Thud!

  Raen’s practice sword connected with the training dummy’s chest – a solid hit, clean enough. He studied the dent in the wood, then turned his hand over and flexed his fingers around the grip.

  It felt alien, but less alien than before.

  ‘Not yet where I want it to be, but better.’

  He took up the stance again, feet planted, sword raised, and swung again. A downward slash, hips twisting.

  “Hmmm.”

  Dral’s voice reached him from the edge of the training ground. Raen turned, facing the barbarian who stood with arms crossed, watching him with his cloudy eyes.

  “You’ve slightly improved from yesterday. The side effects from the coma seem to be lessening.”

  Raen nodded, and then Dral’s gaze dropped to his feet, his brows creasing.

  “But … what is wrong with your stance?”

  Raen blinked. “What?”

  “Before, your stance wasn’t optimal,” Dral said, eyes analyzing Raen from his shoulders down to his legs, “But it was passable. Now, it’s just … off. Your weight distribution is wrong.”

  “Try like this.”

  Dral planted his feet wide, center of gravity low, movements economical and primal.

  “In my tribe, we fight bears, sometimes wolves. Always bigger, always stronger.”

  He moved through the form, slowly. His feet adjusted as he went, sometimes wider, sometimes drawing closer together. His center of gravity rising and falling unlike a fixed stance, more like a living thing.

  “You don’t beat such enemies with power, you beat them with precision and without wasting energy.”

  He moved through another repetition, each motion slow enough to follow, but fast enough to show intent.

  “This stance is ever-changing, something that grows with you. It adapts to your body, to the ground beneath your feet, to your enemy.”

  “Start where I did, let it find its own shape.”

  Raen studied him for a moment, copied the stance, and swung.

  It felt wrong immediately.

  His feet were too wide, the stretch pulling at a muscle in his inner thighs that had never before been asked to work like that. His weight settled unfamiliarly, foreign even, and his shoulders protested against the low center of gravity.

  His blade wobbled mid-air.

  “Again.”

  Ten swings later, and he could feel his thighs burning, sweat dripping into his eyes. He wiped it with the back of his forearm without breaking rhythm.

  “Again.”

  Thirty, and the burn became something else. The world narrowed. The training yard shrank to three things: muscle, weight, and steel.

  “Switch hands.”

  Raen moved his sword to the left, the familiar weight settling into his palm. But the stance was still wrong. His mind, which wished to fight left-handed, felt it wrong while his body protested as it was locked into a posture it had never used.

  “Again.”

  Fifty swings later, the burn in his legs turned numb, spreading outward, into his hips, lower back, and even the base of his spine. His mind began to empty, thoughts becoming irrelevant.

  And then-

  The sword moved clean.

  No wobble, no hesitation. The blade cut through the air in a single, unbroken arc, exactly where it was supposed to go, with the exact force Raen planned it to have. For one instant, everything aligned.

  Dral’s eyes narrowed, studying Raen for a moment.

  “Good,” he said. “Now hold it with both hands.”

  Raen obeyed.

  And instantly hated it.

  His mind recoiled, as if something deep inside him had been struck. His body was tense, resisting, his shoulders locked, every muscle in his body fighting it.

  “It feels wrong.” He muttered.

  “Swing.”

  He swung his sword, and Dral raised an eyebrow, not in surprise, but interest.

  “My body won’t listen,” Raen said through clenched teeth, frustration bleeding into his words.

  “I try, but it just won’t.” He repeated, his swings faster, more ferocious. His swings became desperate, as though force could break the rebellion in his own limbs.

  His form broke, his left foot slipping forward, his center of gravity collapsing. He stumbled and barely caught himself before stopping, chest heaving.

  “Why the hell won’t it listen?!”

  “Because you’re fighting it.”

  Raen froze.

  Dral’s voice was calm, certain. He stood with arms crossed, axe resting against his shoulder, watching Raen without any judgment.

  “Your mind wants the left hand, your body the right. Both are screaming against one another. In my tribe, we have a saying: ‘The bear who fights his own claws dies hungry.’”

  “So … what do I do?”

  “Stop choosing, let them work together.”

  Dral moved beside Raen, adjusting his grip. “Right hand guides, left hand strikes. Both hands, one weapon, using both sides of yourself.”

  Raen stared at his hands. After losing his right, he’d compensated with his left, building everything around it for fifteen years. Now he had both, but couldn’t use either properly.

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  Two halves of himself, pulling in opposite directions.

  “Again,” Dral said. “But this time, don’t think about hands, just the target.”

  Raen raised his sword with both hands. He forced himself to uncurl his fingers slightly, to loosen his grip. He emptied his mind, breathed out.

  Then he swung.

  The blade came down clean, smooth. Both arms moved together, no wobble, no hesitation.

  Silence.

  “Acceptable,” Dral said, nodding his head and turning around, his blood-red hair moving with the wind, leaving the training yard as Raen continued swinging the sword.

  Raen stood there, chest heaving, the echo of his sword swing still ringing in his head.

  ‘I can do it. Before the scouting mission, I can get strong enough.’ He thought, a small smile appearing on his face.

  “Squad leader.” Adam’s voice cut through the silence, cold and formal, like a blade.

  He stood at the edge of the training grounds, looking at Raen with an expression that was deliberately neutral.

  “Our patrol is in thirty minutes. You’re with Jason and me.”

  He turned and walked away without waiting for a response.

  Raen sighed as he watched him go.

  ‘That guy is still mad at my decision, huh?’

  He exhaled in a slow, controlled breath, as Dral showed him, letting his feelings sit.

  ‘After decades of being on my own, I thought I didn’t care what others thought of me.’ He thought as he placed the training sword back on the rack. ‘And now this bothers me … weird.’

  He made his way out of the training grounds, each tired step letting him know just how long he had trained, and how hungry he was.

  ‘Thirty minutes, enough to shower and grab a bite at the very least.’ Raen thought, making his way straight to the showers. He reached them in seven minutes, scrubbed the mud and sweat off in five.

  He ate a bowl of tasteless broth and a tough chunk of bread standing up, and was back at the tent in twenty-two minutes. He moved quickly, checking his gear: sword at his hips, dagger at his belt, waterskin full. Everything was where it needed to be.

  ***

  The three of them left camp at the appointed time and moved into the forest. The thick, layered canopy swallowed the open sky and replaced it with green and shadow. Sound filled the space as birds called from somewhere high in the canopy. Leaves rustled, something small moved through the undergrowth to their left, leaving unseen.

  The forest was alive around them.

  “Your practice earlier, the stance was different,” Adam said, eyes glancing at Raen. His tone had softened, the coldness from before thawing by a degree or two. “Dral teach you that?”

  “Something like that.”

  Adam was quiet for a moment, watching the path ahead.

  “You know, back home, ma always told me that you’d do something crazy one day. Get yourself killed for being too clever.” He smiled before shaking his head.

  “Don’t prove her right.”

  ‘Too late.’ Raen thought.

  “I’ll try not to.” He said aloud, meeting Adam’s eyes with a smirk.

  “But I think it’s more likely that you’ll be dead once you go back home, didn’t you promise her to come back in six months. That was about a year ago, was it not?”

  Adam’s throat moved as he swallowed involuntarily. He said nothing for several paces.

  “Raen,” he said eventually, and the way he said it – careful, stripped of deflection – made Raen glance at him. “I don’t know exactly what that coma did to you, whether the changes it brought to you are good or bad.”

  “But don’t try to be a hero, alright?”

  He looked at Raen, genuinely worried. It wasn’t surface concern but the deeper kind, one that came when you cared about someone but couldn’t do anything.

  “You know, I had a lot of time to think while I was out. About how much time we waste, how many mistakes we make because we’re not paying attention.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like right now.” Raen suddenly stopped walking, suddenly enough that Jason, a step behind him, nearly bumped into him. “Jason, what do you hear?”

  Jason froze.

  “Um … wind, birds?”

  “No birds,” Raen said, not turning around. His eyes were fixed ahead, focused, knowing exactly what to look for.

  “None for the last 20 seconds,” he said. “Either something scared them off, or –“

  “Or someone did.” Adam’s hand moved to his hammer, not grabbing it yet. His fingers curled around the handle, resting there, ready.

  “Stay low and move away from the road,” Raen whispered. “Get ready for a fight if needed.”

  The two obeyed without question, dropping into a crouch and sliding sideways into the denser bush beside the trail.

  “Follow me.” Raen led the way, moving low, his eyes constantly moving. He looked not straight ahead, but slightly to the side, scanning the gaps between the trees.

  They moved in silence, the forest around them no longer pressing them as before, the canopy above being sparser, allowing more sunlight to pour through.

  Raen then heard it.

  Multiple footsteps, straight ahead.

  He raised his fist and all of them stopped. He listened, allowing the sound to settle, to resolve itself in his mind. Pace, weight, spacing, he counted the rhythms.

  ‘Four of them, that’s not too bad.’

  He allowed himself one small, inward breath of relief. Four was manageable, at least in normal circumstances.

  Adam and Jason heard the footsteps a few seconds later. Their heads turned, eyes finding the same gap in the trees that Raen was watching.

  Raen focused; his eyesight was always his strongest tool, the one gift his body had from the very beginning. It allowed him to spot things from a distance that others never could.

  That was when he saw them, four soldiers walking forward in a loose formation. They wore uniforms – Imperial uniforms, the same dull red as Raen’s own.

  “Four men, all wearing our military uniform.”

  “Ohh, so it’s our guys,” Jason said from behind, his weight shifting as though to stand up.

  “Stay low.” Raen’s voice was quiet, but sharp enough to freeze Jason mid-motion. “We don’t know if they truly are friendlies.”

  They stood motionless as Raen kept watching. He let the four men get closer, close enough for details to sharpen. He scanned them, observing the way they walked, the tension in their shoulders, and the angle of their eyes as they observed their surroundings.

  “Behind those bushes,” Raen commanded in a tone that was barely a whisper now. All three of them pressed deeper into the undergrowth, Raen’s eyes still locked onto the four soldiers.

  A couple of seconds later, their footsteps grew nearer, and Raen was finally able to hear their conversation.

  “Will this pass?” The first voice sounded nervous. His voice was shaky, like a person who couldn’t sit still in his own skin. “I mean, won’t our faces be unfamiliar?”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” A second voice snapped.

  “We’re not going to enter the camp. Our orders are just to go to the designated location and get the news from one of our guys inside.”

  They stopped talking for a moment before a third voice – calmer, more measured – echoed.

  “The patrol switch happened recently. Even if some soldiers come across us, we can easily pass without drawing attention. Act normal, and we’ll be fine.”

  ‘Enemy troops, disguised as our own. Coming to meet a spy.’ Raen thought before looking back at Jason and Adam. He held up four fingers before miming the motion of walking. He then tapped his own chest and pointed toward them.

  Adam’s jaw tightened as he understood.

  Raen’s mind worked quickly, running through the options.

  Do they let the men pass, allowing them to meet up with the spy, or engage?

  It was he who had to make that choice.

  ‘Four men, not too dangerous,’ he thought. ‘If things go well, we can get rid of a spy, or even take the information he was going to leak.’

  He held up his hand, palm flat, facing Adam and Jason. It was a signal to wait.

  He waited until the four got closer and continued observing them. He looked at their way of walking, their breathing, even the way their arms moved.

  They were not amateurs. All four knew how to fight, but probably not elite either.

  ‘Under normal circumstances, with the element of surprise … it would be manageable even with just Adam.’

  ‘But now ...’

  It was too risky. Jason was young, untrained, while his own body was still half-broken. A mistake here wouldn’t be just a bruise or a lost point in a training yard.

  ‘One mistake here, and someone dies.’

  Instead of taking the risk, he would trail them.

  ‘Get closer and find an angle where we can eliminate at least two from the very start.’

  He glanced back at Adam and pointed forward. He then made a slow, deliberate crawling motion with his two fingers.

  Adam nodded once, and they shifted to move, only for something in the bush right in front of Raen to move.

  Raen's eyes snapped down, and a wild fox stared back at him.

  Small, nose twitching, the fox had been curled in the undergrowth, probably sleeping. Raen’s boot had shifted the leaves, waking it up.

  It sat there frozen, looking up at him with black eyes that held no understanding of the situation.

  ‘Don’t –‘

  The fox panicked.

  It launched itself sideways, scrambling away as its claws tore at dead leaves. Its body twisted, snapping a small branch before zooming away from Raen.

  The noise immediately caused the four men to turn around and stare at the bush.

  Raen pressed himself flat on the ground. Behind him, Adam had gone completely still while Jason grew deathly pale in the face.

  The four men stared at the bush. The fox was gone, but the damage was done.

  “Do we …” one of them started

  “Slowly.” The leader of the squad said, all four men drawing their weapons and moving toward the dense bushes, eyes scanning around them.

  ‘Dammit!’ Raen thought, clenching his teeth as he held his sword. The element of surprise was gone, and the plan he had in mind evaporated in an instant.

  The four men continued getting closer, each step deliberate, patient.

  ‘Think, Raen, think! What can you do right now?!’

  I myself have once been faced with a similar situation, thus the idea to write the failed 'Trai'.