The Road to Holberg
The forest was dense, trees behind trees behind trees, each making its strange little noises. There was nowhere in the empire quiet like this place. It seemed like silence after a while, all those sounds merging into a quite cacophony. Cerwynn stared out over the wooden walls of the Broch’s battlements, rubbing his temple. A hand reached down to the flask at his hip and hesitated there.
No, they need you.
With a sigh, he withdrew his hand and pulled his cloak over the flask, and turned back to the training grounds below him. Lynn was drilling the troop again, pairing them off to spar. She circled the grounds watching them clash. When one would relax his guard she would wordlessly intercede, raising his arm to the correct position and closing his grip more firmly, without so much as making eye contact. They were still a little intimidated by her, as fresh a bunch of soldier as their were, their thorn still red and raw, freshly branded on their cheeks, but Cerwynn knew he had made the right choice, she was the one of the few who were properly trained, and the only one who could keep them in line.
