was bigger than they had expected.
An assortment of soldiers and servants hurried about, finishing their duties
for the day, or beginning their duties for the night, or possibly just looking
busy to avoid being given additional duties.

The palace stood at the end of the courtyard, and
though they had all gazed up at it through the gate, it appeared far bigger
now. The building rose perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above them. Aedan
noticed how the lowest doors were all eight feet above the ground with stairs
leading up to them – stairs that could theoretically be destroyed when under
threat. But where the stairs should have been made from wood, these were of polished
granite. Clearly there was a conflict of values here.

The apprentices were handed over to a royal porter
whose face hung from his skull like drooping clay and whose eyes registered
neither welcome nor hostility. In fact, if it were not for the treachery of
blinking eyelids, the unfocussed gaze might have belonged to a corpse. Aedan
had heard about this kind of thing. Many important servants considered an
appearance of bored efficiency void of interest or powers of observation to be
safest. With grave indifference, the porter led them up the stairs and into an
airy vestibule of the keep.

The windows here should have been no more than
angled slits allowing arrows to be shot out in almost any direction and light
to enter from almost none. But again, the design ideals had apparently been
flung away and much larger windows cut into the stone walls.

The boys were led past guards, through a hall and
up a wide marble stairway bordered with alabaster statues – all resplendent in
royal robes. They climbed five storeys before the porter turned. He led them
into a wide passage so lavishly decorated it made Aedan feel uncomfortable. The
windows faced west, admitting bright shafts of bronzed light that glowed off
the opposing wall. They passed several grand archways and large rooms before
stopping outside a decorated oak door at the end of the passage where the
dead-faced porter knocked.

The spy-latch was opened. An eye inspected them, a
bolt slid, and the door was swung open.

They filed into a spacious room, richly carpeted
and decorated with all manner of maps, sketches of weapons, and diagrams of
fortresses. On the western and southern walls were large windows – a strangely
unwarlike feature for a room dedicated to the purpose of war strategy, but the
commanding view gave it some justification. Light from the windows fell on two
dozen men sitting at a long table that ran the length of the room. Aedan
recognised some of the faces – Osric, Skeet, and Balfore the dandified mayor
who was still festooned with chains and rings.

Aedan knew he was meant to bow to the prince, but
because nobody in the room was dressed in any sort of royal outfit and all
heads were crownless, he had no idea whom to acknowledge.

“Bow to your prince, boys,” said Skeet.

Aedan glanced desperately across at Peashot for
some clue, but the smaller boy shrugged. In a kind of disorganised arrangement,
they all bowed, each aiming in a different direction. Vayle, at the back, was
the only one to get it right. The room fell silent.

“Boys, do you intend to humiliate me?” Skeet said.
“Here is your prince. Do you not recognise him?”

“Sorry, sir,” Hadley replied. “Sorry, Your
Highness. We have only ever seen you from the backs of crowds. We would only
recognise you by those big prince clothes and the crown.”

Though Hadley did not exactly say it, there was in
fact nothing remarkable about Prince Burkhart, except for a general appearance
of softness. A neatly arranged crop of mousy hair framed a round face with round
cheeks, eyes that held more humour than command, and a surprisingly red nose
looking as if it had been struck by a heavy bottle, or the contents. Aedan
wondered if that was perhaps the young ruler’s means of escaping the strains of
leadership.

The prince laughed, stepping out from the others
and dissolving the tension in the room. “That’s alright. I have no love of big
clothes or heavy metal hats. I suppose I look rather like the squire of one of
these gentlemen here, all of whom probably appear a lot more commanding than
I.”

“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir – Your Highness.”

Prince Burkhart clapped his hands and laughed
again. “Quite right. Your candour would make you abysmal in matters of court
policy where none of us may say what we really think. But let’s get to the
reason for your presence here. You came up with some interesting ideas in that
last design of yours. While we are not convinced that they would work, we admire
the boldness – something that qualified strategists will tend to place beneath
caution, perhaps to the detriment of their plans. Even if your thoughts do no
more than shake us from rutted thinking, it will be well worth the exercise.
The ideas of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys have never been heard in this
room before, but the present exigency calls for unusual measures and creative
approaches.

“The internal moat, the rolling discs, and the dye
– crafty one that – are all fresh ideas, and those are most welcome here. The
dyes we will certainly attempt as it will cost us little. The angle of the sun
will probably play a strong role in their success. The moat does give us some
interesting possibilities. An external moat would need to be at full depth all
the way round before a siege begins. There might not be time for that in our
case. But if it is behind a protective wall, it could be partitioned off,
drained and deepened in a section where tunnelling is taking place, then
flooded again in preparation for the tunnel’s arrival.

“The rolling discs are interesting – especially on
the downward slopes where they could roll at speed for a mile or more. On the
level, however, we feel that they would not travel any great distance before
collapsing and might not be that difficult to avoid. We will still build the
prototype and see what happens. Soaked in oil and set alight they would prove
devastating if they could reach an enemy camp.

“As you can see, we place a high value on original
concepts. So now that you know what we think of your ideas, we would like you
to see if you can spot the flaws in ours. Before you look at the plans, I want
to make two things clear. Firstly, if you speak of any of these things outside
this room, you will all be built into the foundations of the outer wall.” He smiled,
but his brows were raised in a way that assured the boys this was not a joke.
“Secondly, there is to be no polite deference. If you observe a flaw, you speak
of it. You have been brought here because of your original perspectives. It is
your duty to voice them. Now, let’s get to it.”

Five chairs stood open at the centre of the long
table and the boys were invited to take their places before the large map unfurled
there.

As Aedan settled into a plush velvet chair, he
decided that he liked this prince. Burkhart struck him as an open and up-front man,
someone with whom he would always know his ground. He shifted the chair up and
focussed on the map, eager to say something that might win the prince’s
approval.

The drawing was complicated and the annotations
numerous, but the work was so neat that things became quickly clear.

Trying to concentrate under the weighty eyes of
the city’s war council was not easy. Lorrimer, if he was absorbing anything,
gave no evidence of it and fidgeted constantly. Aedan was the first to speak.

“Is this a tunnel?” he asked, pointing to lines
that led from the outer wall to a small fortified hill.

“Yes,” Burkhart replied, hovering over the map.
“Leaving that hill to an enemy is not an option as it gives an excellent
prospect for catapulting the city. It is a ghastly shortfall of the original
city plan. Fortifying and holding the hill is a necessity. It will also give us
an excellent means of guarding our own eastern wall, forcing an enemy to take
the sloping ground on the northern, western and southern aspects. Do you see a
problem?”

“Wouldn’t they suspect a tunnel? And if they drew
a line between the two structures and looked for the way plants grow
differently after the soil has been disturbed, especially if it’s dug from the
top, then wouldn’t they be able to sink a shaft and enter our own tunnel,
entering both the city and hill fortress?”

“That is why there are very heavy iron doors on
either side,” said the prince. “Passwords would be required to get in.”

Aedan nodded and tried to hide his frown.

“Speak, young man. You dislike the idea? You have
a better one?”

“Well, I was just thinking that if the tunnel was
breached, the hill fortress would not last as long without supplies and
reinforcements. I was wondering if we could use the first tunnel as a trap and
dig a second one in secret, one that maybe wanders off to the side before
coming back to the fortress, so they would never guess where to dig.”