The smell of toasted bread was the first thing to greet Oren as he entered the large mess tent that morning.
The long wooden tables stood in parallel rows, and around them dozens of new conscripts gathered in uniforms that still looked strange on their bodies, as though each of them were wearing someone else’s clothes.
He found Daren and Silen sitting at the end of one table, two plates of bread and cheese and a little honey before them.
Silen raised his hand when he saw him.
“Oren!
Here, come, there’s room.” Oren sat between them and began cutting the bread quietly.
He wasn’t as hungry as he’d expected, but his hands needed something to do.
“I was just telling Daren,” Silen began, chewing, “that the bread here is better than I expected.
Back in the village we used to hear that army food was unbearable.” “Maybe they haven’t gotten to the real food yet,” Daren said, without lifting his eyes from his plate.
“Pessimistic as always,” Silen laughed, then turned to Oren.
“And you?
Sleep well?” “Sort of.” “I didn’t sleep much.
The beds here are hard, and the man next to me snores like he’s plowing a field.” Silen paused a moment, then added in a slightly quieter voice, “But it’s fine.
A person gets used to anything if he has to.” A stranger came carrying a tray and sat at the opposite end of the table, alone, staring silently at his food.
It took no more than seconds before Silen turned to him.
“Morning.
Haven’t seen you before did you arrive today?” The man raised his head, a little startled that someone would open a conversation.
“Yesterday.
From the north.” “The north’s far.
They say the cold there shows no mercy.” Silen slid into conversation with ease, asking about the village he came from, the road, his family, as though he’d known the man for years.
There was no artifice in it, no wish to be seen, only a genuine curiosity that made the questions flow one after another.
Daren watched the scene in silence, as usual, continuing his meal.
Once the stranger had gone back to his own table, Silen said, shaking his head, “Good man.
But worried about his land.
Left his sister looking after it alone.” “How did you learn all that in two minutes?” Oren asked.
“I don’t know.” Silen shrugged.
“People like to talk about themselves.
You just have to ask them about the right thing.” “And what’s the right thing?” “Whatever matters to them.
Land.
Family.
Work.
No one refuses to talk about the thing occupying their mind.” “And what occupies yours?” Daren asked suddenly, in a tone not without quiet mischief.
Silen stopped chewing for a moment, then smiled a smile different from his earlier ones, closer to a dream than to a courtesy.
“Onions.” Oren laughed despite himself.
“Onions?” “Don’t laugh.
Onions are serious.” Silen set his hand on the table as though sketching an invisible map on it.
“I want land.
A piece of land, not big, to start with, near a good water source.
I’ll grow onions on it.
Nothing else, just onions.
Then I’ll sell the crop myself, at the market, not through some merchant who takes half the profit.” “Why onions specifically?” Oren asked.
“Because they don’t spoil quickly, and because people always need them, in every house, in every season.
No one can do without them.” His voice grew more animated with every sentence.
“If the first year succeeds, I’ll expand the land the next year.
And if it keeps going well, maybe I’ll buy a second plot after a few years.” “Sounds like you’ve planned this for a long time.” “Since I worked with my uncle at the vegetable market.
I used to watch the merchants buy from the farmers for next to nothing, then sell for many times the price.
I always thought: why not be the farmer and the merchant both?” “And what if it doesn’t work?” Daren asked, not with doubt but with genuine curiosity.
“Then I’ll grow something else.” Silen laughed.
“But I won’t know until I try.” Silen turned toward Daren, as if silently returning the question to him.
Daren wasn’t one to volunteer talk about himself, but after a brief silence he said quietly: “I want to make a sword.” “A sword?
Isn’t that already your father’s trade?” “My father makes everything except swords.” Daren pressed his fingers against the edge of the table, as though remembering the shape of his hammer.
“People in our village don’t need swords.
They need axes and shears and plowing tools.
Useful tools.
A sword’s no good to anyone in farming.” “So when did you last make one?” “I’ve never made a whole sword before.” He said it calmly, with no embarrassment in the admission.
“But I watched my father forge a blade once, for a merchant passing through the village.
I watched him for three days, hardly moving from my spot.” “And what struck you about it?” Oren asked.
Daren thought a moment before answering, as though searching for the right words to describe something he had never explained to anyone before.
“The balance.
A good sword isn’t just sharp.
It has to feel in your hand like an extension of your arm, not extra weight you’re carrying.
Most people who forge swords quickly forget that part.
They make a sharp blade and a heavy hilt, and end up with a sword you can’t use for more than a few minutes before your wrist tires.” “You seem to know a lot for someone who’s never made one.” “I know what a good sword looks like.
That doesn’t mean I know how to make one.
That’s a big difference.” Daren looked at his hands for a moment.
“I want to learn.
One day I want to forge a complete sword with my own hands, start to finish.
I don’t know if it’ll happen, but I want it.” “Sounds like a hard dream to achieve,” Silen said, not mockingly but with the frankness of someone weighing things by his own logic.
“Who even buys swords these days?
Everyone wants tools, not decorative weapons.” “Maybe no one will buy it,” Daren said, unbothered.
“But I’m not thinking about selling it now.
I’m thinking about learning how to make one that deserves to be made.” A brief silence settled over the table, not a heavy one, but the kind that happens when someone says something truly sincere, and the others find nothing to add right away.
Oren broke the silence at last: “I’ve never thought of anything I wanted with that much clarity.” “You will,” Silen said, with the confidence of someone who doesn’t doubt it.
“Everyone finds something eventually.” The conversation kept drifting among them, unhurried, a question here, a memory there, until someone mentioned the name of a man from the village who used to work as a woodcutter.
Oren paused briefly at the name, then found his mind drifting away, to an image he hadn’t summoned in years.
He remembered a small house near their old one, its mud wall cracked on one side, and a mulberry tree in front of it the two of them used to climb together.
He remembered the face of a boy about his own age, his laugh, the way he used to run without looking back.
He remembered a game they invented with pebbles, and a small, silly moment when one of them fell into a puddle and they laughed about it for a long time.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember his name.
It wasn’t worrying, only strange, like trying to grasp something you’d just seen, only to have it vanish between your fingers.
He tried again, and found something vague floating in his mind, not a full name, but a tone, the echo of a word’s ending.
The name, as far as he could recall, ended in the letter N.
He glanced, without meaning to, at the two sitting across from him.
Daren.
Silen.
He thought for a moment that most of the people he knew from the village had names ending in N.
It wasn’t something he’d noticed before, or perhaps he had and simply hadn’t paid it any attention.
He thought: “Strange.” Then Silen came out with a sentence about something else entirely, about the price of onions at the market last week, and the conversation drifted off, and Oren let the thought sink into the background without chasing it further.
It wasn’t long after breakfast that a low-ranking officer entered the tent and called out loudly for all the new conscripts to assemble in the outer square.
They all expected that military training would finally begin: running, weapons drills, formation exercises.
The conscripts moved with a mixture of tension and curiosity, talking among themselves in low voices about what the first day of real training would look like.
But instead of being led to the usual training ground, the officer marched them in a different direction, toward a low stone building at the edge of the camp, unlike the tents and wooden structures around it.
Its heavy wooden door stood open, and inside was a wide hall divided by tables, behind each of which sat a clerk holding papers and a pen.
“This isn’t training,” Silen whispered to Oren as they approached the entrance.
“I don’t know what it is,” Oren answered.
They sat on wooden benches lined along the sides of the hall, waiting their turn, while an official standing at the middle of the hall called the conscripts name by name.
He was a middle-aged man, calm in his movements, speaking without raising his voice more than necessary, as though this procedure had repeated itself before him hundreds of times.
When the group near them came up, Oren heard one of the conscripts ask: “What exactly is going to happen here?” The official answered without pausing his arranging of papers: “You’ll be choosing a path.” “A path of what?” “A magical path.” A brief silence fell over those nearby, then low murmurs began spreading among the conscripts.
Not everyone was equally surprised; some nodded as though they’d expected it, while others suddenly stopped talking, staring at the official with slightly widened eyes.
“Magic?” Silen whispered to Oren, his voice caught between excitement and suspicion.
“I’ve never heard of this before.
I mean, I’ve heard stories, but I never thought anyone dealt with it for real…
like this, in such an official way.” “Neither did I,” Oren said.
Even Daren, on whose face surprise rarely showed, raised his eyebrows slightly and looked at the official with sharper attention.
As their turn drew near, the official stood before them and began explaining in an even voice, like someone repeating words he had said thousands of times: “Every conscript undergoes an initial assessment upon arrival.
This assessment determines which magical paths might suit him.
No one can simply take whichever path he wants; it depends on the assessment’s result, and on which paths and which qualified instructors are currently available for training.” He paused briefly, then added: “Because of the current wartime conditions, and the shortage of available instructors this season, you have, in this intake, only three paths to choose from: Theft, Binding, and Transformation.
Each will be presented to you briefly, and then each of you will choose one.” “What’s the difference between them?” one of the conscripts asked.
The official answered: “Each path has its own nature and requirements, and you’ll learn the details in training.
Today, it’s enough for you to know their names and choose one.” “And can the choice be changed later?” Silen asked.
“Rarely, and only with great difficulty.
Better to think carefully now.” Oren absorbed the words in silence.
There was nothing more to clarify than this, and it didn’t seem the official intended to elaborate further no matter what he was asked.
It was more like a clerk explaining a complex administrative procedure with the least possible detail, not a priest revealing a sacred secret.
Daren was called first.
He approached the table and stood before the official with his usual calm.
“Which of these paths suits manual work more?” he asked directly.
“I mean, if one of them has to do with shaping things or changing their properties, not just moving or binding them.” The official looked at him a moment, then said, “Transformation is the closest to what you’re describing, by name at least.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best fit for you.
It depends on what you’ll learn afterward.” Daren thought for a moment, his eyes half-closed as though weighing something in his head that no one else could see.
Then he said: “Transformation.” The official wrote the name on his paper without comment, and moved to the next.
Silen’s turn came, and he immediately launched a string of questions: “Which one’s easier to learn?
Does any of them need more physical strength?
Could I see someone use one of them, just to understand the idea better?
And if I choose one and it turns out I’m not good at it, can I try another after a while?” The official answered with a patience clearly born of habit: “There’s no absolute easier or harder it differs from person to person.
And no, you can’t see a demonstration now.
And as I said, changing your path later is rare and difficult.” Silen shook his head, not entirely convinced but accepting the answer.
He looked at the three names written before him on a small board, and said finally: “Binding, then.” He didn’t explain why.
It simply seemed, of the three, the closest to something he could understand.
Then Oren’s turn came.
He stood before the table, looking at the three names written in a clear hand: Theft.
Binding.
Transformation.
He felt nothing strange in his chest, no shiver, no voice whispering one of the names to him.
There was nothing but three words on a board, and a need to choose one of them.
“Is the choice really permanent?” he asked.
“Practically, yes.
Changing it later requires approvals that aren’t easily granted.” Oren nodded, and thought for a moment.
He knew nothing real about any of the three paths, only the names and brief definitions barely sufficient to understand anything at all.
He had nothing to go on but the little he’d heard.
“Theft,” he said at last.
“What does that mean, exactly?” “That’s the name of a path with its own rules.
You’ll learn what it means in practice during training.” Oren tried to picture the idea, but it remained vague, closer to an abstract word than a clear image in his mind.
Still, “Theft” was at least a word whose first meaning he knew, and he could begin from there without pretending to understand more than he did.
“I’ll choose Theft.” The official wrote the name on the paper without comment, then raised his eyes to the next conscript in line.
Once everyone had made their choices, the official announced that path training would begin the following day, when each conscript would be assigned to his path’s group, with a specialized instructor.
For today, that was the end of it.
The three of them stepped out of the stone building into the midday light, amid the voices of the other conscripts talking among themselves with excitement or confusion, each according to what he had chosen.
In Oren’s hand was a small slip of paper, on which he had written his name and his path, to be submitted the next day at the gathering.
He looked at it as they walked back toward the tents.
“Theft,” Silen said, walking beside him.
“I didn’t expect you to pick that.” “I didn’t expect anything either,” Oren said.
“I didn’t even know what I was choosing between.” “No one did,” Daren said from the other side, in his usual calm tone.
They walked in silence for a while, among the camp’s tents and the clamor of conscripts around them, while Oren kept glancing at the slip of paper in his hand every so often, as though trying to grow used to seeing the word before him a word he had known almost nothing about before this morning.
Your support means everything.”