Four days went by faster than Owen had expected.
There were cultivation lessons in the mornings, and physical conditioning that left even Marianne flat on her back in the grass afterward. There were armament drills, and lectures, and Professor de Montfort’s classroom, where the next set of specimens had turned out to smell considerably worse than the spiders. Every day was full from the morning signal to the moment he lay down at night.
He enjoyed it more than he had thought he would. Proper facilities. Instructors who knew what they were doing. A routine that left very little time for anything else.
He had even found an hour on the long range, early one morning before most of the residence was awake. With a range officer watching, he had worked on his timing against the moving target until it started to come to him. Then he had spent what was left of the hour calling up a few of the other designs inside Firearms, one at a time, just to feel their weight and how they sat in his hands.
On the fifth day, the first-years were sent to one of the Academy’s combat arenas.
It was a big facility, split into a number of separate fighting courts, each wide enough to move around in properly, with practice obstacles scattered across it. Reinforced barriers rose between the courts. Above them, raised walkways let the instructors look down on everything at once.
Wood cracked against wood all across the arena. Cadets in training uniforms were stretching, checking their gear, or standing in loose knots talking while they waited.
Elias was watching the court beside them, where two older cadets were already sparring. Their weapons met again and again, too fast for Owen to count the blows. One of them was driven back three steps and nearly lost his footing, then caught himself and came straight back in.
"Look how fast they are," Elias said. "Is that what we’ll be like? After three years?"
Owen watched them a moment longer. Then he turned as an instructor began gathering the first-years at the centre of the arena.
* * *
"Today is one-on-one," the instructor said, once they had formed up. "Controlled. Supervised. This isn’t your entrance examination. Nobody is fighting for a place. We want to see how you deal with someone who doesn’t fight the way you do. Different armaments. Different styles. Different abilities."
He looked along the rows.
"You’ll choose your own partners. You’ll fight under supervision. And you’ll get feedback afterward."
He beckoned, and a cadet from one of the older years stepped up beside him.
"Before anyone does anything," the instructor said, "watch this."
He touched the older cadet’s shoulder. A faint, pale shimmer spread out over the young man’s body, like a thin film of light on the surface of water, and then faded until Owen could barely see it.
"That is a training ward," the instructor said. "Every one of you will have one. It’s there to catch permitted attacks before they do any real harm."
He took a padded practice blade from a rack and struck the cadet across the ribs. Not gently.
The ward flashed where the blade landed, a bright pulse of light. The cadet didn’t even flinch.
"That’s a scoring strike," the instructor said. "When the ward lights up like that, it’s been hit somewhere it counts. Three of those, and your match is over. Or I stop it, if I think it needs stopping." He handed the blade back. "But the wards have limits. They’re strong enough for what’s allowed. They are not strong enough for everything. If you use something excessively destructive, or something I’ve forbidden, or you try to break through the ward on purpose, you’re disqualified. On the spot."
He paused.
"And some of you have armaments that do unusual things. Before each match, I approve what you’re allowed to use. You don’t use anything I haven’t approved."
He gave them a few minutes to find partners.
Elias was already looking around, clearly hunting for someone whose armament might give his shield something to think about. Marianne went straight to another cadet with a spear, a tall boy Owen had seen in the formation, and started talking to him with obvious enthusiasm. Eveline had found a partner of her own and was already going over the rules with her.
Owen hadn’t moved yet when Mira walked up to him.
Her chestnut ponytail swung behind her. She had the same easy confidence he had noticed on the range.
"Have you got a partner?" she asked.
"Not yet."
"Then fight me."
She said it plainly, without any edge.
"I watched you on the range," she went on. "That weapon of yours. I want to know how my bow does against something that fires that fast."
Owen found he wanted to know too. He had seen what she could do. And a good archer was just the kind of opponent who would tell him something about Firearms.
"All right," he said.
Elias had obviously been listening. He turned round with his eyes bright.
"That," he said, "is going to be worth watching. She’s the best archer in our year."
"Then you should come and watch," Mira said.
Owen only smiled.
* * *
The instructor began sending pairs to the courts. Several matches went before theirs.
Elias was drawn against a stocky girl with a pair of short, heavy blades who wanted nothing more than to get close and stay close. She came at him relentlessly, trying to get round the edge of his shield. Elias didn’t let her. Owen saw him setting his feet properly before every blow, and when he used Rebound, he came out of it balanced. She still made him work for every inch of space.
Marianne’s match against the other spear user was quick and lively. The two of them circled and thrust, each trying to beat the other’s weapon aside or catch it and drag it out of line. Twice Marianne slipped her point past his, and the third time he got his own in first.
In a court farther along, Lucien de Clare stood across from a broad, strong-looking cadet with a war hammer. Lucien’s axe didn’t give him any room. Every blow was heavy and exactly placed, and by the time the instructor called the third strike, the other boy was breathing hard. A ripple went through the cadets watching from the barriers.
Owen watched as much as he could, in between.
What interested him most was how different they all were. Even two people with almost the same weapon, like Marianne and her opponent, didn’t fight the same way at all.
"Calder. Ferrers."
* * *
They walked to their court together.
A handful of cadets drifted toward the barrier to watch. Owen heard them talking.
"That’s the one with the weapon from the examination—"
"The one that makes all that noise?"
"Do you think her arrows will be able to keep up with that?"
Most of the arena carried on with its own matches.
Their court was long and fairly narrow, with four obstacles in it. A stack of timber near one end. A low stone wall in the middle. Two more stacks closer to the far side, set at an angle to one another.
The instructor came down to the edge of the court and looked at both of them.
"Calder. Your bow, and Windtrace, within the limits I give you. Ferrers. Your sword, and your firearms." He looked at Owen. "No uncontrolled destructive techniques. And before you use one of those weapons on another cadet, I want to see what it does to a ward."
He led Owen to a reinforced post standing just outside the court. It was wrapped in the same shimmer as the wards, but thicker, brighter.
"Fire into that," he said. "Ordinary shot. No fire, nothing else."
Owen called up the rifle, brought it to his shoulder, and fired once into the post.
BOOM!
The ward on the post blazed white where the round struck it. Then it faded. The post behind it was untouched.
The instructor looked at it closely, then nodded.
"It’ll hold that," he said. "So that’s your limit. Ordinary rounds only. No Fire. Whatever you use in there, it stays at that level or below it. You go over it, the match is finished."
"Understood."
Owen dismissed the rifle.
At the far end of the court, Mira stepped onto her starting mark, and her bow appeared in her hand, silver-white, the emerald lines glowing faintly along its limbs.
Owen summoned his sword.
Mira looked at it, and then back up at him.
"You’re going to fight me with that? Not your gun?"
"I’m going to use whatever suits," Owen said.
She tilted her head slightly. Then she smiled.
She went to her end of the court. Owen settled his feet at his. Both of them felt the ward settle over them, cool and almost weightless.
The instructor raised his hand.
"Begin."
* * *
Mira loosed first.
She drew and released in a single movement, and the arrow came straight at his chest, Windtrace snatching it forward so fast it was almost a blur.
But Owen had watched her draw. He was already moving. The arrow hissed past his shoulder.
A second one came on its heels.
Owen turned his blade and caught it on the flat.
Clink!
The arrow spun away across the court.
He didn’t stand and wait for a third. He went straight at her.
Behind the barrier, someone whistled. He was across a third of the court before Mira had nocked again.
But she was already moving, sliding sideways across her end of the court as she drew. She knew what would happen if he reached her with that sword.
She didn’t aim at him this time. She aimed at the ground in front of him, where he was about to be.
Thunk!
The arrow struck the court a stride ahead of his foot. If he had kept going, he would have run straight into the next one.
Owen saw what she was doing. He cut left without slowing down and kept coming.
Now she had to retreat in earnest. She backed behind the stack of timber nearest her end and, a moment later, came out of the other side of it at a completely different angle, putting it between them.
Owen could have kept chasing her round the court with the sword. He knew he would probably catch her eventually.
He decided to show her something else instead.
He let the sword go.
On the other side of the timber, Mira was already bracing herself for that long rifle.
What appeared in Owen’s hand was much smaller.
A pistol. Compact and dark, the grip settling neatly into his palm.
Her eyes flicked to it. Just for an instant.
"What is that?" someone said behind the barrier.
"That’s not the same one!" That was Elias. "That’s a different one!"
The instructor looked down at it, and at Owen, and nodded once. "Approved. Carry on."
Mira saw what it meant at once. Owen could move with that in one hand. He could aim it on the run. He didn’t need to stop and settle himself the way he did with the rifle.
He raised it and fired.
Bang!
Mira had just begun to change direction. The round struck her ward high on the arm, and the ward flashed.
"Strike. Ferrers."
She was already moving toward the low stone wall in the middle of the court.
She knew she couldn’t outrun a bullet once it was fired. Nobody could. So she wasn’t trying to. She was watching him instead. Watching his arm, his shoulders, his feet. Moving before he fired, never after.
Owen came after her, steady, the pistol held toward wherever she was most likely to come out.
Whenever he gave her an opening, she took it.
An arrow came at him from behind the wall. He leaned away from it. Another came from the far end of it, a moment after she had dropped out of sight at the near end. He had to sidestep that one too.
The exchanges were coming faster now.
Owen moved out from behind the wall to get a better angle on her.
And as he committed to it, Mira loosed.
The arrow was going wide. Then Windtrace bent it, just slightly, just enough to bring it back in toward the place he was stepping into.
It caught his ward on the shoulder.
The ward lit up.
"Strike. Calder."
Owen glanced down at his shoulder. Then he looked back at her.
She hadn’t simply got lucky. She had waited for the moment when he had made up his mind and couldn’t change it, and she had shot into that.
That was good. Very good.
But it didn’t rattle him.
One each.
Mira began using the obstacles harder.
She moved between them constantly, putting first one and then another between herself and Owen so that he never had a clear line on her for long. And every time he had to cross a stretch of open ground to get a better angle, an arrow came at him.
Owen saw what she was doing.
With the pistol, he could punish her whenever she showed herself. But she was making him keep changing the distance. Close. Far. Close again. Never letting him settle into the range he wanted.
He changed weapons a second time.
The pistol vanished.
What took its place needed both his hands.
It was longer than the pistol, though nothing like as long as the sniper rifle, with a shorter barrel and a different shape altogether. Built to be swung from target to target. Built to fire again, and again, without stopping to settle.
An assault rifle.
Behind the barrier, the watching cadets had gone silent.
"That’s three," Elias said. Owen could hear the excitement in his voice from across the court. "That’s three different ones. Three!"
Up on the walkway, the instructor had leaned forward slightly. He was watching Owen’s hands closely.
Mira didn’t wait for Owen to get used to it.
She came out from behind the near stack of timber, already drawing, an arrow nocked and the emerald light already running along the limbs of her bow.
Owen had been waiting for that.
He swung the rifle across and fired one shot.
Bang!
It hit her ward before her fingers had left the string.
"Strike. Ferrers."
Mira let the shot go unfired and threw herself back behind the timber.
Owen didn’t fire through it after her. That wouldn’t have done anything except waste rounds. Instead, he moved, working his way round to a better angle, watching the edges of the stack. There were only so many ways she could come out from behind it.
He knew he could fire as many times as he wanted with this. He didn’t need to. He only needed to be ready.
Mira waited.
Owen began to work his way round the left side of the stack.
The moment he committed to it, Mira broke right. She came out from behind the timber and sprinted for the open ground on the far side, trying to put the length of the court between them.
It was quick and well timed. She had picked her moment perfectly.
But Owen didn’t chase her.
He stopped where he was, turned, and brought the rifle round to the gap she would have to cross.
Owen saw her realise it. He saw her eyes come up and find the barrel already waiting for her.
She drew anyway.
Owen fired first.
Bang!
Her ward flashed white.
"Strike. Ferrers," the instructor said. "That’s three. Match."
Three strikes to one.