Tavi looked down for a moment, then said, “I didn’t understand.”
“You were at a disadvantage. You’re already a fair hand with a blade.” Max grinned suddenly. “If it makes you feel any better, I was the same way. Only my first centurion broke my wrist six times and my kneecap twice before I worked it out.”
Tavi winced at his own wrist, now swelling up into a large, plump sausage of throbbing torment. “Naturally, it only stands to reason that I would learn more quickly than you, Max.”
“Hah. Keep that talk up, and I’ll let you fix that wrist on your own.” Despite his words, though, Max looked concerned about him. “You going to be all right?”
Tavi nodded. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Max. It’s just…” A little pang of loneliness hit Tavi. It had become a familiar sensation over the last six months. “I’m missing the reunion. I miss Kitai.”
“Can’t a day pass without you whining to me about her? She was your first girl, Calderon. You’ll get over it.”
The little lonely pang went though him again. “I don’t want to get over it.”
“Way of the world, Calderon.” Max reached down to slide Tavi’s good arm over one of his broad shoulders and lifted him from the ground. Max helped him over to their camp’s fire, where Magnus was pouring steaming water into a mostly full washbasin.
Twilight lingered for a long time in the Amaranth Vale, at least compared to Tavi’s mountainous home. Every night, the trio had stopped traveling an hour before sundown, in order to give Tavi lessons in the use of Legion battle tactics and techniques. The lessons had been arduous, mostly practice exercises with a weighted rudius, and they’d left Tavi’s arm too sore to move after the first couple of evenings. Max hadn’t judged Tavi’s arm ready to train until two weeks of exercises had hardened the muscles in it into sharp, heavy angles beneath the skin. Another week had served to frustrate Tavi thoroughly with the seemingly clumsy techniques he was being forced to learn-but he had to admit that he’d never been in better fighting condition.
Until Max had broken his wrist, at least.
Max eased Tavi down beside the basin, and Magnus guided the broken wrist down into the warm water. “You ever awake through a watercrafted healing, boy?”
“Lots of times,” Tavi said. “My aunt had to see to me more than once.”
“Good, good,” Magnus approved. He paused for a moment, then closed his eyes and rested the palm of his hand lightly on the surface of the water. Tavi felt the liquid stir in a swift ripple, as though an unseen eel had darted through the water around his hand, then the warm numbness of the healing enveloped his hand.
The pain faded, and Tavi let out a groan of relief. He sagged forward, trying not to move his arm. He wasn’t sure it was possible to fall asleep sitting up, and with both eyes slightly open, but he seemed to do so, because the next time he glanced up, night had fallen, and the aroma of stew filled the air.
“Right, then,” Magnus said wearily, and withdrew his hand from the washbasin. “Try that.”
Tavi drew his arm out of the tepid water of the washbasin and flexed his fingers. Soreness made the movement painful, but the swelling had all but vanished, and the throbbing pain had faded to a shadow of what it had been before.
“It’s good,” Tavi said quietly. “I didn’t know you were a healer.”
“Just an assistant healer during my stint in the Legions. But this kind of thing was fairly routine. It’ll be tender. Eat as much as you can at dinner and keep it elevated tonight if you want to keep it from aching.”
“I know,” Tavi assured him. He rose and offered the healer his restored hand. Magnus smiled a bit whimsically and took it. Tavi helped him up, and they both went to the stewpot over the fire. Tavi was ravenous, as always after a healing. He wolfed down the first two bowls of stew without pausing, then scraped a third from the bottom of the pot and slowed down, soaking tough trailbread in the stew to soften it into edibility.
“Can I ask you something?” he said to Max.
“Sure,” the big Antillan said.
“Why bother to teach me the technique?” Tavi asked. “I’ll be serving as an officer, not fighting in the ranks.”
“Never can tell,” Max drawled. “But even if you never fight there, you need to know what it’s about. How a legionare thinks, and why he acts as he does.”
Tavi grunted.
“Plus, to play your part, you’ve got to be able to see when some fish is screwing it up.”
“Fish?” Tavi asked.
“New recruit,” Max clarified. “First couple of weeks they’re always flailing around like landed fish instead of legionares. It’s customary for experienced men to point out every mistake a fish makes in as humiliating a fashion as possible. And in the loudest voice manageable.”
“That’s why you’ve been doing it to me?” Tavi asked.
Both Max and the old Maestro grinned. “The First Lord didn’t want you to miss out on too much of the experience,” Magnus said.
“Oh,” Tavi said. “I’ll be sure to thank him.”
“Right, then,” Magnus said. “Let’s see if you remember what I’ve been teaching you while we ride.”
Tavi grunted and finished off the last of his food. The practice, the pain, and the crafting had left him exhausted. If it had been up to him, he would have simply lain down right where he was and slept-which had doubtless been intentional on behalf of Max and Magnus. “I’m ready when you are.” He sighed.
“Very well,” Magnus said. “To begin, why don’t you tell me all the regulations regarding latrines and sanitation, and enumerate the discipline for failure to meet the regulations’ requirements.”
Tavi immediately started repeating the relevant regulations, though so many of them had been crowded into his brain over the past three weeks that it was a challenge to bring them up, tired as he was. From sanitation procedure, Magnus moved on to logistics, procedures for making and breaking camp, watch schedules, patrol patterns, and another hundred facets of Legion life Tavi had to remember.
He forced his brain to provide facts until weariness was interrupting every sentence with a yawn before Magnus finally said, “Enough, lad, enough. Get some sleep.”
Max had collapsed into lusty snoring an hour before. Tavi sought his bedroll and dropped onto it. He propped his arm up on the leather training helmet as an afterthought. “Think I’m ready?”
Magnus tilted his head thoughtfully and sipped at his cup of tea. “You’re a quick study. You’ve worked hard to learn the part. But that hardly matters, does it.” He glanced aside at Tavi. “Do you think you’re ready?”
Tavi closed his eyes. “I’ll manage. At least until something beyond my control goes horribly wrong and kills us all.”
“Good lad,” Magnus said, with a chuckle. “Spoken like a legionare. But bear something in mind, Tavi. “
“Hmmm?”
“Right now, you’re pretending to be a soldier,” the old man said. “But this assignment is going to last a while. By the time it’s over, it won’t be an act.”
Tavi blinked his eyes open to stare up at the sea of stars now emerging overhead. “Did you ever have a bad feeling about something? Like you knew something bad was about to happen?”
“Sometimes. Usually set off by a bad dream, or for no reason at all.”
Tavi shook his head. “No. This isn’t like those times.” He frowned up at the stars. “I know. I know it like I know that water’s wet. That two and two is four. There’s no malice or fear attached to it. It just is.” He squinted at the Maestro. “Did you ever feel like that?”
Magnus was silent for a long moment, regarding the fire with calculating eyes, his metal cup hiding most of his expression. “No,” he said finally. “But I know a man who has a time or two.”
When he said nothing more, Tavi asked, “What if there’s fighting, Maestro?”
“What if there is?” Magnus asked.
“I’m not sure I’m ready.”
“No one is,” the Maestro said. “Not really. Old salts strut and brag about being bored in most battles, but every time it’s just as frightening as your first. You’ll fit right in, lad.”
“That’s not something I’ve had much practice in,” Tavi said.