Their day, however, had just begun. After grabbing a drink of cold water from the well and a piece of fruit from the pantry, Sam led Harald down into his father’s old gym that was located in the basement level.
For a couple of months Harald had made his way down here regularly. At first it had creeped him out. He associated the cold, damp room deep underground with his father’s mysterious arts; a few times as a child he’d crept down here to watch his father train, and the intensity he’d seen in the man’s eyes, the savagery of his cries and the brutality of his strength had terrified him.
That’s not my father, he clearly remembered thinking. That’s a demon.
But habit renders even the most frightening of places mundane, and soon Harald had come to dread the gymnasium not for its traumatic memories but for the painful ordeal he’d suffer there every day.
Sam and Harald removed their armor and hung it up on armatures set by the entrance archway.
“Now that I think about it,” said Harald, doing his best to limber up, “this place always was too clean. I should have realized you were sneaking down here and using the equipment.”
“There’s a lot you should have noticed,” agreed Sam. She wore a simple white shirt and leather breeches, and it was the first time he’d ever seen her not wearing either armor or her maid’s uniform. Only now did he appreciate just how in shape she was. Her arms were lean and defined, her body wiry and strong, her legs shapely and muscled. Unaware of his stare, she repinned her blonde braid and strode into the large room. “Let’s see how much you recall.”
The room was cavernous. His father had taken little interest in most of the manor, but directed a prized group of dwarven architects and miners to remodel this section of the basement to his specifications. As such, the ceiling was easily some eight yards overhead, and held in place by massive beams of petrified wood, with a horizontal ladder running down the room’s length suspended only three yards above the ground. The floor was of polished stone, but most of it was covered by a large woven mat of hardy fibers that seemed to have absorbed years of sweat and blood without complaint.
Along one wall were training dummies mounted on stands, each with a different set of faded circles and targets painted on their leather frames. The very last dummy was little more than broken wood and torn leather and stuffing, however; his father had destroyed it on one of his last nights in the manor before disappearing.
The back of the room was dominated by weights imported from Marheim, along with a thick rope that hung from the ceiling. The knights from the north were infamous for their strength and durability, and it was seen as a mark of pride for them to wear the heaviest possible plate armor into battle. His father had crewed with one such early in his career, Sir Vasteim, and from him picked up the practice of resistance training.
The other wall sported practice weapons on racks bolted to the stone, along with strange training implements like hanging bags filled with sand, small, horse vaults, and a wooden mannequin his father had named Gustav in order to tease Harald, and whose many segmented arms would rotate and strike back at the trainee as it received blows.
“I never commented on your training regime before,” said Sam, turning so that she walked backwards onto the matt. “But it wasn’t… well.”
“Efficient?” Harald walked after her. The place had a very distinct smell, though it was greatly faded now; old sweat, mineral dampness, the herbal smell of the matt, the heavily waxed wood of Gustav the mannequin. “Systematic? Smart?”
Sam grimaced. “Something along those lines. I read your training journal. You… sort of did whatever felt right on any given day?”
“That’s a charitable way to put it.” Harald frowned at the weights resting on the floor. “I’d say I did the best I could, but I don’t even think that’s true.”
“Well. Since a lot of the gear down here is Marheim equipment, I made the effort of buying some Marheim training manuals.”
Harald rolled his eyes. “Of course you did.”
Sam put her hand on her hips and stared at him.
“I mean,” said Harald hurriedly, “that’s delightful, I am most enthused, please, Samantha, tell me more.”
“I’m going to make you pay for that,” she said with a grin. “But fine. I’ll just run you through my standard exercise routine. If a gentle young maid like myself can do it, a big man like you should have no trouble, should you?”
“I’m going to die,” croaked Harald.
Sam dragged the six horse vaults away from the wall and set them at regular intervals down one side of the room. Each was about four and a half feet tall, with a wooden body wrapped in thick leather set upon four splayed wooden legs.
This done, she went to the back wall and dragged over a heavy duffel bag that looked to be filled with sand.
“There,” she said, dropping it at the edge of the mat. “The first exercise is simple. Consider it a warm-up. We’ll start side by side. Come here.”
Harald limped over, already feeling miserable.
“One of us will carry the sand bag to the far end of the room, while the other makes their way there by leaping over the horse vaults. The bag weighs about sixty pounds. Whomever makes it to the far end first wins. The loser… let’s see. The loser has to drop and do a set of ten push-ups. Nice and easy. Ready?”
The far end of the room no longer looked a thirty yards away, but rather a hundred. “All right,” said Harald without enthusiasm.
Sam grinned, crouched by the sandbag, and took hold of the two heavy straps sewn atop it. “Ready? On your mark—get set—go!”
For a second Harald just stared, mesmerized, as Sam hefted the heavy bag. She rocked back even as she hauled up, the muscles in her shoulders and bicep sharply delineated, and then she got her shoulder under it and powered up to standing.
It was only when she started staggering forward that he woke up and rushed to his first vault.
Ideally he knew he should have simply placed both hands on it and vaulted over. It was a horse vault, after all. But instead he jumped and landed on his stomach, grunting as he did. For a moment he seesawed back and forth, and then he toppled forward and crashed to the floor.
He rolled over, scrambled to his feet, and found that his legs were still jellied from the morning run. Grunting again he ran to the second and repeated the maneuver.
It only got less graceful.
By the time he reached the fifth he couldn’t leap high enough to flop over it, so he backed away, panting, and fought to catch his breath, hands on his knees.
Sam had already reached the far end of the room and was waiting, arms crossed, eyebrow raised.
“Sadist,” Harald rasped, then tried again.
He managed to swarm over the fifth, but it took him a good two minutes to get over the last horse. When finally he crawled off the mat and level with Sam, he felt both humiliated and nauseous.
“Ten push-ups,” said Sam, her voice pure business.
“Yeah, yeah.” Harald managed three before his arms gave out. Over the next minute he slowly squeezed out the remaining seven, only for Sam to kick the sand bag. “All yours.”
Heaving for breath, he stood, swayed, and moved to the bag. “This thing is big enough to hide a body in.”
“That’s why they call it a corpse bag in Marheim.” Sam swung her arms back and forth in exaggerated self-hugs, then glanced at him. “Three. Two. One. Go!”
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Harald didn’t even bend to pick up the bag. Instead he just watched as Sam ran lightly to the first horse and vaulted neatly over it. She made it look simple, elegant, effortless. Both hands on its back, legs swung up together and to the side, a moment where she just floated through the air, and then she was down on the far side and moving to the next.
“Damn it,” he hissed, but the sight of her impressive athletic abilities spurred him on. He would get better. Stronger. Faster.
Starting today.
Crouching, he sought to duplicate her lifting maneuver, and nearly popped a blood vessel doing so. The bag was immensely heavy, and his Strength of 6 was barely up to the task. For a terrible few seconds he simply agonized, the bag drawn up before him, leaning back to offset the weight, then somehow he stood.
But he failed to generate enough momentum to get it up and onto his shoulder. Instead he just clutched it to his chest as if he were holding a log, arms wrapped beneath it, and seeing red he set to desperately staggering forward.
He got halfway before his arms gave out.
The urge to collapse was strong.
But instead he crouched before the bag, grabbed its straps with his jellied fingers, and heaved.
The bag wouldn’t budge.
Sure the straps went taut, but he couldn’t get it up off the ground. He was wheezing, sweating, and the world had narrowed to a tunnel.
Then Sam was there, crouching before him, and together they hefted the bag off the ground. She helped him raise it all the way up and onto his shoulder, and he staggered and nearly went down beneath the weight. But she propped him up, helped him steady, and then pushed him forward so that he stumbled the rest of the way.
When he reached the far side of the room he didn’t drop the bag, but just collapsed with it to the mat. He rolled over onto his back and blinked up at the ceiling, blinking away the sweat, breath whistling in his tightened lungs.
Sam squatted next to him. “Good. You made it there and back again.”
“I… just need… a moment.”
“Take a minute. We’re going to change this up.”
When Harald finally managed to sit up, he saw that Sam had pulled out a weighted vest from the supply cupboard as well as a sandbag half the size of the corpse bag.
“Let’s ease things up,” she said. “I’ll wear the vest, and you do the lighter bag. That, and you do every other horse.”
Harald went to protest, but Sam shook her head. “No arguing. Strength training is progressive. In Marheim they call it putting a stone in the bucket. Their greatest knight, Sir Isenhardus, is said to have become the strongest man to ever live by that method. He would put a milkmaid’s bucket yoke over his shoulders, and each day he put a new pebble in each bucket. At first it was as light as a breeze, but after a month it became work, and after six he thought he would collapse. But he kept at it, and after a year he was carrying as much weight as four full grown men. He simply grew stronger as he put more stones in the bucket.”
Harald grimaced. “You’re saying I need to start with an empty bucket.”
“Not quite.” Sam’s smile was sympathetic. “But you need to give yourself room to grow. Your Strength is just 6, right? There’s no sense in pretending it’s 10.”
“Fair.” Harald fought the urge to ask, but couldn’t resist. “What do you think Yeoric’s Strength is?”
“Hmm.” Sam’s expression turned grim. “Hard to say. But probably somewhere between 12 to 14?”
Harald had known that, but hearing it spoken out loud drove the reality of what he’d committed himself to home. “All right. Time to get to work.”
“We’ll do four more laps,” said Sam, rising to her feet and pulling on her weighted vest. “Then we’ll do ladder crossings.”
“You mean…?” Harald pointed at the ladder that was bolted to the ceiling.
“Correct. You pull yourself along beneath them, hand over hand. In Marheim they do it in full plate armor. Let’s see how far you can go in a shirt.”
“Oh.” Harald stared up at the ladder. “I always wondered what it was for.”
“Then we’ll do a rope climb, and finish with lifting some of the weights. That should be good for a first day.”
Harald nodded sharply and pulled himself to his feet. “Yes.” He wanted to joke, to deflect how he felt, to hide behind humor. But all it took was seeing Yeoric’s face before his own to sober him up.
“But Harald.” Sam became tentative. “Two months… there’s a limit to how fast the body can grow. In Marheim they call it ‘burning down the house’. Exercise is like setting your house on fire, ruining it. But sleep and rest and food are when the workers come and repair your home, build it back bigger and better and stronger. You can’t just exercise all the time. You need to rest, and in two months…”
“I’ll make it work.”
Sam stared at him, and suddenly her helpless anger shone through, her emotion bright and bleak.
“Hey, I really will.” Harald wiped the sweat from his brow.
Sam shook her head. “I should have stopped you. But I’m still so used to playing the majordomo… Harald, you can’t beat Yeoric in two months. You just can’t. I pushed you just now to lift and vault far more than you should have been able to because… I don’t know. I hoped you’d pull off a miracle. Be able to suddenly grow faster than was possible. But… I’ve been training for several years now. I know how quickly the body responds. You have to get out of this duel. And you don’t even know how to wield a sword.”
“We’ll see.” And to his surprise, Harald didn’t feel the panic and fear he expected to. Instead, he felt a savage calm, an unyielding determination. “Whatever Vorakhar did to me, it’s not normal. This Demon Seed, my new Soul, my Divine Rank… I’m not saying it’s a guarantee, but I don’t feel afraid. You just keep pushing me, and I promise you, I’ll keep up.”
Sam clearly didn’t believe him, but she finished buttoning up the weighted vest. “I guess we’ll see.”
“One way or another.” He crouched by the smaller bag and grabbed the straps. “Ready?”
“Ready,” smiled Sam, but the expression was at once sad and heart broken.
“Set. Go!” And Harald rocked back on his heels and hauled the bag up. It was half the weight of the other, and far more manageable.
Body weak, muscles protesting, he set off across the hall. His knees were unsteady, his lungs labored, but he kept his gaze on the far wall.
To his side Sam set to vaulting again with the same ease as before, as if she weren’t wearing a weighted vest at all.
But Harald kept his gaze focused, and this time he leaned forward. He fought the discomfort, he attacked it like it were his enemy. Toughen up, you sorry bastard. You’ve lounged about and taken it easy your whole life. Now you need to get going. No excuses. One foot, next foot, get there, just keep moving, don’t stop, go go go!
He hit the far end of the room at a quick clip, but Sam was already there, puffing for breath.
Harald dropped and forced out ten painful push-ups, then, gorge rising, stood. “Let’s go.”
He swarmed over the vaults, climbing every second one, and still Sam beat him.
He dropped and did another agonizing ten push-ups.
“Water break?” asked Sam.
“Go ahead,” he grinned. “But that’s on your time.”
He hefted the small bag and set off. And as he ran, something strange happened to him. The discomfort, the pain, the weakness, it started to feel… good.
Not pleasurable. But it was an affirmation. An affirmation that he was alive. That he was pushing himself. That he was testing his limits. The more his body ached, the more his side burned with a new stitch, the more his muscles clamored for rest, the more present he felt. The tighter his focus became.
And again, he realized that the body’s job was to protest and stop him from pushing too far. It was like a cautious carriage driver who pulled back on the horses’ reins way too quickly at the sight of an accident far up ahead.
His body wanted to protect him, but in doing so, it prevented him from growing.
He could change that.
He could push past its warnings.
He could show them for the false limitations that they were.
So he powered through to the end of the room, and this time Sam barely managed to get there before he did.
Without a word he dumped the bag and dropped to do the ten push-ups. His arms shook, his breath rasped in his throat, but he found that the faster he did the push-ups, the easier they became.
Reeling, sweating profusely, he stood. “Ready?”
Sam was watching him with concern. “Don’t hurt yourself, Harald. We’ve two months to go.”
“There is no tomorrow,” he rasped, clapped his hands together three times, and ran at the vaults.
He leaped up and clambered over the first. Turned his shoulder and fell. Hit the mat hard, rolled, got up.
His stomach was trying to climb up his throat, his mouth was thick with saliva, his mind was reeling.
But he staggered around the second vault and tackled the third. Up and over, down and bam into the matt. For a second he just lay on his side, and then he growled and pushed himself up. Swayed, caught his balance, and ran to the fifth vault.
His jump was too weak. He slid back off it. Gasping, he backed up, stared at the vault, and summoned everything he had. He ran forward on wobbly legs and slammed into the vault. The four legs skidded on the mat then caught. He wrestled his way up, turned, dropped, and came up on all fours.
No time to stand. Sam was pounding up the hall, the corpse bag slung over her shoulders.
Cursing, heaving, Harald lunged forward on all fours and crawled off the matt. He collapsed onto his side, then, arms moving of their own accord, he pushed himself up, sweat stinging his eyes.
Only to see Sam step off the map a second later.
“Ten,” wheezed Harald. Then, not wanting to speak from the floor, he marshaled the last of his strength and willed himself to rise. Piece by piece, effort by effort, he rose, till at the very last he straightened and raised his chin and stared at Sam.
“Ten… push-ups,” he rasped.
Sam shrugged the huge bag off her shoulders. It hit the ground with a solid CRUMP and then she swung her arms, loosening her shoulders. For a moment she just held his gaze, eyes bright, and then she snapped off a military salute and grinned. “Yes, sir!”
And dropped to knock them out.
It was pathetic. He’d skipped half the vaults. She’d been wearing a weighted vest and carrying the corpse bag.
But by the Fallen Angel, it felt like a victory. Swaying, he enjoyed the moment of fierce exultation. At any point he could have quit. At any moment he could have eased up. Sure, maybe someone like Yeoric would have laughed at his celebrating this ‘victory’.
But he’d overcome something. Some inner barrier. Had tapped a source of strength, a living flame that had buoyed him farther and faster than he’d have thought possible.
And it was just the beginning.
The sound of metallic stars ringing out against the void filled his mind:
The Demon Seed Has Stirred
Your Strength has risen from 6 to 7
“Fuck yes,” he hissed.
“What?” Sam finished her last push-up and sat back on her heels. “What was that?”
Harald grinned. “Oh, nothing. Ready? It’s time to go again.”