The training ground they were sent to the next morning was far larger than anything Owen had seen at the Academy so far.
It had been divided into sections, each set up for something different. There were rows of reinforced practice targets, lines of wooden posts, and wide open spaces for weapon demonstrations. Along one side ran a long range, clearly built for anyone who fought at a distance. Thick stone barriers separated each section from the next, and the ground everywhere was marked by old scorch marks, shallow gouges and pale scars where years of armaments had been tested against it.
The air was cool. It smelled of damp earth, and beneath that, faintly, of metal.
All around them, cadets were arriving in their new navy uniforms, boots ringing on the stone paths as they came toward the instructors.
Owen stood beside Elias and looked the place over.
His eyes kept drifting to the long range. The targets down at the far end of it were a long way off. Farther than he had expected. That might do, for Firearms. Eventually.
Elias was more interested in the people.
Around them, the other cadets were already talking about the assessment. Whether they would have to show the strongest thing they could do. Whether they would be put up against each other.
"What do you think?" Elias asked. "Are they going to make us fight?"
"They said yesterday it was an assessment," Owen said. "Not a competition."
"I know that. But everyone’s going to be comparing themselves anyway, aren’t they? Whatever they call it."
Owen couldn’t really argue with that.
"There you are," Marianne said, coming up behind them with Eveline. She was practically bouncing on her heels. "I can’t wait. A proper exercise. With my spear, finally."
"I want to know how they’re going to judge us," Eveline said. She was looking around at the different sections. "I still don’t see how they can compare a spear against a bow. Or a sword against a shield."
Before anyone could answer, Captain Pike arrived with several instructors behind him.
He walked toward the gathered cadets with the same economy Owen remembered from the slope, the insignia of his rank plain on his coat. His eyes passed over the faces in front of him. Owen saw him notice several he knew from the examination, Owen among them. He didn’t single anyone out.
One of the instructors stepped forward. "Form up!"
They formed up. It went a little better than it had the day before.
The instructor began calling names. Owen heard Elias answer, and Eveline, and Marianne. Mira Calder. Lucien de Clare.
"Ferrers."
"Here."
A few conversations at the back carried on after the roll had finished.
"Quiet," the instructor said, and they stopped.
Pike stepped forward.
"Today," he said, "we want to know where each of you is starting from. Your cultivation control. How well you know your armaments. And the fundamentals of how you fight. Once we know that, we know what each of you needs to work on."
He looked along the rows.
"This is not another examination. Nobody is going to lose their place because someone beside them does better. Your results will be recorded so your instructors can use them. There won’t be a board in the sky."
A few people laughed quietly.
"You’ll move between stations. Different instructors will look at different things. Do as you’re told. Stay in control. Don’t take risks you don’t need to." His gaze settled, briefly, on no one in particular. "An impressive technique means very little if you can’t use it safely. Remember that."
* * *
The instructors split them into smaller groups.
Owen and Elias were sent first to the station for cultivation and armament control. Eveline and Marianne went to another, close by. Owen saw Mira and Lucien among those waiting farther down for their own turns.
The instructor in charge of their station was a wiry man with close-cut grey hair and an even voice.
"This first part is about control," he said. "I want to see how steadily you can circulate your mana and channel it into your armament. Manifest it. Keep the flow even. Then show me one basic use of whatever it can do. Basic. Don’t push any more into it than you need."
The first few cadets took their turns.
Some of them called up their armaments in an instant and held them steady without any trouble. Others had to screw their faces up with concentration before anything appeared at all. One girl produced a great roaring sheet of light along the edge of her glaive that made the cadets nearby step back, but within a few seconds it had begun to stutter and flicker, and she couldn’t hold it.
"Too much," the instructor said. "You threw everything at it at once. Pouring more mana in isn’t the same as controlling it. Again. Half that."
She tried again. The light was smaller this time, but it stayed.
"Better."
Owen watched closely. It made sense. Out in the forest, every scrap of mana he had wasted would have been mana he didn’t have at the end. In a long fight, that could be the difference between walking away and not.
"Ward."
Elias stepped forward. His shield formed on his left arm and the short sword in his right hand, the metal catching the light.
The instructor looked them over. "Defence. Show me."
A soldier came forward with a practice weapon. He set himself and struck at Elias’s raised shield, hard but measured.
Elias fired Rebound.
Thoom.
The shield threw the practice weapon back away from him, and the soldier had to take a step to keep his balance.
"That works," the instructor said. He was looking at Elias’s feet, not the shield. "But you rocked back on your heels when you did it. A lot further than you needed to. Again. And this time, think about where your feet are before he hits you."
Elias set his feet more carefully, one back and braced.
The soldier struck again.
Thoom.
This time, Elias barely moved. He stayed where he was, the shield still up, and came out of it balanced. It wasn’t perfect. But it was clearly steadier.
"That’s it," the instructor said. "Rebound will push things away from you. But if you’re off balance afterward, the next one is going to hit you anyway. Remember that."
Elias nodded, and Owen could see that he meant it.
"I didn’t even notice I was doing that," he said when he came back. "Leaning back. I had no idea how much difference it made."
"That creature threw you across the clearing," Owen said. "Even with the shield."
Elias went quiet. Then he nodded.
"Yes," he said. "It did. I’m not doing that again if I can help it."
"Ferrers."
Owen stepped forward and summoned his sword.
It came smoothly, the familiar weight settling into his hand. He had held it, or something like it, nearly every day for as long as he could remember.
"Keep the flow steady," the instructor said. "Then show me one of its properties."
Owen let Fire run into the blade.
Flames spread along the length of it, burning evenly from the guard to the point. They didn’t spill off the edges. They didn’t flare.
The instructor watched it for a few seconds. "Bring it down. Keep it lit, but bring it down."
Owen eased back on the flow. The flames sank lower and lower along the steel until they were barely more than a glow, and still they burned.
"Hold that." The instructor wrote something. "Now let it go. Show me something else."
Owen let the Fire fade and called on Steel instead. The sword changed in his hand, grew denser, heavier, its edge hardening.
"Can you hold both together?"
Owen brought the Fire back. The flames climbed along the hardened blade, and he held them there, the weight of the Steel and the heat of the Fire running through the same sword.
The instructor’s pen had stopped moving. He looked at the sword with obvious interest, then down at his notes, then back up.
"That’s enough," he said. Owen let both properties drain away. "What does it cost you? Holding both at once."
"More than either one," Owen said. "Quite a bit more."
The instructor nodded slowly. "Then you know what to work on. You clearly have a great deal of mana to work with. Don’t lean on that. Make it last longer."
"Yes, sir."
* * *
When everyone in their group had been through, they moved on to the weapon-handling stations.
Here, the instructors weren’t looking at mana. They were looking at how well each cadet actually used what they had. Balance. Distance. Accuracy. Timing. And whether they could use their armament’s abilities with any control.
Owen watched Marianne’s turn.
She walked into the marked area with her spear and settled into her stance, light and balanced. The instructor pointed her at a practice target with several marks painted on it and called out the marks one after another, moving her nearer or farther each time.
Her spear went where he told it. Every thrust was quick and clean, and she kept shifting her feet so that she was always exactly at the right distance.
Then, partway through a close-range drill, the instructor stepped in. Not fast, but suddenly, closing right inside the length of her spear.
Marianne reacted at once. But she had to shift her hands along the shaft and skip back two steps before she had the space she wanted again.
"Your reach is excellent," the instructor said. "You know exactly where your distance is, and you keep it. But you don’t like it when someone takes that away from you. You need to be more comfortable when they get inside."
"I’d rather they were polite enough to stay at the end of my spear," Marianne said.
"Enemies are rarely that polite."
A few of the watching cadets laughed. Marianne laughed with them, and nodded.
Eveline’s turn came at the next section over.
She moved through a sequence of attacks and defensive changes with her sword, every movement neat and prepared. When the instructor called out a new target, she switched to it without any hesitation.
Then, halfway through one movement, he suddenly changed his instruction. Owen saw her abandon what she had been about to do, turn, and go straight to the new target.
"Good," the instructor said. "You let go of what you’d planned and listened. Your foundation is sound. Make sure you can still do that when there’s more pressure on you."
"That was harder than I expected," Eveline admitted afterward. She looked pleased all the same. "I’ve practised drills all my life. But I always knew what was coming next."
Then it was Mira’s turn, on the long range.
Owen paid close attention.
She walked up to the firing line with her silver-white bow in her hand, the emerald lines along its limbs glowing faintly in the morning light. Her chestnut ponytail hung straight down her back. While the instructor explained what he wanted, her eyes never left the targets.
The first targets were stationary, set at different distances down the range.
Mira drew and loosed. Then again, and again. She moved from one target to the next without any wasted motion at all, and every arrow struck where it was meant to. Owen saw the faint flicker of green along the bow each time she released, the arrows picking up speed in flight. Once, he saw one curve slightly in the air, just enough.
Then the instructor brought out a target that moved, sliding along a track across the end of the range.
Mira waited, watching it.
She loosed.
The arrow hit it.
A low murmur of appreciation went through the watching cadets.
Owen remembered the Stalker Goblin in the woods, and Mira’s arrow taking it from under his sword. At the time, he had mostly been annoyed.
Watching her now, in a place where nothing was trying to kill anyone, he could see far better how good she was. Her accuracy. How consistent she was. And above all, how smoothly she moved from one target to the next, never once losing time.
That was years of practice. Nothing else could do that.
Lucien’s turn came in one of the other sections.
His axe appeared in his hands as he walked into the marked area. The instructor sent him through a series of targets, watching his strikes, his feet and his control. Lucien went through them hard and fast and precise, every blow landing with real force exactly where it was meant to. It was easy to see how he had finished first.
His replacement arm didn’t seem to slow him at all. Owen watched for it, and couldn’t see a single movement it stopped him making.
"He’s good," someone near Owen muttered.
"He came first," someone else said. "Of course he’s good."
When the instructor gave him his corrections, Lucien listened, nodded, and didn’t argue.
As he walked out of the area, his eyes moved across the cadets watching and found Owen.
Their eyes held.
Neither of them said anything.
Then Lucien turned away and went to wait for his next station.
* * *
"Ferrers."
Owen walked into the marked area and summoned his sword.
The instructor sent him through a sequence. Marked targets. Changes in distance. Shifts from attacking to defending and back. Owen went through it the way he had gone through a thousand drills in the Ferrers training yard, his feet always where they needed to be, every strike placed without any more movement than it needed.
Then the instructor started changing the sequence while he was in the middle of it, calling out targets he wasn’t expecting and making him respond instead of follow a pattern.
Owen adjusted each time.
"That’s a very good foundation," the instructor said at last. "Very good." He paused. "But in formal combat training, you won’t be hitting posts. Your opponents will be looking for openings. And they’ll take them."
"I understand, sir."
Owen had barely lowered his sword when Captain Pike walked over and spoke quietly to the instructor. Then he turned to Owen.
"The ranged weapon," Pike said. "The one you used in the examination. Could you show us?"
All around, cadets turned to look.
Elias looked as though it were his birthday. Marianne swung round toward Owen. Eveline was watching him with open curiosity. And over by the long range, Mira had stopped what she was doing and was looking at him too.
"I can," Owen said. "But it’s very loud, sir. Much louder than you’d expect. And it hits hard."
Pike didn’t brush that aside.
"Then we won’t do it here," he said. He turned to the instructors. "We’ll take it to the long range. Everyone else stays behind the safety line. And I want the target area checked before anything is fired."