The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Three

[A/N] Sorry for the delay, there will be two double chapter updates coming up !

There is a double update for chapters 186 and 187 and another double update for chapter 188 and 189.

In the end the longer I take with the chapters the more happy I am with the result so hopefully people will enjoy those last chapters.... Let's go.（„- ֊ -„) ˎ ˊ ˗

I had a terrible feeling as I stood to attention and moved along with the others. We weren't well trained at archery either, our section was directed to learn sword fighting and archers would be delivered in greater number behind us, but part of the formation training required some of us to act as archers, others as shields. There was a great level of concentration involved, one moved with the entire group, and once one or a portion of the formation stepped out of line the entire formation risked falling apart.

It was hard to focus though, and I found myself stepping in the wrong direction twice, bumping shoulders with the soldier next to me who scowled darkly at me the second time.

General Nikola never actually looked directly at me the rest of the training, and yet I found myself sweating heavily as I worked, and only calmed down toward the end, when he still didn't seem concerned with me.

It was entirely possible that he hadn't noticed me, that I'd just visualised that out of panic of seeing a familiar face appear, even if I barely recalled exchanging words with the man. Still I felt his eyes burning my back as I left.

There was a great buzz about him as we slowly drained from two crisp lines into a less respectable crowd. The Generals were essentially the highest knights, they did not usually teach formations to the new soldiers, but the word amongst the crowd was that General Nikola liked to observe training at least once in a while with new soldiers to see if there were any particularly bright soldiers to send for special training.

It was just my luck that he of all of them would be there, I could only hope he hadn't actually seen me, or not believed it was me, but I knew I would be tense and wary the next few days even if nothing happened.

Sergios patted my head just as we were off the empty grounds and I raised a brow at him. "Your hair is still wet. I repeat that you should cut it to something shorter. I don't know why you bother with this..." He ran his fingers down to the ends.

I shrugged and grinned at him. "I could always strangle enemies with it."

"It's not quite long enough for that." He answered seriously.

I meant to laugh in reply but the smile died on my lips as General Nikola turned a corner and slowly passed in front of us, his eyes were already on us before I looked up to see him, in fact I wasn't entirely sure how long he might have been standing there because he wasn't in his knights armour like normal, and made barely a noise when he was dressed in just the chest plate and leather wearables.

He had dark green eyes and short cropped brown hair and while Sergios gave him a half soldiers salute, a fist palm up on the heart, I stood and watched his eyes slide over us as he passed.

But as we filtered out and ate and slept and started the day again no one guard singled me out from the section and we continued as normal.

Perhaps normal was a generous term, nothing was normal, even any routine we had had while training was lost. Every day new chores and different work, more training and some more mundane tasks that were inevitably passed onto me.