The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Forty-One - Testing Your Limits

Sarge had asked George and Rambo to take over the training duties for our new auxiliary recruits. I could sort of understand him asking George - although he'd always looked solid and muscly when he was back in London, now I could compare him with the proper, active Marines, I could see he was a tiny bit out of shape...

And, of course, they all teased him mercilessly about it non-stop.

But, then again, the guys teased each other all the time about basically everything. It took some getting used to but none of them seem to get upset about it. I guess it was just a Royal Marine thing.

I was much more surprised by the fact that he had chosen Rambo but the guys seemed to think it was the most normal thing in the world.

There were three new recruits, Nathan, Alan and an Asian guy who asked us to call him Fred. Apparently he didn't much like it when people mangled his proper name. And the poor lads seemed to spend all their lives running. They started the day with a 'four miler' round our little island, accompanied by a couple of the proper Marines to encourage them and to show them how it was done, I suppose. And on the way back, they were all loaded down with logs - it was one way of collecting firewood, I suppose.

After breakfast... those guys were quickly learning to eat like Marines too... they had to run back up to the north of the island where they were building an assault course for themselves with all sorts of climbing and crawling and scrambling and dangling from your arms type stuff.

They seemed to spend most of the afternoon crawling through mud and then, to clean off, they had a swim in the sea - out to a buoy and back - fully clothed. And then they got to run back to the lighthouse for a cold water, open-air shower.

And, even after dinner, they didn't get to rest - either they had classroom type learning or they had the fun of night patrol.

"Isn't it all a bit... excessive..." I asked Sarge after one of the guys had to be pretty much carried off to his bed by his fellow recruits one evening.

"No, Ma'am," he replied. "It's absolutely and fundamentally necessary. Until you've tested your limits, you're never going to know what you're capable of... and sometime, in combat, you might have to take it right up to those limits if you... and your comrades... are going to survive..."

I thought about that then nodded.

"And, just so you know, all the lads have been there. Anyone who wears the green beret has been through it - I'll tell you about the thirty miler some time."

And, that night, in bed, I found myself wondering about how that fitted in with all my Toymaster's crazy 'assume your position' stuff - maybe that was the whole point - taking me to my limit so I could find out what those limits really were!

Or, maybe, like he said, he just enjoyed playing with my body... and with my mind.

On the Sunday evening, Sarge had some news when he returned from dinner with Megan's family. "It looks like there've been a couple of more serious raids," he reported. "Loads of people dead and large amounts of stuff stolen... mostly food, of course. So far, they've all been well to the East but they're coming this way."

"Not a great surprise," Daniel commented. "We always knew it was going to get much worse before it got better. Any clues as to who it might be?"

"Not so far. They are doing a thorough job of not leaving any witnesses behind."

"And where do we fit in?"

"There's a group of worried farmers who want to meet you."

"Where and when?"