The Talented (2 page)

Adrienne had no doubt who
would win.

They circled each other
for only a minute before the Yearling made a move, lunging for
Adrienne. She could see evidence of training in that move, but also
a lack of finesse, and she sidestepped it easily. They repeated the
maneuver again and again until Adrienne tired of the game. She
ducked under a wild swing from Rosch and landed a hard punch to his
gut. He doubled over and barely avoided catching her knee on his
chin.

He staggered upright and
back a few steps, and Adrienne kicked out high, her foot stopping a
bare six inches from the Yearling’s throat.

Rosch stood frozen, the
arm he had moved instinctively to block her kick only halfway
raised.

Adrienne lowered her leg,
planting both feet firmly on the ground with her weight balanced on
the balls of her feet in a fighter’s stance that was as natural to
her as breathing. “That kick would have crushed your windpipe,”
Adrienne told the boy, her brown eyes hard and a little mean as she
studied him.

Rosch was breathing
heavily from the short match, and his eyes were wide with shock.
Maybe he was surprised that he had lost so quickly, but Adrienne
suspected the surprise had more to do with the fact that he had
lost to her, a young woman who stood only as high as his
shoulders.

A session with her taught
new soldiers not to make assumptions about their opponent based on
such trivial factors as size and gender, and that was one of the
reasons Captain Garrett used her to test out the new
recruits.

“
I realize that,” the young
soldier said stiffly, struggling to maintain some dignity despite
the sweat dripping down his dark face.

“
Maybe you’re just slow,
then,” Adrienne said bitingly. “Or maybe you are too damned naive
to realize that female soldiers can be as great a threat as
men.”

He moved toward her again,
apparently intending to take her down through sheer size. She
allowed it, falling so that even as she hit the ground she was
building momentum to roll. It took Rosch a moment to realize that
she was not pinned, and then she was on top of his back, holding
his shoulders down with her legs and locking his head with her
arms. She held him a few painful seconds longer than necessary
before letting go and getting up in disgust.

She took a deep breathe in
an attempt to calm herself. She wasn’t angry with the boy. It was
the lieutenants and captains that had handed him a sword and deemed
him fit to fight that disgusted her. “You need to learn to control
your body. If you don’t, you’re likely to end up with an Almetian
knife where your throat used to be.”

Adrienne turned on her
heel and left the recruit and the crowd that had gathered to watch
her work. She moved with the sleek, predatory moves of a panther,
her thick black braid swishing behind her like the tail of an angry
cat. She was distantly aware of the bustle of soldiers and working
civilians around her. Kyrog was always full of people, but she paid
them no mind as she made her way once more to the captain’s
quarters.

She welcomed the anger she
felt over the soldier’s ineptitude. It helped to push away memories
of what Lieutenant Nissen had tried to do earlier, before Ricco had
chanced upon them.

Her anger at the
Yearling’s lack of skill was very real. With the constant threat
from Almet to the north and groups of bandits roaming the plains of
Samaro looking for travelers or defenseless villages to plunder, it
was up to men like Rosch to see that the land did not devolve into
lawlessness.

Although there had been
little more than skirmishes with Almet in the last decade, everyone
in Kyrog knew that Almet would soon bring its large military force
against Samaro. Not only would Rosch and soldiers like him be
useless against the soldiers from Almet, he would be a liability to
the men fighting alongside of him.

Her anger carried her back
to Captain Garrett’s office. The captain looked up from the stack
of paperwork on his sturdy wooden desk and nodded to
her.

“
I finished sparring with
Rosch.”

He raised an eyebrow.
“And?”

Adrienne began to stalk
around the small space, and Captain Garrett’s lips twitched with
humor in response to the temper rolling off her. She cut a figure
with the sword at her hip slapping against her thigh with each
turn. Her
swa’il
,
the snug fitting leather outfit designed for fighting, was dirty
and stained with sweat, dirt, and what was likely blood.

“
He was horrible,” Adrienne
said when she finally came to a stop before the captain’s desk. Her
dark complexion showcased her expressive brown eyes, and those eyes
were burning. “We were sparring without weapons, and I had him beat
almost before the match began. If this is the best we can expect
from the east—”

“
Rydaeg,” Captain Garrett
interrupted, holding up a hand. “He is young. He only recently
reached his majority. Roua does not offer the same experience to
its soldiers that Kyrog does.” He smiled slightly. “And he was
probably surprised by your talent.”

“
I understand that, sir,
but—”

“
I don’t think you do fully
understand,” Captain Garrett interrupted. “You are an exceptional
soldier, and I rely on you as a teaching aid and for your
exceptional skills. Part of the reason you are so exceptional is
natural talent, but that is not what sets you apart. You have been
a soldier nearly your entire life, and that is why you cannot fully
understand soldiers like the one from Roua. You have never been
where they are. It is possible that the soldier you sparred with
this morning can spend the rest of his life training and never
reach your level, but that does not make him a bad soldier. Any man
brave enough to pick up the sword has my respect.”

“
Sir—”

“
That was not a slight,”
Captain Garrett said. “I do not fault you because the choice to
become a soldier was not yours.” He studied her for a moment. “How
long have you been training?”

“
Sixteen years,
sir.”

“
And how many of those
years have you trained at Kyrog?”

“
Twelve,” Adrienne said,
reluctantly following his line of logic.

“
Twelve years. Over half of
your life has been spent at Kyrog being trained by some of the best
soldiers in Samaro, yet you expect a soldier who has trained for
less than a handful of years, and spent only a few days at Kyrog,
to present a challenge for you?” Captain Garrett’s eyes bored into
hers, and Adrienne had to force herself not to look
away.

“
Some of the Yearling
recruits have been better,” Adrienne said, though she knew it was a
weak argument.

“
And others have been
worse,” Garrett said. “Would you rather no one came to train at
Kyrog?”

“
Of course not,” Adrienne
said. “Kyrog has produced some of the finest soldiers in Samaro,
and it should continue to do so.”

Captain Garrett smiled.
“You are worried that recruits such as this latest one will hurt
Kyrog’s reputation. That our standards will be lowered if we allow
soldiers such as Jeral Rosch to train here.”

Adrienne struggled with
that truth, then sighed. “Yes,” she said, her tone taking on a
distinctly defensive note. “I am not an elitist, but if we continue
to accept soldiers such as this one, how can Kyrog maintain its
reputation?”

“
Rydaeg, I have no
intention of letting Rosch become an instructor here,” Captain
Garrett told her, his lips twitching slightly. “He, like others
before him, will receive a year or two of intensive training at
Kyrog before returning to Roua.” Adrienne looked about to say
something more, but the captain held up a finger to stop her.
“Kyrog breeds elite soldiers, but not everyone can train here. To
help the larger war effort, we train some soldiers for a short time
before they leave to share their increased knowledge and skills
with others.”

Enough of Adrienne’s mad
had worn off for the captain’s words to sink in. “Is it enough?”
Adrienne asked.

There was no hint of a
smile on Captain Garrett’s lips now. His dark face looked even more
tired, his scar more apparent as his mouth hardened. “Every year,
men from Kyrog go to the borders of Almet to support the soldiers
already stationed there. They fight and die despite their superior
skills, and we send more in their place. Almet is large and
prosperous; it can summon vast armies. I don’t know if our efforts
are enough.”

It was not what Adrienne
had wanted to hear. She had hoped to have her doubts dispelled, not
to hear them from her commanding officer. “Do we keep doing what
we’re doing?” Adrienne asked when the tight feeling in her chest
was too much to bear. What they were doing seemed too small, the
task too enormous, to make a difference.

“
Highly skilled soldiers
like yourself are important, but numbers matter. A hundred Jeral
Roschs would make a bigger difference on the border than one
Adrienne Rydaeg, if your task was to fight. You have spent your
life training and learning to be the best. Do you wish to simply
leave Samaro to its fate?”

“
No.” Adrienne didn’t need
to think about it. “I will fight to my last breath to defend our
country.”

Captain Garrett looked as
though he had expected no less from her. Following her mother’s
death, Adrienne had been enlisted into one of the private armies by
her father, who hadn’t been able to afford four children. Soldiers
had become her new family, and Samaro was the cornerstone of that
family. Losing one meant losing the other, and Garrett would know
that giving up soldiering was not an option for her.

“
Then we continue on and
hope that something turns the tide in our favor.” He looked down at
the stack of papers on his desk. Adrienne saw that the paper on top
of the stack was a page from an old manuscript, the age revealed as
much by the language it was written in as by the yellow, cracking
paper. The text was Old Samaroan, a rare sight outside of a
library.

“
Do you have a
translation?” Adrienne gestured toward the page. She moved subtly
closer so that she could better see it without being obvious. It
was hard to read Old Samaroan upside down, and she was unsure of
one of the words she saw.
Necromancer?
That didn’t seem
right.

“
I do,” the captain said
with a nod, snapping her back to attention, though her curiosity
about the old text was nearly overwhelming “I won’t need you to
translate for me this time. You’re dismissed, soldier.”

Despite her frustration at
not being able to read the text, Adrienne straightened, saluted,
and left. She did not head immediately to her barracks, nor to the
grounds where the experienced soldiers drilled. Instead she headed
back to the Pen.

For the most part,
Adrienne had always regarded the Yearlings as a nuisance: a waste
of space, resources, and the time experienced Kyrogean soldiers
spent training them when they should be sharpening their own
skills. But after talking to Captain Garrett, she felt she now
understood the Yearlings’ purpose in the larger efforts to keep
Samaro a country free from Almetian rule. Kyrog could elevate those
inexperienced soldiers in a way few other camps could.

“
Jeral Rosch!” she shouted
in a loud, commanding voice that filled the training
yard.

All movement—all sound—in
the Pen stopped. Most of those present had already fought Adrienne
during their short stay at Kyrog and knew that she had a reputation
even amongst the veteran soldiers for being hard and having a
temper that could flare at the least provocation. After the
demonstration she had given just that morning, no one wanted to
call attention to himself and risk her wrath.

Adrienne caught movement
out of the corner of her eye. She turned and very nearly smirked as
she saw three soldiers putting distance between themselves and the
newest Yearling.

Rosch’s swallow was nearly
audible across the intervening yards, but he stepped forward and
presented himself gamely. “Yes, uh, sir?” he asked with polite
caution.

Adrienne nodded her
approval. “Come with me,” she said. Men all but leapt out of the
way to clear a path for her as they left the yard. She stalked
through the crowd of young soldiers, plans coalescing in her mind.
When they reached a nearly empty area of the shaded courtyard,
Adrienne turned to face Rosch and knew that he was working to
control his nerves.

She respected
that.

“
Why are you here?” she
asked.

“
You told me to follow you,
sir,” Rosch said, looking confused.

Adrienne held back a sigh,
reminding herself that he was young and hopefully more nervous than
stupid. “Why are you here in Kyrog, Rosch?”

“
My lieutenant in Roua
recommended me to come here and receive more training. He said I
was quite talented.” He flushed, no doubt remembering their earlier
sparring match and his humiliatingly easy defeat.

“
Roua is not Kyrog,”
Adrienne said. “Do you know why we call recruits like you
Yearlings?”