Jeffery stood at the doorway to his new room. The barracks, which were more akin to stables, were in a truly depraved state. From the outside, it merely looked slightly in disrepair. However, inside, there was a smattering of cobwebs, random broken floorboards, and rotten wood. He stared in. Some people in the room stared back for a few seconds before turning back to what they were doing before. There were already 16 there! The bunks were almost all taken. The only ones left were either directly under a 'window' or covered in cobwebs. Jeffery refused to deal with arachnids, so he chose the upper bunk of a bed that rested against the wall below a window.
Most of the kids were having conversations with those around them. The unpleasant sound of voice cracking filled the room. After arriving at his new bed, Jeffery could see Rob. Rob had chosen a bunk on the lower half diagonal to Jeffery's that was positioned against a side wall. He was talking to the pair of siblings they had spotted at the entrance. Jeffery had missed the first half of the conversation, so he waited for it to end while eavesdropping like any good friend would.
"met close to the edge!"
"Really? What were you guys doing there?" The girl asked this. She was staring at Rob with polite interest while unpacking her bags onto the floor under her bed.
"That idiot had decided to try climbing a tree out over the edge. I think he wanted to get a closer look at the wall. He's always been too curious for his good."
"Oh my gosh! How close did he get?"
"Not that close, but then he fell and was pushed closer" The siblings were actually showing a bit more attention now. "Yea, I had to run up and drag him back!"
"Oh yea, but why were you there, Rob?" The boy asked in an odd tone with a slight grin on his face. "Were you also idiotic enough to want a 'good look' at the wall, too?" Jeffery had always wondered this, but was always too afraid to ask. It would do no good to be questioning his savior, right?
"Mhhh... well, it was like, well, I had a toy and I left it outside. It got swept away by the daily rain and I wanted to see if I could find it again. So I was just searching the area between my house and the edge and just happened to see Jeffery." Rob had a flushed look on his face and avoided eye contact with both of the siblings. He had never been a good liar. He sat back on his bed and lay down. Unfortunately, from his mat's pillow, he could see Jeffery's bunk and Jeffery staring down at him. He immediately looked away. "Oh.. um you're here. Cool, how did the meeting with the general go?"
"That general... is very strange." Jeffery looked down at Rob and quickly said all the odd things he noticed about the general. "He seems so nice and caring, but it's like he's just pretending!" Jeffery began to speak faster. "He had this artifact that could tell if I was lying, and he said that he just wanted to test it, but when you test it it shocks you!"
"What's so bad about that?"
"The only time I saw him smile was when I had nearly fallen out of my chair from the surprise!"
"I'm not sure that's strange. I mean, " he had to take a few seconds to hold his breath. It was clear that Rob was on the verge of bursting out in laughter. "I think it was probably just funny." Jeffery frowned at this. He didn't want to be anyone's laughingstock. He almost retorted by saying that it was no less humiliating than running around in storm runoff looking for a toy, but decided to not to admit to his eavesdropping, however blatant it may have been.
"Wait, you said that he had an artifact that can detect lies?" The boy was the one asking again. "I mean, they're pretty rare, and I never would have expected a backwaters place like this fort to have even a single magical item, especially not such a rare one."
"Woah! How'd you hear about magic artifacts? I read a lot of stories, and they never go into detail about the artifacts, they just say 'they're blessed by gods' or 'have the power of fire within' or some other hogwash like that"
"Oh, um... my uncle is a scholar, he knows these things. He told me all about artifacts when he came over for dinner last spring!" The boy had a very boastful expression on his face, apparently quite proud to know something the others didn't.
"Why did you join the military, then? You could have gotten a job as a scholar!" Jeffery would have definitely chose to be a scholar rather than a foot soldier if given the options. His life goal, however, was to become a hero, and to do that he needed to learn to fight.
"Oh, well, I mean I don't really like learning. The fact just popped into my mind. I'd much rather join the military. They're so cool!" The boy's face as he said this was excited. "But the truth artifact, what was it like?"
"Oh it was just an orb that turns colors depending on the truth of your statement. Can you believe this? They kept it in a safe inside of a vault! In the secured basement of a military fort! Don't you think that's a bit overkill for a ball of glass?" Jeffery was a bit angry at the orb that had shocked him. If he had the chance, he would definitely shatter it. He wanted to destroy the first magic artifact he had ever seen. Being angry at inanimate objects was pointless, but still, destroying the object that had made a fool of him was a satisfying thing to imagine.
"It's a magic artifact! Do you know how rare those things are? Of course they keep it in the safest place in the base."
"Oh, That's weird th-"
"SHUT UP kiddos. You came here to join the military, stop slacking and get outside!" The kids immediately fell silent, and filed outside. Jeffery recognized the voice shouting at them as Keith's. They went outside and stood in a sloppy line. "You scums signed up for military training! You know what it entailed! Get yourselves in line, NOW!" Keith's laid-back nature was gone, and with every word he said spit came flying out. A few droplets landed on Jeffery and he shivered before getting into the much straighter line that the other kids were now making.
"You all look like beggars that have rolled around in our filth pits! Clean yourself, and get into uniform. We have standards to uphold! The baths are in that building." Said building was oddly shaped. The walls were more reinforced than most of the other residential buildings, and the roof continued upwards for a meter higher than the ceiling of the inside.
A timid voice came from four places down the line. "But sir, we don't have u-"
"SILENCE! Are you talking back to me? Your uniforms will be inside the bath rooms. Go now, I want you back here before I finish this meal!" He reached into his pocket and took out a sandwich wrapped in parchment. Jeffery winced at the waste of such a precious writing material. Books were cheap enough to distribute to villages as far out as theirs, but they were by no means common there. The village elder's 'library' had barely one hundred books, all of which Jeffery had read. Loose paper was even more difficult to obtain in his village, and over the course of his life, he had only managed to get thirty sheets from Rob. Keith sat down on a chair that none of them had noticed yet and took a bite. "What are you waiting for? Go!"
The structure had enough baths to accommodate them all simultaneously. They were designed to accommodate all the soldiers in a base with more than one hundred soldiers, after all. Jeffery entered one of the rooms. As previously stated, there was a uniform there. The basin was situated underneath a hole in the ceiling. It had nearly a foot and a half of water in it! He stood on the raised edge of the basin to see through the hole and saw that the roof above his room sloped towards the hole. The baths acted like cisterns. They were filled by the daily rain and could be drained through a hole in the bottom leading under the building. The amount of water that hit the roof of his room was enough to fill the basin to that height daily. Jeffery seriously wondered why his village's cistern was only for drinking water. The rain near their village was even more exacerbated than it was here!
Not having the luxury of time, Jeffery bathed quickly in the cold water. Even after only five minutes, he felt cleaner than he had for weeks. The uniform was much like his normal clothes, the only difference was that it was stiff from its thicker material and had pockets. He exited. He was the tenth to finish. Rob and the girl from earlier were both outside already.
"Oh yea, I never got to know your names. What are they?" Jeffery approached the girl with his query. He tended not to care about names, but thought that a polite gesture or two wouldn't hurt. Also, he would look foolish if he ever had to call them but didn't know their name.
"Oh, it's Samantha. My brother is-" At this moment, Keith took one last bite of his sandwich before lobbing the remainder over the wall nearly twenty five meters away. He had only finished two thirds of it. The buns separated, meat spilled out, and slabs of cheese drifted away on the breeze. It was a truly glorious throw, marred by a lone beet slice that didn't clear the wall. She whispered in a much quieter voice "Brian."
"fu... ATTENTION!" The children that finished lined up. "So you're the ones that finished! You can split up the dinners of the ones that didn't." He pointed to two bins that had been dragged out during their absence. The soldiers were now only training on the right side of the field. They had the spaces between the barracks and the central path to themselves.
"We'll do armor later. For now just pick up a shield and a sword." Every child rushed to the bin of wooden swords first. These ones were not weighted with any additional metal bands, likely because they were for complete beginners. The swords were sloppily cut. A piece of misshapen wood tied seven to ten inches from the bottom of the sword acted as a 'hilt'. The 'blades' were cylindrical, there was no distinction between the flat and the edge. Jeffery picked up one with both of his hands on the string-pattern grip. It was extremely top-heavy and it took a considerable amount of his strength to keep tip-up. All in all, the practice sword was close to a meter in length and looked ridiculously over sized when compared to Jeffery. Rob managed to pick one up with only one hand, but his hand's tendons were visible from strain. The only one who looked passable was a boy next to Brian, who had come out during Keith's shouting.
Jeffery, along with half of the class, gave up on the shield, which was even heavier than the swords. "What are you morons doing? Why are you stopping? Grab. A. Shield." Those who hadn't gotten a shield yet went to the barrel filled with large kite-shaped shields. Jeffery shifted the sword to one hand. He managed to barely keep it up. He reached into the bin and grabbed a shield. By leveraging his body weight, he managed to heave it out of the bin. However, from there, he wasn't able to support it and it dropped to the ground. He strained his back and arm to try to lift it up again, but it only went a few inches from the ground before crashing back down to the ground. It was as heavy as the four-gallon bucket of water he had to carry out to the chickens on some days. He had always moved that bucket by half swinging, half dragging it over with both arms.
"It appears that some of you cannot manage to hold both a sword and a shield at the same time. Just take one, then, but you'll sill be undergoing the same drills as the rest." Keith smiled in a slightly evil manner at the mention of the drills. Jeffery took the sword because he was at least somewhat confident in his abilities to manipulate it in an agile manner. A pair of slightly malnourished children, on the other hand, took only the shield. It appears that they would rather lighten the beating they would receive rather than trying to improve. One expecting a beating would never receive anything but a beating. Jeffery scoffed at them, as if he hadn't just chosen the sword because it was lighter.
"Ok, do ten laps around the fort! If your weapons touch the ground, add another lap!" The children were surprised for a second. Then they reluctantly turned towards the gate and ran. Any feelings of anticipation or glory had been pounded out of them after being spoken at by Keith for two minutes.