“Exactly. Not trying to bore you here, but do pay attention. I don't want to have to repeat myself later. Fail in this lesson and you'll probably die later. Now look here…”
The sword was put on a low table and a piece of metal no longer than a regular fighting knife, but flat and not sharp at all, was held in the large hand instead. The big thumb was placed over a triggering sigil and held. Looking at Tor with a soft smile, the giant man casually, without perceptible effort, swung the metal at the pell, making an angled sweep that, if it had been a human would have bisected the neck and shoulder.
For a second nothing happened at all.
Then with a crash nearly a hundred, maybe two hundred, pounds of wood slid off the pell and hit the ground, making Tor jump back out of the way. The wood was smooth, shiny even, on the top of the log, now nearly three foot shorter and angled at the top.
“A simple cutter, about a four foot sweep on it. You've made cutters before, right? Same basic idea here, only bigger than generally needed for a tool, except in stone working or cutting logs for timber. Now here's the task I have for you. On top of your regular studies and practice, you have two weeks to make a shield that will protect you from both of these weapons. It must be able to withstand twenty minutes of sword, and the same amount of time from this cutter. Failure means death, most likely at least, so I suggest you take the project seriously.”
A large hand was held out as if to forestall speech.
“Yes, we already have shields, so you know that the basic idea can work. But, you aren't allowed to just make a copy of one. I expect novel work, since you've shown yourself capable of that now… Understood?”
Tor did.
The man really did mean to kill him. He'd never even set eyes on a working shield before, and now he had to make one, from scratch, inside two weeks? That kind of work could take years to get right. He was so dead. He may as well run off, or at least send a letter to his parents explaining why he died.
Kolb just laughed as he stood shaking.
“You look cold. Go ahead and run to Lenders and back to warm up, then we'll work stones and unarmed for a while. Don't worry, you have some time to work on your new shield.” The voice held a warm and jovial quality that Tor didn't really associate with the man at all. It wasn't something he could trust then. New things generally weren't, as had been recently pointed out, they needed to be tested first.
Tor ran, and for the second time since he'd come to the school, really considered the idea of just going down the dirt road to the nearest town. It took about an hour to run the distance and back and no one would be following him. After all, this was just part of his daily routine.
The first time he'd considered it had been after he'd foolishly asked a girl if she'd like to attend one of the student parties with him. Everyone else was getting dates, but the girl, one that he hadn't thought totally outside of his social standing and class, had shut him down cold. And loudly. In front of everyone in the dining hall. That had been during the spring of his first year.
The only reason that he hadn't run off then and just gone back home was because of Rolph, who'd told him that things like that happened sometimes. Some girls couldn't see a good thing when it was presented to them. Their loss. That was easy for Rolph to say, rich, good looking and gregarious to boot. Tor hadn't done anything for weeks after that, even avoiding meals so that he wouldn't have to see the girl again. Two weeks later the girl disappeared, pulled back home by her parents for some reason. At least then he'd been able to go to meals in peace. Except for the people talking about him, pointing and staring when he came in the first few times.
After that he'd kind of withdrawn from everyone except his roommate and the instructors. He was there to work and learn. No matter how pretty a girl was, being humiliated like that was too much for him to handle, so he didn't give them a chance to make fun of him like that anymore.
Now this…
Well, he considered, as his feet tapped the ground lightly, a steady jog being good enough for the first half of the trip he felt, could he make a shield like that? What kind of magic would it take? Did he know how to make anything that would help?
His mind turned in on itself as he moved, his focus increasing until he didn't notice the strain of running or that he'd sped up a little. What, he asked himself, was the real problem to be addressed?
A cutter was, he knew from experience, a powerful tool. Just look what it had done to that log. But the basic idea was simple enough. The field just organized a region of space on the tiniest level of being. It told all the energy on each side of a sliver thin line to move in opposite directions. If the gap became large enough, meaning a strong field, it separated matter into two pieces. It didn't cut so much as get the object to pull itself apart, name aside. It was simple and elegant, as well as powerful. Not even requiring outside energy to be made to work.
If he could disrupt that field, scramble it or put in conflicting instructions, that should stop any kind of cutter or even explosive magic from working on him directly. Explosives were similar, he thought. He didn't know it for a fact, but it made some sense that if everything tried to move away from a central point it would blow up. As long as the field had enough force behind it.
That left physical blocking, which baffled the hell out of him for a minute. Luckily for him it did, since he found himself halfway into Lenders and still going, have missed his turn around about half a mile back. Oops. He turned and started going the other direction, making a point to take it a little faster, since Kolb would think he just slacked off if he didn't get back at the expected time.
So, physical blocking…
Nothing came to him, so he set the idea on the back burner of his mind and started working on the food dryer again. It would come to him or it wouldn't, and worrying over something that didn't want to come wouldn't help at all. It would just waste time he could be using for something else.
When he got back a few other trainees, most in brown like him, but two in black, meaning special school kids or senior students that could afford specialty exercise clothes, were going through their paces in the yard. This included, to his surprise, the near black haired girl he'd met the day before. At least it looked that way now, slightly damp with sweat. Trice? That was a funny name, but no weirder than what some of his sisters had. Even Torrence wasn't exactly a winner as far as names went. Easy to remember at least. Trice. Treez. It made him smile to think about. Who didn't like trees?
The girl didn't wait for him to get all the way in the gate before pouncing on him, figuratively at least. She jogged over, followed by the lighter colored girl, Sara.
Trice spoke first.
“I heard that the testing is going well on your new dryer! When can we start getting them? Sara already lined up sales for twenty of them on metal at eleven gold apiece. Of course she'll want a percentage since she did the work getting the sales. Ten percent is standard, don't let her tell you otherwise.” This came out in an excited rush, the other girl blushing when she heard what her friend told him.
“Um, I know that we didn't have a deal in place, but I thought that if I could show how useful I could be… If you know, you can make them?” The blond spoke softly, without making direct eye contact for some reason. They both had black on again, which confirmed that they weren't regular students here at least. If they'd been around Tor hadn't noticed them, but then they were girls. He tried to ignore those kinds of people, so that he wouldn't be tempted into embarrassment and humiliation.
Kolb looked over and saw who Tor was talking to, a smile coming over his face. He waved them all over. “Great! I knew you'd come around eventually to work with Tor here, too tempting a target to ignore. Today I'm planning on unarmed for him. Tor… Normally you'd know what to do if either of these young ladies attacked you right?” His smile went mischievous, a look that Tor hadn't seen on his face before.