The Choosing ceremony was peculiar to Ward members only. Horace was one of twenty new Battleschool recruits that year, the other nineteen coming through what was considered the normal process – parental influence, patronage or recommendation from their teachers. As a result, he was regarded as something of a curiosity, and the other boys had so far made no overtures of friendship or even much attempt to get to know him. Still, he thought, smiling with grim satisfaction, he had beaten them all in the run. None of the others were back yet. He'd shown them, all right.

The door at the end of the dormitory crashed back on its hinges and heavy boots sounded on the bare floorboards. Horace raised himself on one elbow and groaned inwardly.

Bryn, Alda and Jerome were marching toward him between the neat rows of perfectly made beds. They were second-year cadets and they seemed to have decided that their life's work was to make Horace's life miserable. Quickly, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, but not quickly enough.

"What are you doing lying in bed?" Alda yelled at him. "Who told you it was lights out?" Bryn and Jerome grinned. They enjoyed Alda's verbal sallies. They weren't anywhere near as original. But they made up for their lack of verbal invention with a heavy reliance on the physical side of things.

"Twenty push-ups!" Bryn ordered. "Now!"

Horace hesitated a moment. He was actually bigger than any of them. If it came to a confrontation, he was sure he could beat any one of them. But they were three. And besides, they had the authority of tradition behind them. As far as he knew, it was normal practice for second-year to treat first-year cadets like this, and he could imagine the scorn of his classmates if he were to complain to authority about it. Nobody likes a crybaby, he told himself as he began to drop to the ground. But Bryn had seen the hesitation and perhaps even the fleeting light of rebellion in his eyes.

"Thirty push-ups!" he snapped. "Do it now!"

His muscles protesting, Horace dropped full length to the floor and began the push-ups. Immediately, he felt a foot in the small of his back, bearing down on him as he tried to raise himself from the floor.

"Come on, Baby!" It was Jerome now. "Put a bit of effort into it!" Horace struggled through a push-up. Jerome had developed the skill of maintaining just the right amount of pressure. Any more and Horace would never have been able to complete the push-up. But the second-year cadet also kept pressing down as Horace started back down again. That made the exercise all the harder. He had to maintain the same amount of upward pressure as he lowered himself, otherwise he would be driven hard against the floor. Groaning, he completed the first, then started another.

"Stop crying, Baby!" Alda yelled at him. Then he moved to Horace's bed.

"Didn't you make this bed this morning?" he yelled. Horace, struggling up again against the pressure of Jerome's foot, could only grunt in reply.

"What? What?" Alda bent so that his face was only centimeters away. "What's that, Baby? Speak up!"

"Yes… sir," Horace managed to whisper. Alda shook his head in an exaggerated movement.

"No sir, I think!" he said, standing upright again. "Look at this bed. It's a pigsty!" Naturally, the covers were a little rumpled where Horace had dropped across the bed. But it would have taken only a second or two to straighten them. Grinning, Bryn cottoned on to Alda's plan. He stepped forward and kicked the bed over on its side, spilling mattress, blankets and pillows across the floor. Alda joined in, kicking the blankets across the floor.

"Make the bed again!" he yelled. Then a light gleamed in his eye and he turned to the next bed in line, kicking it over as well, scattering the bedclothes and mattresses as he'd done to Horace's.

"Make them all again!" he yelled, delighted with his idea. Bryn joined him, grinning widely, as they tumbled the twenty beds, scattering blankets, pillows and mattresses around the room. Horace, struggling still through the thirty push-ups, gritted his teeth. Perspiration ran into his eyes, stinging them and blurring his vision.

"Crying, are you, Baby?" he heard Jerome yell. "Go home and cry to Mummy then!"

His foot shoved viciously into Horace's back, sending him sprawling on the floor.

"Baby doesn't have a mummy," Alda said. "Baby's a Ward brat. Mummy ran off with a riverboat sailor."

Jerome bent down to him again. "Is that right, Baby?" he hissed. "Did Mummy run away and leave you?"

"My mother is dead," Horace grated at them. Angrily, he began to rise, but Jerome's foot was on the back of his neck, thrusting his face against the hard boards. Horace gave up the attempt.

"Very sad," Alda said, and the other two laughed. "Now clean this mess up, Baby, or we'll have you run the course again"

Horace lay, exhausted, as the three older boys swaggered out of the room, tipping footlockers over as they went, spilling his roommates' belongings onto the floor. He closed his eyes as salt perspiration stung its way into them again.

"I hate this place," he said, his voice muffled by the rough planks of the floor.

Chapter 10

"Time you learned about the weapons you'll be using," said Halt.

They had eaten breakfast well before sunup and Will had followed Halt into the forest. They'd walked for about half an hour, with the Ranger showing Will how to glide from one patch of shade to the next, as silently as possible. Will was a good student in the art of unseen movement, as Halt had already remarked, but he had a lot to learn before he reached Ranger standard. Still, Halt was pleased with his progress. The boy was keen to learn-particularly when it was a matter of field craft like this.

It was a slightly different matter when it came to the less exciting tasks like map reading and chart drawing. Will tended to skip over details that he saw as unimportant until Halt pointed out to him, with some acerbity, "You'd find these skills would become a little more important if you were planning a route for a company of heavy cavalry and forgot to mention that there's a stream in the way." Now, they stopped in a clearing and Halt dropped a small bundle that had been concealed beneath his cloak.

Will regarded the bundle doubtfully. When he thought of weapons, he thought of swords and battle-axes and war maces-the weapons carried by knights. It was obvious that this small bundle contained none of those.

"What sort of weapons? Do we have swords?" Will asked, his eyes glued to the bundle.

"A Ranger's principal weapons are stealth and silence and his ability to avoid being seen," said Halt. "But if they fail, then you may have to fight."

"So then we have a sword?" Will said hopefully. Halt knelt and unwrapped the bundle.

"No. Then we have a bow," he said and placed it at Will's feet. Will's first reaction was one of disappointment. A bow was something people used for hunting, he thought. Everyone had bows. A bow was more a tool than a weapon. As a child, he had made his fair share of them himself, bending a springy tree branch into shape. Then, as Halt said nothing, he looked more closely at the bow. This, he realized, was no bent branch.

It was unlike any bow that Will had seen before. Most of the bow followed one long curve like a normal longbow, but then each tip curved back in the opposite direction. Will, like most of the people of the kingdom, was used to the standard longbow-which was one long piece of wood bent into a continuous curve. This one was a good deal shorter.

"It's called a recurve bow," said Halt, sensing his puzzlement. "You're not strong enough to handle a full longbow yet, so the double curve will give you extra arrow speed and power, with a lower draw weight. I learned how to make one from the Temujai."