Tipping the Scale

A History of Lies (3/3)

They left the building behind and Crystal pointed her towards a bench that stood a bit further up the road, not far from where she had spotted the training field before. Sitting down, she could see that it was no longer empty, around a hundred men had gathered and were loudly laughing and talking while waiting for their training to start.

Almost immediately she saw herself step out of her family home and onto the exercise field where she had trained with her men for years. After her father's death and her betrayal, her mother and sister never returned home. Giving Lidea the advantage of having a fort to defend her position from. In those years, the king hadn't been too aggressive and more focused on convincing her to stop her rebellion. They were good years that were filled with learning and comradery. As young as she had been, the men had almost adopted her. Taking the place of the father and family she so dearly missed.

However, these were not her man.

To her keen eyes, they looked like amateurs. Almost all of them missing the muscled build that characterized most trained sword masters. Were these the men that Warchief wanted to fight with?

She got distracted by Crystal who started to apply the oil liberally to the ends of her hair. Lidea could only admire her as she patiently got to work, armed with only a comb.

A commotion pulled her attention back and she saw a figure running down from the main structure. The men started to collect themselves, yelling welcomes and small taunts about their commander's tardiness. Dressed haphazardly in loose leather pants and a jerkin, and with the laces of his boots not even tied, Warchief looked as if he had just rolled out of bed. Even from here, she could see that foolish grin of his again and Lidea couldn't help but judge the man in silence. No wonder his men were in such a state. Training was mostly driven by discipline, how could he install that in them without caring about it himself.

A tug on her scalp made her wince and she glared at the healer behind her. Crystal in turn just raised an eyebrow while continuing to work on the stubborn knot.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm doing this for your sake. Anyway, what is a pain like this to a warrior like you?"

Lidea wanted to argue that she had already said to cut it off, but thought better of it and focused back on the field below. She was taken by surprise as she saw Warchief looking at her. He nodded in greeting before turning back to his men. Lidea wondered if he had not said anything to avoid calling the attention of the others to her. She appreciated it if that had been the case.

"All right everyone, settle down. Welcome to morning practice, I thought to focus today on general stamina. In other words, we will be doing exercises until you drop."

A collective groan came from the group and Lidea couldn't suppress a smile. Nobody liked to do physical exercises. She herself would rather do three hours of sparring matches instead of even a half hour of doing exercises.

"Can't we do sparring instead?"

Lidea frowned and tried to find the owner of the voice among the group. The idea that someone would dare to talk back to their commander's training schedule, was inconceivable to her. They were either brave or more probably, conceited and stupid.

"No. There isn't much point to you guys sparring if you can barely lift a sword."

Warchief's no-nonsense answer pleased her. At least he seemed to have some spine. Some mumblings of malcontent followed his reply, as was to be expected but what Lidea didn't see coming was that the same voice spoke up again.

"But don't we become stronger through sparring anyway?"

The short-sightedness irked Lidea as she now pinpointed the young man that had spoken. He had a slender build and Lidea doubted that he would be able to last more than ten minutes into a fight.