The Blood Knight

Before II

"Run twenty laps around this arena," Sir Gerald said.

Cedric gulped. It was early in the morning and h could barely see anything. He just knew that he was in an arena as there were stone benches arranged like a staircase all around him. And the sandy floor was wide and it seemed quite round.

"Start!"

The boy ran. When Cedric started, he thought that running twenty laps might be quite simple. It was just running, right?

By the end of his first lap, he realized he was wrong. Very wrong.

At the end of his second lap, there are eighteen more to go and he was wheezing. His limbs felt as if they were screaming and squeezing themselves while his chest was simply refusing to expand to draw in some breath. Cedric had to stop, panting.

"Keep running!"

Cedric just couldn't. At that moment, Mr. Kellen came with a hunting hound and a shirt? Wasn't that the shirt he wore yesterday? Cedric wondered, staring at the smiling butler. The shirt was lowered down so that the hound could sniff it. It was a jet black lean dog, with a long snout and tail and springly long legs made entirely of muscle and senew.

The moment the hound sniffed the shirt, the dog bolted straight at Cedric, yelping.

Cedric screamed and dashed away. He didn't know where he got the strength to run, but he ran. Dogs were usually friendly with him, but the way the hound was sprinting after him was enough motivation to run. Dog bites were dangerous and carried incurable diseases, especially hunting dogs who hunted who knows what. The boy completed twenty laps just like that. When twenty laps were done, the dog was called back with a whistle.

After breakfast, Cedric had to sit on the dinning table with piles of books while Mr. Kellen explained him the history of Shokra along with the basic etiquette a knight should know. In the evening, Cedric was beaten to a pulp with a wooden sword by Sir Gerald.

The next day, Cedric couldn't get up. All of his limbs and muscles complained against moving. They hurt so much that Cedric felt as if he was going to die. But he had to get up and run twenty laps around the arena. Home felt like a luxury at moments such as these and he felt a boiling anger at the trainee soldiers who ambushed him that day.

The days went on accordingly. Everyday, a different hound was brought for encouragement so as to prevent Cedric from befriending the dogs. By the time he was able to actually run twenty rounds without the aid of a chasing dog, he had befriended all the hunting hounds in the palace. Mr. Kellen, to his delight, discovered that Cedric had an impacably good memory and abused the boy more with extra information.

Swordmanship was a totally different matter, as Cedric's grace and balance was non existent. Sir Gerald had to beat and pound the boy with repeated exercises before he got a movement right. Mr. Kellen always had to come to the rescue when Cedric felt as if he was going to drop down dead. The knight would eventually concede, muttering that the butler was spoiling the child too much. Cedric wanted to retort that the butler was as much of a tyrant as the knight was, but the butler saves him from the knight. So he simply bowed down, headed back to his room and fell asleep on his bed.

So forth, as time went on, Cedric found that his body and mind grew resilient to the constant torture that he felt quite odd when holidays arrived. He was allowed to do whatever he wanted on those days. So he spent his time reading.

Mr. Kellen, much like Cedric's mother, found his bibliomania to be quite a problem. He resolved the problem by throwing the boy out of the quarters for a bell everyday during lunch.

And thus Cedric thought that the free time would be the perfect opportunity to seek out the library. It was well know that it was built alongside the Wisdom tower and Cedric had been to the wisdom tower. But he was quite sure the guards wouldn't allow a boy to simply waltz into the capital library. Yet for the first time in Cedric's life, he found a major fault with himself.