Metal and Flesh (The Rohvim, Book 1)

1.2 Rat

“And he just told you the entire layout of the barracks? Drunk?” Priam arms waved in the air, Aeden could just barely see, but his ears distracted him.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Priam’s arms dropped and they both listened.

A voice. Down the nearly pitch-black passage they had just traversed. They strained to hear it.

“I tell you I swear I heard something,” a man said, breathing heavily. “No, not a rat. No, I heard a voice. Just … just come on.” The man conversed with someone, but his companion’s voice was too muffled to hear clearly. “I know the guard just passed here, but all the same I heard something.”

Aeden grabbed Priam’s arm and hauled him further down the hallway, taking care not to move too loudly, and yet hurrying as fast as he could. He counted, one, two, three openings in the wall, and felt for a handle. His hand caught it, and it turned just as the hallway began to brighten somewhat with the approach of another torch. Pulling Priam into the room, he shut the door, gripping the handle so as not to allow the latch to shut on its own and thus announce their presence.

They held their breath. The voices outside in the hallway grew louder—the pair of guards outside arguing about the presence of trespassers in the barracks, or the even greater likelihood that the stray noises were probably ghosts—conjured by some dark sorcerer, no doubt. Aeden grinned at the thought of being mistaken for an evil wizard, and he imagined reaching out an imaginary, ghostly arm into the hallway to spook the passing men.

“What was that?” one of them said.

“What?” said the other.

“Something just touched me! Touched me foot!”

Aeden stiffened. Had he really just done something?

“Just a rat, you stupid wretch! Look there! It’s scurrying away, probably gone mad from your stench!”

Aeden breathed easier, and sensed Priam relax a little as the voices faded, their mumbling growing fainter as they passed farther down the hallway. They didn’t move until all was quiet, and only then did Priam nudge Aeden’s arm.

“Ok, let’s get this over with. Do you have the torch?” said Priam.

Aeden spun around, reaching out for his friend, who now seemed just out of reach. “You’re kidding me. Priam, I gave you one job and that was it. If you really forgot the torch I swear I’ll—”

A flash of sparks and a flame interrupted him, illuminating Priam’s grinning face. The other boy always loved a good joke.

“You swear you’ll what?”

Aeden, uncharacteristically, was speechless, but recovered quickly, smirking as he brushed past Priam towards the tidy wooden desk in the far corner, weaving his way around targets, dummy soldiers, and piles of practice gear.

“Well that didn’t take long,” he said, picking up a piece of parchment from the clean, orderly desk. “Let’s see … Rossam … Rossam … Rossam … where is Rossam … hey, here we go. Looks like I’m—hey, this can’t be right.”

“What? Lemme see,” said Priam, reaching over Aeden’s arms to grab the parchment, but too slowly to snatch it from the other boy’s hands.

“It says I’m in the twenty to twenty-five year old bracket. I’m seventeen! What are they thinking?” But it was true—right there, under the heading intermediate young adults, was the name Aeden Rossam.

“Hey, at least you’re ranked in the middle of the group, so Lord Caldamon obviously thinks very highly of you. He’s a friend of your father, right?”

“Right….” Aeden scanned the page. His father. Lord Caldamon. Could it be… no. His father wouldn’t do such a thing. Would he? Aeden felt he knew the answer to that question even as he thought it. Of course he would. His father had high opinions of himself and lofty aspirations for Aeden—if he could only measure up. But to satisfy his father seemed a never-ending, unattainable quest. “There you are,” he said, pointing to another part of the page.

Priam’s face fell. “Priam Switchback, sixteen to nineteen year old group, intermediate. Hmm, I thought I would have made advanced at least.”

“Well at least this list doesn’t matter all that much. The pre-trials count for a lot more. If you can do good there, they’ll place you within your group more favorably, and really, you’re better than all these people—look, half of them I know can’t even hold a sword properly.”

“Yeah….” Priam mumbled. To Aeden he clearly sounded dejected, and he made a mental note to see if his father might do something for Priam as well. Perhaps sway Lord Caldamon to elevate him to the advanced group. But he thought better of it. No telling what Lord Rossam might say.

He was unstable, his father, and Aeden could never predict when the man would praise him or scream at him, hurling obscenities and insults. Most of the time, the man was cool and collected. Calculating, almost. But that was the public face. He showed a far more complicated face to his family.