The celebration lasted a couple of minutes. People told stories of their exploits, which spurred on more cheers. Lille didn’t let us celebrate too long, and soon called for a fresh round.

  Nora and I were on the same team again while Mika moved to the other. Marcell, one of the impromptu leaders of my group last time, was with us again and suggested we follow the same strategy. Me as the Lord with everyone else on attack.

  Mika must have convinced his team to do the same because when the round started, forty people charged into one another with little to no strategy beyond getting past the other blob of humanity. The round began as an all-out brawl, each side dedicated to reaching the other’s undefended keep, though I saw Andrew behind the other side’s Lady.

  As it became clear to both sides that they were following the same plan, people adapted. Like watch towers, people on both sides stepped back from the melee and dedicated themselves to stopping those who slipped through. [Mages], who’d been launching damage spells into the rear ranks of the blob, split their attention between the people who got through and firing at the other team’s [Mages].

  As the plans adapted and stragglers broke through the line, I noticed that nine out of ten times; they focused on the relatively undefended [Mage]. And almost always, people from our side broke off to intercept them. There were still a few people who got past the first lines and went after me instead, but every time that happened the [Mages] focused their spells and all I had to do was finish them.

  Our [Mages] won us that round. One of their spells malfunctioned in the perfect way and created a gust that blew a gap in the enemy line large enough for ten people to rush through and go at their Lady. The other side tried to compensate, but like the breaking of a dam, the more they fell back, the more of us got through. It took another ten minutes, but eventually we dragged their Lady over the border and won another round.

  Tammy and Lille gave us a couple of minutes to celebrate, but afterwards launched us into a game called skirmish. they gave us colored headbands and put us into groups of four. The goal was to rip the headband off the heads of the other groups. The combat rules were the same as in siege. Skirmish was equally fun and frustrating for me. I’d trained in skirmish tactics in the forest, but an open training yard was a very different environment. Not to mention my style was built around endurance combat, which didn’t count for much when some too fast [Rouge] could leap at you and snatch your headband off in a second.

  We played three round of skirmish and while I always equated myself well, there always came a time when the other teams realized that if they took me out the rest of my teams would fall soon after, the other teams swarmed me early into the rounds.

  ~***~

  This morning had been fun and when lunched was called I had a smile on my face. Relaxing like this was a rare thing, and I let myself indulge in the feeling. Nora and I headed back into the tavern together, but she forgot something and had to run back into the yard.

  Leaning against the wooden doorframe into the common room, I cast my gaze across the yard to the stone keep. People filled every window up to the third floor. Each of them watched us with bird-like interest as we milled about and chatted with one another.

  ~***~

  After lunch, they had us all collect back into the training yard. The trainers set themselves up at different points in the yard while Ruth stood before us and waited for everyone to focus on her.

  “Settle down.” Ruth said. She hadn’t raised her voice, but it still carried over all the small conversations happening.

  “I know you're all excited for tonight, but there are still some basics we have to go over with everyone. As you all know, the Guild is a service to help you be the best adventurers you can be. In service to that ideal, the rest of today will be the fundamentals, formations, how to set up a camp, and basic field first aid.”

  Ruth let her words sink in for a moment before she continued.

  “Today won’t be an in-depth session on all the nuances of adventuring life. That you can get if you take advantage of all the courses the Guild offers.

  “Erhard’s wisdom divides all adventurers into five categories: sentinels, flankers, midline, support, and back-line. Sentinels are your frontline combatants. They’re there to soak up all the focus and protect those behind them. Flankers, your jobs are to get behind enemy lines and strike where your opponents are weakest. Midlines are typically less well-defended than sentinels, but are anyone who fights behind the sentinel’s guard. Supports are exactly what they say on the tin. If you want to support your party mates, this is your role. Finally, back-liners are typically [Mages], ranged combatants, and people who can attack from a distance.”

  Ruth paused for questions, a couple people asked some, but they were all [Mages] wondering whether they would qualify as supports or back-liners. To which Ruth’s answer was usually support.

  After that, she had the trainers call out which group they would take, and we all separated. I ended up in front of Tammy again, who’d called for sentinels. She gave us a more in depth run through of a sentinel’s role in combat, but it was all stuff I’d learned when I was six or seven and first being trained with the Black Hands.

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  After an hour of explanations, they had all of us collect back in the center and form a circle. The trainers called out names, and we had to rush into the center and get into one of the four basic formations. If we were too slow or did it wrong, another group was called out to spar with us.

  We kept at that for hours, but every time one of my groups would make a mistake, the trainers would just send us back into the crowd without calling for us to spar. It wasn’t until I saw the steward who’d signed me up for the program, Maggie; I think her name was, talked to Ruth that I got to spar with other groups.

  ~***~

  Next Ruth went over how to set up a basic camp, pitch a tent, start a fire, hide food. It amazed me it had to be taught in the first place, as I’d learned about them even before I’d joined the Black Hands.

  The field medicine drill, however, was far more interesting. Ruth had Regis and Matt bring out a couple dolls made of linen and cotton from the keep. I thought it would be the normal showcase. How to diagnose what was treatable, what had to be severed, and what could be ignored. Instead, Ruth focused on how to treat and heal almost everything.

  “In the lower Tiers, a hit to the head can be especially deadly. If a party member is knocked unconscious position them so they lay like this.” Ruth demonstrated and moved the doll to lie on its side, one leg propped up, and head titled towards the ground. “The goal is to stop them from choking on their own vomit should they throw up.”

  The Cult taught that waking up someone immediately afterwards is what you were supposed to do, especially in the field. Having them lay there exposes them to scavengers and puts your squad at risk of discovery. Ruth went over a couple of the basics, such as how to treat a stab wound, and what to do should you be hit with an arrow or similar weapon.

  I knew how to do the things she taught, but the gentle measures she proscribed shocked me. If you were stabbed or shot with an arrow, we’d trained to remove the weapon immediately and have the squad leader cauterize the wound with the enchanted iron rod they carried for that express purpose.

  Ruth was going over how to apply a tourniquet to stop bleeding, and how to prep for a field amputation when Nora, who stood beside me, asked.

  “Can you imagine what you’d do if you actually had to go through with that?”

  My mind flashed back to the couple of times I’d had to amputate someone’s hand or leg after they got it stuck in a kobold trap. In moments like that, the deal had always been to be left behind to die or have the limb cut off and replaced back at home.

  It was bloody work, but necessary to survive.

  “I can.”

  Nora looked up at me, but when I volunteered nothing further, she looked back to the demonstration.

  ~***~

  Dinner was a quiet affair. The common room buzzed with anticipation as people waited for the Golden Trust. The Guild catered from a local restaurant Nora told me usually only served the Smallbards, who I found out owned both the province and the city, and ruled the lesser nobility of the city.

  Nora and I were quietly talking about some of her favorite plays when half the room screamed. I stood up to see who was attacking, hand clenched around my table knife, so fast that I banged my knees against the bottom of the table. Something Nora found intensely funny.

  The screams had been caused by the Golden Trust. They were a four-person group, one man and three women. All of them gorgeous, beautiful in the same untouchable way a masterwork statue is. The man of the group was tall, had the lean build of a swimmer, and long wavy locks of golden hair. The women looked like sisters, if not triplets. Each with lustrous brown hair and eyes of shimmering hazel. The three followed behind the man with the golden hair. All of them were taller than him, but he kept far enough ahead of them it was hard to notice.

  “Nora.” I leaned down to say. “Look at the [Front Man], he’s only walking ahead of them so it’s harder to spot they’re taller than him.”

  Nora said nothing for a second, though I noticed her eyes skip back and forth between the [Front Man] and the women. We she finally saw what I was talking about she snorted and looked up to meet my eyes.

  “We can’t all be as tall as you, y’know.”

  The crowd of trainees calmed somewhat once the Golden Trust got on stage and pulled their instruments from storage devices. Each of them played a string instrument, some of which I’d only read about from courtly plays. The sisters played the harp, cello, and violin while the man played some variant of a lute I’d never seen before. In the half hour it took for them to tune their instruments perfectly, we’d all finished eating and now eagerly waited for them to start.

  “Afternoon everyone!” The man said, his voice carried with it the echoes of songs already played. “Your lovely [Hall Mistress] has bid us perform for you all, and we just couldn’t refuse. How could we? After all, the four of us met in a similar program back in the capital!”

  “However.” The woman with the harp cut in. “As much as we appreciate your interest. This isn’t a concert; we are simply here to provide the background music to your mixer. It is my personal hope you take this seriously. Who knows, you might meet the people you send the rest of your life with in this very room.”

  “Exactly! We’re going to start with a classic. Enjoy the night, have fun, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Those phantom melodies still accompanied the man’s voice. But after the interruption, they seemed discordant.

  When the man finished, they immediately started into song.

  The music was airy, and full of energy. It reminded me of some of the battle hymns from back home, the ones sang by the Order of New Growth during a march. I closed my eyes, momentarily lost in memories and the foreign music. Music was such a large part of my life back home that hearing a kind of music I’d never heard before was a magic all its own.

  “Bran! Come dance with me!” Nora’s smiling face greeted me when I opened my eyes.

  Nora led me to a portion of the common room with the tables cleared and people danced. Their dances weren’t the curated moves of balls or pageants, but the free form movements of people simply allowing themselves to be caught in a rhythm.

  Nora and I joined in, and I let her lead. She didn’t hesitate. It was clear she had no formal training; her movements were chaotic and jerky, and her arms quested out away from her like the pecks of a curious bird, but it fit her. They made perfect sense when put in the context of Nora, and I smiled unabashedly for the second time today. I joined her, imitating her as best I could.

  Nora and I lost ourselves in the dancing. Occasionally we joined larger groups, but mostly the two of us danced together, content to drift upon the music. A slow, more sedated song, one which felt better suited to courtly balls than adventurer tavern; broke our trance.

  The music’s shift in tone was so sudden that it caught most of the people dancing off guard. Confusion spread further when the Golden Trust, who’d been content just to play their instruments thus far, sang.

  Their voices intertwined and layered over one another. No one person held dominance over the others and all worked in perfect harmony. The song they sang held no words but conveyed a story with crystal clarity all the same.

  They sang of a child, leaving home for the first time, their anxieties and excitement laced every beat. Each wordless verse the story of a new adventure. First, they climbed the tallest mountain to slay a dragon, in the next verse they sailed the world sea and found new lands.

  I held my hand out to Nora, who looked at it with a mix of laughter and worry in her eyes. Gently, I led Nora to the center of where we’d been dancing as the Golden Trust sang of a search into the depths of the world for the plane heart.

  Balls were commonplace amongst the cult, and there was always a section exclusively for the unawakened to dance with each other. I’d asked my mom when I was younger why they forced us to dance like this and she’d told me it was to form stronger bonds amongst the younger generations. Which was why it didn’t surprise me they’d eventually switched to a slower song.

  Nora’s doubts slowly faded as I led her through the steps of Renewal’s First Light. It was a ceremonial dance we did at the beginning of the Renewal festival every year. The steps were easy to learn but hard to master and we held a contest every year for the best dancing partners. I stuck to the first few steps of the dance, which, while similar to a waltz, had more dips and spins.

  By the end of the song I pulled Nora, who beamed at me, up from a low dip and moved to start the dance again, but the next song was a return to the energetic. We danced for a little longer, but I could tell she was getting tired, so we left the dance floor and went to get a drink before going back to our table.

  “We should go dancing again.” She said. A tired smile on her lips.

  “I’d like that.”