Time went by and the frozen lakes thawed. The seminary watched the snow melt and the green grass flourish as Ezril and his brothers labored under the training of the priests, their bruises ever growing alongside their skills. In the fourth month of their third year in the seminary a new training was added to the already tasking ones they had: climbing.
It came with the introduction of a new lesson. It was held every morning just before the morning training and after the morning mass. It lasted a long while, pushing back the morning training towards the afternoon. The lesson was held at the top of a tall tower. It was located in a part of the seminary they had never been. To reach it, they had to use all the skills garnered from the lessons of Jaeltiff, the day given to the training of the body.
The ordeal taught them one new truth—Takan possessed a fear of heights.
This lesson, surprisingly, fell under the purview of Father Ulrich’s command. Every day Ulrich taught them the history of the seminary. He taught them of its glorious tales. He taught them of its crushing defeats. They learned of the assassinations of the different Monsignors, their ages, and how long they were in power. They learned everything worth learning of the history of the seminary. The story of Brandis and his twelve cohorts was not spared.
Father Fravis also added a new touch to their training on Nuratiff. He took them into a large room where the ground proved terribly uneven. There, he instructed them to spar. Within the first month they found the ordeal one of most impossibility. But as the months flew by, they found they developed an understanding of it.
Ezril learned it was all about footing. The training pushed the basic teachings of stance to the extreme before he figured out how to accommodate it.
“Your enemies will not always fight you on level grounds,” Fravis said. “And we are not nobles that we would duel in fairness.”
Ezril found himself wondering just how much of the different trainings intertwined in their purposes. Obviously, fighting on such a terrain would have proved more tasking if they had never run in the uneven terrain of the woods under Father Zakarid’s tutelage.
Before long Father Fravis had them training alongside children from other towers. Ezril understood very quickly the intent of the new sparring partners as he found they displayed a new variety of moves. Unlike his mates who seemed to have subconsciously developed a series of combos he already knew, they introduced something new.
It taught and showed them their bias in both defense and offense. Unconscious or not. They were not the only ones who learnt, though. It was as educational for them as it was for the children of the other towers.
For Ezril, the other children from the different towers only proved new enemies and nothing more. He displaced them with tricks he found to be beyond them. Rarely did they present a new challenge. Though, he never grabbed the wooden knives by the intended blades again.
Still, there was one boy who proved challenging.
Most times Ezril found himself paired with a boy from the Konvac tower named Baltar. Baltar proved more adept with his hands than Ezril. He won most of their spars and proved to possess tricks far superior to Ezril’s. Often, Ezril found himself understanding the patterns in Baltar’ fighting style only for the boy to switch to a different style of attack or defense. Ezril found himself looking forward to their coming spars, thinking up ways to attain victory. Each time he lost, and it came with a sense of defeat and a tinge of achievement.
……………………………………….
“Careful!” Salem shouted on a midday while they trained with boys from another tower.
He rushed to Divine and his sparring partner, a boy from Fig tower. “You don’t have to be so violent,” he said, “we are not here to kill each other.”
“Yes,” the boy spat, derogatory. “I suppose you’ll be telling me I don’t have to win next.”
Truth be told, they were not required to win the spars. Winning was simply an intrinsic reward as far as the boys were concerned—Fravis, when he was around, punished errors but rewarded no victories. So they sought after it, pushing themselves for the satisfaction. It often led to more violence during spars between towers than was necessary, as the boys found it as more of a contest between towers than a spar to increase their skills.
Ezril suspected it was the intentions of the priests.
“That’s enough, don’t you think?” Darvi stated, turning to them after putting his opponent down. There was an underlying threat in his voice.
In one quick move Ezril put down his partner as well and turned his attention to Salem. Ezril’s partner struggled beneath him, perhaps on instinct, and he pinned him down. He kept his attention on Salem and Divine, his knee on the nape of the boy’s neck.
Darvi had addressed Salem and was now walking towards him. Everyone stopped and stood on edge. It was not the first time Salem pulled such a stunt, ignoring his partner to rush to Divine’s aid whenever he felt the boy’s partner was becoming too violent. Today, however, it seemed things were to escalate. Fravis was not with them, after all.
There was a tension in the air, and it seemed everyone felt it.
A brawl was a possibility but Ezril always saw it as boys being boys. Putting boys in such a situation was going to escalate into various things. In this setting, violence was one of them. However, the reason they were on edge was because Salem had once gotten into a fight when Divine’s partner had furthered his violence into name calling.
Divine had held back his hurt but Salem had not. He had rushed the boy and, in a bid to stop the violence, the others had joined in. In a matter of seconds, the arena had erupted in a brawl. They had been punished for it, sent to the degrading task of cleaning out the latrines after their strokes from Father Talod. But the reason Ezril never forgot that day was because it was the first time he broke a finger. It had left him unable to use a sword for a week or draw a bow.
After the winter test Father Talod had brought Raylin to their room, introducing him to be a new member of their tower. Apparently, a tower with a single child among its mates was not smiled upon. The first few days had been rather amusing. Takan sought any and every excuse he could to talk with the boy. For the first time Ezril saw Takan and thought him desperate, remembering how men visited aunt Teneri every waking day whenever they wanted something from her.
Raylin had grown close to Unkuti instead and, in time, Takan withdrew. Slowly, Raylin began conversing naturally with the rest of their mates, becoming one of them. But Ezril felt some days the boy tried too hard. Today was one of those days.
Raylin took a predatory step away from his partner, and towards Divine’s.
“This will not be happening,” Darvi warned immediately.
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If any of the other children made a suspicious move Ezril was certain they would all join in to defend Salem in whatever may transpire. But although Raylin had the same intentions, as far as he could tell, the boy was borderline on being the one to start the brawl, and Ezril knew no one wanted to clean out the latrines.
Luckily for all of them, Raylin stopped in his tracks the moment Darvi spoke.
There would be no brawl today. But there would always be another day.
………………………….
“You’re a fucking shithead! You know that?” Unkuti complained later, when they were in the dining hall having their evening meal.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Salem asked, lifting his head from his plate. It seemed he was not going to be insulted by the boy.
“You always do this,” Unkuti fumed audibly. “You protect him from everything, like he’s some fragile egg. Don’t you ever get tired of getting us into trouble?!”
“The Broken take you!” Salem cursed from across the table. “Just because you have the body of a small gorilla and the brain of an oaf doesn’t mean he can take the same crap you can.”
“Watch your mouth, brother,” Unkuti warned, seeming on the edge of his patience. Everyone at the table was aware that Unkuti did not joke with anything that had to do with the Broken or the Tainted.
“Or what?” Salem challenged.
“Or I’ll wash it out for you.”
“You know what…” Salem began what everyone was certain would cause more trouble. “I never asked any of you to fight for me, and I’d rather die than take advice from a child who only knows how to tell false tales concocted by a tribe of sav—”
Unkuti’s hand moved in a blur and his plate went flying across the table. Salem dodged it with ease but the plate only proved a distraction. Unkuti was already leaping across the table. His knee found Salem’s nose. The chaos of scattered plates filled the air as they plummeted to the ground.
“That’s enough!” Darvi ordered the moment Unkuti’s first blow connected with Salem’s face.
“Oh shut up,” Takan snapped, rising from his seat. Ezril looked up from his food. Takan’s lips twisted in anger as he faced Darvi. “No one put you in charge.”
Ezril slipped his left hand over his fork, wrapped it around the utensil. He watched Takan as he opened his mouth to say another word. All the while he ignored the continued scuttle between Unkuti and Salem.
“Sit down, brother,” Olufemi told Takan without inflection.
It surprised them. At least all but Salem and Unkuti.
“He can’t just command us and expect us to obey.” Takan spat, recovering from his surprise quickly. “We are not Alric…”
Ezril found himself leaping over the table, fork held like a knife, trashing the meals in different directions. His knee hit Takan’ chest with his whole weight behind it. They went to the ground together. There, Ezril placed his fork as close to the boy’s eye as he could without injury. Everything was done in an instant. Silence dawned on the table. Unkuti and Salem’s scuttle ended immediately.
“Are you the new A—” Takan began before his voice ceased.
Ezril brought the fork closer to Takan’s eye, touching it to his bottom lid. It sufficed to silence the boy.
“Please…” His lips spread into a malicious grin that was not real. “Give me an excuse.”
Ezril saw fear and anger cloud Takan’ eyes but knew with a certainty when fear won out. Takan stayed still. He uttered no other word. Ezril remained in place. He knew his conscience would judge him for this even if it didn’t judge him now. Whatever he told himself, be it to establish dominance or peace, he had acted out of the discomfort of guilt. Hearing Takan bring up Alric had not just reminded him that he had killed a brother. It had reminded him that he had taken a friend from Darvi. He had killed their brother. So he had moved, attacked.
“That’s enough!”
Heads turned at the words and composure returned in an instant within the hall. Ezril and his brothers did not move.
Talod stood before their table and Ezril noted the silence for the first time. He wondered if he or the priest had been the original cause but knew Talod was the reason it remained. He moved his fork from Takan’s eye, rose from his brother, and turned his gaze to the ground.
……………………………….
Father Yesuan, the seminary’s healer, took care of Unkuti and Salem. Salem it seemed had a broken nose, a split lip, a swollen eye, and a few bruises. Unkuti had two broken fingers. It explained in the simplest terms who had won the fight.
“Would someone like to tell me what happened?” Talod asked, as the rest of them stood outside the healer’s room.
“Salem and Unkuti had a minor misunderstanding,” Takan said quietly.
“Of course.” Talod turned to him. “I’m sure you saw all that from your place on the floor, Vint.” He rarely called them by their family names, only using it whenever he had an insult stemming from disappointment to offer. “All of you return to your quarters,” he ordered, exasperated.
They turned, and trooped out, Unkuti joining them from the room.
“Tenshaw. Vi Antari,” Talod called as they left.
“Yes, Father.” Darvi answered.
Ezril paused and they made their way to Talod. Being told to wait was understandable. for reasons unknown to Ezril, Father Talod did not like him, and he had threatened a fellow brother’s sight. Fights were nothing new among the children in the seminary but there were rules: render no permanent or fatal.
Ezril had threatened to blind his brother—a permanent injury. Punishments were clearly in order.
“Fix this,” Talod told Darvi simply. He spared Ezril a look of disgust, turned, and walked away, leaving Ezril puzzled. Why was I called? And why should Darvi have to fix it? It’s not like he did anything.
Darvi, seeming to understand what was going on, turned and began making his way for the exit.
“Where to?” Ezril asked.
“To talk to Unkuti.”
Ezril paused remembering what Father Fjord had said of the brother and the wolf he had brought. “If you can’t find him, try the Kennel.”
I guess I should talk to Salem, he told himself with a resigned sigh as Darvi’s departure continued.
The healer’s room smelled of herbs of various types. Potted plants as well as certain powders were positioned against the open window. There was a bottle of clear liquid with a snake wrapped inside. A transparent can of soil and oddly colored worms that gravitated towards the light of the fire that illuminated a portion of the room. Salem was seated on one of the mattresses present in the room with a swab of cotton up his nose and a slight coloring on his lips.
“Feel like a man?” Ezril asked.
Salem made an obscene gesture at him with his hand. “Sod off.”
Ezril stopped a few paces away. “You really are going to get him killed, brother,” he said, his tone serious. “At least if you keep this up.”
“Taking sides with Unkuti?” Salem scowled then winced in pain.
“Today is not about sides, brother,” Ezril told him. “Keep coddling Divine like that and he’s going to get killed when they send him out.” He paused, then frowned. “He’ll probably die before he even gets the chance to leave these walls.”
“You’re one to talk, brother, you do the same for Olufemi,” Salem shot back. “You think we don’t see it, but we do. The way you watch him. The way you’re always at his beck and call. You jumped into a fight with Takan the moment he opposed him.” He laughed bitterly, then winced in pain again. “I don’t have to listen to you.”
The boy was wrong but Ezril felt no compulsion to correct him.
I really don’t have to be here, Ezril reminded himself. Salem always proved himself incapable of thinking straight anytime it came to Divine. This was no different. Still, Ezril trudged on.
“Everyone knows there’s no love lost between Takan and I,” Ezril clarified easily. “Besides, my case is not what’s causing a problem. I’m also not the one who asked my brothers not to protect me.”
Salem frowned and Ezril wondered if he had caught a glimpse of remorse on the boy’s face. Salem had made a point about his relationship with Olufemi, and that had made up part of the reason he had never spoken about how his brother treated Divine. At least until now. Actually, if Father Talod hadn’t said anything, and Darvi hadn’t gone in search of Unkuti, he wouldn’t be here.
They settled into a strange silence.
“You can’t possibly begin to understand,” Salem said eventually. “We might all be playing family but he’s the only person I can call family in this whole carnage.” He raised his head up, cotton-swabbed and color-lipped. “We might undergo the same experience here but you are still a child, brother. There are things you cannot understand, yet.”
Ezril took offence from Salem’s words. Notwithstanding, he knew Salem was not wrong. He could not oppose that. Being a year older than him, Salem was in his fourteenth year, and Divine, only his thirteenth.
Ezril shrugged simply. “I will not lecture you on this, brother. All I will say is one day you will regret this decision if it does not end here.” He turned, made his way to the door. He stopped when he reached it. “And stop starting fights you cannot win.” He opened the door. “Only fools do that.”
The talk left Ezril pondering on his relationship with Olufemi as he left the room. He’s right. But it’s not like I don’t already know, he assured himself.
The brothers were a mess and, what was worse, Father Talod expected Darvi to fix it. And for some reason he had kept only Ezril around to learn of it.
Ezril’s mind drifted to Darvi as he walked back to their room.
I hope he’s having better luck with Unkuti.