On the next morning Lysander left for the training grounds at around 10 am and went straight to Ser Roderick and Darren who were standing in the middle of the field. Darren had a notebook in his hands and was looking at the group of villagers who had gathered on the training grounds while seeming a bit clueless.
"Good morning, Ser Roderick, Darren."
Both men bowed.
"Good morning your majesty. It is an honour to work with you."
"I'm sure that it's actually not much different from how it would usually be. Do you intend to make a list of the recruits in that notebook?"
"Yes, but I sort of don't know where to start."
At that Lysander looked at Darren for a moment and then just said:
"How about we just use my royal authority to make it easier?"
His next action then was to turn around towards the villagers and order them to form a line so that they could be noted down one after the other without anyone being missed. They followed his command and after a bit of chaos and shuffling had managed to form a queue. The prince assigned Darren to write their names and certain necessary information like their height, former fighting experience and facts about their health, down. Then he went towards the armoury with Ser Roderick where they called for the help of a few servants to carry out wooden swords and bows as well as targets.
After a while those who had already been registered joined them too and when Darren had finished noting them down the group of villagers assembled in front of the prince and the two soldiers.
There were about 70 men and 40 women all of them between 18 - which had been the minimum age. Anyone below it had been sent away by Darren - and 45. Yet the majority of the recruits were between 20 and 30 years old. They were the ones who had been to young to join the war when they had last sent recruiters to Elade a few years back or who had decided to concentrate on building a family and taking care of their farms but now their farms lay in ashes anyway and the service in the army offered another way to ensure an income in the future. Of course they also felt obligation and loyalty towards their country and humanity but that hadn't been the first concern for most of them.
After a short speech to greet the villagers the prince stepped back and handed the sceptre over to Ser Roderick. His first order then was for the villagers to run three rounds around the training field to warm up a bit. Then, just like the prince had done it with Kiran's friends a few weeks ago, he began to show them how to hold a sword and how they were supposed to stay. All in all the training was pretty similar to the one with Kiran's friends and as the prince walked around to inspect the villagers actions and correct them where necessary he spotted a few of known faces.
He met Jill who just came back from the armoury where she had fetched the smaller sword which Lysander had given her the few times they had trained too and they exchanged a friendly greeting. Afterwards he watched her movements and complimented her on her progress to which Jill - who had gotten a lot more comfortable around him by now - cheekily replied:
"What can I say? I simply had the best trainer," she smiled deviously, "Val helped me a lot."
Deciding to ignore the obvious tease Lysander just snorted.
"Yes, Val indeed is pretty good at fighting and she picks up on new things incredibly fast. Did she join as well?"
"Yes, I did.," answered a voice behind the prince and when he turned around he came face to face with Val and the twins, who stood behind her.
Val looked at him expectantly.
"So... Are we supposed to go through all of the rookie stuff again or will you teach us something new?"
أنت تقرأ
I don't know
الخيال (فانتازيا)We had set out to rid the world of the monsters who endangered us but it began to feel like we had become the very thing we fought against in the process. ******* The narrator is late. A village burns down. The villagers move. An orphaned prince...
