Shaman's Crossing (The Soldier Son Trilogy #1)

I left the building, relieved to be finished with academics for the day. Even Corporal Dent seemed in a better mood as he formed us up in our ranks and marched us back to Carneston House. He still fell back beside Gord and criticized him, referring to him again as Gorge and promising him that he’d shave him thin as a rail before his first year was through. Gord strove to keep pace with us, but in truth, his legs were short, so that he lurched and jounced along rather than marched. Dent harangued him all the way back to our dormitory, winning not a few smiles and sniggers from some of the other cadets. Dent did have a clever wit, and the sharp observations he made about Gord, how his cheeks kept cadence with the jiggling of his belly and how he breathed through his nose like a blown horse, were piercingly accurate and delivered in such a wondering yet sarcastic tone that even I could not keep my lips from crooking.

Yet when I stole a glance in Gord’s direction to see how he was taking it, I felt a creeping shame about my secret smile. Gord soldiered on manfully, sweat already streaming down the side of his fat face. The folds of his neck bulged red above his tight collar. His eyes stared straight ahead and his face showed no expression, as if he had long been schooled to mockery. I think if he had looked flustered or embarrassed, I might have been able to smile without shame. But that he took it in stride, with dignity, even as he stoically attempted to force his body into compliance, somehow made Dent’s taunts childishly cruel. Gord was doing the best he could; there was nothing he could have done to please Dent. All amusement went out of me, and for the second time on that first day of Cavalla Academy, I discovered a worm’s trail of cowardice within my soul.

Dent dismissed us outside Carneston House, allowing us to racket into the building and up the stairs. Or so we thought. A roar of outrage from Sergeant Rufet brought us all to a sharp halt. The war veteran actually rose from his desk to confront us, and the way he reduced us to cringing puppies with two dozen words showed that Dent had a long way to go to develop the lashing tongue and acid vocabulary of the true sergeant. When he released us, we went upstairs quietly, exhibiting the self-control that we’d someday be expected to display as cavalla officers.

Our respite was brief. We were allowed just enough time to put our books and supplies away and straighten our uniforms. Then it was time to once again fall in on the parade grounds, this time for drill.

I had expected that we would go straight to the stables and the horses, and in truth I had looked forward to being in a saddle again and seeing what sort of mount our new Academy commander had procured for us. Instead, in our small patrols we spent the better part of the fall afternoon with Dent, practicing basic drill. His inexperience at teaching was as great a handicap to us as our inexperience at marching. I knew the fundamentals of drill, for Sergeant Duril had taught them to me, just as he had schooled my normal stride to twenty inches, the standard for marching troops. But I had never drilled with a group of men, where one must watch one’s fellows from the corner of one’s eye and match both pace and stride to the patrol.

Some of the others did not know even how to do an “about-face.” We repeated these over and over, with those of us who knew them standing like oxen in harness while Dent harangued those who did not and made them endlessly shift from “attention” to “parade rest” and back again. It was almost a relief when he decided to get us into motion. He marched us back and forth, back and forth, seeming to become more discontented and more distraught with our ragged lines and uneven response to his bellowed commands. Those of us who quickly caught on to drill could do nothing for those who did not, nor could we make our entire patrol look better than the worst soldier in it. Gord took a heavy share of Dent’s abuse, as did Rory, for he walked with a rolling gait and bent elbows. Kort had a longer stride than the rest of us, and when he attempted to shorten it, he appeared always on the verge of stumbling, while gangly Lofert could not seem to master the difference between right and left on any of the commands. He was always a second behind the rest of us as he strove to go in the correct direction by spying on the cadet beside him.

Dent cursed us all roundly but without Sergeant Rufet’s skill. I could not understand why he could not teach us calmly, until I spied Cadet Captain Jaffers and Colonel Stiet standing to one side of the parade ground. Jaffers had a notebook in his hands and seemed to be critiquing each patrol under Stiet’s watchful eyes. Caulder Stiet stood just behind his father and to his left, scrutinizing us as well. I wondered if he contributed comments to our critique. I was beginning to understand Sergeant Rufet’s apparent intolerance for the boy. It was annoying that this pup seemed to have his father’s ear on all facets of the Academy, and yet were I his father and in a similar position, would not I try to teach my boy by my example? Even as I tried to justify his presence that way, I knew that my own father would have expected me to exhibit far more humility and would not have suffered me to wear a cadet’s uniform until I had truly earned it.