Will Of The Fates

9.

"If you don't want your bread, I'll take it." Sidas drew me out of my thoughts.

I looked up as he took a long slurp out of his bowl. I shrugged. "I'm not usually hungry in the morning. But I don't have a lot of bread, so no."

"Aww." He slurped loudly again. "Night watch left you without an appetite?"

"Maybe." I bit into my bread. "I'm not usually hungry in the morning either."

"Same." Hanna mumbled beside me as I she swirled the soup in her bowl.

"Yeah..." Pyr sighed as she watched Pippa down her second bowl of soup with her own first bowl in hand. "I'm not used to it either."

All three men gave us a confused look. Risna raised an eyebrow. "If this is about you girls wanting to lose weight, I can tell you right now that you don't need it."

I threw Risna a scathing look. "It's not that. We used to have training as kids and they told us to not eat breakfast before it. That's why we don't usually eat breakfast."

"No breakfast before training?" Elikai raised an eyebrow. "That's not good for a child's development."

"It was not for development..."

"More for endurance development." Hanna replied in distaste. She'd seemed to have lost any appetite at old memories being brought up. "It was so we wouldn't throw up and make a mess during training."

"Throw up?" Elikai sounded surprised. "That's a normal thing?"

"They don't consider their job done till we do." I looked down at my bread. It now tasted like nothing.

"Yeah." Pyr sighed. "But atleast we got to rest after."

Hanna and I turned to look at her. Our voices also came out in unison. "You got to rest?"

Pyr's eyes widened. "You didn't?"

"No." Hanna and I replied again. She glanced at me over her shoulder. "Was it bad for you too?"

"Twice as worse."

"I doubt it. No way you guys holding sticks trained harder than archers."

I frowned. "I didn't just train as an s—"

"I'm guessing this is a mercenary village?" Elikai cut me off. He seemed angry. "Such heinous behaviour towards kids. If I ever meet your Chief..."

"You won't meet her." Pippa piped up. "And even if you do, she's too..." Pippa trailed off as she realised all of us had turned to look at her. She reddened. "... s... strong..."

"Yeah." Pyr reinforced. I started to wrap my bread. I was done. "Besides, it's been happening for centuries. Not just us."

"Tradition." Sidas scowled. Risna turned to the side and spit. I ignored that as I tilted my head back to finish the rest of the soup.

"Good soup." Hanna mumbled beside me as she did the same.

Our team was ready, but their team took a while more as Sidas and Elikai left to straighten up and change. They both returned with armour on. Or Sidas did, I didn't see any on Elikai but he patted his chest to assure me it was there. It did sound like leather, but I couldn't be sure.

"Alright." Sidas walked up to the entrance and turned to face us. "Emerys and Risna will bring up the back, I'll be in the front with Pyr and Hanna. Elikai, stick with Pippa."

Everyone nodded at that. Risna smiled down at me, I smiled back. Kind of an odd set up, but he has seen the place from inside so he probably knows what to do.