When their day of training ended, they were escorted away under guard, stinking and sore and tired. They were tied to posts in separate tents, where meals were brought to them by people who wouldn’t make eye contact. Brysen wanted to lie awake and plot his next move but must have fallen asleep instantly, because the next thing he knew, daylight glowed against the tent flaps and Visek was nudging him awake with the tip of his boot.
He was sore when he opened his eyes and sorer still when Visek untied his ropes and shoved him outside.
“We run,” he said, and Brysen found himself jogging the perimeter of the entire Kartami camp. Visek passed him a skin of water but never let him stop moving. Even when he doubled over to vomit, Visek pushed him. The sun had peaked when he was finally allowed to rest. After Brysen shoveled a few handfuls of mashed beans into his mouth, Visek made him run to an open clearing, shoved a spear in his hand, and ordered him to throw it at a grass-stuffed pelt target.
“First on the ground, then in the air,” Visek said.
He lifted the heavy shaft, cranked his arm back, and let it fly.
He missed.
He had to chase after the spear, bring it back, and try again.
He missed again and had to run after it again.
“From now until you are allowed to join us, when you go anywhere,” Visek snapped at him, “you go running.”
It was sundown when he was finally allowed to stop the target practice, and he hadn’t gotten much better at it. He hadn’t seen Jowyn all day, and he hadn’t seen Anon, either. His legs and back and shoulders felt like the charred embers of a plague pyre, but this time, after Visek left and the Uztari girl who’d first captured him went to tie him up for the night, he found the strength to resist slightly. He caught her by the wrist.
“Is he okay?” he asked. “Jowyn?”
She looked away, but he squeezed her tighter. “Please, tell me.”
“He’s fine,” she whispered. “You’ll train together again tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” he said, slumping back against the post. He noticed her smile slightly before she left him. “By the way, my name is Brysen,” he added.
She shook her head slightly. She was a cold-blooded fanatical killer with the Kartami horde, but Brysen swore he saw her mouth Duh.
“And you are?” He smiled.
“Morgyn,” she whispered as she was leaving.
“Morgyn,” he repeated after the flaps closed behind her. Good, he thought. An ally.
The next day, he was woken by the same rough boot and dragged outside again to run, but Jowyn was there waiting.
“You’ll run three laps of the camp,” Launa told them, “and then, to the barrows.”
Brysen was excited to be near Jowyn, dirty and stinking as they both were. He hoped to tell him about his plans, but they had no chance to talk. Visek ran right behind them and could hear anything they said. Brysen couldn’t explain how he hoped to identify Anon’s tent from the air so he could target it later, that he was working on Morgyn to get her to help them escape when the deed was done, or that, in spite of it all, he was actually enjoying his time in the Kartami camp. He loved flying. He felt like it was what he was meant to do. He wanted to see if Jowyn felt the same way about driving the barrow, that if it weren’t for the brutality of this army, maybe this actually was where they were both meant to be.
And with Visek there, Jowyn couldn’t tell him he was being foolish. No Kartami guard was his ally just because she’d told him her name, and so far, all Brysen had done was train, and not all that well. He was a middling warrior at best, and he was no closer to killing Anon than he’d been when they’d arrived, even if he managed to spot the leader’s private tent. They still hadn’t even given him his knife back.
Brysen had the whole conversation in his head. By the time the sun had reached its peak and their run was finished, he wasn’t sure who had won the argument.
They spent the rest of the day training on the war barrow.
By sunset, Brysen could mount the kite in ten breaths, grab a spear without falling, and throw it absolutely nowhere near a target. But he didn’t crash. Not even once. And as he soared above the camp he saw Anon, walking with two warriors. The man gave some sort of instructions and then looked up in his direction to watch Brysen train.
Brysen turned the kite against the wind and dove, showing off. When he pulled out of the dive and steadied himself again, Anon had gone.
They only stopped training because evening storm clouds boiled on the horizon, rolling their way. The moment their practice ended, every muscle in Brysen’s body burned or ached or both. He was covered in dirt and blood and sweat, but he happily could have kept going right through the storm. He wondered what it would be like to fly through lightning. Not even hawks liked to the fly in the rain, though.
Once he’d come down for a final on-purpose landing, Visek supervised them as Jowyn inspected the kite for tears in the fabric and then folded and stowed it for an easy launch the next day. Visek watched Brysen oil the lines and sharpen the spears, then cover the barrow against the oncoming rain.
“So … how am I doing?” Brysen asked Visek when their work was done. He tried out an insouciant grin. “Like what you see?”
Visek was immune to his charms.
“Tomorrow you learn to strike where you aim, or else you’re not worth wasting another day on,” he said.
“I suppose I could use some more target practice.”
“You will have it,” Launa interjected. “When you were above, did you see the dust cloud on the horizon?”
Brysen told her that he had.
“That is the army of Uztar approaching. They will be here by sunup,” she said. “When they are in eyesight tomorrow, Anon wants you leading an assault on the barricades. We’ll let your friends see whose side you’re on. Kill one of them—and be seen doing it—and then we can decide how it is we think you are progressing.”
Brysen blanched. Even Visek looked doubtful at his mother’s orders. “Isn’t it … too soon to fight? I’m not ready.”
“This is a war, boy!” Launa slapped him so hard across the face, his head turned. Jowyn’s fists clenched. “You are ready when you are needed or you are a deadweight. Deadweights get carried in the guts of a vulture. Your sister will see you fight, or she will see you bleed out on my spear. Either way, tomorrow is the day one or the other will occur. Understood?”
He looked at the ground as he nodded, cheek stinging, but the woman’s voice suddenly softened. “But you’ve done better than either of us expected you to,” she said. “And I believe you will like tonight’s training regimen, although some your age find it the most terrifying part of all.”
“What is it?” he asked, still not looking at her.
“Sealing the warrior’s bonds to each other,” she answered him. “Or breaking them for good.”
This time, Visek and Launa led Brysen and Jowyn away together.