Robin Hobb - The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy - Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade’s Magic

‘Wood chips? What are you going to do with wood chips?’

‘Wedge them into a door frame.’

Nate was shocked. ‘Nevare! That’s not like you. Or is it?’

I shook my head, a bit surprised at his question, and taken aback for a moment. It wasn’t like me to play such tricks. More like Dewara, I thought to myself. It was a plainsman tactic, this subtle revenge, and probably unworthy of a gentleman. I tried to care about that, and could not. It was almost as if I had discovered a second me inside myself, capable of such things.

Rory leaned closer to my hand to peer at the chips, and then shook his head. ‘They’re too little to make any difference. They won’t hold.’

‘Want to bet?’ I asked him.

‘I’m coming with you. I got to see this.’

Rory and Nate followed me as I crept down the stairwell to the next floor. The second-years had a door that opened out from their study room onto the stairwell. They closed it at night to hold the heat in their rooms. I crouched down. The dim lantern in the stairwell barely illuminated my work as I carefully stacked the wood chips into a series of wedges under their door. ‘Do some in the sides, too,’ Rory suggested in a whisper.

I nodded, grinning, and worked them in just above the hinges, pressing them firmly into the crack and pushing them flush to the frame.

The next morning we hastened our fellows out of the room and down to the parade ground, ignoring the pounding and shouting from the second-years’ door as we passed it. There, we assembled without Corporal Dent, and were innocently awaiting our corporal when the third-years and the cadet officers arrived. All the second-years were late to the parade ground and awarded demerits as a result. It was easy for most of us to look innocent, for Nate, Rory and I had kept our secret to ourselves. I don’t know if Nate or Rory whispered, but by noon, all my fellows had, in one way or another, conveyed subtle congratulations to me. Our corporal suspected us and did his best to make us miserable that day. Yet his best efforts did little to dampen our spirits, and that, I think, infuriated him all the more.

I should not have been the instigator of such a trick, for I should have known that Rory would only escalate the war of mischief. I think it was he who pissed in their water ewer and left it by their washbasin, but I have no way to be certain. Day after day, the second-years bullied us, and every day, we found some small way to strike back. We were far more adept than they were at subterfuge, and more creative. Flour and sugar rubbed into their bed sheets meant they awoke as sticky as dumplings. A hollowed stick of firewood, packed with horsehair from the stables, drove them out of their study room one night. They cursed at us and accused us, but could prove nothing. We marched off the demerits, kept our eyes down and seemed to submit to them, but at night, after lights-out, we often gathered to whisper and rejoice in our defiance. All good-natured tolerance for our ‘initiation’ was gone. We waged a war of endurance, now, to prove we would not be run off.

The six-week initiation culminated in a grand mêlée on the parade ground. Traditionally, it was some sort of mock battle, a wrestling competition or a tug-of-war or footraces or other sport challenge between the houses that theoretically dispersed any ill-feeling that had built up during the initiation. All were to emerge from it peers and equals, Academy cadets one and all. But in my first-year, it all went wrong, and to this day, I do not think what happened was entirely an accident. How naive we all were! We had been brought to the edge of a boil and held there by bullying and pressure. We should have known better to put any trust in anything a second-year from our house told us. Yet when Corporal Dent came pounding up the stairs, shouting at us to rally, for Bringham House had stolen the flag of Carneston House and was defying us to take it back, we all slammed our books shut and left our Sevday afternoon study to pelt down the staircase out onto the parade ground.

Across the parade ground, to our fury, we beheld our cherished brown horse flying upside-down from Bringham House’s flagpole, below their own flag by a substantial margin. The base of their flagpole was guarded by their first-years. On seeing us emerge like bees from a kicked hive, they roared at us their challenge to come and prove who was the better house. The Bringham House second-years stood on the steps, cheering them on.

I think the upper classmen had misjudged the temperament of the Carneston House first-years. Or perhaps they had not. We charged into the fray, Rory in the forefront, bellowing like a bull. I heard someone shout from behind me, ‘Champions. You are supposed to choose champions to fight for each house!’ But if that had been the plan, no one had told us about it beforehand, and now it was too late. The first-year cadets of Carneston House hurtled, barehanded, into the ranks of Bringham House first-years. We thought that we battled for the honour of our houses. In reality, the second-years of both houses had manoeuvred us into providing them some free entertainment. They roared and cheered and cursed us from the sidelines. We were scarcely aware of them. At first it was only pushing, shouting and standing wrestling as we tried to win through to the base of the flagpole to reclaim our colours. Then fists started to fly. I do not know who struck the first hard blow. Bringham House accused our cadets, and we accused theirs. I think that all the frustration of all the first-years at the bullying we had endured as well as the pressures of the Academy suddenly burst like a swollen boil.

There were a dozen of us from Carneston House. There were only eight first-years in Bringham House, but when their second-years saw that we were getting the better of them, enough of them waded in to more than even the odds. Even so, the triumph came to us. Most of us were frontier-lean and leathery while the Bringham House first-years were town boys. Gord, for all his tubbiness, was in the thick of it, red-faced and shouting and flailing away. I saw three Bringham House cadets try to bring him down, but he just hunched his head into his shoulders and ploughed on toward the flagpole. Trist was ever the best of us, for he fought as if he were in a ring, throwing punches and ducking and gracefully sidestepping his opponent’s wild swings. There were perhaps twenty-five of us battling at the base of the flagpole, but at the time, it seemed like hundreds. I fought with none of Trist’s refinement or economy of motion. I brawled, shoving men aside, kicking the feet out from under one who came at me, rolling another off my shoulders as he jumped on me. He landed badly and I didn’t care. I stepped over him, shoving my way closer to their flag.

I don’t even know who finally reached the lines and pulled our flag down within our reach. Theirs came down as well, and we seized it gleefully. We were falling back across the parade ground, in possession of both flags and heading toward our own house when third-years on horseback led by the house sergeants from all four houses on foot clattered onto the parade ground. The sergeants waded into us, tossing cadets aside as if we were children. Once they had roughly separated us, the third-years rode their horses in between us. We were standing apart, breathing hard and caught between shock and triumph at what we had done when Colonel Stiet himself was suddenly there, bellowing at us to form up in ranks.

The elation we had felt at winning Bringham’s colours evaporated. We came to order in two ragged lines, facing one another. My nose was bleeding, my knuckles were raw and one sleeve was half-torn from my shirt. Trent was holding his arm across his chest. Jared’s features were hidden by a mask of blood flowing down his face from a scalp wound. My only satisfaction was that the Bringham House cadets facing us were in far worse condition. One of them was being held up by two of his comrades. His eyes were dazed, his jaw hanging slack. One had lost his entire shirt in the battle, and the red blossoms of what would be bruises were all over his chest and upper arms. In the middle of the parade ground, the Bringham House flag stirred in the dust as a slight wind picked up one of its corners.