Already dressed down in combat togs—cooling vest and shorts—Alaric held a neurohelmet by the chin strap in his left hand. His scarred leather combat boots held no comparison to Liam Ward’s glossy black uniform boots, but their footfalls both echoed in the cavernous interior, rolling along the back wall and bouncing around in the open-beam rafters three stories overhead until one step could hardly be distinguished from another. The applause of footfalls chased after and ahead of them, warning the small gathering of three cadets who stood in a short line before their instructor.

Three trueborn protégés remaining from a starting sibko of thirty-two.

Weakness.

“Loremaster Ward.” The instructor bowed his head out of deference, but did not break eye contact with the older man.

His name was Kyle, Alaric already knew. He had never earned a Bloodname. Though five years younger than Liam Ward’s forty-three, Kyle would finish his career here on Tamar, wiping noses and training future warriors, future leaders.

Setting the worst to train your best? Such a backward system.

“Star Captain Kyle,” Ward greeted him cooly. Then: “Have you chosen your cadets for today’s Trial of Position?”

The sibko instructor nodded. “Rahm and Gregor earned that right.”

“Then Cadet Rahm will match up with Alaric instead, who will test out as a warrior today. Cadet Gregor, you are dismissed.”

As simple as that. Alaric saw Kyle bridle and Gregor hang undecided at the quick turn of events, but there was no questioning the man who oversaw all ceremony and ritual within Clan Wolf. Their anger was useless. A Trial of Refusal could be called, of course. But Kyle did not have the stones for it, and Gregor as yet had no standing within the Clan.

Alaric had already dismissed the possibility of a trial before Kyle began considering it.

He turned his attention to the cadets instead. Trueborn, from the Clan eugenics program. Young and arrogant. The same as he had been at that age, Alaric supposed. All of eighteen or nineteen—four years his junior. They eyed him warily, as one might some alien creature discovered under a rock. Studied his easy, ready stance. His dark blue eyes, which never blinked often enough. Golden blond hair, iron straight and cut all at one length, even with his chin.

Scarred knuckles, broken when smashing in the faceplate of an Elemental, one story said.

A knotted rope of tissue along his right arm. Shrapnel—bouncing around inside a tank’s crew cabin, tearing through his arm and chest several times. He’d used a hot shell casing to cauterize the wounds.

And a small crescent-shaped scar on the outside ridge of his left eye. A fast-draw barracks competition. But you should see the other guy.

They knew who he was. Of the ironborn sibko. But hearing rumors and watching the barracks-tale come walking in dressed for combat were two different things.

“Gregor,” Kyle said, conceding the argument as Alaric had known he would, “stand down. Rahm, you test with Alaric.”

Loremaster Ward nodded curtly. “Alaric. The DropShip lifts at fifteen hundred.”

He would be there. It was promised.

The loremaster turned and stalked away. His steps echoed, stirring the silence that enveloped the small gathering. Alaric had no time for Kyle’s sour expression or Gregor’s glare, so he simply swung his neurohelmet toward the nearest of the two Blood Reaper s. “I will take this one.” He stepped past Gregor, too close, waiting to see if the younger man would bump shoulders against him. A simple touch…

Gregor jumped back.

Satisfactory.

“Alaric!” Rahm called.

One cadet to another, there was no need to answer or even acknowledge. But he did. Pausing. Turning halfway back to look a question with his eyes.

Rahm swallowed. Glanced at his companions and drew strength from their presence. “They say you’ve refused testing every year. Actually challenged by trials not to test.”

That one. “Is that what they say?” Alaric asked. He waited for the others to nod. Even Kyle joined in. Alaric smiled, showing white, white teeth. “Interesting.”

Then he turned back to his ’Mech.

Tamar’s Golden Ranges rolled out for hundreds of kilometers once the two cadets cleared the training compound and a swampy river delta. A great sward of tall, yellow grasses and battle-scarred, blackened earth still healing from the last training battle. Low hills hardly worth the name. Out here there would be no games of hide and seek. No advantage in the terrain at all. Only skill mattered.

Skill, and the instincts of a hunting wolf.

Alaric trusted his instincts. Stomping his Blood Reaper onto the proving range, feeling its weight sway behind the cockpit, which thrust out of bulky shoulders eight meters above the ground, he felt complete. He felt that the machine’s gyroscope was not perfectly responsive to his neurological signal, as fed through the neurohelmet and translated by uncalibrated control circuitry, but his firm touch on the control sticks made up the difference. Every step felt strong and certain, and his weapons were fully charged.

He even had time for a quick hardwire bypass of the particle projector cannon interlock, which prevented weapons fire at dangerous cycling rates. The ’Mech was his.

Behind, on his left shoulder, Rahm lumbered along in his own Blood Reaper. He spread wide from Alaric’s line of march as the targeting computer suddenly painted icons for six enemy machines on their heas-up display.

“I will break east on your opening shot,” the other cadet said over private comms. As if offering Alaric a gift by giving him first blood.

Alaric shrugged to the cockpit. “You do what you feel the need.” His voice-activated mic certainly picked up his lack of concern. “Do not cross my line of fire.”

The cockpit smelled of warm electronics, but the coolant charge flowing through Alaric’s vest raised gooseflesh on his arms. He dialed back on the flow, preferring to run warm alongside his machine.

His trained eye had already parsed out the ID tags on each of the six enemy BattleMechs. Two thirty-ton Hellion s. A pair of heavy Vultures and another of assault-class Jupiter s. By Clan practice, he and Rahm would fight with live weapons fire against each pair of ’Mechs in order. One on one, unless one of them instigated a melee by firing on the other’s combatant—or each other. That was a tactic used by the blindly ambitious.

Alaric expected it.

One “kill” was all it took, of course. One light ’Mech and you qualified as a warrior. Of course, every sibko cadet dreamed of a clean sweep: three defeated enemies for bumps in rank through Star commander and straight to Star captain. That was the way of ristars—the rising stars of Clan militaries. And the holy grail was four kills. Star colonel. No one save the legendary Natasha Kerensky had ever accomplished that.

Many had died, or failed looking very foolish trying, in the last seventy years since it was done.

“Here they come,” Rahm warned.

Alaric had already noticed the Hellions moving forward. Through the BattleMech’s ferroglass shield it was hard to tell how they moved, but he saw at once from his tactical monitor how the two advanced in perfect concert. A pair of veterans. Liam Ward had promised a challenge, and the Wolf loremaster would deliver on his word.

Shoving his throttle to the forward stop, Alaric sped his Blood Reaper up to a running pace of sixty-two kilometers per hour. Rahm fell back for only a moment before following suit. Like a pair of savage wolves, they bounded over Tamar’s greensward.

The Hellions carried heavy lasers only, which meant they had to wait for close-in shots. Alaric helped his enemies cut the distance quickly, holding his own fire for ten heartbeats. Twenty. Rahm must want to fire, he sensed, but the cadet was too honor-bound to renege on his promise to wait. Foolish, to have no plan of his own and rely so heavily on Alaric’s strategy.