Iron & Ice #ONC2024

Chapter VIII

 Over the next few weeks, we settle into our new routine. Our classes are brutally difficult, but it's the amount of reading and papers and research that our teachers assign that begins to weed out the serious contenders from the rest.

Classics becomes by far the hardest class. The format is different, and it's not enough to memorize the materials. Princess Jessamine expects us to be able to use the works of the old philosophers to extrapolate our own positions on everything from politics to the human psyche. And every point we make, every position we choose, she challenges us. It is both one of the most demoralizing classes, particularly once we start turning in graded work, and one of the most fascinating.

Combat is also brutal. Jovianus shows us no mercy. Come rain, shine, snow or ice, we report to the parade ground twice a day, for conditioning in the morning and combat training in the afternoon. All of us quickly grow stronger, faster, better, even those of us who were fit to begin with. If it weren't for Meadow's brutal training back in London, I think Combat would have been the death of me.

My favorite classes quickly become Spycraft with Miss Grace and Strategy, again with Princess Jessamine. In Spycraft, we have no essays or research papers.

Instead, after the first few weeks, Miss Grace tasks us with bringing her information. Whether it's something we've extrapolated from reading the newspapers and letters from home, or if it's a secret we learn about one of our peers or teachers or family members, we are instructed to bring her one piece of information per class. We tell her in confidence, one by one going into the office off her classroom to whisper our information in her ear.

At first, it's nothing serious, nothing significant. At first, it's our new classmates' favorite foods or secret habits. Later, it grows to each other's vices and weaknesses, to politicians' strategies that we ferret out by reading between the lines in the papers that come up from London. It frightens me to think of how much Miss Grace must know about us, simply from what our peers and rivals have told her.

Strategy is our most enjoyable class, at least to my mind, even though most of my classmates don't take it seriously. In it, we combine everything we've learned in our other classes to pick apart the strategies and tactics behind ancient battles fought hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago.

Twice a week, in the evening, Princess Jessamine hosts additional study sessions where we mock up battle maps and recreate troop movements to provide a physical aid to our studies. The sessions aren't graded and don't count against it. Most of us attend the first session, but after that first night, most of the class stops attending, seeming to feel that it's time wasted that could be spent studying.

I keep going, somewhat stubbornly, because I like listening to Princess Jessamine speak. I drag Cassian with me, and Octavia comes, too. Victra attends perhaps a third of the sessions, but skips those on nights when she has too much work for our other classes.

After the first week, Princess Jessamine starts changing things up. We're no longer confined to battles of ancient history. Instead, she invites some of the other teachers to join us to recount their experiences in more recent wars.

Agrippina Lycaeus demonstrates the infantry formations in the Battle of Ålesund in the last Norwegian War, one of our nastiest defeats in recent memory. She describes to us the way the Royal Aeronautical Corps supported the infantry from their airships-then a new invention. She deftly moves pieces across the board with her gnarled fingers, telling us about everything from the conditions on the ground-miserable, cold and dank-to how the commanders' bickering doomed our chances of success, despite a strong offensive.

Another time, after a recent snowfall, General Jovianus joins us and has us recreate the Siege of Scalloway, which took place here in Shetland, when a garrison of a mere hundred held out against the full might of the Norwegian navy and prevented Shetland from falling under Norwegian control.