Outcasts of Aquila (Aquila's Originals 2)

Chapter 2: Miryhls, Part 2

THE MIRYHLS STAYED until dusk, at which point the lieutenants sent the eagles back to their eyries, much to everyone's disappointment.

"Can't they stay until morning?" Tenzi asked, a fellow student and occasional friend to Orla's group. "We'll all be good."

Her plea was echoed by many others, along with even rasher promises, but the lieutenants were unmoved. "You still have lessons tonight," Dhori reminded them all. "The miryhls have distracted you enough for one day."

Everyone groaned. While most of the daily lessons were fun in some way – tracking and hunting, building fires, preparing food, even identifying the safely edible plants and fungi amongst the vegetation – the evening ones were always dull.

"Can't we have a night off, for Maegla's sake?" someone was unwise enough to whine, unfortunately not just within Orla's hearing, but in Lieutenant Cayn's as well.

"Wanting a night off are you, Givellen?" the lieutenant asked with the kind of sympathy that made wise students wary. "Tired of learning your history?"

Alas for the rest of them, Givellen seemed oblivious to the lieutenant's tone or the way his friends had shuffled away from him. "Honestly, sir? Yes. Why are we still learning about kaz-naghkt? No one's seen one for five years. They're dead and gone. We've nothing to fear from them anymore."

"Have we not?" Cayn asked, his voice deceptively soft. He smiled at his fellow lieutenants. "D'you hear that? Seems we can rest easy now, everyone, safe in the knowledge that Givellen here's been all over the World's End mountains, removing any trace of our old enemy. I daresay he routed out every last nest and roost, making sure they were all dead and gone. How lucky we are!"

No one laughed. Least of all Givellen, whose mouth gaped like a fish. "But that's not what I – I didn't say – I didn't mean – Sir!"

Cayn narrowed his eyes. "Sounds like you don't know what you're talking about, am I right?"

Givellen shook his head numbly, shrugged and finally hung his head. "You're always right, sir," he mumbled the lieutenant's favourite response.

"I am," Cayn agreed cheerfully. "And until the day you've explored every last inch of the Overworld, crawled through the deepest caves and climbed the highest peaks, neither you nor anyone else can definitively say that the kaz-naghkt are gone for good, can they?" He looked at the students, eyebrows raised expectantly.

"No, sir," they answered.

"We've thought them defeated before, but they always came back, didn't they?"

"Yes, sir."

"So it's not impossible that they might turn up again, is it?"

"No, sir."

"Then I guess we'll be sitting down tonight and every other night the rest of the lieutenants and I choose to learn about the old enemy, won't we?"

"Yes, sir."

"Anything else to add, Givellen?" Cayn leant forward, smiling at the lad.

While Givellen might have been a little slow on the uptake earlier, he and the rest of the students had spent enough time with Cayn to know there was only one answer to that question.

The lad licked his lips and kept his head down. "No, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Thank you, sir," the subdued students chorused.

Cayn smiled and spread his arms as if to hug them all. "Then settle down, my lambs. It's time to begin at the beginning once again."

Orla joined her friends in a huddle towards the back of the group. Other students might vie for positions close to the fire – or as far away from Cayn as possible – but it wasn't so very cold. Nor could Cayn be trusted to remain in one spot. The man positively revelled in tormenting the students whenever he could, and was often known for standing behind any who were foolish enough to show they were trying to avoid him. Taking the space between Taryn and Zett, Orla rested her back against a sturdy tree and stifled a yawn as Cayn stalked around the students while the other lieutenants set up an easel with a familiar set of boards.