“Get out of that tree, soldier, and run into the field! I said run! Run! Do not walk! Draw your weapon, Parnard! Draw your weapon!”
“I hope he does not fall upon his knife.”
“Don’t worry,” the Captain replied without looking back from the young recruit’s progression across the stump-dotted valley. “If he does, it will be the first time today he has hit something. Now rally on the hill, Parnard! Rally on the hill!”
“Look at him go!” exclaimed the Sergeant. “I have not seen him move that fast since the last meal call. Why, he has almost crested the ridge.”
“He is very swift,” the Captain agreed. “The only problem is he’s climbing the wrong hill.”
“At least he is finally showing some pluck. Should I whistle him back, sir? Or let him discover his mistake?”
A series of muffled, high-pitched yelps echoed through the woods as Parnard’s charge was halted: a dense thicket of thorns grew on the opposite side of that hill.
“No need. He has already discovered it.”
Parnard gingerly dabbed at a scratch on his chin with a cloth, helmet off, his tunic rent in several places. “Begging your pardon, Captain,” he said, his voice rising an octave, “but the ground was very swampy and I did not wish to get my boots wet, and to avoid that noxious quagmire, which, I might add, was not on my map, I went ‘round it, and then when you shouted, ‘Run, do not walk!’ with such a - well, such a distracting loudness, it quite startled me, and made me very unsettled, so that I just rushed forward, headlong, not entirely knowing where I was going, only that I must do it- “
“My voice, Parnard? Are you blaming my voice for throwing your advance off-course by three miles?”
“Exactly, sir!”
“So, essentially,” the Captain said, leaning in until his nose nearly touched his, “it is my fault for yelling too loudly. Should I, perhaps, whisper my orders?” He yelled as loud as he could in his face, “HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO SURVIVE THE ENEMY, IF YOU CANNOT FOLLOW A BASIC PLAN OF ATTACK?” Parnard flinched and dropped the cloth. The Captain suddenly whipped around to face the silent line of recruits. “Does my voice distract the rest of you?”
“NO, SIR!” they shouted.
“Thaldir,” he growled, stepping over to another recruit, “Parnard here suggests my voice is disorienting. When I give my commands, do you feel an uncontrollable urge to sprint towards the nearest bush?”
“No, sir!” bellowed Thaldir.
The Captain turned back to Parnard with a look of mock surprise. “You see, Parnard?"
“But Thaldir’s ears are not as large as mine,” he observed plaintively.
The Captain ignored him. He pivoted on his heel, and pacing back and forth, said to the recruits, “We are going to perform the next drill, right here, right now, on this flat, unthorny piece of land, where nobody will be running off! Sergeant, proceed.”
The Sergeant began his slow, ambling stroll down the line, stopping to eye one recruit, then another, passing by Duinion and Gornon and the short-eared Thaldir, and continued toward the end of the formation before coming to a dead stop in front of the last, and the tallest of them. Parnard’s lacings were not secured, his shirt hung out in the back, and his hair appeared not to be combed. The Sergeant paused, slightly to the side, and hesitated.
“Sergeant,” the Captain called out. “We are waiting.”
He looked back at the Captain, his expression conveying a profound uncertainty. At the Captain’s curt nod he sighed, and reaching out, tapped Parnard on the shoulder. “You’re it, Parnard. Now, come over here and stand right there. Do not move from this spot.”
The Sergeant lifted his head and announced, “Recruits, we are practicing unarmed combat. There may be a time when you find yourself without a weapon.” He struck a fighting pose, one leg in front of the other, with slightly more weight on his back foot than his forward foot, and drew his hands up, one high, by his right ear, and the other stretched out far in front. “Now, I may seem too far to strike you from this distance, Parnard,” he said, bouncing a little further away on his feet. “Tell me, at what point do you feel safe?”
“At no point do I feel safe,” answered Parnard.
A ripple of snickering broke out among the recruits. With a sudden, explosive shift of his rear foot, the Sergeant lunged forward, bringing his fist up so that Parnard was struck squarely on the temple. His boots lifted from the hard-packed earth and he landed flat on his back with a dull thud.
“Parnard?” the Sergeant said, kneeling beside the motionless elf. “Ai! Captain, he’s gone quiet.”
“Is he dead, Sergeant?”
“No, he’s still breathing, sir.”
“Well, pick him up,” he sighed.
Parnard let out a long groan and opened his eyes. “How did I get here on the ground?” he complained, his voice thin and shaky. “One moment I was contemplating the sky, and the next…”
“Right then,” the Sergeant said. “Walk it off! Recruit Thaldir! Front and center! Prop him up, and walk him around the perimeter. That’s right. FORWARD…MARCH! Watch out! Do not let him stumble into the wall! That’s it - Left…Left…your other left, Parnard! Left, that’s right! No, not Right, Left!”
The two elves tottered around in circles, Thaldir adopting a frantic half-drag, half-hop march to keep the semiconscious Parnard upright.
The Captain watched their progress, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Look at that, Sergeant! He is actually marching in step, for once!”
“One more blow to the head like that and he might actually become an Officer,” whispered Gornon to Duinion.
