Litany of Winter

Hans took him back to the training hall after breakfast.

The doors were already open. From the corridor Severin could hear boots striking boards in a steady rhythm while somebody called out numbers. Hans stepped inside, then pointed toward the benches along the wall.

”Sit there.”

Severin nodded and sat.

The hall was larger than it had looked from the landing two days earlier. Thick wooden beams crossed the ceiling between older stone arches, and iron pipes ran along one wall. Numbers were painted above the weapon racks. Opposite the doors, a clock hung high enough to be seen from anywhere in the room.

About twenty people in gray were moving in two lines across the floor. None looked much like Hans. Ages and builds varied enough that Severin could see no obvious type among them. One woman was heavy through the hips, while a narrow man near the back had already gone red in the face.

At the front, an instructor in a dark shirt watched them carry canvas sacks from one chalk line to another. He did not shout encouragement. When someone dragged a sack instead of lifting it properly, the instructor stopped them, demonstrated the movement once and made them repeat it.

”It’s the third day,” Hans said. ”Thought you should see this.”

”The interesting part?”

”No. This is the part that gives you a better chance of coming back alive.”

A bell rang from somewhere outside the hall. The Initiates finished the run they were on and returned the sacks to their marked place beside the wall before moving to the weapon racks.

Severin recognized Erich before Erich noticed him.

The machine fitter had changed into a lighter gray training coat and looked as if somebody had poured water over his head. His hair was plastered to his forehead. He took a wooden practice sword from a rack and checked the number above it before joining a line facing the instructor.

”That’s the bloke I played cards with,” Severin said.

”Bauer?”

”Yeah. You know him?”

Hans leaned back against the wall. ”He’s hard not to notice.”

The instructor demonstrated a simple cut and had the line repeat it.

Severin had seen better sword work in cheap stage shows. Several of the Initiates moved like they were afraid the wooden blades might break. Erich gripped his weapon hard enough to make the difference obvious, as if he meant to keep it from escaping.

The instructor walked past him, tapped the back of Erich’s hand and said something short.

Erich loosened his grip, but three cuts later it had tightened again. The instructor came back, and Severin smiled.

Erich saw him this time and stared at him for a second before turning back to the drill.

The drills continued. The instructor moved along the line correcting stance and arm position. Nobody was allowed to hide a bad movement by doing it faster. If they got it wrong, they reset and tried again until the movement held.

Severin flexed his right hand against his knee. The little finger still lagged behind the others, though not as badly as it had in Blackhaven.

He watched Erich fail the same cut six times before the wooden sword finally stopped wobbling on the seventh. Severin kept watching.

Back home, most lessons came after the mistake. Put your hand somewhere stupid and somebody broke one of your fingers. Stand square in front of a man who knew how to punch and spend the next day eating on one side of your mouth.

Nobody stopped the fight and told you where your foot should have been. You learned after somebody put you on the ground.

The swords went back onto their numbered racks. The Initiates paired off for unarmed work.

This part Severin understood better. At least he thought he did.

The first pair began, and within seconds the instructor stopped them. He shifted one man’s footing and corrected his arm before having them try again. The same shove that had sent him stumbling now barely moved him.

Severin leaned forward.

”See something?” Hans asked.

”Yeah.”

”What?”

”There’s more to this than I thought.”

Hans laughed. ”Maybe now you understand why you stood no chance in that warehouse.”

Severin looked at him. ”Fuck off.”

The unarmed drills were cleaner than street fights and much less entertaining. Nobody grabbed a bottle or kicked a chair into somebody’s knee. Severin could still see what mattered: keeping balance, judging distance, getting your wrist free before somebody stopped you drawing a knife, and learning how to hit the floor without cracking the back of your head against it.

He had learned some of it by accident. Here, an instructor stopped people before the mistake became an injury.

After another bell, half the group left through a side door. The rest moved benches and tables into the middle of the hall. The instructor spoke with Hans briefly, then looked toward Severin.

Hans said, ”Observation drill. You can stay and learn.”

When the instructor came over, he introduced himself as Otto Neumann.

”So you’re the one Schultz thinks might be worth training?”

”I guess so.”

Neumann glanced at Hans. ”Hope this one’s in the next intake.”

Two assistants arranged a small table near the far wall. One set down a satchel, a cup, a newspaper and a pair of gloves. The other shifted a chair and opened a cabinet, leaving one door partly closed.

Three people entered from the side passage and took places around the table as if they were waiting in a tavern.

Neumann gave the Initiates a few seconds to look, then made them turn around and began asking questions.

One remembered the satchel, while another knew which cabinet door had been open. Erich noticed a dark stain on the cuff of the man nearest the table, and a woman remembered that one of the three had changed chairs after they entered.

Severin had missed that. Neumann asked about the newspaper and got three different answers, then asked which person had looked toward the main door most often. Nobody agreed.

Then Neumann looked at Severin. ”Anything they haven’t said?”

Severin looked back at the three by the table.

”The one by the cabinet.”

”What about him?”

”Never saw his right hand.”

The man smiled. Neumann kept watching Severin. ”Why were you watching his hands?”

Severin shrugged. ”I like knowing where a man’s hands are.”

A few of the Initiates looked over as Neumann said something to the man.

He brought his right hand out from behind his thigh. A short wooden practice knife rested against his palm.

Neumann turned back to the group and continued the exercise.

When the drill ended, he watched the assistants reset the room for the next group. They shifted the chair and removed the gloves, already changing what the next group would see. Severin tried to hold the whole arrangement in his head and realized how much of it he had not noticed the first time.

Erich passed on his way out. ”You smug bastard.”

Severin grinned. ”How’s the sword?”

”Apparently I’m trying to strangle it.”

”Good lesson?”

Erich wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ”Yesterday I had to memorize warning marks for two hours. I’d rather get hit.”

Before Severin could ask more, Neumann called Erich back.

Erich sighed. ”See? Work is work.”

He went, and the next part took place in a smaller room beside the hall.

Severin sat at the back while the Initiates filled two rows of benches. A blackboard covered most of one wall. Neumann drew a rough room plan in chalk, then wrote several lines beneath it. The writing meant nothing to Severin, but he understood the shape of the lesson well enough.

People answered while Neumann corrected them, and the Initiates wrote down what they had missed.

A dented metal box sat on the front table beside a folded cloth. Neumann turned it once and asked what they could say about it without guessing. One Initiate called a dark patch rust. Neumann made him look again and correct himself.

The Initiate gave a different answer the second time. Severin looked around at the notebooks.

Pages of diagrams and lists, with mistakes crossed out and notes crammed into margins.

At the freight yard, the marks on the crates had meant nothing to him, and neither had Hans’s hand. The bastard with bones pushing through his skin had made even less sense. Yesterday a fly had dropped dead beside an empty shelf and sent Hans backing out of the room.

Severin still did not know what any of it was, but for the first time he could see a place where people might actually teach him.

The lesson ended with another bell.

Benches scraped back. The Initiates carried their books with them and returned the room to order before leaving. Erich stayed behind long enough to put a stack of slates back into a cabinet, then caught up with Severin and Hans in the corridor.

”You joining us tomorrow?” he asked.

Severin looked at Hans.

Hans said nothing and shrugged.

”Maybe,” Severin answered.

Erich nodded as if that were enough. ”If you do, don’t stand behind me with a sword.”

Severin smiled. ”I wasn’t planning to.”

”Good. I don’t trust my grip.”

He headed back toward the training hall with the others.

Hans waited until Erich was gone. ”That was your third day.”

”Unfortunately.”

”Tomorrow I’ll need you to tell me whether you’re in or out.”

Severin looked through the open doors. The wooden-sword drill had started again, and Erich was back in line with his practice blade raised in front of him.

Neumann stopped beside him and tapped the back of his hand. Erich loosened his grip and tried again.