Tthor Prayer and the Orffelios' paila

16- Tthor's training

   The month of January had arrived with rain. The days followed one another closed, with gray and heavy clouds. Drizzle seemed to envelop the abbey and fog, in the morning and afternoon, made Warghost appear to be held in the air, as the hill on which it was built was enveloped in cones of humid air for most of the day. .

   The storms almost always broke out at night and the rain hit the thick glass with Vitro quite violently. The wind, which was blowing intensely there at the heights of Warghost, created an atmosphere of certain tension, especially in Tthor, who had been having trouble falling asleep lately.

   There were several reasons. One was the wind and another was the way he had to sleep: they had tied a long rope, braided with a rather complicated knot, as the young man had thought, to one of his ankles and the other end attached to one of the sticks from the high four-poster bed. An apprehensive Noel and a rather reserved Tthor told, half-heartedly, what had happened to them. Tthor avoided talking about the theft of the mirror from the blacksmith, the flight of the griffin and the celestial deer. He simply told how he sleepwalked to Mount Ri and how Noel helped him return to the abbey. This had forced him to make a rather forced decision: tie him to his bed so that he would no longer come out at night.

   The first nights he slept only before dawn. As the days passed, he managed to sleep more hours but always fitfully and with restlessness. And almost every dawn, the light of the new day found Tthor asleep on the carpet half a meter from the door, with the rope pulled taut, hurting his ankle.

   A couple of days later, unable to stand the protests of the Warghost elders any longer, Professor Evans removed the noose from Tthor, instead opting to lock the door on him for the night. Consequently, Tthor wandered sleepwalking through his bedroom and woke up, almost always in front of the dying flames of the great fireplace. But on the fourth night, Tthor had woken up on the third floor landing, in front of Orffelios' paintings, curled up on the floor, without remembering how he had gotten there or how he had managed to open the door. And even then a resigned Professor Evans no longer locked the door.

   The days were no better than the nights, as Tthor told his cousin in letters.

   “Professor Evans, according to him, to make me tired so I can sleep better at night, has designed a training plan for me…” Tthor wrote to Wilgenyna.

   In reality, that teacher's plans never came to fruition because after a week he did not achieve even a tenth of what he had set out to do.

   On the first day of training, Tthor was taken to the central courtyard, taking advantage of the fact that it was not raining that day. The sky was clear and there was a gentle but not very cold breeze.

   Professor Evans explained to him the positions of the hands with the sword, from the first to the eighth; but when Tthor tried to retain them in his memory, Professor Evans gave him the so-called supination, that is, taking the handle of the sword from below.

   Ten times Tthor tried the positions, under the desperate gaze of Professor Evans. And ten times he marked them wrong.

   "Rest!" Evans muttered as he disappeared through a side door, cursing under his breath.

   Tthor stood there ashamed, looking at the stone of Kabanor and wishing he were that small, insignificant ant now walking along the edge of the fountain.

   He only remembered the first and second positions, so he adjusted his mask, which made him sweat and took away most of his vision, and he practiced them several times, walking around the entire yard. Then he tried supination, or what he thought was supination, which was actually the third position. She was a little happy at his achievement and steeled herself when she saw Professor Evans walking towards him. But his self-satisfied smile faded when he heard that all the positions he had made were wrong, because he had been holding the sword with the wrong hand.

   With the foil and the saber he also had no luck. And he was silently grateful that the arrival of twilight put an end to that day's training.

   As they gathered their things and took off their masks, Thor gathered his courage and said:

   "Pro...pro...Professor Evans, tomorrow...tomorrow it will...it will turn out better. I will practice it…I will practice it."

   "No matter how much you practice, it is evident that you do not have the gift, as your father did and even if you do better tomorrow, you will always be mediocre," he said with a low and guttural voice.

   "It's just that he doesn't see…I see…when there's light," said Tthor, now sweating because of his nerves.

   Tthor felt that, for some reason, that man did not want him around and taught him only out of obligation.

   " What have you said? It's just that it's hard to understand you when you stutter."

   Tthor blushed and repeated the phrase, making a vain effort to speak more clearly:

   "See...I see...better in the dark...darkness."

   "Then we will tell your enemies to turn off the lights when they confront you for the throne."

   "I am not the he…heir," said the boy, almost whispering.

   "I hope so... for everyone's sake," and he walked away muttering under his breath and leaving a red-faced Tthor in the frozen courtyard.

   The second week did not go better for Tthor, neither with the javelins nor with the hammer, much less with the spears.

   Professor Evans tried everything, day, night, sun, rain. The boy's vision seemed to worsen as the days became colder and closer. He had no balance, no aim, nor enough strength in his arms to do hard work.

   Pole vaulting was a complete disaster, considered in Warghost an art of war and not a mere sport. He fell so many times and hit himself so much that in the last few falls he thought he wouldn't be able to get up anymore. When night came, after that particular training, Tthor felt that there was not a single part of his body that did not hurt. But more than pain, he felt anger. Anger because he had failed to do anything well, unlike Professor Evans who seemed to handle every weapon and do every exercise with sublime skill.

   And then, worse than all that, there were the nightmares, the few nights that the boy managed to fall asleep. He always dreamed that he was trapped, sometimes in Murk's ship, sometimes in the caves of Mount Ri, and sometimes underwater. Those were Tthor's worst nightmares. He felt that he was drowning, that with each breath his lungs seemed to burn inside his chest and he kicked in the water, which became increasingly denser until he could no longer move. And then, at the last second, when he thought death was inevitable, he opened his eyes and found himself sitting in the four-poster bed, in the dark of the night, with the silk sheets sticking to his skin with perspiration and with the body trembling with uncontrollable dread.

   Only Wilgenyna knew about these nightmares and suffered as much as he did, from a distance. her feeling miserable for not knowing how to help him. Only by rereading his letters, over and over again, did Tthor manage to calm down and curl up in his bed, eyes wide open, waiting for dawn. And wishing, deep inside him, that the month of April would arrive as soon as possible.