They started back the way they had come.
They hadn’t gone far when a soldier appeared near the mouth of the narrow passage, right on their way back.
Owen looked around. Another soldier had moved onto a raised position overlooking the open ground. Right where the other route would have taken them.
They couldn’t go either way. Not without someone being hit.
Thwack!
A projectile smacked into the barricade beside them. Elias swung his shield up.
Harrow and Pell flinched, both of them at once, and the dummy swung wildly between them.
"Stop," the leader said. "Hold it. Stay here. Let me look."
Owen was already looking.
Behind a different barricade, off to their right, there was a gap. A way through, leading back toward the extraction point. But getting to it meant crossing a short stretch of open ground first.
"There," he said, pointing. "Behind that barricade. It goes toward the extraction point. We’d have to cross that bit first."
The leader looked at the gap. Then at the soldier on the raised position, and at the open ground.
"We can do it," he said. "If Ward covers the crossing. And we all go together." He turned to the rest of them. "Ward, you go first, and keep that shield toward the one on the platform. Harrow, Pell, you go right behind him. Ferrers, stay with the dummy. I’ll be right with you. When I say go, we all go. Nobody runs on ahead. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Go."
Elias went first, his shield toward the soldier on the platform.
Owen stayed beside Harrow and Pell, helping guide the dummy around the end of the barricade, checking they had room to make the turn without losing their grip.
The leader moved with them, his eyes on the way ahead.
They made it through the first gap.
Then, halfway across the next stretch, Harrow’s boot came down on uneven ground. His ankle turned, and he stumbled.
The dummy lurched sideways.
Owen grabbed it before it hit the ground and took some of its weight until Harrow got his feet back under him.
It cost them a few seconds. That was all the soldier needed.
Thwack!
Elias got his shield there in time. But the soldier had already moved, ducking down behind his earthwork and coming up somewhere else, and Elias had to shuffle sideways to keep the shield between them and him.
The leader looked back at them. Owen saw him see what had happened. Elias out in front, the two carriers lagging behind, Owen with them, everyone strung out across the ground at different speeds.
"Stop!" he called. "Behind the next barricade! Everyone, together!"
Owen thought it was the right call. Harrow and Pell needed a moment to get their footing and their grip back.
They gathered behind the barricade. Harrow shook out his ankle. Pell re-set his hands on the straps. Elias kept his shield up and his eyes on the soldier.
"Ready?" the leader said.
"Ready."
They went on.
* * *
They were close to the extraction point when Owen saw the last soldier.
He was moving round on their right, trying to come at them from the side.
"Right!" Owen said. "Coming round on the right!"
"Ward, cover the right," the leader said. "Keep moving, everyone else."
Owen stayed with the dummy. He helped Harrow and Pell over the last stretch of rough ground, guiding them around a dip they hadn’t seen.
Thwack!
The soldier threw one more. Elias was there, and the shield took it.
Harrow and Pell staggered over the marked line of the extraction area and lowered the dummy to the ground inside it.
Their observer raised her hand.
"Squad four. Objective complete."
Elias let out a long breath and let his shield fade.
Harrow straightened up, groaning, and rolled his shoulders. "Nobody told me it was going to be that heavy."
The leader looked around at all of them.
"We did it," he said. He sounded faintly surprised.
Owen was pleased.
It hadn’t been clean. But they had changed their plan when they had to, more than once, and that was what had got them through.
* * *
Back at the preparation area, their observer called them over and opened her notebook.
"You completed your objective," she said. "And your use of cover got better the further you went." She looked up. "But there were two problems."
They waited.
"First. When you chose your route in, you didn’t think properly about what it would be like coming back with the casualty. You only thought about it when you got there." She turned a page. "Second. When your carriers ran into trouble, you let yourselves get stretched out. Your shield was out in front on his own. Your carriers were behind. Anyone who wanted to could have picked you off one at a time."
She closed the book.
"In a real operation, both of those things get people killed. Especially when you’re bringing out wounded, and someone is trying to stop you." She looked at the leader. "That said. When your route stopped working, you saw it, and you changed it. That was the right thing to do. And calling everyone back together was a good decision."
The boy nodded.
"I didn’t think about how much the casualty would slow us down," he said. "Not until we were already carrying it."
"Ward," the observer said. "Your cover was good. You stayed where you needed to be." She turned to Harrow and Pell. "You two need to practise moving together. You were fighting each other half the time." Then she looked at Owen. "Ferrers. You picked out the other route, and you saved your casualty from being dropped. Both useful."
She looked at all of them.
"And remember. You weren’t sent out there to beat those soldiers. You were sent out there to bring somebody home."
She dismissed them.
Elias stretched his arms out over his head. "I didn’t think the first exercise would be so much carrying. Or so much running."
"Giving orders was harder than I thought too," their squad leader said. "Especially when we had to change routes. I had to think of something new right then, with everyone looking at me."
"Calling us back in was the right thing to do," Owen said. "If we’d kept going all spread out like that, that last crossing would have been much harder."
The boy shrugged, but Owen could see the observation had landed.
"Maybe," he said. Then he looked at Owen. "That other route. The one behind the barricade. How did you see that so fast? Have you done this kind of training before?"
"Something like it," Owen said. "I’ve had some practice looking for cover. You start to see it."
The boy nodded as though that made sense.
"The hardest part," Elias announced, "was protecting all of you. You got to stroll along while I stood out in the open getting things thrown at me."
"Stroll?" Harrow said. "Did you see me carrying that thing? You weren’t the one hauling it halfway across the field."
Pell laughed, and so did their leader.
* * *
By the time the last squads came off the field, the afternoon was turning toward evening.
The instructors gathered all the first-years once more. Around Owen, everyone looked tired. Sleeves were grey with dust, and boots were caked in dirt. More than a few cadets were rubbing their shoulders.
"That was only the beginning," the instructor told them. "The basics of working as a unit. The exercises after this will have harder ground. Objectives that change partway through. And more decisions you’ll have to make yourselves, with less time to make them." He looked at them. "For now, remember what your observers told you. Use it next time."
He dismissed them.
Owen and Elias made their way to the edge of the training ground. Eveline and Marianne were already there, waiting for them.
"Well?" Marianne said. "How did it go?"
"We got our casualty out," Elias said, "and we didn’t leave anyone behind."
Marianne narrowed her eyes. "You sound suspiciously pleased with yourself."
"My shield stopped every single thing they threw at us. I think I’m allowed to be pleased."
"He’s right," Owen said. "He kept them off us the whole way."
Elias looked delighted.
"Did you have any trouble?" Eveline asked.
"They moved," Owen said. "Once we had the casualty, they changed position and blocked both the ways back. We had to find a different route out."
"Ours was a mess at first," Eveline said. "Everyone kept assuming a different idea of where we were supposed to be going. Nobody was saying anything. Once we actually started talking to each other, it got much better."
"Mine had a boy who wouldn’t stop trying to fight the soldiers," Marianne said. Her voice had an edge. "Every time one appeared, he’d go straight at them. We were meant to be carrying the casualty."
"Maybe he’d have preferred fighting the dummy," Elias said.
"He might have done better against something that didn’t move," Marianne said.
* * *
The four of them started back toward the residential buildings.
All four of them were dusty to the knees. Before they had even reached the main path, Elias had started talking about dinner.
Owen let them talk while he thought it over.
It had been nothing like the examination. The soldiers had been holding back the whole time. There had never been any real danger. And yet carrying that dummy across the field while the ground changed around them had needed things that being good with a sword didn’t give him.
They had done well. Not perfectly. But better than he had expected, for five people who had only been put in a squad that afternoon.
He thought about their squad leader. He had been handed a job he hadn’t expected, and he had done it reasonably well. He had listened, and made decisions, and changed them when he needed to.
Owen wouldn’t mind working with him again.
"So," Elias said, as the residences came into view. "Next time you get some free time. Are you going to spend it practising with that rifle?"
Owen thought about it.
The assessment had shown him he could use it. It had also shown him exactly where he couldn’t yet. The moving target. Holding steady. Using it in different conditions.
"Yes," he said. "On one of the proper ranges. As soon as I’ve got a free session."
"I’m coming," Elias said at once.
"You could ask Mira, too," Marianne said. "After that shooting of hers this morning, I bet she’d want to see it."
Owen didn’t dismiss the idea.
"She can come if she wants," he said. "But I’m going there to practise. Not to put on a show."
"Of course," Elias said. He didn’t sound as though he believed a word of it.
They walked on toward the dining hall, Elias already talking about what a second demonstration might look like.
Owen only half listened. He had already decided. The next free session he had, he would spend on the range, with the rifle.