The morning’s exercises went as usual, though now the troops were all forced to, instead of running in circles around the perimeter of the square, march while wearing their armor and bearing their packs, spears, and shields. Though the pace was notably slower to march, carrying the weight had Ezra’s shoulders aching before long. They maintained a pace that was just a quick walk for him, but carrying fifteen kilos on his shoulders while he did it was more than enough to tire him out.
“Pass it over,” Boyd said.
“Hell no,” Leah answered, panting.
“Do it.”
“No.”
“Woman! Pass over the backpack! It’s half your weight.”
“And it’s my job to carry it, not yours. Shut up, let me march. If I have to keep listening to this bullshit, I’ll kick you between the legs.”
Boyd shut up at that, though he didn’t look cowed. Instead, he sighed and continued striding directly beside Leah. As the shortest of the four elite recruits, she needed to step nearly twice as often as her face went red from exertion. Sweat ran down her face as she puffed, but she didn’t slow her pace. Cord and Ezra stayed close as well, and Ezra kept his attention behind her. There’d already been a couple people jostling, whether for position or just to get back at the recruits that were constantly beating the rest, and Ezra knew what would be coming as they saw an opening.
After a full lap, the opportunity presented itself as Leah lagged behind the brothers by half a meter. A foot lunged out and kicked her lagging left foot towards her right. She cried out involuntarily as her left foot hooked behind her right ankle and she stumbled and fell. Boyd managed to keep Leah from landing facefirst on the ground while Ezra stepped forward towards the guilty party.
Fucking William.
He tried to step back into the crowd and avoid Ezra’s attention, but Ezra stepped forward while saying nothing. His knee knifed forward and slammed into the outside of William’s left thigh. The jackass’s eyes widened as his leg crumpled underneath him and he fell. Unlike Leah, the petty idiot had no friends to catch him, and he fell directly to the mud. All around them, the marching soldiers slowed and stopped as Leah struggled to remain upright and William tried to extract himself from the ankle-deep mud.
His sculpted hair was filled with mud as he tried to catch himself on his arms and they buckled. The ground, mushed to icy mud under a hundred pairs of feet, splashed up and soaked the inner city boy, and he scrambled to his feet, his face almost glowing red with rage at what Ezra’d done.
“The fuck was that, rat?”
“What was what?” Ezra shrugged, maintaining eye contact. “I just hurried to support my squad mate. I’m glad she didn’t fall like you did.”
“You’re going to just pull this shit and think that you can get away with it?” William snapped.
Ezra looked at the people all around, the other soldiers who seemed to be quite willing to stay out of it and the approaching Lieutenant Georg. The rest, even sergeants, had been marching with the soldiers. As his commanding officer approached, Ezra had a thought occur to him and, with nothing better occurring to him, he asked, “Lieutenant Georg, is it alright with you if I have a talk with William a little bit away from everyone else?”
“You trying to get into a fight, Ezra?” Georg asked, his eyebrows climbing.
“No, sir!” Ezra replied. “I think a good conversation will help both of us, and away from others I think we’ll be able to speak more openly. I promise that, so long as I’m not provoked, I will not attack or deliberately provoke William.”
After pursing his lips and thinking about it for a few moments, Georg nodded once before saying, “I’ll hold you to that. Speak where we can see you, but I don’t care how quietly you speak to keep your words secret.”
“Thank you, sir!” Ezra answered with a salute. Then, with that, the sergeants pushed the rest of the soldiers into continuing on their path, leaving Ezra and William alone as Georg walked away.
“Follow me,” Ezra commanded, walking more towards the center of the square where they were guaranteed more than a couple meters’ separation from passers by. He didn’t wait for William to follow, though he listened for his footsteps to make sure that he didn’t try to sneak attack him.
You’re fine, Jormun said, floating ahead of Ezra. He’s thought about it and is following. Can’t wait to see what you’re going to say to him though.
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“Here’s fine,” Ezra sighed as he turned and looked at William. He was about three meters away from where Ezra’d stopped, and his face had been cleaned of as much of the mud as could easily be cleaned in that short time.
“What, rat?” William sneered. “You think you can just bring me here and insult me and I’ll take it?”
“No,” Ezra laughed. “I figured I could tell you the truth, though, and maybe that’d get us onto a better footing with each other.”
William just grunted in response, waiting to see what he had to say.
“Yeah, I figured that’d be the case,” Ezra sighed, trying to keep himself from just insulting him. “Look. I don’t like you. I think you’re an insufferable ass, and if I never have to be near you, it’d be too damn soon. I figure the feeling’s mutual, and you obviously think you should have been in the elite recruit squad. That you think you should have been selected is a joke, if you ask me. Instead of fighting to get better, you’re wasting your time on this shit.”
William’s face shifted to be more purple as Ezra talked, and he braced himself as William stepped forward and poked him in the chest, hard. Under the boiled leather chestpiece, Ezra didn’t feel much. William shouted, “You slumrats think you can come in here and get treated better than the rest of us? You don’t deserve it! You’re lucky to be paid to be a soldier instead of a conscript. Now you’re getting uppity and in my face because you’re lucky? Give me a break.”
“Me working my ass off and applying to be a soldier is me being lucky?” Ezra scoffed. “I’d say being born in the inner city where you get enough to eat every day is being lucky. You’re a sore loser and forced to be a wannabe bully because you weren’t strong enough to bully us all. You’ll find no sympathy from me.”
“Then why would you call me here? Just so we could argue?” William snapped back. As he was about to shout something else, Ezra jumped in.
“No, it was so we could both say that we hate each other and that isn’t going to change,” Ezra raised his voice enough to keep William cowed. “Also, so I could say this: I’m not going to start anything else with you. I’ll make sure my boys don’t either, and Leah won’t. Don’t start anything, and we can get back to giving each other dirty looks, nothing else. We’re about to go on the march to fight against an army of monsters. Did you know that?”
The abrupt subject change took William by surprise and he said, “Yeah, of course.”
“I don’t want to get killed by a goblinoid,” Ezra said simply. “If we keep acting this way, I can’t trust having you within a hundred meters of me when we get into a real deadly fight. If I think you’re going to pose a danger to me and my people, I’m going to do whatever necessary I can to make sure you’re nowhere nearby when we get into battle.”
“You think you can make them reassign me?” William let out a bark of laughter. “Good luck.”
“No, I don’t,” Ezra shook his head slowly, meeting the other man’s eyes. “I will do whatever I can to make sure you’re not on the battlefront at my side.”
William’s posturing froze up at that, and he swallowed visibly. “What are you threatening me with?”
“Nothing, so long as you don’t try to hurt or kill my people,” Ezra replied. “But you know that I’ll win whatever fight happens between us. You know that the leadership likes and values me more than you. I’ll get in trouble, and it won’t be the first time that I do. I’d rather we just stay away from each other and do our jobs well.”
Then, he didn’t say anything else as he stepped forward until he stood beside William and he said, “I really hope we can get along better, even if you’re an uppity inner city kid and I’m a slum rat. Cause rats bite.”
Ezra left William behind as he jogged to catch up with the rest of the soldiers, and he fell in line beside his friends as they hustled to continue their conditioning.
“What was that?” Boyd asked. “I had my money on you sucker punching him.”
“I did, just with words,” Ezra shrugged. “We’ll see if he listens.”
The largest elite recruit continued to badger Ezra for a while, but he didn’t offer anything else up, and it wasn’t long before they were all done marching. They all went to collect their water skins and drink up, the cold water a beautifully soothing feeling down Ezra’s dry throat. The teams all stepped to begin their training, but a voice cut through the sergeants’ barked commands.
“You’re with me, Ezra,” a familiar female voice said. He turned and saw a blonde woman with green eyes and studded gloves that seemed a lot more imposing now that he’d seen them in action. Then, Chloe stepped forward to him and gestured for him to leave the security of standing with the rest of his team.
“Yes ma’am,” he replied, walking forward as soon as he’d deposited his pack with the quartermaster.
“You said that you’ve used an aural attack,” she said as soon as he was close. As she spoke, she turned on her heel and led him around the captain’s office.
“Once,” he confirmed. “I’d like it if you don’t make me prove it, though. I drained myself with it, and I’m only barely past refilling myself past where I was when I used it the first time.”
“Yeah, you’re not ready,” she confirmed. “You’ve got a strong grasp on aura for an Initiate, but you’re not nearly an Adept.”
Ezra just nodded, waiting for her to say anything else, but was left waiting as she walked silently towards a small sand pit, one that Ezra’d seen but had never approached. It was outside of his reach, anyways, as it was the Captain’s area, so he’d never concerned himself with it.
“So, here I’m going to train you to become an Adept as soon as possible,” she said as soon as they stepped over the rope fence.
“And how are we going to do that?” Ezra asked.
“Well,” Chloe grinned in a way that sent a shiver down his back, “mostly, I’m going to fight you. And you’re not going to have a good time.”