FROST- Jotun Chronicles #1

Battle Training

                The tides of war are starting to turn. We are pushing them back. They are falling, stumbling, going down with bloody wounds, with my sword thrust through their middles. Finally we are pressing against the city walls. Their archers are trying to take us down, showering us with flaming arrows, screaming threats and raining rocks and hot oil down on us. But we have shields of ice that cannot be penetrated, that cannot be set ablaze. We bring the ladders, scale the walls.

                I grab a soldier’s tunic and send him tumbling down and down. His screams ring in my ears. Below me a surge of white crashes through the city walls. Someone has succeeded in opening the gates. We are in the city. We will bring it down stone by stone.

                I sat up in bed so fast I made myself dizzy. I was breathing hard, as if I’d actually been scaling walls instead of just doing it in my dreams. It had felt so real. I could almost feel the stones of the walls scraping the palms of my hands. I looked down at my hands, but they were smooth and free of marks. Of course they were. It was just a dream.

                The clock on the nightstand said it was seven, and I groaned and forced myself out of bed. It had only been one week of lessons with Prince Lief, and my entire body felt like one giant bruise. Things in the dining hall weren’t any better either. It only made it worse that the Queen had actually shown up for dinner one night, accompanied by much fanfare and excitement. She’d sat up at the high table, but when she and her entourage had swept past my table she’d stopped and put her hand on my arm, and asked how my lessons had been that week.  The teasing and name calling had only grown worse at the table, and I had to force myself to grind my teeth in silence and not retaliate. There was no use flinging insults back at them. They were behaving like children, so I’d give them just as much notice as I would a child who pitched a fit.

                Lief’s insults were a different matter. They were harder to ignore, especially when they were whispered in my ear as he was teaching me the proper grip on my sword, or grunted at me while we were sparring. He couldn’t seem to get enough of the hand to hand combat, which is why I felt like I’d been run over by a dump truck.

                In the shower I tried to scrub shampoo into my hair, grunting at the strain it put on my already over-taxed arm muscles. Every part of me was dreading going to training. I was at a point where I felt ready to snap and drive my katana right through him if he made one more biting remark at my expense. One thing was true though, after seven days of lessons I was much better at blocking punches. All it took was a bloody lip or two to really drill the technique into your head.

                I climbed out of the shower and made my slow and painful way into the bedroom, where Charlotte was still sleeping, one arm flung out onto my pillow. I snorted, it’s a good thing I wasn’t sleeping there still. Geeze.

                A plain white t-shirt and a pair of cotton stretchy pants and I was ready to go. I didn’t care about makeup, since there was no way in hell I was trying to impress Lief. I shut the door quietly on my way out, shooting one last envious look at my slumbering friend.

                As usual the hallways were relatively empty. The only noise was the gentle patter of my feet echoing along the corridor. When I arrived at the big double doors I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. Just do it, I told myself, don’t give him the satisfaction of chickening out. I pushed the door open and walked in, the familiar sounds of practice hitting me like a wall.

                Lief was waiting for me in the corner, arms folded. His usual expression, smug disgust, was absent, instead he looked sullen. I figured it out fast when I turned and looked where he was staring and saw the Queen standing off to the side of the training room. She was looking around absently, fanning herself with a light blue jewel encrusted fan. Her hair was piled on top of her head in curls today, and she had a number of noble ladies with her, all dressed to the nines, all with similar hair styles. They talked behind their hands and made eyes at the practicing swords men, who seemed to be quite distracted from their training today. When the Queen saw me she gave me a small smile and nodded politely. Then she waved a hand at Lief.