A Soldier's Life

Chapter 198: Fighting Lessons

I had the elven daggers and axes spread across the dining room table. “These are the weapons I will train you in. The dagger is for defense, and the hand axe is both a tool and a weapon.”

I considered the daggers and gave Flora the smallest, more of a skinning knife than a fighting weapon. The blade was just four inches, curved, and easily concealed. Her arms were twig-like, and she lacked any real strength that I could discern when I had watched her clean. “This blade is for you due to your size. Careful with it; it is sharp.”

She frowned at me and pulled it from the sheath, inspecting it. She handled it with experienced care, testing the edge, and I realized I was an idiot for thinking these women were unfamiliar with knives. They were a tool every person was familiar with.

For Renna, I selected a modest double-edged dagger. The blade matched the length of her hand, about seven inches. Renna also quickly inspected and admired the craftsmanship. Livia reached for the largest elven dagger, nearly a foot long, and the small woman could probably use it as a short sword.

I softly grabbed her wrist. “No. I want you all to have weapons that you can easily conceal under your robes.” She looked doubtfully at Renna’s blade. I selected a blade slightly larger than the one I had selected for Flora, and she frowned upon taking it. “Size doesn’t matter. It’s how you use it,” I advised her.

“Now, like I said, the hand axes are tools for cutting firewood, clearing a campsite, and a backup weapon. They will be slow and heavy for you to use in combat.” I let them select their own hand axes from the array on the table. I sent the remaining nine daggers and nine hand axes to my storage. They had seen me make things appear before, but making them disappear got gawking, amazed stares from Flora and Livia.

“For this evening, we will work on holding the daggers properly and practice some simple defensive stabs and slashes.” I went into storage and pulled out an armor stand I had wrapped in old blankets to use as a training dummy. We spent the next half hour getting their grips right.

The most common mistake they made was not keeping their index finger next to the guard. This meant their hands could slide on the grip when they stabbed the dummy. “You may not think it is a big deal now, but when your hand is coated in blood, you will appreciate having established a firm grip on your weapon.”

As we moved into slashing and stabbing attacks on the dummy, I had to remind them every five minutes to attack with purpose. “You are not cutting vegetables. You are attacking an enemy,” I said heatedly. They lacked conviction, treating this as a fun game. I decided to switch their target from the dummy to myself.

They giggled as they made half-hearted efforts to stab me, which I easily blocked. I tried to be firmer with them, slapping their hands away harshly, but they still treated it as a game. I started to lose patience and thought about letting one of them stab me by mistake.

I noticed Zyna in the doorway to her room, watching with slight amusement at my apparent futile efforts to get them to take this seriously. Zyna’s face made me snap. I batted Renna’s wrist aside, her blade went flying, and in a quick step, I was behind her. I pinned her arm behind her back and swept her feet. She crashed hard into the floor, and I landed on top of her. I did my best not to hurt her, bracing my knees on her sides.

“Attack me now, Renna!” I said forcibly, my hips immobilizing hers. Flora and Livia were stunned by my sudden change. Renna was trying to catch her breath as I pressed her into the ground. “You can’t attack me because your weapon is ten feet away, and I have you immobilized. I could do anything to you, and you can’t fight back. I want to teach you so this never happens…”

A burning heat started to form between us. I crushed Renna’s hand to her back, causing her fire spell to fizzle. Zyna clapped loudly from the doorway. “Impressive Renna! Forming a spell with one hand. Not an effective spell and is much too slow, but it’s a huge jump in your skill. But I suggest you three take these lessons extremely seriously.” She eyed Flora and Livia. “You two may never learn an offensive spell, and a blade may be the only thing between being captured, killed, or raped. And Renna, you may find yourself out of aether when you need it most.”

I stood and let Renna stand. She rubbed her arm as I had wrenched it a little, but I did not feel guilty. Zyna had their attention, and her voice was hard. “Just because you have power doesn’t mean you will not be taken advantage of. Do you think the little pranks your classmates do to you are malicious? What if a count sees you and fancies you? What if an enemy soldier captures you? What if you get drunk in a tavern and lose your faculties? They will take what they want from you without your permission.” Her tone suggested Zyna might be speaking from experience, maybe not her own but something she may have witnessed.

“You need to be able to attack without hesitation. Always be prepared.” Zyna had stepped closer to me, and I sensed her anger manifesting in her tone. Her hand flashed, and I managed to avoid a stab to my stomach, just taking a slash across my forearm. Her blade had slid across my gloves, not even marking them. Zyna was unapologetic as my blood dripped onto the stone floor. I let myself bleed and just stood and studied the young mages who were still in disbelief that Zyna had attacked me. I thought it was a good lesson, but I waited to heal the wound until after a sufficient pool of blood formed.

Zyna left, and we continued with the lesson. This time, they were more focused. I started to go over the vulnerable veins on the human body that a dagger slash could be used to cripple an opponent. After nearly two hours, Renna asked, “Did you heal yourself?”

“It wasn’t that deep of a cut,” I said, ignoring her question. She narrowed her eyes at me, so I pulled the healing salve from my pocket. “Healing salve,” I said, handing her a small container of thick paste. “Keep it, I got more.” She took it, suspicion still in her eyes. I pulled two more containers into my hand and gave one to each mage aspirant. “The viability is roughly a month. After that, its efficacy will fade over the next two months. After three months, it will be mostly useless.”

Flora was the first to respond, her voice full of respect and appreciation. “You brewed these, didn’t you?” They had helped me procure the ingredients I was using, so I couldn’t deny it, and I nodded.

After they all secured the healing salve, the practice continued until the dinner bell rang, and Flora’s stomach complained with a rumble and she gave me a pitiful look, “Does this mean you are not cooking for us tonight?”

I couldn’t resist her wide blue eyes, like a begging puppy. I produced one of my prepared burritos and a dungeon apple for each of them and sent them away. I was looking forward to getting into my dreamscape and incorporating what I had practiced and seen this morning with the Imperial Legionnaires. I focused on recreating the Primus. Even in the dreamscape, I had an innate dislike of the man, but it was admirable that the man in charge of all the legionnaires still practiced with them in the morning.

I had him fight Konstantin first and frowned as the Primus beat Konstantin every time. This was an improved version of Konstantin, who could beat me if I didn’t use my air shields.

What made the Primus so superior? He was faster, but not by a wide margin over Konstantin. His shield work was superior, and he used it expertly as a distraction, defense, and offense tool. His footwork was good but superior. I tried something new and slowed the combat down to study it.

Shit. He could instantly read his opponent’s footwork, blade, shield, and muscles. No, there was more to it. The Primus was responding to his opponents before they even moved. It made no sense. No, it had to be magic. The prick was using a spell form. I was sure of it. Some future sight most likely, and my subconscious had solved it to incorporate it here. He knew what his opponent was going to do before they did. How do you counter that?

Konstantin fell for the fifth time, and I took his place. I took away the Primus’ advantage. He was still a difficult opponent but not impossible to beat. I added more of what I had seen this morning into my various constructs, improving them as I practiced and completely forgetting to study the earth spell tonight.

I was up before dawn and descending the tower. I paused at one of the libraries on the first floor. Only a single mage was inside, passed out at a desk, his face buried in a text as he drooled on the pages. I walked quietly to the shelves, reading the titles. This library was dedicated to recognizing and countering opponents’ combat magics.

The library was small, maybe three hundred books in total. I still had hundreds of elven metal crafting books to add to my dreamscape library. But I would check out the other libraries in the tower. A gray-robed mage entered the library, giving me an odd look as I wore common clothes.

Even with the token in hand, I was still escorted from the gate to the legion training yard and not allowed to wander the Imperial Grounds unsupervised. I was disappointed that Primus was not here today. I wanted to test myself against him again. A legionnaire saw my disappointment. “He only comes when he can. The mage companies and legions are being shuffled across the Empire, so he is busy.”

As the legionnaires filled the nine sparring circles, they naturally moved themselves up in an orderly and unspoken fashion. I moved to the ninth circle, thinking to try my skill against the least skilled among them. Two other legionaries had also moved to the ninth circle. The dirty blonde-haired legionnaire in the circle looked the three of us over and gave me a very slight nod. I moved into the circle with the training weapon, and he held up his hand, “We need to wait till the healing mages arrive. Mage Faustus is notoriously late.” It was a good ten minutes before two mages arrived, eating their breakfast unconcernedly as they walked.

My opponent immediately tried to surprise me with an attack. He was fast and strong as I went on the defensive. Combat erupted around me as the other participants started their fights as well. I gave as good as I got but soon realized my opponent was the superior swordsman. I prolonged the fight, and after a few bruising strikes, I conceded the match. He nodded in respect as I let one of the healing mages tend to me. I was slowly earning the respect of these men.

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As I watched the fights, one thing I did not like about this type of practice was that all your focus was on a single opponent. Many of the techniques and skills used would only work against one opponent. A sweaty older man sat next to me, dried blood on his training clothes. He only sat here because water was available on a table. He greedily drank a cup. “You are clearly skilled for a conscript. What did you do before the legion?”

Rather than answer his question, I asked one of my own. “Is that why you all despise me? Because I am a conscript?”

He wasn’t reserved in his response, “The conscripts embarrass the Legion of the Lion and the Empire with their poor decorum in public, poorly tended armor, and mediocre skills.” An air of superiority laced his words. “You are just the regular army playing dress-up.”

I could have noted that I knew a number of conscripts that could more than hold their own against this group of Imperial elites, but I held my tongue. Still, his statement caused a burning fury inside me. “Do you want to have a go with me?”

He chugged his water and stood. Apparently, he had expected my offer, and maybe he had goaded me. If I remember correctly, he was ranked fourth among this group, well third today, as he had moved up one circle since the Primus was not here. A few others paused to watch, and I sensed snickering gazes. This contest was meant to put me in my place like yesterday.

Well, fuck that. After a few exchanges where we tested each other, I laid an air shield along the ground, causing him to trip. To his credit, he adjusted rapidly, but I still had a brief opening. He backed up, limping and studying the group that had betrayed him. He flashed glances among the crowd, thinking one of the others had caused his stumble. Three men slightly shook their heads no, and a few shrugged, which told me many legionnaires had spell forms themselves.

My opponent grunted and returned to face me, even more determined. As we continued, I noticed my shield arm getting heavier and heavier. It was not fatigue, so I assumed it was a spell form. It definitely was a slow-acting spell form. I loosened my forearm in the strap, and when it became an annoyance, I flung the shield at my opponent.

Unfortunately, he was prepared for this, and my follow-up attack was blocked. He didn’t let me reclaim my shield, and I was struck in the ribs with his shield while he blocked my blade. I had decided not to use the air shield again and conceded the fight. I waived off the healing mages, displaying annoyance. I took a seat and pretended to brood the rest of the morning. I only needed to watch to improve my dreamscape afterward. If they continued baiting me into duels, I might get seriously injured from a spell form I was unaware of.

The next few days blurred together. I would get my beating and give a beating with the Imperial Legionnaires in the morning, then attend Zyna’s class, to practice being a statue. The afternoon was spent working with Renna, Flora, and Livia. They would not be fighters by any measure but could defend themselves against a single opponent and maybe make a lethal blow against an unskilled or unsuspecting opponent.

Renna’s favorite part of the lessons was breaking free from my restraining holds. I tried to keep the training both serious and fun, and I didn’t mind her clear flirting. I may have reciprocated a little. Livia and Flora thought our byplay was cute by their giggles.

I spent my evenings cooking both in the kitchen and in the alchemy lab, keeping Zyna happy with dungeon feasts and stocking my dimensional storage with hot meals. I even managed to make caramel bread for Zyna, recalling that she had wanted to try it when we hunted the hill giants.

It was a regional dessert from Tsinga—a type of monkey bread with caramel baked in and drizzled over it. Though it was a bit too sweet for me, Zyna, Renna, and the mage aspirants apparently had a sweet tooth, so I had to bake it repeatedly to satisfy them.

For alchemy, I focused on stockpiling useful powders. I ordered the myconid powder rather than making it myself. I accidentally ordered a “cube” of blue myconid powder. The blue spores were the best for concealing your scent. My mistake was ordering a cube, not realizing how much that was. A “rack” contained twelve vials, each containing about one cup in volume. A “square” contained twelve racks, and a “cube” contained twelve squares, an entire crate.

Apparently, my order had angered quite a few people, as that was almost the entire stock of blue myconid powder in the capital. Zyna thought my error was funny even though it had overdrawn on her Chancellor’s allowance for the month. She happily paid the overage just for the joy of annoying the Imperial alchemists.

I focused on smoke pellets, blinding pellets, and sneezing pellets. These were some of the simpler powders to make and were usually useless if exposed to humidity. I wouldn’t have this problem since I would store them in my dimensional space. All the pellets were made by making a paste and then encasing them in a hard shell that would shatter when thrown. The powder would be exposed to air and rapidly catalyze to produce a cloud roughly seven feet in radius.

The hardest part of the entire process was drying the pellets after encasing them in the special resin. If you dried them too fast, the shell would crack. Too slow, and moisture might be retained inside, making them useless. The resin was only osmotic for about two hours as it cooled, so if you failed to dry it in that time, the pellets would be useless.

It made me briefly think bitterly of Lareen, who could pull moisture out of objects. She would have been good at this phase of alchemy. I think I had forgiven her for her betrayal. At least, I could see why she did it—to improve her own standing. Still, it was hard to trust anyone because of it.

The smoke pellets created a dense white cloud of smoke that had a pleasant almond scent. In windy conditions, it wouldn’t last long, but I still saw value in the item. The blinding pellets were not true blindness. The spores clung to the cornea of the eyes, rapidly creating a thick mucus and blurring the vision of those in the cloud. What made this extremely valuable in my mind was that magical healing could not cure the condition. You needed to wash the eyes with water to clear your vision.

The sneezing powder was smokeless, so the victim would not realize they were inhaling it. It caused the victim’s nose to run and sneeze uncontrollably for a few minutes. The main use was to affect animals that tracked by smell. Pairing the blinding and sneezing powders together would simultaneously affect two senses in a fight. In the back of my mind, I was hoping for a chance to spar with Konstantin again and use the sneezing powder on him. A man needed goals in life.

My time in the dreamscape was spent making large strides in my skill with the blade. As I continued to improve my partners, so did my own skills improve. I wished I could observe legionnaires with mastery in the spear. Sometimes in the dreamscape, I got too focused on swordplay, and I needed more time to study earth speak or practice with my strongest runic weapon.

My earth affinity had leveled off at 32 after consuming all the earth essences, and I could feel the ability tantalizingly close to imprinting when I did study the spell forms. I had also consumed the last three minor dexterity essences and three minor coordination essences. The only physical essences I had left were two major dexterity. I had several magic affinity essences: air, water, displacement, and illusion yet to consume. I was reluctant to go through the pain of unlocking air or water at this moment, so the illusion essences were next on the menu.

Ignis had returned my resin-hide legion armor, which looked brand new and perfectly fit. I stashed it away in my dimensional space after scuffing off the shine. I was a conscript and took pride in that fact—well, keeping my armor unpolished was a way to give the finger to the volunteers.

I managed to figure out what some libraries in the towers contained, but I hadn’t found them vacant to peruse the books. One library was dedicated to spell forms and combating others with certain spell forms. This library usually had a handful of gray and white-robed mages studying all the time, even before dawn when I descended the steps.

Another library contained even more valuable information—bestiaries. Each leather-bound book detailed a specific creature, detailing everything about its habitat, fighting tendencies, weaknesses, and strengths. The old curator of this library, who seemed to live inside, wouldn’t allow a filthy legionnaire to touch her books unsupervised, but Zyna promised she would accompany me when she had time.

Another library in another tower contained a compendium of artifacts. Each artifact had its own manuscript detailing which dungeon it was found in and its functions. If it was not a dungeon artifact, it would provide the country of origin and the name of the artificer, in addition to details of what it did. I managed to sneak into this archive briefly and locate the folio for the magebane blade.

I had only paged through it rapidly before being chased out but was able to review it in the dreamscape later that night. The origin of the poison was from a fist-sized spider that lived in deep, humid jungles. The magebane blade replicated this poison. There were four different magebane blades detailed within the pages, two sketches looked eerily familiar to my own. The other two were inferior copies made by a master artificer in the faraway Kingdom of Gesedmuria.

The poison that a magebane produced reacted with the aether in the body, making it extremely turbulent and impossible to control. A mage had no chance of writing out a spell form to cast a spell. With some practice and luck, a mage could still funnel aether through a spell form, even while being under the influence of magebane poison. The potency of the poison or quality of the artifact would determine how long the effect would last.

I recalled during my battle with Traeliorn how difficult it had been to control my aether. I had just barely been able to access my dimensional space for a brief moment and that had turned the battle in my favor. The text didn’t indicate there were side effects from the poison, so maybe I could poison myself and train to use my imprinted spell forms while under its effect.

As I woke in the morning, I was not headed to the Imperial Legion Hall today. This morning, the new mages were journeying across the river into the Eastern Forests to hunt gnolls. This was a rite of passage for mages in the War College and their induction into killing humanoids. As Zyna had promised, I was being assigned to guard Renna. Gnolls were not the only scourge in the woods but tended to camp along the wide river, making them easy to find.

Rather than dress in the parade armor, I suited up in my resin-hide armor. It was partly to irritate the Imperial Legionnaires and because I found it much easier to fight in. As we gathered in the courtyard, I could see Renna standing away from the group in her gray robes. Although she was excluded from the small cliques of mages, she stood proud and confident. She even managed a smile in my direction before returning to a stoic demeanor.

More and more legionnaires arrived, swelling our number to twenty-seven, outnumbering the new mages by nine. We were waiting on the Chancellor and mage instructors. We ended up waiting for almost two hours before seven mage instructors arrived, along with Zyna. They were all dressed in standard mage commander gear with light armor. Zyna looked a little too serious today. I listened to her speech, which touched on procedures and safety. Then she read off a list pairing a legionnaire with each mage.

I was not surprised when my name was announced with Renna’s. After the pairings, we all walked to the docks, where a large barge waited for us. Another fifteen legionnaires and two more mages manned the craft. Massive prepared packs of gear were here for the legionnaires to carry. Fortunately, I already knew that after we traveled thirty miles downriver, we would be making camp a short distance from the river for the night before the hunt.

Two drakes also circled high above from the Dragon Legion, another layer of protection for the young mages. I settled on the barge’s bow, ignored by both legionnaires and mages, and relaxed while I had the chance.

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