The Hunters of Sian

The Library

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Chapter Twelve

The Library

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As the weeks passed, the days grew hotter and dryer. There were more cold soups, salads, and fruit on the tables in the food hall to try and combat the growing heat. The massive stained-glass windows were flung open all along the stone corridors in a desperate attempt to get some air flow. The classrooms were swelteringly hot. The tower room in particular was nearly painful. The sigils sessions, with the heavy use of chalk and dry air often resulted in sneezing fits and a few nose bleeds. Several times, the riding classes had taken the apprentices to the swallow stream to give them practice riding in the water. The dracks had loved it. Their riders...?

Not so much.

Nigel nearly drowned because his drackina stood on him in the river after he fell out of the saddle and only Cadric's command got the beast to move.

In botany, they were now doing several plants at once now rather than just one or two. This meant more complicated mixtures and more opportunity for failure. Often the plants needed to be treated a certain way before they were safe to use, steaming, of stewed or left in running water for two days. Jeremy was violently ill when he had misread his own notes and accidently stewed the wrong plant and left the poisonous one raw. He drank the tea he brewed and was so ill he had to stay in the hospice overnight. Nell had visited him and had sat next to him on the hospital bed to go through their writing assignment.

Survivalist classes were still Nell's favourite. They had been shown how to make their own fishing hooks from bone and cord from plant fibres. They were still making basic snares as well as fishing traps using rocks and shallow water. They had also had one particularly fun lesson on the outskirts of the forest picking and cooking mushrooms and small tubas over their own fires. Thomas got sick after he ignored Nell's warning and ate a poisonous mushroom. No one felt particularly sorry for him.

Combat classes always left them bruised and exhausted. Nell had learnt to hide any injuries on account of the noble boys targeting anything that could be seen as weakness. The next biggest development had come during combat classes when Cadric had announced that should think about which weapon they wanted to specialise in.

'You'll all learn basic dagger, sword, and bo staff stances but I expect all of you to take some time to study the other weapons we have in the armoury. Eventually you will be asked to pick an item to specialise in. I would urge you to think long and hard about what will and wont suit you,' Cadric said. His eyes went from Nell to Jeremy and Florian. The three were the smallest in the class. Sumaya wasn't as muscular as the nobles either, but she had years of combat training from her own tribe, and it was obvious that Cadric wasn't bothered about what she chose.

Nell had no idea what to specialise in. Thankfully, neither did Jeremy or Marshall. At the end of their combat class, whilst Marshall nursed his very bruised wrist, the three padded into one of the many weapon storage rooms. They stared around at the vast array of metallic weapons.

'Somehow I don't see myself flinging that around,' Jeremy said, pointing to an enormous, spiked club. It was nearly as long as Jeremy was tall.

'Or that.' Nell nodded to a huge broad claymore with a red handle.

'If we are learning swords anyway, they may not be a bad idea,' Marshall said as he looked into a glass case. Nell peered over his shoulder. Five long, oddly curved swords lay inside.

'Nah, that's boring. May as well try something new.' Jeremy was dancing about the shelves, picking up various small daggers. 'What do you suppose this thing is?' he called out, holding an odd sort of metal gauntlet with chains attached to the fingers.