future assured. On my eighteenth birthday, I had thought I grasped it in my hands. Now, I perceived that golden future could be lost, and not even through my fault, but purely by the politics of the day. Prior to the Academy, I had given little thought to the prejudice I might encounter as the second son of a New Noble. During my training with Sergeant Duril it had seemed a thing I could easily overcome by dint of solid effort and good intentions.
I hovered at the edge of sleep. I think I dozed. Then I felt a sudden sting of outrage. I sat up in the dark. As if from a distance, I heard myself speak. ‘A true warrior would not put up with continued humiliations. A true warrior would find a way to strike back.’
Spink shifted in his bed. ‘Nevare’s talking in his sleep again,’ he complained to the quiet room.
‘Shut up, Nevare,’ Kort and Natred said in weary chorus. I lay back in my bunk and let sleep take me.
The few weeks of initiation that remained seemed an eternity to me. The pranks grew rougher. One night, we were all rousted out of bed in our nightshirts and forced outside in a cold, driving rain and told to stand at attention. Sergeant Rufet had been lured from his desk for that one; he found us when he was doing one of his regular rounds of the building, and angrily ordered us back to bed. I could no longer, as Rory did, shake such humiliations off as a challenge to toughen me. I now saw them as a small place where the Old Nobles’ sons could unveil how they truly felt about us. When they taunted me or forced me to behave foolishly or wasted my time with unnecessary tasks, it now burned in my soul. It created a little well of anger in me, one that they fed, drop by drop. I had always been a good-natured fellow, able to take a joke, able to forgive even the roughest of practical jokes. Those six weeks taught me why some men carry grudges.
I began, foolishly perhaps, to take small vengeances. When I blacked the second-years’ boots, I took care to get blacking on the laces so they’d dirty their hands. They caught me at that, of course, and angrily warned me to be more careful the next time. I blacked the boots meticulously, but pushed a thumbful of pine-tar up into the treads of several random boots. They tracked the sticky mess all over their floors the next morning as they left their dormitory, and reaped the punishment for a sticky floor at the noon inspection. That, they blamed on each other, and had demerits of their own to march off. That pleased me. Far better to make their misfortunes seem accidental.
A few nights later, I rose from my bed after I judged the others were asleep. I walked silently through the study room, but just as I reached the door, Rory spoke.
‘Where you going, Nevare?’
He and Nate had been sitting in the dark, talking quietly. I hadn’t noticed them.
‘Out. Just for a minute.’
‘What you got there? More tree gum?’
When I made no reply, Rory gave a snort of laughter. ‘I saw you gatherin’ it the other day. Pretty smooth, Nevare. Actually, pretty sticky. And I wouldn’t a thought it of you. What are ya doing now?’
I was torn between reluctance and a certain amount of pride in my cleverness. I came back to the hearth, blew briefly on the coals to wake a feeble flame, and then showed them what I held in my hand.
‘Wood chips? What are you going to do with wood chips?’
‘Wedge them into a door frame.’
Nate was shocked. ‘Nevare! That’s not like you. Or is it?’
I shook my head, a bit surprised at his question, and taken aback for a moment. It wasn’t like me to play such tricks. More like Dewara, I thought to myself. It was a plainsman tactic, this subtle revenge, and probably unworthy of a gentleman. I tried to care about that, and could not. It was almost as if I had discovered a second me inside myself, capable of such things.
Rory leaned closer to my hand to peer at the chips, and then shook his head. ‘They’re too little to make any difference. They won’t hold.’
‘Want to bet?’ I asked him.
‘I’m coming with you. I got to see this.’
Rory and Nate followed me as I crept down the stairwell to the next floor. The second-years had a door that opened out from their study room onto the stairwell. They closed it at night to hold the heat in their rooms. I crouched down. The dim lantern in the stairwell barely illuminated my work as I carefully stacked the wood chips into a series of wedges under their door. ‘Do some in the sides, too,’ Rory suggested in a whisper.
I nodded, grinning, and worked them in just above the hinges, pressing them firmly into the crack and pushing them flush to the frame.
The next morning we hastened our fellows out of the room and down to the parade ground, ignoring the pounding and shouting from the second-years’ door as we passed it. There, we assembled without Corporal Dent, and were innocently awaiting our corporal when the third-years and the cadet officers arrived. All the second-years were late to the parade ground and awarded demerits as a result. It was easy for most of us to look innocent, for Nate, Rory and I had kept our secret to ourselves. I don’t know if Nate or Rory whispered, but by noon, all my fellows had, in one way or another, conveyed subtle congratulations to me. Our corporal suspected us and did his best to make us miserable that day. Yet his best efforts did little to dampen our spirits, and that, I think, infuriated him all the more.
I should not have been the instigator of such a trick, for I should have known that Rory would only escalate the war of mischief. I think it was he who pissed in their water ewer and left it by their washbasin, but I have no way to be certain. Day after day, the second-years bullied us, and every day, we found some small way to strike back. We were far more adept than they were at subterfuge, and more creative. Flour and sugar rubbed into their bed sheets meant they awoke as sticky as dumplings. A hollowed stick of firewood, packed with horsehair from the stables, drove them out of their study room one night. They cursed at us and accused us, but could prove nothing. We marched off the demerits, kept our eyes down and seemed to submit to them, but at night, after lights-out, we often gathered to whisper and rejoice in our defiance. All good-natured tolerance for our ‘initiation’ was gone. We waged a war of endurance, now, to prove we would not be run off.
The six-week initiation culminated in a grand mêlée on the parade ground. Traditionally, it was some sort of mock battle, a wrestling competition or a tug-of-war or footraces or other sport challenge between the houses that theoretically dispersed any ill-feeling that had built up during the initiation. All were to emerge from it peers and equals, Academy cadets one and all. But in my first-year, it all went wrong, and to this day, I do not think what happened was entirely an accident. How naive we all were! We had been brought to the edge of a boil and held there by bullying and pressure. We should have known better to put any trust in anything a second-year from our house told us. Yet when Corporal Dent came pounding up the stairs, shouting at us to rally, for Bringham House had stolen the flag of Carneston House and was defying us to take it back, we all slammed our books shut and left our Sevday afternoon study to pelt down the staircase out onto the parade ground.
Across the parade ground, to our fury, we beheld our cherished brown horse flying upside-down from Bringham House’s flagpole, below their own flag by a substantial margin. The base of their flagpole was guarded by their first-years. On seeing us emerge like bees from a kicked hive, they roared at us their challenge to come and prove who was the better house. The Bringham House second-years stood on the steps, cheering them on.
I think the upper classmen had misjudged the temperament of the Carneston House first-years. Or perhaps they had not. We charged into the fray, Rory in the forefront, bellowing like a bull.
