The House of Oldenrock

Initiation Part I

Chapter Nine: Initiation

            Margot wanted to throw up.  At least now the cramp, the horrific stabbing feeling in between her ribs had gone, but the nausea remained.  Her feet, which had drummed kilometer after kilometer, horribly ached.  The rocky terrain did not help.  She tripped at least once a day, and the rocks hurt her feet.  If possible, the now mountain terrain just got rockier, and of course, it forced Margot to only run in one direction: up.

            “Halt.” Margot heard Captain Meghan say.  That was the command that Margot had been waiting for all day.  They now would stop running for the day and make camp.  Margot slowed to a stop, and finally the whole exhaustion and pain hit her.  She raised her arms above her head taking deep breaths in an attempt walk it off.  Instead the ground swam beneath her feet and she was greeted the increasing dizziness and tunnel vision that-

            “Now would be a bad time to faint,” she heard Hal whisper into her ear, and she realized that he was holding her, and his strong hands were the only things were keeping her up right.  He had caught her. Margot then stepped away from how now that the feeling had passed.

            “Thank you,” she said.

            “Would you excuse-” Hal turned away from Margot, and instead of the word “me” coming out of his mouth, whatever had been in his stomach did, which was mostly bile. He barely missed his shoes.  He retched again, and Margot turned around to look at the remaining recruits.  The amount of recruits had grown when they reached Riverheart and then Swan Keep for their route took them straight through those cities where recruits would be waiting to join the Gray Guard.  Despite the growth, the number of recruits had ended up shrinking as the run to the mountains progressed.  Many recruits had realized that they could not finish the run and dropped out.  Now, only Gregor Smith, two out of the eight recruits from Riverheart, one out of the four recruits from Swan Keep, and of course Margot and Hal remained.  When they had started out the day, there had been one more recruit from Swan Keep remaining, and Margot had completely missed his disappearance. Margot was also the only girl to even join the recruits.

            “That was awful,” she heard Gregor say in between pants.

            “That’s terrific,” Captain Thayer replied without even looking at him.  The Mountains had not gotten too steep for the horses yet, so the Captains were still able to ride alongside the recruits without breaking a sweat, but Margot was sure that this would probably be the last day with them even though they had only entered the mountains a day ago.

            “Just wait until initiation starts,” Captain Meghan said.  “Now, that will be awful.”

            “Starts? Then what was this…this whole trip out to the Walls, if it wasn’t initiation?”

            “That was the run to the Walls.  You need to finish the run to qualify for the start of initiation.  I am surprised that so many of you made it thus far. Let’s see, we had seventeen of you in total.  Three of the recruits from Swan Keep dropped, six of the recruits from Riverheart dropped, and two of the recruits from Rock Hall dropped, which means that in total eleven of you dropped.  Out of the seventeen recruits on the Rock Hall run, six of you remain.  I’m impressed.  Usually, out of fifteen recruits who do the Rock Hall run, only one or two remain, and they are generally from Riverheart or White Keep, which are closer to the Walls.  I am surprised that Rock Hall produced the most successful recruits.”

            “Successful? We haven’t even finished the run yet.” Gregor said.

            “Aye,” one of the recruits form Riverheart agreed.  He was the only other recruit of high birth, but like the two Captains, although he belonged to a major Clan, the Rivenocts to be exact, he was from one of the lower Houses.  Margot had forgotten which House, but at least she remembered his first name, Ashcor. “When will this run even end?”