So the bracelets were doing exactly what the Commandant had said they would.
Owen looked up toward the projection hanging in the sky over the distant field. Even from here, it was enormous, and he could make out the rankings on it clearly enough.
The list was already changing.
At the top was a name he didn’t know, Mira Calder, with nine points. Below her, Adrian Holt, with eight.
The third name made Owen pause.
Lucien de Clare. Seven points.
So Lucien was here. Owen hadn’t seen him in the field, but with two hundred and fifty people waking up at once, that wasn’t surprising. Whatever had been done for his arm, it was clearly enough for him to fight.
Owen looked at the name a moment longer. Then he looked away. Lucien was somewhere else in these grounds, and he had no reason to go looking for him.
His own name wasn’t anywhere near the top. Neither was Elias’s.
"Nine already," Elias said, squinting up at the screen. "Some of them must have walked straight into a nest."
"It’s barely started," Owen said. "That list is going to change a hundred times before the end."
They set off again.
* * *
They didn’t have to go far before they found more.
A smaller group this time, four Giant Rats nosing through a hollow in the grass. They scattered the moment Owen and Elias came over the rise, squealing, and then turned and came back at them.
Owen cut down two of them, one after the other.
Elias caught the third on his shield.
Thoom!
He knocked it sprawling and finished it before it could get back up.
The fourth took one look at them and fled into the tall grass. By the time either of them could have reached it, it was gone.
Owen let it go.
His bracelet glowed again. Five points.
Elias checked his and grinned. "Three."
Then his grin turned a little rueful. "You know, this would be going a lot better for my confidence if you weren’t standing right next to me."
"You’ve got three points," Owen said. "And you told me you’d barely done any real hunting."
Elias opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"I suppose that’s true," he said.
He fell into step beside Owen as they kept walking, and Owen didn’t tell him not to.
* * *
The observation room was large and dim, and the walls were covered with light.
Dozens of projections hung across the room, each showing a different part of the examination grounds. A stretch of forest, a rocky slope, a long sweep of open grass. The soft hum of the viewing equipment filled the room beneath the low murmur of instructors comparing notes and staff calling out updates.
On the largest display, at the centre of the far wall, the rankings shifted every few seconds.
Major Helena Stroud stood in front of it with her arms folded.
"Calder’s still holding first," Captain Alden Pike said beside her. He had a sheaf of notes in one hand and was scanning down them. "Eleven now. She hasn’t slowed down at all."
"She’s been lucky with her ground," Stroud said. "She found a cluster early and stayed on it. That’s good judgment. But anyone can put up numbers in the first half hour. I want to see whether she can still do it in the eighth."
Pike grunted. He gestured to one of the projections on the left, and an attendant brought it forward.
It showed a young man moving through the edge of the forest. Adrian Holt. As they watched, a Prowler came at him out of the undergrowth. He didn’t meet it head-on. He stepped back between two trees, let it come into the gap where it couldn’t turn, and killed it there.
"He’s been doing that since the start," Pike said. "Using the trees."
"He reads the ground before he commits," Stroud said. "He doesn’t waste movement, and he hasn’t taken a single hit he didn’t need to." She watched another moment. "I like him."
Pike turned a page in his notes. "De Clare’s third."
Stroud didn’t answer straight away.
"Bring him up," she said.
Another projection slid forward. Lucien de Clare was on one of the rocky slopes, axe in hand. Where his left arm should have been, there was a replacement. It was hard to tell from the projection how much use he was getting out of it, but he was moving, and he was killing.
"Two weeks," Pike said. "After losing an arm in front of half the capital. I didn’t expect him to turn up at all."
"Neither did I," Stroud said. "He’s competing. That’s all I can say about him yet." She watched him a few seconds longer. "What that arm can and can’t do, we’ll find out over the next twelve hours. So will he."
Pike nodded. Then he glanced at her sideways.
"Speaking of the duel," he said. "Have you looked at the Ferrers boy yet?"
"Not properly."
Stroud turned to the attendant. "Owen Ferrers. The grassland."
It took a moment to find him. When the projection came up, it showed him walking through the tall grass with a sword burning in his hand. Elias Ward was a step behind him.
They watched the attendant run the footage back to the first encounter with the rats.
Ferrers didn’t do anything elaborate. That was the first thing Stroud noticed. The rats came at him from two sides, and he stepped, and cut, and stepped, and cut. One stroke each, two at most. He never moved farther than he had to. He didn’t chase anything. He didn’t waste a technique on something a plain cut could finish.
"Look at that," Pike said. "He’s barely trying. If that’s how he fights Prowlers, I’d put money on him for first."
"He’s got five points," Stroud said. "Calder has eleven."
"For now."
"For now," Stroud agreed. "It’s a good sword arm. I won’t argue with that. But five Prowlers don’t tell me what he’ll do when something bigger comes at him. They don’t tell me what rank he is, either."
Pike shrugged, unconvinced.
Stroud’s eyes had already moved to the other figure in the projection.
"Who’s that with him?"
Pike checked his notes. "Elias Ward. Common-born. No family to speak of." He frowned. "Are they working together?"
Stroud watched the encounter again. Ward had taken his own two rats. Ferrers had taken his three. Neither of them had stepped in to help the other, and their points had gone up separately.
And yet, after it was over, Ward hadn’t gone anywhere. He had stayed right beside Ferrers.
"No," she said. "Not exactly."
She watched Ward catch a rat on his shield and throw it back, then step in to finish it.
"He hasn’t had much real experience," she said. "You can see it in his feet. But his shield work is sound, and he doesn’t hesitate. He goes in when he has to." She tilted her head slightly. "There’s something there to work with."
Pike was already looking back at Ferrers. "I still say Ferrers takes first."
Across the room, one of the other instructors overheard and laughed. "Holt. He’s the one who won’t make a mistake."
"Calder," someone else said. "She’s already got a lead, and she’s not giving it up."
"De Clare," said a third voice, more quietly. "He’s got something to prove."
Pike looked at Stroud. "Well? Who’s your pick?"
Stroud looked up at the rankings. The names shifted again as she watched. Someone near the bottom jumped twelve places.
"I don’t have one," she said. "It’s been half an hour, Captain. Ask me again in eleven."
She turned back to the projections and kept watching.