"Ugh."
Delam looked around the barracks and shook his head.
In his old memory it had been shabby, sure, but livable enough... and now that he'd actually arrived, he understood something afresh.
That memories only get prettied up.
That was how awful the barracks were.
The bunks were laid thick with straw, and it had gone so long without being changed that the smell of it fermenting rose off the bedding.
Fifty men had to sleep in here together?
'At least it's not winter, thank goodness.'
Delam himself was fine thanks to his mana, but the other trainees were another matter.
It was the sort of environment where come winter men might freeze to death.
At least for now it was autumn.
Not hot, and perfect for sleeping.
The second thing to be thankful for was the food.
Because of the intensity of the training, perhaps.
The first meal he ate after arriving at camp came with meat in it.
Only a little unidentifiable salted meat floating on top of a soup, but in an age when protein was precious, it was a feast.
That was the end of day one.
Barracks assigned, spots claimed, dinner eaten.
After that, a brief period to sort themselves out, and then to bed.
'Bastards, they could at least give us time to wash.'
Click.
Grumbling, Delam lay there and opened the locket.
It was already pitch dark, so his mother's portrait wasn't visible.
But the fragrance carried off the leaf pierced right through the dark.
"Hoooooo—"
As he drew breath slowly, the scent came pushing into his lungs.
At that clean, cool fragrance he seemed to see a plain before his eyes.
A plain of gold, with a gentle wind blowing across it......
'Did Mother think of this sight too, when she breathed in the scent?'
He wanted to believe so.
That he and his mother were connected by this locket.
A little while later Delam fell into a deep sleep, for the first time in ages.
Feeling the wind blow across — a plain, or somewhere like it.
Whoooosh.
***
He had no memory beyond closing his eyes for a moment.
And yet outside the barracks it was already morning, sunlight shining.
"Reveille! Reveille!"
"Get up, you bastards!"
The instant the sun began to rise, unwelcome guests came to the barracks.
Pouring in all at once were the instructors.
Each carried a club carved from birch, and it wasn't to be taken lightly just because it was made of wood.
Look at those six edges.
Get hit and you had a blood bruise at minimum, and if you were unlucky enough to take one square in a place like the head, that could be your last day.
"Beginning roll call! You are number one. Count off in order, one through fifty. Trainee, what number are you?"
"...Sir?"
Trainee number one, not yet awake, asked back blankly.
Of course, farmers and shepherds were early-rising sorts by trade.
They had to be up at dawn to tend sheep and work the fields, so ordinarily this was a time they'd already be awake.
The problem was that they had been marching for over thirty days up to yesterday.
Naturally they weren't in their right minds.
The instructor, of course, made no allowance for that sort of thing.
He didn't ask twice; he swung the club.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
"Aagh! Aaagh!"
The roll call continued from there.
Two, three, four, five......
And each time, a trainee's scream burst out.
There were trainees who managed to shout their numbers, but regrettably, getting the right number out in that chaos was no easy thing.
And even when they did get it right, the instructors didn't let it go.
They found fault with every conceivable thing and beat them mercilessly.
"You too... hm?"
And so the instructor came past the halfway mark.
The club he was reflexively about to bring down hesitated in midair.
Because the reason to strike had disappeared.
The boy standing at attention held a posture that was flawless.
The instructor swept the area with a hawk's eye, looking for something to fault.
But the threadbare blanket lay folded to sharp corners at the head of the bunk, and the worn leather shoes at the foot were arranged neatly as well.
The boy shouted.
"Forty-one!"
"Is that number correct?"
"It is, sir."
"If you are wrong you take double. Are you certain?"
"I will bear it, sir."
"Trainee, what is your name?"
"Delam, sir."
"Tch......"
The instructor smacked his lips and lowered the club.
Then he looked the boy over once more and moved on to the next in line.
"Forty-two!"
"Wrong, you little shit!"
"B-but the one before me said forty-one......"
"Wrong regardless! Die!"
Mark, who had copied Delam, was beaten with gusto.
The trainees ahead of him, already thrashed and groaning, glared.
Not at the instructor — at Delam.
-We all take it and you're the only one who slips out of it?
-You traitorous bastard!
But Delam paid it no particular mind.
As far as Delam knew, bullying in a training camp was exceedingly rare.
Because training together bred camaraderie?
Or because the instructors were watching?
Neither, of course.
'It's just that you're too damn exhausted.'
Even tormenting someone takes stamina.
And a training camp leaves you exactly enough strength to close your fingers.
Since you do have to eat.
'Hang in there, you poor bastards.'
Delam cheered them on with a snort of a smile.
It would be hard, but this too would become fertilizer.
Fertilizer for surviving, out on the battlefield.
***
Life at the camp was monotonous.
Apart from breakfast and dinner, there were exactly three kinds of training.
Physical conditioning, drill, and ideological instruction.
Of course, three kinds didn't mean it wasn't hard.
During conditioning everyone threw up.
Even those who came from farming or carpentry, who used their bodies, were no exception.
That was how vicious it was, a training that wrung a man out.
And what about drill?
They had to move identically on command, and having never once done anything like it in their lives, it was extremely difficult.
Get it wrong in the middle of that and you were beaten, get it wrong beside a comrade and he was beaten, be beaten and be exhausted, be exhausted and get it wrong again... it was hell.
'But the roughest of the lot is ideological instruction.'
Ideological instruction is simple.
You all sit down together nice and cozy in the barracks.
And all you have to do is listen to the story the instructor tells.
The content was easy too.
[Our royal house is this magnificent]
[Our kingdom is this incredible]
[And the enemy kingdom fighting people like us is trash]
That sort of thing, stretched out at length.
It was even entertaining.
Because it hadn't been written by instructors or politicians — they'd rounded up the comic performers of the capital and had them write it.
Thanks to which, listening to it, a man could get his chest hot with loyalty and love of country despite having been dragged there by conscription.
Provided, that is.
That he [could listen] to it.
"Khhk!"
"Mustn't doze... mustn't doze......!"
The trainees listened with their eyes forced wide.
This was ideological instruction after finishing conditioning and drill.
What happens when your stamina has been wrung out to the last drop?
You have no choice but to nod off.
An utterly natural thing.
The problem was that the instructors couldn't grasp that obvious fact.
"You dare doze while the majesty of the royal house is being spoken of?"
THUNK!
One trainee was struck immediately.
Everyone saw it and pinched their own thighs, but it did no good.
If you could stay awake on willpower alone you'd already be a human weapon.
You wouldn't need training like this at all.
That day too ended in that same agony.
But the trainees' enthusiasm was greater than usual.
Because tomorrow the training they'd been waiting for began!
***
"They say training gets added starting tomorrow?"
"I hear we learn weapon technique."
"Ha! At last the time has come to show off my talent."
The barracks after training had ended.
Perhaps thanks to being ground down for over a week already.
The trainees' stamina had come up considerably by now.
Enough to trade a bit of small talk before sleep.
And the ones talking hardest right now were the [blockheads].
That was what everyone called the men who had volunteered.
The ones who'd come on their own two feet looking for a reversal of fortune.
Every one of them held a great faith.
A talent no one could match!
The conviction that it lay sleeping inside them.
And with that, were drill and ideological instruction going to catch their interest?
Those were junk training that couldn't even show off their genius.
The weapon training starting tomorrow, on the other hand, was another matter.
"Today's my last day of barracks life, I expect. With my skill I'll be assigned private quarters from tomorrow and living separately."
"I learned swordsmanship from a mercenary captain, too. He went wild-eyed the moment he saw my talent, and it was a job turning down his offer to take me as a disciple."
Tremendous confidence with no basis behind it!
And of course, nowhere close.
"Thrust that spear straight, you bastards!"
"No, is your arm crooked? Why are you thrusting sideways? I said stab the front — why are you stabbing the comrade on your diagonal!"
"Gaaah!"
"S-sorry......"
At last, the first lesson.
The moment it started, the trainees came to a realization.
That they hadn't a speck of talent in them.
There were, of course, some who couldn't accept reality.
"Isn't it that you instructors can't teach properly?"
"Why you little—!?"
At one trainee's protest the instructors' eyes rolled back.
What the trainees were holding right now were [real] spears.
Instructors or not, they hadn't mastered mana; they were merely veterans who had been through a few battles.
Which meant that if the trainees set their minds to revolting, instructors could die by the cartload.
"Beat this bastard down!"
"We've got to crush the sprout before it grows!"
The instructors, venom in them, converged with clubs raised.
At that momentum the trainee went uh, uh— and dropped his spear.
Club blows poured down, laced with a killing intent unlike anything so far.
"P-please, spare... khuuk!"
In the middle of the thrashing.
A trainee took one square on the back of the skull and let out a death cry.
The way he collapsed and convulsed on the ground was not a good sign.
Delam saw it and shook his head.
'He's finished.'
How many deaths had Delam seen on battlefields.
For a knight to grow used to death means, precisely, to [know].
Where a man dies if you stab him, where a man dies if he's struck.
Regrettably, that trainee had been struck where he must not be struck.
"Fuck... clear it away."
"Yes, sir."
A man had died, but the senior instructor's response was simple.
The trainee's corpse was dragged off and vanished somewhere unknown.
The trainees who saw it were stunned witless.
Which was only natural.
The camp had been brutal, but no one had died yet.
And now a trainee in the same position as them had ended up like that, right before their eyes.
Shiver, shiver.
And the most frightened of all was someone Delam knew.
The loafer from his own village, Mark.
He had finally grasped reality, it seemed, and his face was bloodless.
"Hey."
"Wh-what......"
"Did you not hear the instructor? Hold a spear like that and you'll lose your fingers when you thrust. And you're supposed to grip below the midpoint, so why are you the only one holding the butt end? Do you want to stab the guy in front of you too?"
"I'm not going to stab him!"
"Then grip it properly. Anyway, it's starting to feel real now, isn't it? How much of an idiot you've been. Wow, swapping a perfectly clean lot — even I never imagined anyone doing that."
"Ah......"
"Listen to the instructors properly and train hard. That's how you stay alive out on the battlefield too. Don't you want to see your parents again?"
Drip.
Mark shed tears without meaning to.
Contrary to his imaginings, he had no talent whatsoever for the spear.
He'd already taken any number of blows from the instructors and hadn't improved.
And in the middle of it he made himself think.
-A knight uses a sword.
-The sword will be different......
But the truth was he knew himself.
That it was nonsense.
"Are you the trainee Delam?"
Just then someone approached Delam.
Clothing similar to the ordinary instructors', but a grade finer.
A senior instructor.
At the appearance of a superior the instructors around him snapped off salutes.
Their faces were flustered by the sudden visit.
But Delam answered calmly.
"Yes, sir, I am Delam."
"Follow me. Bring the spear as it is."
"Yes, sir."
The trainees who'd been spoiling to show off their talent.
Delam knew better than anyone how absurd a notion that was, and yet he didn't sneer at those trainees.
Because in fact, he was thinking the very same thing.
'Right, let's do this properly.'
I'll show you what real talent is.
So watch, and applaud!